Category Archives: gaming

gaming, sewing Leave a comment

Practice Mushroom

Blue Mario Mushroom

This morning, my son was insistent that we make the Super Mario Mushroom he’d been asking about for weeks. I’m not exactly Little Miss Etsy, but I took Home Ec in junior high and sewed my own plushie music note by hand, so I figured I’ve totally got this.

I found this instructable that put me on the right track, and I convinced Connor that we should make a small “practice” mushroom out of the fabric I had on hand, instead of an 18-inch Giant Mushroom.

I showed Connor all the steps involved in sewing a plushie, even though I actually did everything myself. (Since I hadn’t sewn in several years, I wasn’t sure which steps to let Connor help with.) It took about two and a half hours start to finish, but the end result was a perfectly passable practice mushroom. It has a few imperfections, and I learned what not to do next time, but I really enjoyed myself. My son thinks it’s the best thing ever (for today, anyway), and that’s what I was going for in the first place, so arts and crafts time was a rousing success!

Sewing by hand is kind of meditative. I like it. I should do this more often. I’m sure my son would appreciate it. 🙂

college, gaming

Starcraft Memories

From: Diana
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 4:13 PM
To: sheryls
Subject: RE: o man

Oh, it was fantastic playing Starcraft with the guys at RCC. We’d go to Kreischer-Compton lab after-hours during the summer, hack the imaged PCs so we could network the game, and play Starcraft in the dark using cloned discs. Jamie would always be the Zerg, and Jamie’s Phish-loving friend Josh would always be the Protoss. And I’d always be Human, and there were other people who’d rotate in and out, like Kirkum and Gerbil. But one of the humans would finally get nukes, and launch them at Jamie’s Zerg, and everyone’s computer would calmly say, “Nuclear launch detected.” And Jamie would ALWAYS half-stand up and say, “WHAT THE FUCK?!” And we’d all look for the tiny red dot that tells you where the nuke’s going to land.

Good times. 😀

aikido, crafty, gaming, jobhunt 3 Comments

A Quickie

I pulled my groin in aikido on Saturday, while trying to roll. I’m getting annoyed with myself for not “getting” it yet. At least my leg seems to be on the fast track, and feels like it should be healed by Wednesday’s class. It really put a damper on the weekend’s other extra-curriculars, though.

This week, Monday through Thursday afternoons, I’m attending an outplacement workshop paid for by Sky/Huntington. I was dubious about its actual value, but it actually seems like it’s going to be helpful. Among some of the highlights will be resume-crafting, networking and job-searching, and negotiating a job offer. I’m actually looking forward to some of this… plus, it gets me out of the office for half a day.

Rob has requested another manly candle, to be picked up this week. In looking at my records, I realize I haven’t made any candles since February (which was the last time Rob requested a manly candle). Candle-making is definitely a seasonal thing for me, being that I don’t like to have the oven on in the summer, and my timing mojo gets thrown off if I melt candle wax in the microwave instead. Maybe I’ll have to ramp up the seasonal candle-making a little earlier this year, and be sure to give everyone at work a going-away candle with my name and URL on it. 🙂

Update, 11:45pm: Rob’s candle came out well. I used a blow dryer to even out the surface — I should have tried that long ago.

In other news, bumping up the difficulty in Civilization IV really makes a difference: from me beating all the computer players in Chieftain mode to me getting my ass kicked and barely making it to the end of the game with one city intact in Warlord mode. If it weren’t almost midnight (and if I weren’t gainfully employed and due at work at 8am), I’d start another game.