Making foody things

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I made chicken stock. From the few tastes I took, it came out rather good, but we'll see when I eventually use it in something. I followed Michael Ruhlman's Ratio for everyday stock. I love this book. It's got seriously interesting things in it - like how to make sausages from scratch and chicken stock and the best pancakes I've made (Alton Brown's pancake recipe is still one of my favourites, but this one is slightly easier for a Saturday morning).
So, a bit of a background on me and chicken stock. Every time we make roast chicken (which is about 4 times ever) I say to myself: I really should have a go at making stock from the bones rather than just throwing them out. So I'd shove the remains of the bird in the fridge, and look at it every time I'd open the fridge over the next few days, and say to myself, "Really should make stock." But it never happened, because I was never really motivated. And I'd end up throwing it out after a while. So yesterday, I finally psyched myself up for a whole day of keeping an eye on a pot of bones and water, and it turned out great. I did it in the slow cooker, because I know for a fact that I can't keep any of my pots on the hob at below a simmer.

And I'm making two breads today. A naan for Liam and a carrot / butternut squash / pecan loaf for me for later if I get peckish or tomorrow's lunch. And hopefully it'll still be good when Mammy and Daddy come to visit on Friday (I'm doubtful about that). As I write this, I have corn starch all over my right side. It fell out of the press and spilled all over me :/ And it doesn't clean up easily.

Ooh, and I made a salad dressing the other day. It involved carrots and ginger and vinegar and oil in the blender and turned out lovely.

So that's that. A quick round-up of other news: I am slowly finding homes for all our stuff in this house. I want to relearn to drive here in Ireland, but when it comes to actually going out driving I don't want to. I only have my learner permit for a year, so I can't really dawdle with it. I'm running the intro 5e D&D game. And I'm really enjoying trouncing Uruks in Shadow of Mordor.

I just realised that I don't believe in myself

(Obligatory opener:) How long has it even been since I last posted? A whole term in Oregon. That's terrible. We've done loads of cool stuff here and I've not posted about any of it. And now we're heading home in a week.

I've really enjoyed my time in the Pacific Northwest. So many trees; lovely springtime weather. Our apartment faces a forest - two big living-room windows looking out onto huge evergreens, and relatively smaller-looking leafed trees. Some days I just stand in the middle of the room and look out the windows and pretend I live in a modern architectural wonder of a house that's built into and around the forest. I'll miss that. I'll miss the way the sun falls through the gaps in the canopy, and the way the patches of light that make it to the ground sway with the breeze. Yep. I'll definitely miss that. Ireland doesn't have nearly enough trees. If I had the power of a god, I'd make ancient forests appear on every field in Ireland. Still. I am looking forward to going home.

I don't know what else to say. I suppose my thoughts have turned from American housewifey type things to homeless job seeker in Dublin. Not so much looking forward to that. And I bought a budgeting program today and, boy, is grown-up stuff frightening. Mostly because I have no idea how much money comes in every month, but my budget has over 2,500 outgoing every month (and that's not including saving for rainy days), and since I've never made money even closely resembling that, it scares me. It just seems like way too much for two people and a dog every single month. So it's a bit stressful. But I suppose I should find out how much comes in every month before I really start to freak out.

What else on the changing of the tide? I suppose I'm just procrastinating now. I do actually have a lot of organising to do - to get ready for the movers coming next week. Right at the moment I'm sorting out what to keep, what to throw out and what to donate.

Oh. I've been off sugar for a six weeks now. I do think its helping with mood swings and energy levels. I could be deluding myself, but I do feel like things have been more stable. But I also haven't been worrying about writing in those six weeks, so I don't know if the stress of being too hard on myself for not being more like Brandon Sanderson (who writes about 3 books a year) was at play as well. Seriously, if there's a line up of absolutely terrible role models for me to pick, I will pick the worst one, and be the hardest ever on myself when I'm not living up to those standards. I actually don't think I'm cut out to be a writer because nothing is ever good enough for me, but I also have the problem that I'd rather play games than spend the long hours to get it good enough. And, I was given 4 years of free time and I didn't manage to get one book finished. I've endlessly tinkered with 1, written 1, got half way through another and actually completely finished a short story (I had motivation on that one - it was for a competition and I had a deadline). So I'm just going to stop and get an office job and bemoan my lack of writerdom. And that will be fine. And all the people who didn't believe in me (which is probably just myself) can laugh and say, "I knew you'd never do it."

Wow. This post has taken a turn for the bitter. But I have learned something. I have no faith in myself that I can actually write, or be a writer. I think it's the second part of that that's important, because I do actually believe that my stories are good (I absolutely love the story in Artificer), but I don't think I actually write them well. And therein lies my problem. So perhaps I should focus on learning the craft of writing rather than tweaking a story that already works. I need a workbook. Actually, I think I need a writers' group. One that actually meets to critique writing and that expects members to have new things every week.

Now so now. Thank you theraputic journal. I should remember to visit you more often.

How I Worry

First is the old and much turned over (tee hee hee, pun) car crash. It's very boring and it quickly gets swapped out for explosions. Something exploded and there are little husband bits all over factory rubble. My rational brain says, someone would have contacted me. My petty brain goes, no one cares enough*. After this a part of me goes, explosions are a bit ridiculous; there must have been an earthquake. Never mind that I felt absolutely nothing here, just 5 miles away. And after this it gets into the fantastical realms of someone has him locked up in a secret underground bunker. It elevates to this level in a matter of seconds, and this one hangs around for a while as my imagination goes through what they are doing in that bunker - tests for science, or torture, or some horrible questioning session (who knows what the questions are about).

Do I have issues? Is this normal? Do other people worry like this?


*My petty brain is the stupidest thing in the world. And the problem is that my body listens to it and not my rational brain. It's very annoying.

Christmas and New Year

Despite not having any interesting plans, Christmas turned out really well. We bought turkey legs on the spur of the moment while shopping for Christmas dinner on Monday, and got some spuds and vegs to go with them. I brined them and dried them Christmas morning and put them on that afternoon. Boiled the spuds for mash and did the vegs in salt water (yummy). I made some stuffing for Liam. But the part of the meal I was most proud of was the gravy. Somehow, onions fried then dusted with potato starch and stirred up with chicken stock and herbs with a touch of pan scrapings from the turkey turned into an amazing just-thick-enough brown gravy with a perfect gravy shine. And I made it from scratch with no recipe and just a little research.

Liam got me an ant farm. They're all beside me now, wandering around their tunnels, hanging out. It's a cool present - one of those things you always want, but would never buy for yourself. I got him Back to the Future Lego, which gave us the idea to watch the movies. One and two, anyway. We didn't make it to three. Along with them them, we got through How to Train your Dragon and The World's End. I enjoyed all of them. Yea. It was a very relaxing day. Quiet, but nice.

New Years wasn't quite as good. We watched Aliens, and paused it in the middle for the countdown. And while I enjoyed the movie, I'd had this sense of apathy the whole rest of the day that pulled the whole thing down. So while the last day of 2013 wasn't great, the first day (evening) of 2014 more than made up for it. Again, it was nothing special, but we got some mulled wine and played games, and I got past the bit that was annoying me in Terraria and am mad back into the game again.

I feel I should mention something about Terraria. In the first two weeks I had it, I played about 100 hours. I have no idea how this happened. Well, actually - I know exactly how it happened. It's because it's less a game and more a building program, only fun and pretty with game elements thrown in. I built a tree-house and a dragonfly airship and an apartment complex for the characters who joined me. And then I decided to build a beach house, and the commute between the tree-house and beach-house was about 5 minutes (real time) and I had to keep going back and forth to re-supply. So yea. I can see where the time went. And all this back-and-forth made me want a teleporter, but the get the teleporter I needed a certain character which would only arrive in my apartment-village if I defeated a certain bad guy, which could only be defeated in a certain game-mode (Hardmode - which could mean the destruction of everything I'd built so far) so I created a new world and made it Hardmode and had to get stuff to survive and then other stuff to fight the bad guy.... and yea. I just took a very, very long and windey time and I got annoyed at all the hoops I had to jump through just to get a teleporter. BUT. Last night I did it. I defeated The Destroyer (quite easily once I had the right gear), and the Steampunker moved in and I bought teleporters off her. And I'm a happy bunny once again. Except I think I left the lid off my lava generator, and I'm afraid I'll come back to overflowing lava (not good).

Right so. I think that's everything. We'll be home in three weeks. Can't wait.

Fire

We managed to set the big oven on fire last night. I'll leave all wonderful details up to your imagination, but I will disappoint you by saying it was about the size of two candle flames. I found it all rather amusing, actually. Little flame burning away in the bottom of the cooker, happily suffocating itself.

That's all I really wanted to say.

NaNoWriMo update (brought to you by Friday*)

I'm at 33,000 words and after 7 years and 4 attempts, I think NaNo has finally helped me figure out a pace that works for me. That's what this year is all about. It isn't about getting to 50,000 by writing any old thing that comes into my head. It's about writing well (enough for a fist draft anyway) and getting a story straight - not just ploughing ahead because: oh my god! word count. It's about using the motivation to come up with a steady routine that I can follow all year round. And I've figured it out. And this figuring out brings me to the understanding that I won't be finishing NaNo with 50,000 words this year, but a very respectable 40,000. And that's what I'll be aiming for every month for three months until I have draft one of this novel finished.**

And if anyone's curious, the routine is 2,250 words Monday to Thursday, 1,000 on Friday and the weekend off. The 1,000 on Friday and the weekend off is the most important part. No matter what I do to try to motivate myself to work more than a half day on Friday, I can't do it. My brain goes, "Lunchtime Friday. Playtime. Woooooo!" It's probably because there's a lifetime of programming in there telling me this (from arts and crafts after lunch on Friday in primary school, to Liam getting of work early on Friday afternoons) and I'm okay with that. As long as I'm aware of it, I can work with it and do that 250 words more on the main weekdays.

Right so. It's lashing here. Our roof is leaking. And I'm going playing in a closed beta all weekend (so excited :) ).


*which, coincidentally, is today.
** I do kind of wish NaNo wasn't in November, because keeping the momentum going through December, when my brain says I should be on holidays, is even harder than writing on a Friday afternoon (keep reading, it'll make sense in a minute).

Nanowrimo 2013

I'm doing nano a little differently this year. I find that the non-stop pace of the month burns me out and while I get loads done in November, I don't do anything else until March, and I'm well sick of writing by the end of the month. So this year, instead of writing close to 1,700 words every day I'm going to write 2,400 words every weekday. It's not that much more to write and having weekends off will (the theory goes) keep me fresh and interested.

So, what am I writing this year? Well, as I get older I'm realising that the nano rules aren't for me. I can't start something new in November because I come up with ideas by writing. I have to just start whatever is forming in my head and let the idea grow with the writing. And the breakneck pace of nano doesn't leave much time for idea percolation. In the past I've found that I get to the end of the month and I might as well have spent it doodling ideas in a journal, because that's about how useful the manuscript is to me. Anyway. This year I started back in August and got 15,000 words in by the time November came around. Shush. I was away for five of those weeks or something. And sick for two more. Yes, I'm making excuses. Well - I got nicely off the point of this paragraph. The story is about a country girl whose sister falls ill and she sneaks away to the dreaded city to get medicine. But on the way, she gets struck by lightning which awakens her magical powers. The only problem is, the city executes casters and she doesn't know how to hide her powers. (Now, if only I could write an intro to Artificer as easily as that.)

And that's mostly this year's nanowrimo. As of today I am 45 words behind. Not bad at all. Ooh, and I made out a mad spreadsheet with maths and everything that lets me mess around with words per day and days left and other fun things.

In other news: those five weeks off were spent at PAX and on a visit home (via Germany). PAX was brilliant, as usual. Of all the events I've ever been to, only Glastonbury and PAX feel like home to me. Like I belong there. Like it fills a gap in my soul. The trip home was great too. There's nothing quite like getting to see everyone and hang out.

So yea. In very small news, I'm playing Morrowind (via Oblivion), Privateer 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, watching Agents of Shield, Korra and Once upon a Time, and we're off to Thor 2 this afternoon, having watched Thor 1 and the Avengers last night. And my hair is pink.

I always injure myself when I hand sew

Okay. I just stuck the eye of a needle half a centimeter in under my nail. I think that means it's time to stop tinkering with my outfit. It's a significant eye, too - about a millimeter in diameter. Funnily, it's the same sort of sore as a piercing. Weird. It's not bleeding so much. A little blob welled up just after it happened, but now the nail looks normal, with only a little mark about half a centimeter down on the inside. Interesting.

I got purple shampoo today. Who knew such a think existed? Blondes use it to keep their hair looking super-duper extra-platinum white-blonde. And the one I randomly picked up had really good reviews. The conditioner's reviews aren't so good because people thought it made their hair look purple. That's good news for me :)

So my outfit is only about 80% good. There's more I'd like to add in and parts I'm not very happy with, but it'll do. It'll look good to anyone who isn't familiar with it, but I'm afraid it won't stand muster when real Skyrim fans see it. Anyway. It's good enough. It's not like I'm entering the cosplay contest or anything. And I'll have fun wearing it around for a day. That's really all that matters, really. Right - time to try this on. Yeay.

my hair is PURPLE

Tired post ahead - you have been warned.

I have purple hair. It's so amazing. Every time I pass a mirror (which is quite often given that we have at least one in every room) I see it and I smile, which evolves to a laugh, which evolves to a happy dance. It's so amazing. I was at the hairdresser for about three hours today. She did a great job on it - both the colour and the cut. I think I look about 12, but that might just be because I'd gotten used to icky sort-of long in-my-face shaggyness. I was well fed up of my grown out hair. But this new hair is amazing. I know I said that already - read the disclaimer.

So, what else... I'm touching up my dovahkiin outfit for the weekend. I redid the bracers from scratch, and next is to make the "studs" look better, then to round out the edges of all the "leather" bits. I must log into the game and check the studs to see if I'm inspired on how to get them to look better. I still haven't figured out a way to do the little shield-thing on the shoulder (gardbrace?). If my sculpting skills were better I'd make it from reinforced clay, but as it is I need some sort of guide or mold and I haven't come up with anything.

Okay. Check out armour in Skyrim, then off to bed.

Northern Adventure

I felt like something to eat the other evening, and usually I'd have a bowl of krispies. But we'd run out and I didn't feel like going to the shop to get more. So instead I made rice pudding from scratch. It turned out exactly like rice pudding from a can even down to the lack of a certain flavour that I can't quite put my finger on. I always feel like it's just not good enough. Or maybe there's some flavour in the pudding itself that I want to tone down or something. Anyway, it satisfied my desire for krispies.

A small group of us went to Flagstaff last weekend. While the others went to the Grand Canyon on Saturday, we headed south to Sedona and Jerome. Sedona is the same amazing as always. I think I could live there and the red rocks would never get old. Storm clouds were building on every part of the horizon as we wandered around, so we didn't dally.

Onwards to Jerome and while wandering Main St, I felt an awful sense of familiarity. I'd seen this before, and I knew exactly where. Google streetview. When we first moved to Arizona I'd looked up Jerome because that's where Maynard James Keenan (of Tool) set up his wine shop. But I'd completely forgotten that and when I saw this street again, I was like: we have to find Caduceus Cellars. We did find it and stopped in to sample wine made by a rock star. It was pretty good. It didn't taste "winey" if that makes any sense. There wasn't that horrible bitter taste that any wine I've ever had before has had. Some did, but we ended up buying two bottles that didn't. The rain came in then, so we grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to Flagstaff. We fit Lowell Observatory in that evening with the rest of the group, and weren't up for much else but food and bed afterwards.

Sunday, we strolled down to Flagstaff Extreme (and when I say strolled I mean we drove the few miles but didn't do it with any kind of urgency). It's an adventure course up in the trees and we had great fun balancing across logs and swinging from zip lines. Not fun was the rope swing. I was clinging on so hard I hurt my back and even with that I barely made it to the other side before my grip gave out entirely. My fingers were still sore an hour later. We were just under half way through the course when thunder rolled in and spoiled our fun. But they gave us a full refund, which is pretty amazing considering that thunder rolls in every afternoon this time of year.

The others headed to Meteor Crater, but we've also been there before, so we just headed home. I love Flagstaff, though. It's such a cool town, with an amazing vibe. And the people who live there are so cool. Chandler is so dull and homogenized in comparison. But at least we've been getting away most weekends recently, which is great.

Camping Trip #2

Right now I have 24 mosquito bites. Some are the painful swollen-golfball type; others are the small itchy type. They, and a bunch of photos (which need a tiny bit of levels-adjustment in photoshop - hence why they aren't part of the post), are all we brought back from our weekend camping trip. Apart from the mosquitoes, the trip was wonderful. We ate food cooked over a campfire and watched meteors streak through the Milky Way. I went swimming in a lake. River went swimming in the same lake. It didn't rain - yeay.

I'm kind of tired and can't think of what to say. I'll update again when I have the photos ready.

We finally went camping

Packing is a bad idea when the more responsible member of the team (i.e. the one who usually remembers all the things I'd forget) has had a few drinks. We forgot chairs, blankets, utensils, cleaning things, food... But no great worry - this is America, land of capitalism so we bought most of the things we needed. I drove us to the lakeside campsite, around the campsite and back out of the campsite again. Who would have thought the place would be full on a Thursday night. We raced darkness as we drove back down the road towards another campsite I'd seen (11 miles from the lake). This one was about half-full, and with night closing in too fast, we picked a spot and put our tent up. Adventure 1 complete.

Adventure 2. I hadn't eaten much all day and I was starving, so we drove back to Payson (half an hour) to get food. We got tacos from one of the few places open that late (10pm-ish) and ate them while watching the lightning across the hill. It was pretty spectacular - all the lights around us went off about half way through the meal. That should have pinged something in my brain, but no. We clambered back in the car as the first drops of rain hit. I was still fine with this - it was probably just a shower. Heh. About a quarter of the way back to the campsite I was driving through rain so heavy I couldn't see 10 meters ahead of me. It was pitch black, and my headlights barely lit the road for all the rain. With each flash of lightning I fixed the curves of the road ahead in my mind. We got there in one piece, our tent had held up masterfully, and we crawled into bed.

I should mention that there was poo around our campsite and all the signs around warned of bears. The outcome of this is that I didn't sleep a wink the first night. I woke up to every little noise. In the morning we woke up to cows in the next campsite over. Who knew cow poo could look so solid. Anyway, I slept well the next two nights.

(Mis)Adventure 3. On Friday night we got a campfire going and cooked burgers. But a thunderstorm as big as the one on Thursday night rolled in as we were cooking. So we had slightly pink-in-the-middle burgers. But that was okay. It was practice for Saturday.
Saturday night's dinner was steak and fish (guess who had what) and Friday had thought us how to get the fire going and how to cook well over an open fire. So we did fried spuds on the pan and everything was delicious. Except that we cooked the steak and fish separately and when Liam got up to help me get the fish onto my plate, River snuck over to his and scoffed half his dinner. I felt so bad that I couldn't hardly eat. I ended up giving half my dinner to Liam. But I'd had enough. Needless to say River was locked in her crate while we finished eating.
And we had toasted (roasted?) marshmallows. They were divine.

So that was all the mad adventures. We went kayaking on the lake on Saturday. That was good fun too. We only rented the kayak (a sit on) for an hour, but more thunder came in after 40 minutes. We'd had enough fun anyway. I'd forgotten to put on suncream and I was paranoid. (I didn't get burned, though.)

We packed up Sunday. I didn't want to go home. Sitting around a campsite surrounded by pine, oak and juniper is the best thing ever. But we've booked another trip for two weeks from now. Can't wait.

I was motivated yesterday

I got so much done yesterday. I was quite proud of myself. I was up at 7 and drove Liam to work, then I came home and fixed the car backseat thing that River sits on. The straps holding the attaching clips had frayed. They had become really brittle in the sun, and I had to cut out the frayed bits and attach the remains back together. It was quite fun figuring out how to best attach them. I ended up sewing them together and reinforcing the join with duck tape.

Next up was the hammock - our old one's ropes had also become sun-frayed and we replaced it. So I got to mess around with more bits of rope. But we have a hammock again. Yeay.

I went bra shopping - unsuccessfully - but even that didn't kill my motivation.

Then I got 1,500 words written. I'm doing an online writing course and am working on an entirely new story. I'm really enjoying it. I'm trying "discovery" writing, so I have absolutely no idea where the story is going beyond the next few scenes. But the characters are fun. The side-kick is a bit psycho-homicidal and those type of characters are always fun to write.

And after all that I fixed the brakes on Liam's bike. This bike is my newest project. It's been a mess since we moved here - flat tires, chain covered in sand, brakes that were so tight the bike didn't move. I haven't looked at the gears yet, but I imagine they are in an equally sorry state. I've always wanted to learn how to maintain / fix a bike and I'm using this as my learning bike. It's funny how not mysterious a bike is when you actually start learning about how all the pieces work. I used think the brake and gear wires were set with some kind of techno-magic-precision-engineering, but it's nothing more complicated than a nut / bolt you can tighten and loosen. And the wire tension you just fiddle around with until it's right. Crazy.

So I cooked dinner then, and after that we went to the shop and bought random things (I got a Nalgene bottle), and then I played Skyrim until bedtime. Ahh Skyrim - I am, once again, entirely addiced. I even got a funny buzz in my solar plexus region the other day I wanted to play so badly. Oh my god. How do Bethesda do it? How do they makes games that do this to me?

Anyway. I must go get some writing done. I'm on scene 6 and I'm supposed to be on 9.

Arizona Heat

It hit 52°C in the car yesterday - yes, that thermometer runs a little hot, but still 52 is a ridiculous temperature for it to be. The thermometer in the house got to 47, which is what the weather people said it would be. It's 44 out there at the moment.

So we're inside playing Borderlands 2 for the weekend, because it's too hot to go outside. I'm really glad we went back to this game. Because once you get beyond level 10ish content, it actually gets really fun. For some reason I find the start of the game lacking, or maybe it was that when I played it before I couldn't help comparing it to borderlands (1) and it didn't have Mordecai and that made me sad. And what makes me really sad is that they changed Mordecai's voice actor between the two games.

Anyway. I really just wanted to post about the temperature, the borderlands stuff is filler :)

Homemade Chocolate

I made chocolate today. I was food shopping this morning and randomly bought cocoa. I'd run out ages ago and it's nice to have around for making random hot chocolate when the mood strikes me. So when I got home I put the tin on the counter and was inspired to make something with it right away. "What can you make I cocoa," I asked the tin. Google answered; coconut chocolate. Equal parts coconut oil and cocoa, and enough honey (or other sweetener) to take the extreme bitterness out of it (which in my case was 2/3 the amount of the other two). It's really yummy. And mostly good for you. If I could handle the bitterness on its own I'd totally leave out the honey, but alas, my poor tongue is too sensitive to bitter tastes.

So that's in an icecube tray in the fridge and I take a tiny bite of one square every now and then.

Neverwinter

This game is my latest obsession. Not for the game itself (which is a whole lot of fun), but for the player content. They have this feature called the Foundry where you can play quests made by players, and make your own. Some of the Foundry quests are as good as the best of the dev quests. They are a whole ton of fun to play.

The other element of Neverwinter I absolutely love is their screenshot software. It records the script of what your character does and then you can open it up in the editor and move the camera around and get extremely high quality screenshots. I messed around with that last night and this was us in Blackdagger Ruins.











In other random news, this is what the stats for my blog looked like today:

I love it when things work out

I was supposed to start an online writing course (writeaboutdragons.com) yesterday, but the organiser sent an email saying it was postponed until July. I'm so happy about this. Now I have the time to finish the dress I started in September (and put off because the pattern was miles too big and I became disillusioned at having to undo and repeat all the work I'd done so far).

So now I have time to make the dress. I'm going to unstitch it today and iron the pieces, then cut out the pattern pieces in the smaller size. But before I go near the mock-up I'm going to try measuring things. I have this idea to cut strips of the pieces at the waist and bust level to see about sizing without having the hassle of sewing the entire thing up. It will at least give me an idea if the size is way off like it was before. But I'll see if that works out.

So...
today: rip, iron, cut pattern, test size by making strips from the pattern pieces
tomorrow: (possibly finish cutting pattern) cut material
thursday: sew
friday: finish sewing, fit
monday: cut actual material
tuesday: sew
wednesday: finishing touches

I'll update with my progress later in the week. I think this schedule doesn't give me enough time, but we'll see how it goes.

Furious Yoga

I've been doing yoga for over a month now and I'm really enjoying it. This morning I was out of bed and all set for 40 minutes of stretching at 7:15. Yoga first thing is completely different to yoga second or third thing. It's like that first stretch when you wake up, only it lasts for 15 minutes rather than 15 seconds. I think I'm getting a little stronger too. And I'm definitely getting more flexible - only by a tiny bit, but it makes me feel good about the whole thing.

*

We went to see Fast 6 (Furious 6?) on Wednesday. So much fun. Heists and fast cars, they go together so well. I kinda want to watch the whole series now, because this movie mentions things from earlier movies - not that you need it to get what's happening.

*

I'm playing an MMO called Neverwinter at the moment. Set in the D&D world of Ferun. I prefer it to a lot of MMOs I've played. The controls are set up like a shooter, mouse-look and crosshairs (which are a circle in this case). You use abilities by pressing the mouse buttons (and Q,E, and R) and it makes combat so much easier. And so much more fun. You have to dodge attacks, aim at enemies - it's not a case of trying to remember a rotation of abilities and having 20 different keys set up. It lets you get on with playing the story rather than playing the mechanics.

I don't think I have much other news.

Archery

I've been down to the range twice since my bow arrived. Yesterday I was just remembering how things work, and shot well enough, but was wrecked after 3 ends (15 shots). Today I loosened the tension on the bow and only brought one arrow with me, forcing myself to take it easy.

I was trying new things - stance, follow-through, focusing on my target instead of sighting down the arrow. It was kind of cool, actually. Over the 40 minutes I was out I could see myself improving. The times when I remembered my steps of shooting (anchor, relax, focus, follow-through) I was only about a foot from where I wanted the arrow to go.

Now, I consider this excellent for someone who wasn't using any reference point on the bow for aim. All I did was stare at where I wanted the arrow to go and relax my body so it moved where it wanted to. My arrow landed exactly where I was looking on the x axis, but up between 1 and 2 feet on the y axis. At one stage it went clear over the whole target and had a slight run in with a rock. It got a bit scraped up, but the vanes are fine so it's all good.

I think the people shooting on the target next to me thought I was a bit crazy. They offered me extra arrows and everything. But they were friendly.

I can't wait to go again. I'm so obsessed. I'm going to have mad callouses on my fingers from pulling the string.

I Bought a Bow

Look, look! I can post again without feeling like a stranger on my own blog. Yeay.

So, this is a little random. And of course it needs a story to go along with it. We went out for brunch yesterday and I decided I wanted to go to REI (they are having a sale and I wanted to see if I could pick up a wicking string top; I couldn't, but that's not part of this story). After REI we went to the games shop and on the way home we ended up going north on the 101 instead of south.

"You know what's up this way?" I said. "Bass Pro." Yes. Bass Pro, a fishing, hunting, boating, really crazy-american (sorry Americans, but face it, you do have a penchant for going over the top with things) outdoor shop. That place was an experience - taxidermy animals all over the place, antlers lining the walls, a massive aquarium in the middle of the giant shop. I was pretty cool, but pretty frightening at the same time. I suppose hunting is such a small thing in Ireland that seeing a whole shop dedicated to it was odd.

Anyway, we just went up to see the place, because we'd been told it was worth seeing. I kinda wish I'd brought my camera, but I would have looked weird taking photos and the security people probably would have given out to me.

So, this all brings us up to the point of my story. They had a load of archery stuff upstairs (down from the racks and racks of guns and rifles) and I got all nostalgic about archery. There's a range here in Chandler by the dog park and I always look in wistfully when we pass. So we looked at bows. Not seriously, because they were all over $200, but I can't say I wasn't tempted.

That evening, as I was importing old posts into Blogger, I came across a post where I wrote about the archery class I did back in '06 / '07. And I'd written the name of the bows we used. And out of curiosity, I went on Amazon to see if they sell them. And they do...

So, I think the title of the post says all that needs to be said at this point. Well, except that it's bright blue and will be here on Wednesday and that Chandler Archery Club is giving a one-day lesson in June. they run lessons through-out the year too.