Book Logging

( Castle, Jayne. Hot Zone )

( Daisy Kutter: The Last Train )

( Knights of the Lunch Table: The Dodgeball Chronicles )

( Korgi 2 )

( McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. Princesses Behaving Badly )

( Owly: Just a Little Blue )

( Scharf, Caleb A. The Copernicus Complex )

Started but not finished:

( AnubisAnkh. Pride of Time )

( Arruda, Suzanne. Mark of the Lion )

( Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites )

( Hartman, Rachel. Seraphina )

( Howard, Philip K. The Rule of Nobody )

( Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History )

( The Professor's Daughter )

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Last night, Scott's FATE game met. Scott's really burned out on GMing, I think. He's made arrangements with booniverse for her to run a couple of one shots for the group to give him a bit of a break (and to get through the rest of cider season). Scott loves GMing, but he feels like he's not managing to make the game interesting for everybody. Part of that, I suspect, is that he's really sold on the FATE system but is still learning how to make it work. It requires a different approach to play than what we're used to, and I'm not sure it works as much better as Scott thinks it can. I find the rules really obtrusive. They require thinking in a different way and jumping through some hoops in order to use them to one's advantage.

I have to figure out, though, if the FATE game goes on, how my character should respond when people get killed. She's a doctor with a fair amount of experience with the unusual, but one of her aspects is that she's determined that nobody die when she's involved. In last night's session, two of the bad guys we were fighting got killed (we have an ex-Navy SEAL. The player decided, quite reasonably, that he would shoot to kill). The game ended before that aspect came into play, but I think, if it comes up again, there has to be some sort of repercussion for my character if our group kills someone. I just don't know what it should be.

Our group did kind of fail to achieve our real goal. There was some sort of giant magical conspiracy to break down the barriers between the everyday world and the magical plane. One of the player characters made a bad call at the very end of the session. He shot the device that was channeling the energy. That destroyed the device, but in the process, it sent a huge surge of power through the device such that the barriers were left permanently in tatters all over the world.

Cordelia had volleyball practice last night at her school. I took her over there and picked her up afterward. When we arrived, all the doors were locked, and it looked like there might not be a practice. Fortunately, somebody came to let the kids in, and one of the doors was unlocked when I came to pick Cordelia up after practice. I was a little worried about that as I'd forgotten to put the coach's cell number into my phone.

My e-mail started behaving itself properly again some time yesterday evening. Everything seems to be coming through fine. I did discover that I could prompt unviewed messages to come through by quitting and restarting my mail program. If I'd looked at the message online, it wouldn't come through at all, but if I hadn't, everything was fine. Well, it was awkward as I didn't know when I needed to restart the mail program. I still have no idea what happened. My software is up to date; I did check that.

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Today, I tried Steven Smith Teamaker's blend no. 55, Lord Bergamot. I steeped the tea for three minutes instead of the recommended five. I really, really liked the way it smelled, but I couldn't taste any of that when I drank it. It was definitely different than other black teas I've tried, but it didn't taste at all the way it smelled. I don't think I liked it.

I also tried Steven Smith Teamaker's blend no. 18, Brahmin. I steeped it for three minutes rather than the recommended five. It smells like straight up tea (which, according to the ingredients, it is). It tastes to me like a stronger version of the sort of tea one gets at a Chinese restaurant. I don't tend to drink that stuff because it doesn't really taste good to me.

I had Cordelia try the lavender milk tea. She drank about a third of the mug and then passed the rest to me. She didn't like the lavender flavor or smell very much. She didn't out and out hate it, but she thought it was peculiar.

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Family scheduling around my grandfather's funeral has gotten complicated. My sister, her son, and my mother are coming in Saturday night. We'll have breakfast with them on Sunday and then all go to East Lansing for the memorial. I scheduled Cordelia to be out of school on Monday because she hasn't seen my mother in about three years.

The complicated part comes from something completely unrelated to the funeral. In terms of my siblings, there's my sister, there's a half-brother on my mother's side, and there's a half-sister on my father's side. (I usually don't include the 'half-' part because it feels sort of distancing.) My half-sister is flying in to Michigan this weekend to see Grandma. I had assumed that I wouldn't be able to see her because of the way scheduling around Scott's work and the funeral worked out, but when my other sister heard that our half-sister would be in Michigan, she moved heaven and earth to figure out a way that we could get to see her.

We haven't seen her for many years, and even then, each of us saw her for no more than a couple of hours. We've never really had the opportunity to be close because more than twenty years separate me and my sister from our younger sister and because we've never lived in the same state. Our younger sister grew up in New Mexico and then moved to New York City. My other sister has lived in the Atlanta area for a very long time now, and I've been in Michigan all along.

The plan is that we'll spend part of Monday hanging out in Ann Arbor with Mom and our brother. Then he'll head back to Kalamazoo while Mom, my sister, my nephew, Cordelia and I will all head north. We'll be staying at a hotel in Oscoda. That was the closest we could get to East Tawas because there's some sort of big boating thing going on. We were extremely lucky to get these two rooms. My sister says that Mom is looking forward to seeing Grandma (her former mother-in-law) and my uncle and aunt. It's been about thirty years since she saw any of them.

In a way, staying in Oscoda will be more convenient than staying in East Tawas. Oscoda is where my uncle and his family live and is likely where the extended family will gather.

I've e-mailed Cordelia's teachers about the change in plans. I just have to call the school tomorrow morning. I had to reschedule a doctor's appointment that was on Tuesday morning. My sister's flight back to Atlanta leaves at 3:45, so we'll definitely be back in Ann Arbor in time for Cordelia's vaccination appointment at 4:00.

I feel a bit guilty about taking Cordelia out of school for two days, but she's not going to have an opportunity to see any of these relatives again for a long time (at least a year and quite possibly considerably longer). She's also doing quite well in school. I don't think two missed days will hurt her badly.