Rest in peace, Anne

No picture with this posting, likely the last of the year. There is no picture that can encompass the enormity of this year's losses, or the trepidation with which we face the coming year, which is likely to prove just as difficult if not more so.

My own personal security is viewed with less contentment when considering the insecurities of the world, filtering down into the lives of family and friends. Life is never static, and it is also finite. We have a limited amount of time with one another, and to accomplish our goals. Come what may, we'd damn well better soldier on AND remember to stop and smell the daisies.

Miach's mother, Anne, died suddenly yesterday evening in Florida. She had been complaining since Thanksgiving of feeling short of breath, and of having no energy. She was diagnosed with asthma and given some inhalers, but Miach felt that it was something more serious going on. Frankly, I did, too. There is nothing more stressful than a death in a family during the Holidays, especially a family like Miach's, that typically hosts several out-of-town guests (including, this year, one getting treated for cancer). Yesterday was one of the worst days I can remember, and all I did was pay for an unbelievably expensive airline ticket and offer some emotional support to a guilt-ridden and shocked Miach. Because for years, I've been enabling him to avoid doing what he knows is his lot in life: being the next grown-up. His parents worked hard all their lives to provide for their kids, and they were successful to a large degree. They were immigrants, but had both gotten higher education, and they believed strongly in the value of an education. Both their sons went to college. Miach went as far as you can go in college and got a doctorate. Their daughter followed in Anne's footsteps and became a nurse, and also presented them with a much adored grandson. And then something happened, and for each child it was a different "something". My own theory, based on my personal experience, is that for a certain personality type (of which I must be an example) so long as your parents are alive, you don't feel like an adult. Not really. Because you know that if worse comes to worst, your parents will take care of you. When my mom died over 25 years ago, I looked around me and suddenly realized that I was now the adult and 4 little kids were depending on me, and I could no longer afford to waste time.
My feelings in this matter are conflicted. I have roots and family here in California that I don't want to leave. Miach's epiphany would probably involve trying to get into a medical residency program close to his Dad, in Florida or at least along the Eastern seaboard. Having lost Anne so suddenly, he is now very anxious about Arnold. Arnold, aside from being older, also has prior cardiac problems. For years, Miach has announced that he only has another few months and then he has to 'get back to work". And I've made it as easy as I could for him to not do that, and there was certainly no financial imperative. And the longer you wait, the harder it is to explain that gap in career, not to mention that you're competing for openings with much younger people.
But now, with Anne gone, too much of a burden is falling on Arnold, and one of these grown children is going to have to step up. It really is long past time.
I will always remember Anne coming home from a 12 hour shift at the nursing home, and then cooking or cleaning for another 2 hours, until she finally sank exhausted onto the couch and promptly fell asleep. Night after night during the two holiday vacations that we took to New York, this was her pattern. Arnold worked an earlier shift, 6 days a week. Meanwhile, the rest of us shopped, or went to the movies or a Broadway show, or played video games. Anne's one vice was the casinos in Atlantic City, and this unfortunately also contributed to how hard she and Arnold had to work in order to retire. She told Miach once that she intended not to leave any money behind when she left this world, and she nearly accomplished it.
Now she can at last rest.

The Lady of the Swan and Me

I like cheese. And good ale. And bread.
Perhaps it is the mystery of the symbiosis between microscopic and macroscopic in these foods that makes them so fascinating to me. Those of us who brew often claim that it is easy, but in reality it is not. It takes a lot of physical labor, even without growing or malting our own barley. And you can start with something that you believe to be a wonderful idea, and end up falling far short of the vision you held. You are at the mercy of the microscopic adjuncts, those invisible co-creators who begin to grow and multiply in the environment you have given them.

The SCA has guilds for brewing and cheesemaking, that encourage and instruct members to attempt to be as authentic as possible in their hospitable tasty endeavors. I joined the West Kingdom Cheesemakers' Guild when the Lady Aeschine Colquhoun revived it. So far, I've made cream cheese and neufchatel. I have the bacteria and molds and trays to make Brie, but I haven't tried it yet because it needs stricter temperature controls. And Lady Aeschine is also in the West Kingdom Brewers' Guild. We have never actually met in person, but we have exchanged email messages on the lists of both guilds, and obviously share a love of fermented foods.

Now, as you may recall, my consort Lord Miach of the Shire has been practicing his western martial arts prowess in the last few months. This has proven to be a real Godsend. It has encouraged him to do that male bonding thing that I really think most men need in order to be mentally and emotionally healthy. It has also encouraged him to be more pro-active in taking care of his physical well-being. He has developed muscles! And he has actually gone to see his doctor and gotten routine tests, which is kind of a miracle. For years, I've worried that he doesn't get out enough and that he doesn't have any social contacts beyond family. That worry is now a thing of the past, as he's become quite the social butterfly in the past year, since we became a part of the Shire of Mountain's Gate. As you may recall, we had been in the SCA for years prior to moving to the Shire, and we had mostly concentrated our interest in target archery and our household and close friends in the Kingdom of Caid. We had tried to fit in to a couple of other local groups, and it just didn't work out. As time has gone on, I have come to realize that the reason it didn't work out is because social events in the greater SCA all tend to revolve around Court, and Court revolves around tournament armed combat. As target archers, we were literally and figuratively on the far borders of any SCA events. Really gifted and dedicated craftspeople can get a toehold into the upper echelons, but that kind of skill and devotion is hard to develop. We tried. Miach continues to work on his Illumination skills, while I've really slacked off on my calligraphy. Miach actually won the Kingdom cooking award at the first Kingdom event we attended. And we've always been willing to volunteer for things. We probably got our Awards of Arms due to all the privies that I cleaned and meals that Miach cooked in Caid, not to mention his willingness to help out at all sorts of archery events and even to host one in Golden Rivers. But a true sense of community and friendship always eluded us until we landed in Mountain's Gate, and the smaller and more intimate group allowed us to feel that we belonged. Even at Kingdom level events, the Mountain's Gate sunshade and encampment gave us a base to hang out at and to welcome other folk into. Our contentment grew, and since there are two Knights and a Baron who are well-versed in armed combat in the Shire, and our Chatelaine is a gifted metal worker, Miach soon had a helm and shield and sword and was attending fighter practices regularly. I knew he was hooked the day I heard the epic heroic soundtrack from the "Conan" movie playing loudly, and found Miach on the exercise bike in the garage in full armor, swinging his sword.

Miach's first foray into competition was at the Golden River Pas D'arms, where he made a reasonably credible showing and exhibited a little flair for the dramatic as well. I got to carry his banner during the introductions. He had also fought as part of a group, and as a combat archer, in the Cynagua/Mists War. He had gotten some good critique and advice, and God knows he took it to heart and practiced. He also began attending fighter practice in Golden Rivers, where there were more fighters, and higher level fighters (including the current and many former Princes of Cynagua). So, at Fall Coronet he felt he was ready to actually enter "The List" (officially competing tournament fighters). He did really well, considering he's been at it for less than a year. One of the fighters he engaged and lost to was Lord Daniel de Blare, who fought like a crazed hypermonkey and just knocked the socks off everyone there, including one-shotting Sir Richard de Camville.
Lord Daniel de Blare thus won for his Lady, who is Aeschine Colquhoun (from the Cheesemakers' Guild), the title of Lady of the Swan and Crown Princess of Cynagua.
Now, this is awesome for many different reasons, but one of them is that the Lord and Lady of the Swan live in the Province of Silver Desert, which is on the far Eastern border of Cynagua. The Silver Desert folk are constantly trekking into the Central Valley of California from Nevada in order to participate in principality and Kingdom events. In Mountain's Gate, we're further away from most of the main sites for events than much of the Principality or the Kingdom, so we can relate. Miach and I were truly very pleased with the outcome. It would have been interesting if Sir Richard had won, but he's won before and he has squires and peers and all sorts of support. He used to live in The Mists, too, and that is pretty much the original SCA group. We would have offered our support, but he wouldn't have needed it, I think. (It should be noted that Sir Richard made a very impressive comeback from a bout of illness and just all-around horridness that would have likely thrown a lesser man. He nearly won the Coronet, surprising himself more than anyone else, it would seem.)

So with much goodwill I congratulated the Lady of the Swan, Her Excellency Aeschine, and revealed that Miach had enjoyed his bout with His Excellency, Lord Daniel, and offered any assistance in their endeavors.

Which is how I came to be invited to be a member of the Court of the Lady of the Swan. There is no running from the pointy hats any longer.

Wanted: Shoehorn

My youngest daughter and 2 year old granddaughter moved in with us in the last 2 weeks, nearly doubling our household and completely filling the last "guest" bedroom. We moved our SCA stuff into our master bedroom closet. Sig moved his car out of the garage, and my daughter's stuff into the garage. Since my oldest grand-daughter, who is going to college in Folsom and Sacramento, already lives with us, this effectively fills the entire house. It's a long story as to why. It has something to do with the economy, although there are lots of other reasons as well. The economy didn't help, shall we say? When people are living on the edge, as my daughter and her boyfriend have been doing for years, it doesn't take much to fall over. Her boyfriend is living with his sister. The two of them are very lucky; they live in a house that their grandparent's owned and their mother grew up in. And their mother is lucky; she lives in a house that she bought about an hour's drive away. In times like these, it would be great to have a house that you could just keep moving family into without it disrupting your actual house and routine.

Our rental agreement was of course only for Sig and myself. The owners of the property could demand that we move. I don't think they would do that, but they could. There are now 4 visible cars outside in front, and our old van in the RV camping in back. That's a lot of vehicles. Thank goodness my daughter is a neatnik, so at least I have a lot of help in keeping the house as liveable as possible. If it were my house, I'd not worry about any of that. But it's not, so I do worry.

We are only about 30 days or so into our 45 to 60 day wait to hear if the bank will accept our offer on the short sale, and already things have changed drastically for the worse. Aside from the greater economy showing obvious signs of a severe and perhaps prolonged Recession, the additional strain of gas, utilities and food for twice as many people is a burden. Frankly, I can't do it on my paycheck any longer, and my paycheck is the largest and my bills the least of my entire extended family.

If the offer is accepted, and I can still get the loan, we'll still go through with it at this point. But if it's not, then I think that's the end of the road for any hopes to keep the down payment long enough to find and put an offer on another house. There is just too much that needs to be done on too little money. My granddaughter may be able to find another job, but it was hard for her to find the one she had and the economy was booming when she did. My daughter has a job, with UPS, but it is low-paying entry level and part-time with no hope of full time for at least 3 years. It's a miracle to me that people will actually work it. I guess most do it for the benefits and the hope that they will sooner or later be promoted.

My family celebrates the end of October/beginning of November as the beginning of a new year. This has been a very disappointing year for me when family matters are the focus. I'm lucky to have friends and avocations that I find fascinating, and a career that is uplifting and meaningful.
I love my kids, and my grandkids. I don't begrudge helping them. And I foresaw that this would likely happen, so Sig and I were semi-prepared. But it still sucks.
And so much has changed in the past year that it makes me apprehensive about the coming year.

The Shire goes Camping

We went camping this weekend on a friend's family lands up in the Sierra, along with many of the denizens of the Shire of Mountain's Gate. It was very mellowing and relaxing. We had planned on being up there on Friday afternoon, but Life has been intervening lately and I was unable to be home until 6pm or so, and we knew we wouldn't make it down the back roads until it was pretty dark and cold. So we went up Saturday mid-morning.
No fires were allowed, and that was a bummer. It was also the first weekend of deer-hunting season in El Dorado County, and there were a couple groups of hunters up with us further down the road. Normally, this would make me anxious. It wasn't bad at all, though.
According to our friend, the large buck that haunts the meadow where we camped did make an appearance in the wee hours, snorting and pawing and rubbing his antlers on trees. Later in the morning, he spoke to some hunters out on the road, and they had bagged a large buck that we believe is the one from the meadow.
As always, we brought way more stuff than we needed. We spent Saturday and what time we had on Sunday sitting around and just being with our friends. I spoke a bit more with the couple that are short-selling their house (which I have put an offer on), kind of hesitantly, because I offered much less than the asking price. They're a bit puzzled that their agent hasn't held any open houses or promoted the house much. I reassured them that I had offered what I was pre-approved for (with reasonable bargaining margin), and that my offer did not reflect what I felt the property was worth to them at all. My friends are puzzled that their agent hasn't been promoting the house, but I am not; it needs work, and her commission is likely to be minimal. Their are also too many houses on the market, several in the vicinity.
My offer remains the only offer.
I still fully expect the bank to reject it. But we are now more likely by far to consider a property up in the foothills, and I anticipate ending up there.
An interesting side note, and one that was also mentioned in this article which was brought to my attention by the Sacramento Land(ing) blog, is that we were told that horses and other livestock are being abandoned by people who are also abandoning their rural properties. This came up because I was again asking for advice about browsers (like goats) and asking about upkeep and feed costs. We were told that if we are able to buy a small acreage, we will have no trouble obtaining whatever livestock we might be interested in, free.
Abandoning ANY kind of animal is heinous and immoral, but HORSES???

The Waiting

As of today, and after an additional 2 addendums by the seller's agent (mostly to make sure I understood that the ultimate sale was not in the control of her client, but was at the whim of the holder of the mortgage) we have now entered the waiting period. The papers, I am told, are now at the lender which holds the mortgage. And the average before hearing anything back on them is between 45 and 60 days.
All of which is cool with us. We're not in a big hurry.
I have concerns about the general economy, and sometimes I wonder if the terms will be anything like what we all discussed in 60 days. This doesn't really worry me too much; if things are much worse and the fundamentals of the sale are becoming more flawed, I don't have to go through with it, of course.
This is not a house I'm in love with, but it is a house and property that I feel we could work with and be relatively happy with. There is plenty of actual room, and according to the friend that owned it (nominally) , it is permitted by the county zoning folks for an additional 1600 ft of housing. Which could be another small house, an addition, a mobile home, etc. As strange as it sounds, that makes me feel better, because I always harbor the low-level notion that my children and Sig's family will somehow all end up out here. That used to be far-fetched, but it's not anymore. They'd have to sleep in trailers, of course, and there would be lots of disharmony but at least they'd have a roof over their head and food to eat.
I do find myself thinking about how various activities will fit in to the potential house, and pondering scenarios. A couple weeks ago I bought a few dozen canning jars with the odd notion that I was going to either go up to Apple Hill and buy bushels of apples or down to the Sacramento Farmer's market and buy bushels of whatever they have that's seasonal and can-able. I suspect it was more a subconscious reaction to this possible purchase of a rural house with acreage more than any burning need in the here and now. The Sig just started a batch of Cabernet Sauvignon which is currently fermenting, crushed skins and pulp included, in a new/clean 20 gallon plastic garbage bin with fitted lid. I think he started wanting to make this wine after talking to some vintners from the area of the house we're trying to buy, at a party.
The whole fermenting blob should yield about 5 gallons of actual wine, according to the Folsom Brewmeister. The wine should age for at least a year. In another month or so, we have to press the wine out of the skins, and Sig knocks the skins/pulp back down under the juice every day with a canoe paddle that he disinfects. We also have some strawberrry mead that is far from done aging.
If we end up being approved for this deal, we are going to have to move 10 gallons of fermenting beverages (which do not like to be sloshed around while still fermenting) about 40 miles. That's probably enough creative food preservation product to worry about. I don't think I'm going to be doing any canning to add to the mix. I do think it's amusing how we're each reacting to ideas that I'm sure were put into our minds by the possibility of moving onto a rural acreage across the road from a vinyard.

The Process

Well, I just signed and emailed an offer to my agent on the House in Hangtown. The asking price is 279K and I offered 230K. I was actually kinda surprised that it wasn't shot down immediately by the seller's agent, but we were told that no other offers had been made so far (it's been about a month on the market now) and to go ahead and submit and "see what happens". That, to me, is a clear sign of the general market right now, because a year or so ago people were taking offense and being insulted by offers that much lower than asking price.

So far, this has been the timeline: Friends mention selling house to us about 5 weeks ago during camping trip, the following week the Sig takes me up to look at the house (he'd already seen it while helping friends collect tools from it), the following week I think it over. Late in that week, I contact the agent that I'd decided I'd contact if I was ever looking to buy again, and he offered to write up an offer that day --- but I didn't know if I could get financing, given the current lending climate. I had two options: my friends gave me a mortgage broker's name that used to work with them, and my agent had a guy he felt was honest and trustworthy. I went with the agent's guy, David, and over the course of another 10 days faxed him my financial information and he submitted it and I was approved. I could have been approved for more, but my down payment is, indeed, paltry.
I notified my agent that I was approved, and gave him all my info and the additional stuff that David had figured up about closing costs, and he then contacted the seller's agent to see if it was worthwhile writing it up, which it evidently was. He faxed forms, I read and thought again for a day, and signed and faxed back today.

Meanwhile I've been seeking advice from anyone who will give it on how to manage a small acreage. Among things I have learned:
Goats will climb on everything, including your car, and poop.
Goats in milk need to be milked every day, which means you can't take weekend trips.
Goats are easy to take care of, and keep your property pretty clear of underbrush and weeds.
It's good to have an "outside" dog to guard your property.
Small dogs and cats can't ever be outside on their own, mostly due to hunting raptors and owls.
Wells are GOOD.
Wells are BAD.
Septic systems are complicated and can have problems if you're not careful.
Septic systems are simple and you won't have any problems if you don't put stuff in them that doesn't belong there.
Some husbands have never pulled a weed in their lives and wouldn't know what to do without a tractor.
Tractors are GOOD.
You don't need a tractor, but you do need SOMETHING to haul stuff around; an ATV with wagon attachment would work fine.
It's good to have a woodlot, and with careful management it will replenish itself. Which is very good, because firewood is expensive.
A rifle or two is mandatory. There are lions and bears. And possibly methheads.
It's OK to shoot a deer that is poaching your fruit, but you'd better know how to clean it. Do not email pictures of yourself holding any kind of recently deceased game animal to your friends with the heading, "What do I do now?"
Your friends will be there for you, with tools and advice, if you need help.

So far, the one thing that everyone agrees on is that they have enjoyed living in the foothills. One friend even opined that caring for a small acreage might actually be less difficult than caring for our current rental gardens, especially if we adopt the philosophy that the goal of successful land ownership in rural areas is to keep the land as close to natural as possible while maintaining fire safety.
Oh, and ponies are EVIL.

The Sweet Life

I guess I'm putting a toe back into the housing pool. Sig took me out to see our friend's property that is being short-sold. It's a nice size, with several usable flat areas. It's not a remarkable property, although our friend and his wife are very fond of it and obviously devastated that they have had to leave it. It frankly needs a lot of work. There are a couple cosmetic projects that need to be done to the inside of the house, and that we're probably capable of completing although they are a little more complicated than painting a wall. There are about half a dozen outdoor projects that are in very beginning stages of execution, the most ambitious of which is the construction of a small medieval stone building with attached small tower.
On the plus side, the house has several areas that would be ideal for our use. It's hard to describe this place, which looks like a typical ranch house on the outside.
The house is really built into the side of a hill, rather like our rental but even more pronounced. So, there is a main floor, then a short flight up to the bedrooms and guest bath. The main living area has a low, flat ceiling with dark wood beams crossing it. Kind of Tudor style. There is a wood burning stove in the corner, which is raised and completely encased in some kind of shale stone to absorb and radiate the heat. The bedrooms are unremarkable, other than some personal touches of creativity that our friends have designed and which are entirely cosmetic. Guest bath is very nice. Down a half-flight of stairs is a laundry room with a full bathroom and more storage, and a masonry block room that is at this point entirely under the house and surrounded by the hill, so it's like a bomb shelter. They were using it for food storage and a wine cellar, which actually works quite well, as the temperature is a constant 50 - 60 degrees. There is also a room in which the water heater lives, which is large enough that they had a chest freezer in there as well. Go down another half flight of stairs, which are painted but not carpeted like the upper stairs are, and you are in the lowest level which has an unfinished but totally usable bedroom, and two other rooms -- again, masonry block rooms. From this level you can enter the 2-car garage or you can walk out a door that leads directly off the main parking area in front of the house. There is actually a little screened off entry way, so you have an outer door, then the screened in area, then the door into the lower level. To get to the main level from the parking area, you have to walk up a half flight of steps onto a wrap-around porch. When you're standing to the rear of the house, you only see one story; this is the part built into the hill. When you're standing in the front, you see two stories.
There is a very large, circular vegetated area in front of the house which our friend referred to as the herb garden. All I could see was rosemary, growing like crazy. To the right as you face the house is a very lovely wooden archway with gate, and about 20 feet of poured concrete "stone" walkway. Our friend states this area, due to elevation and the natural fencing of manzanita which surrounds the rear property line for several feet thick, is largely deer-protected. He had intended to put flowers and perhaps container plants in this area. Across the parking area from the house is a very large outbuilding, which has it's own masonry block "cellar" under it. Again, built into the side of the hill, so that you can walk directly out from the cellar onto the hill, but the main entrance is on top of the hill. This little building has electricity and an air-conditioner that may or may not work. There is obviously an upper storage area above this building, which is built like a small barn, but our friend says he never opened it and advises throwing a few bug bombs up there if we decide to open it. The outer roof of this building is mossy and worn, but the interior is fine.
The Pros to this property: It's close to most of our friends. It is just about the perfect size of acreage. It has a large area towards the front that is free of trees and could be used for a large garden. From what we understand, there is a creek or small stream that cuts across the very front of the property between our access road and the main road, and running water is usually a good thing -- especially since it is highly unlikely this small creek would ever reach a high enough point to come close to flooding the house or outbuilding, since they are built up the hillside. There is ample room for me to make and age cheese, in the room that is very like a cave and totally under the hill. There is plenty of room for both Sig and I to set up a brewery on the lower level of the house off the garage, and I'm sure I could set up my outside propane burner/kettle rig outside nearby either in the garage or just outside the screened lower level porch. Alternately, we could also set this up in the cellar under the outbuilding, although I think that would be much better suited for use as a small livestock shelter. Sig would have plenty of room for an armory, fletching area in the outbuilding proper. We could use the lower level bedroom as a guest room area, and the other room could be an exercise room. The small upstairs bedroom could be garb and fabric storage and sewing room. The second large bedroom is already set up with DSL and outlets for computers and electronics, and was being used as a shared office space, which we would probably also do. There is also a soaking tub in the master bath, of Japanese design, which is very deep and intended to cover you up to the neck in a sitting position. I'm sure I'd love that. And the oddball space that others might find difficult to find a use for, we actually can use very well.

The Cons are that it snows, and about twice a year according to our friend, it is rather difficult to get out of the drive. He doesn't mind this, and just calls off work. It's a little more problematic for me, as if I call off work that means someone else has to pick up the slack and there is very little room for picking up the slack in my work. There are also many, many projects that should really be completed (like the retaining wall outside, and the sliding closet doors inside) and which will mean putting our hobby projects on hold or being incredibly disciplined to work on both hobbies AND house in our spare time. It is also an additional 42 miles of driving per day, and that is very worrisome. On the other hand, with as much time as we spend driving up to Placerville anyway to take part in Shire activities, it isn't as bad as one might think. Two other Shire members drive daily down into Sacramento, or even further, so it isn't out of the question but it does mean a much earlier start to my workday and additional fuel cost at a time when most sane people are trying to cut back on driving.

Then there are the mixed blessings: it will be much more labor intensive to take care of the property, but it will help us get into shape. We will need goats to keep the weeds down, but if we get dairy goats we can make cheese, and there is a darn near perfect shelter for them in the 7/8 enclosed area under the outbuilding -- cool in summer and pretty well insulated in winter, especially with a lot of straw and straw bales under there. With mucked straw, you've got a pretty good compost starter, which is handy for gardens. (Of course, you'd need to fence the garden from the goats, and deer....)
There are the intangibles, such as having the chance to try to live a more sustainable life, which was a long-ago dream. And perhaps of regaining a sense of adventure and youthfulness that I might have abandoned long before I should have. Of course, there's always the possibility that it will be too much, and that unexpected costs and emergencies will pile up, and arthritic knees and bad backs will be too much of an obstacle.
And then there are the bees, which Sig (who is allergic) is absolutely opposed to me keeping, and which I think would be a great addition to the family, as long as they are at one side of the 2 acres and he is at the other. Bees are great. I'd love to be able to add Honey to the list of foods we can provide ourselves, especially since we make Mead. I imagine there are enough bees around that a garden would be pollinated, but it would be nice to have our own, especially since bees are having problems now. We shall see, I suppose.
But for now, I guess this is the post where we start moving towards ownership. Whether this property, or some other place, it is not going to be easy. The interest rate and the fact that I have very little down payment money mean that property ownership costs for me will be higher than ideally they would have been. I may not be able to get a loan at all.
I'd like to own again, though. It may not be the very bottom of the market, and in fact I know it is not. But I want my own house, that I can do what I want with to a greater degree than I can the rental house. I'd also like to create a little world that I can pass down.

iDiots

So, my granddaughter's iPod refused to let her hook it up to her computer because she didn't have a more current Windows version. It told her to take the iPod to the nearest Apple store for assistance.

We went to Arden Fair Mall, because according to my grandkid, that was the closest Apple store. I was finding that hard to believe, since Folsom and EDH are so affluent, but we were down at the Farmer's Market in Sacramento anyway, so it wasn't that far out of our way.
I hate malls. I hadn't been to Arden for at least a couple years. I think I went to the Downtown mall the time prior to this, and that was probably a year or so ago. I only go to malls if there is no way to avoid them. For instance, I needed a pair of good walking shoes a few years ago, right away, and knew that the Arden mall had specialty walking shoe stores. Malls just irritate me and turn me into the kind of grump that dislikes everyone, and I don't like to be like that. I'd rather live in my fantasy world, where everyone spends their discretionary income on books and museums. So, I was already struggling not to be grumpy when we eventually made our way through the mall to the Apple store, only to find a line of about 30 or 40 people stretching down the promenade.
"What are y'all doing in line?", I asked a pleasant countenanced young lady.
"We're trying to get iPhones," she replied.
"All of you people in this line are here for iPhones?", I asked, a bit incredulous.
"Yes"
"What if I don't want an iPhone?"
At this point, a gentleman with an East Indian accent who appeared to be guarding the line broke in to tell me that I could enter the store if I did not want an iPhone. So, we did.
And we were met by a young Apple-shirted employee who asked us if we had an appointment.
"You need an appointment to shop here???"
"no, but it's strongly advised"
"but my grandkid's iPod told her to come to the closest store. It didn't tell her to make an appointment..."
"it's ok, I'll get someone to help you", he said, and snagged a nearby female Apple-shirted co-worker.
"Do you have an appointment?", she asked.
"NO! We have a problem with our iPod, and we were told by the iPod to come to the nearest Apple store. It didn't tell us to make an appointment!"
"Well, I can set up an appointment for tomorrow at 10 am," she said.
At this point, my grandkid, sensing that I was going to lose it, interrupted.
"Look, I just need to ask one question. I'm just having a problem downloading."
The female Apple employee reluctantly answered the question, by telling my grandkid that she needed to hook the iPod into a computer that had Windows XP, which the damn iPod could have just told her in the first place rather than have us go to the mall and be hassled by Apple employees.
We left post haste, and I proclaimed under my breath "fuggin IDIOTS".
The people waiting in line are idiots to still be lining up for the rare privilege of purchasing an over-priced and over-hyped toy. I'm guessing most of them could spend the money paying down their credit cards or buying gas or food. I'd have thought that most of them would have learned their iPhone lesson by now, after Apple basically screwed the first purchasers of the silly thing for an extra $300.
The store employees are idiots for thinking their menial jobs are so key to society that we need to schedule appointments with them.
Apple is an idiot corporation for not making enough iPhones that people don't need to stand in line for them, because some of those people (the ones who aren't idiots, really) are going to have second thoughts while waiting and they're going to decide they'd rather feed their kids for a month than buy whatever it is that an iPhone is to them. (Is it a phone? Is it a iPod? Is it a Web browser?) And Apple is so far into idiocracy that I hope every stockholder takes a good, long look at their holding if Apple thinks that consumers are going to continue making appointments to spend their money at Apple stores. You think Starbucks went a little overboard? I've got a feeling that's nothing compared to Apple.
Periodically, I get really ticked off about a certain consumer situation and I swear that I'm never darkening the doorstep of that business again. I'll overlook an occasional rude salesperson, but an entire store of them leads me to believe that this is corporate policy, for instance. I'll overlook crappy merchandise once, but two times and I'm not coming back.
It's not that the Apple store employees were rude. They were exceedingly polite. But any retail business who demands that it's customers make appointments to obtain help or spend money does not deserve customers, period. It is the most iDiotic thing I have ever seen.

Midir

Midir is a member of the Tuatha De Danaan; the "People of Danu". People who get paid to study such things believe that the "Danu" in question is also the being that the Danube river is named for. A lot of old goddesses are associated with rivers, but that's probably another post for some far future day. Most people who are interested in such things believe that the Tuatha De Danaan are gods. Strictly speaking, they are literary characters with very unusual attributes, not classical gods in the Greco/Roman sense, but not exactly mortal beings, either. There are many, many such beings in Celtic myth.

A few years ago, I was quite the Celtic Kookball (or maybe "Cuighbhall") according to my children. I immersed myself in the various cycles of Irish mythology and some of the Welsh. Midir was an interesting character to me for some reason at the time, and I developed a fondness for him, but there really isn't much in the mythology about him. He's sort of a peripheral character who occasionally pops up to steal someone's wife or to foster someone, not the focal point of any really key stories. One remembers the main characters: Lugh, the Dagda, the Morrigan, Brigit. Midir is one of those characters that it is very easy to forget, and so I did.

Then, a few weeks ago, I remembered that there was a particular character that I had a fondness for back in the Kookball days and that he had been the foster father of Aengus Og, and I just couldn't recall his name. It bugged me that I couldn't remember it. Every so often, I'd struggle with it, and it just wasn't there. You know how it really just nags at you when something like that happens? You can't remember the title of a song or the name of some obscure movie, and it just bugs you.

Fast forward to this past weekend. The Sig and I were camping on the very beautiful and isolated mountain acreage of a friend, and having a very pleasant time. I also used to do quite a lot of camping, and I've always been a bit of a survivalist at heart, so it was comforting and relaxing for me to be out in the middle of nowhere with Sig and our friends. Now, we knew that our friends were thinking about selling a house that they no longer feel they can live in due to extended family obligations. We also know that they love the house, and they never did put it on the market, so despite the fact that we are kind of "looking" for a house all the time we didn't really have this house on our radar because it seemed like their attachment to it was strong and that they probably wouldn't be able to realistically price it even if they got around to ever putting it on the market. But it seems they have now determined to sell it, and they are increasingly anxious to sell it, and they feel that what they have decided to ask for it is incredibly reasonable. I did detect a change in the way they presented the story, almost as if they had noticed how many properties up in their neck of the woods were on the market and were not selling. And they seem to have accepted their new digs, and they are doing a lot of improving of them, and are moving more of their belongings to their current house from their prior house. This isn't the usual "move up" situation, where they actually bought a new house before they sold their old one. It's more of a familial obligation that they feel bound to fulfill, and probably rightly so, but it has plucked them away -- not seduced them away. We are very familiar with their current lodgings, but we've never been to their prior house. They haven't lived in it for a year, although they still maintain it. And in a very diplomatic way, they made it clear that they are interested in us moving into that house. We could rent it, we could buy it, we could rent it for a while and then buy it.
Well, obviously, the whole idea is kind of alarming. I can think of no quicker way to ruin a friendship than to bring money into it. So, the logical part of my brain is steering very clear of the offer. But the seed was planted, and the emotional part of my brain began to steer back towards it. Our friend had spoken to us of some improvements he had invested a lot of his time and creative energy in, back before they knew we were looking for a house and before they were really ready to sell it. And they are just the kind of things that we would have dreamed of doing, if we'd had the skill. And other aspects of this as yet unseen house have been brought up in random snippets of conversation: the large basement, the cellar, the fruit trees. Perversely, as the economy has gotten worse and fuel has gotten more expensive, I find myself once again feeling the urge to move further away. This is another of those logical brain vs. emotional brain dilemmas. I love my job, and I do not want to give up my pay and benefits. I'd probably try to make the commute. If it came down to it, I could get a job in a hospital much closer -- really close. But it would mean a pay cut, I'm certain. And it would mean giving up my seniority and my vesting in my current pension.
So, Sig and I are sitting around the campfire and I'm looking up at the brilliant Milky Way and I'm feeling things. I have a strong intuitive streak. When life keeps heading me in a certain direction, I tend to think it might be good for me to stop struggling and just go with the flow. Life has been leading me in the direction of the Sierra for years. First, old friends who purchased land up in the mountains and came up from the LA area several times a year, during which we'd all camp on their land and tell stories and think about trying to preserve the place for our kids and grandkids. But eventually, they realized that they weren't ready to build in the mountains and they found what they were looking for in Southern California. We are still close, but our dream of a viable, actual community is gone now. One of our group has made such a life for he and his wife in Willits, and has given gentle advice from time to time on living closer to the land in a smaller community in a more purposeful way. I thought about moving to Southern Cali, and I thought about moving to Willits, and it would have been lovely to have moved closer to the closest friends I've ever had -- but it didn't seem right. Life was not pulling me in that direction, but it was definitely telling me that the times were changing and decisions had to be made soon.
When Sig and I discovered our new community and made new friends, I really didn't think it was going to work out so well. I thought it would be another shallow disappointment, leading nowhere.
Nothing could be further from our life in the past year. We have had such fun, and been made to be so welcome. Every shared experience just makes us that much more interwoven into this group of people that have come to be like family to us, and in such a short period of time.
I used to be very cavalier about friendships. When you have less time to grow them, they suddenly become that much dear to you, I've discovered. Our friends in LA, by necessity, we only see for a week or so every year. Sig's friends from back East we host at a BBQ for a day when they're here for a sporting event. Friends are different than family, because you are bound by common interests, and not birth. It is a different kind of love, and it is very necessary for your mental and emotional well-being. Your kids, and your partner, can't provide the kind of sounding board that friends provide. This past year I feel that we've been absolutely flooded with friendship, and we've become physically and emotionally healthier for it. And the roots of it are in the foothills of the Sierra, once again. Only this time, the friends belong to the land and aren't traveling to it to try to make it theirs. I can't help but feel that life has led me to this place, and that I'd better consider any offers very carefully, no matter how alarming the notion of them is. There is something deeper going on here.
So, sitting looking up at the stars, this obscure Celtic supernatural being again came into my mind, for no known reason. He didn't have anything to do with mountains, or friends, or community or houses. But I couldn't think of his name, for the life of me. So, I threw out a challenge to the Great Beyond. If this is really something that I should pursue, the name of that being would be given back to me that weekend. Now, this doesn't mean much, scientifically. After all, I did know his name, I'd just forgotten it. For years. But it was buried in my own mind, just like all those algebra formulae and the names of all the bones in the human body that I could no longer remember, either.
That night, I dreamed of deer in the meadow. Or maybe they dreamed of me.
And in the morning, as I woke up, the name was given back to me. Midir.

Where do we go from here?

It's not like we're at a crossroads where we are forced to make a choice.....yet. But lately I've been thinking a lot about the future, given the increasingly high cost of fuel and food. Of course, opinion is somewhat divided as to whether these costs will continue to rise, but it seems to me that a prudent and safe presumption would be that they will.
So, the question becomes, in a future of increasingly limited resources, what will our communities look like? James Kuntsler believes that they will look an awful lot like villages did prior to the Industrial Revolution, and that big cities are doomed, as they will lack the resources to provide for their population. Others believe that with limited resources, people will need to live in cities due to jobs and distribution centers (in other words, it will only be economically possible to ship food to limited "ports" -- no more trucking avocadoes from Mexico to Maine).

In the past year, we've formed some bonds locally up in the foothills of the Sierra, which is a bit mystifying to me. It all started because we wanted a yard for the dogs. The whole process which began over 2 years ago and has now culminated in us becoming a part of a community that we never dreamed we would fit into, is almost metaphysical and to question whether it is practical seems a bit like rejecting guidance from the Numinous. And that seems very ill-advised.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that I am letting my emotions have dangerous control over what should be a more practical decision. It's not like human beings are unknown to make poor decisions based on misguided spiritual beliefs and emotional attachments, after all.

In the last few years, I developed a real admiration for modern design, because it is clean and simple. And that has led me to become fascinated with modern housing architecture, and to almost exclusively track a particular type of mid-century modern tract house built in the Sacramento older suburbs by the Streng Brothers. If the New Urbanists are right, then living in an older and established suburb in a Streng home would be perfectly workable, and in many ways ideal. There would be nearby public transportation, shops and parks. It would be much closer to my current work territory. Additionally, my chosen career path is heavily dependant on driving and as the cost of fuel becomes more prohibitive, I don't see that my employer will have any choice than to limit services to higher population density areas. If Kuntsler is right, then it would be better to move even further away (but closer to our social circle who live mostly in the Placerville region). My job prospects would be less appealing. I could probably find work doing pretty much what I'm doing now, but it would pay a lot less and yet rent and food would remain around the same cost. Where we live currently is at a border area, literally. We live right on the border of Sacramento and El Dorado County, right on the border between urban and rural. We are neither here, nor there.
The Armstrongs, my Scottish clan, were a borders clan. The borders of Scotland were a wild and crazy place, of nearly constant warfare and invasion. People lived in modified towers, basically, in which they could draw up the ladder to the second floor and have some defense against casual opportunistic foes. Just thinking about the daily lives of my forbears makes me anxious, and while my borders are nowhere near as tumultous as theirs, the resonance of the borders as a place in space and time does seem apt and descriptive of where I find myself.

Life in the Current Middle Ages, Plague Free Edition

Sig and I have been spending way too much time in the Middle Ages, and it's getting pretty darned expensive. We already had the basics of a good period encampment, but then Sig decided to try to get into the combat archery in ernest. We also already had all the components to make the arrows, and the correct weight of bows, and the armor -- but he needed an expensive helm, and rigging leather, and under-armor padding, boots, gloves, etc. And we began brewing a lot more, and we bought some kegs and cheap-O carbonation equipment, and some additional supplies. Then we realized the cheap-O stuff was not cutting it, so we purchased a CO2 rig, with gauge and tubes and doohickeys, which is not really very medieval at all, but it's pretty darned expensive to waste 5 gallons of ale that you've spent several hours making and several weeks aging because oxygen got into your keg. Stale and sour ale is actually VERY medieval; but our motto is "The Middle Ages As They Should Have Been". Not with sour ale, highway brigands, high infant mortality, famines, body odor and plague.
Since buying garb is pretty expensive, even though most of it is of much better quality and craft than my mundane clothing and lasts pretty much forever, I have taken my fellow Shire member Solveig up on her offer of a monthly sewing meeting. And if my garb lasts forever, you may ask, why do I need new garb at all? Well, Sig needs a gambison and a surcoat to cover his objectionable Kidex armor. I need to line my wool cloak. I need a couple more underdresses, as I only have one. We need some banners and hangings. It would be nice to make my grandbabies some tunics, trewes and leines. Sig could use a couple of long tunics, too, although he does have three really nice ones. And he REALLY needs some trewes. He only has one or two pair now.
And then there are the target archery arrows. Those cost about $25 per dozen, and if you've ever shot target archery in the field, you know that wooden arrows are often damaged and lost, much like golf balls. Arrows also require actual functional quivers, which tend to be expensive. Again, you can get cheap-O quivers, but they aren't big enough and they don't have enough strapping to really be very useful. You also need either very long and tight leather gloves, or leather armguards, because the bowstring WILL snap your bowarm. And you will need new bowstrings periodically, bow string wax, finger tabs or a three finger glove to pull your bowstring, something in which to carry all of this, etc.
Calligraphy requires pens, points, inks and a vellum-substitute parchment paper that is more expensive than drawing paper. You will need to consult some good books with period examples of various scripts. You will need something to carry your supplies in. If you go really crazy, you will want a light table and a drafting table, and various implements to square your work and measure your lines.
Then there are the embellishments to your garb, or to make jewelry: wire, beads, metalworking tools, needles, cord, hoops. And something to carry your supplies in.
And since most of our SCA lives revolve around events that we stay at for two nights to two weeks, camping, you need a period tent and chairs and bedding and rugs and floor pillows and feast gear and a brazier and lanterns/oil lamps/candles and a way to clean things and dispose of refuse and store food/drink.
Now, mind you, we had already accrued much of this stuff over the past several years. We already had the basics. And you might point out, and rightfully so, that perhaps it would be less expensive to just have ONE craft. The problem is that whatever it is you do in the SCA, and wherever you enter the great wheel, eventually that thing will lead you to another thing. Archery leads to combat archery which leads to heavy combat which leads to being recruited to fight in wars which leads to travel costs, for example. People end up with trebuchets in their back yard, and they had no intention of ever having such a thing. I am not joking about this. I once saw a post from a person needing to sell his TWO trebuchets, because he was moving and would no longer have a place to keep them.
My goal is now to discover ways to keep my medieval avocations, but also keep them within a budget and not drive my mundane self into the poorhouse. Several months ago, I thought about a new direction for this blog, which started out as a response to the overheated bubble market in Sacramento area real estate from the perspective of a renter who hoped to buy soon. That ship has sailed, and several blogs cover those issues much better than I ever could, like Average Buyer and Sacramento Land(ing) . Many of those blogs came about because their creators were trying to cope with their own fears and frustrations over housing. And it strikes me that if I'm stressed out about losing my sense of community and my social outlet because it revolves around what can be expensive avocations, others probably are, too. A lot of people didn't just use their HELOC to buy a Hummer, or go on a cruise. Some of us used them to buy pavillions, armor and trucks/trailers to haul this elaborate stuff around. And we're just as tapped out as the mundane folks, and probably just as stressed about lifestyle issues. I wish I could say that I'm going to use my medieval life as a work in progress on living the Dream on Le$$, and that is my goal, but I suspect that I am going to fall short.

My Birthday

Today is my birthday (go, me!!) and I thought I'd post an update on where things stand currently.

The Housing obsession has now melded itself to some other themes of the past year or so in my life; namely, the search for sustainable community and our nerdy avocations. One of the reasons that I've given up haunting the local housing blogs (instead of several times a day, I now check in one or two times a week -- and some weeks, none) is that I'm not seeing much downward pricing in houses that I'm interested in. The houses in areas that no one in their right mind should ever have believed they could flip for a profit are dropping like rocks in price. But in safe, quiet, attractive areas the houses are not affordable to me.
And my demands have only gone up, which doesn't make it any easier to find one. My demands have gone up because the community that we have long sought and found so elusive, we have evidently found in the charming denizens of The Shire of Mountain's Gate. Since our first tentative shire meeting in November, we feel we have finally found our SCA home. We have gone from no involvement and lapsed memberships, to meetings several times a month and sometimes multiple times a week. My sewing machine has showed up again on the dining room table, and I'm still making atrociously poor tunics for family members, but I'm counting on some monthly sewing circles to help me improve. I've discovered beading, which I am not too bad at. I'm going to give embroidery another shot this weekend, while giving inspiration and moral support to the Sig as he embarks on his own journey to hone his medieval martial arts skills. The armor that we had sitting in boxes has been "rigged" with the help of our Shire Seneshal, Geoffrey of Clan Fergus. He has also fitted a very impressive helm for Sig. With the armor and the helm, Sig looks very scarey for his 5'6". We will be attempting to put up our period pavillion for the second time this weekend at the Cynagua Coronet. Sig is in the early fermentation stages of a strawberry mead, and I've got a kegged blackberry cream ale. The herbs have arrived from Wildweeds and all I'm lacking now is the juniper berries in order to make a pretty darned good stab at a very early period gruit ale.
Most of this stuff: armor, brewing equipment, archery gear, pavillion tent, garb; we've had for years gathering dust in our little storage barn. Now, it's out and working. Which is why the criteria for housing has significantly changed. Simply put, we now need room to work on our projects. It doesn't have to be fancy. But we need the usual 3 bedrooms/2 baths plus a larger kitchen, and some room that can be used as a project room (a formal dining room or den would be fine) and storage space. Oh, and a place for the small utility trailer.
The rental house is a very functional base of operations right now. It works well for most of our needs, but there are some problems that frankly, having our own house would solve. It's just that we can't find anything like the rental for sale at a price that would keep our mortgage payment at the same level as our rent. If we could, and if we could get the loan that we could easily have gotten back in 2006, we'd buy. If this were my house, instead of a rental, I'd feel free to get the ductwork permanently repaired, put in solar power and hot water, buy that damn hot tub that I so desperately need but refuse to buy until I have my own house. I'd get rid of the puzzling raised beds in the total shade, and put some raised beds where they could get some light. I'd have the dead chestnut tree removed, and some gentle pruning done on dead limbs on the magnificent old oak. But it's not my house, and the landlord seems to be ok with it just slowly deteriorating. The frustration with the slow deterioration of the house, coupled with the low-level anxiety of renting (you never know when they might sell, or raise the rent, or decide one of their kids needs the house) inclines me strongly towards trying to buy, but there are really no viable options out there and I'm not going to spend 100k to 200k more than I'd spend in another two to four years. At some point, this will balance out, but the scales are tipped too far in favor of renting currently, and I don't think that will change in the next 6 months. I'm hoping it will change in the next year, just as I was last year, and the year before that. But it's obvious that this is such a slow moving train wreck in housing that I don't really need to monitor the market even on a weekly basis, and it's just wasting my time to do so.

On the general economic front, as you can imagine, increased avocations and the SCA in addition to the increased cost of food and fuel have impacted my finances. We did have the basics purchased already, but we have honestly way overspent in the last few weeks on brewing gear, fabric, beads and tools. We've also had to have repairs done to the two older vehicles. My job has been notifying us of some pretty scarey budget problems, and they are not hiring any employees to replace those which have left. This is rather remarkable, as I work in healthcare. It has really brought home to me the realization that when the economy goes sour, no field is really safe from the effects of it. It's rather ironic. During the late bubble, I was a miser and we didn't really go anywhere or do much of anything, because we were waiting for it all to come crashing down. And now that it has, and costs are increasing and my job is flashing yellow and traveling is twice as expensive as it was -- well, of course, now we're going to resume our expensive medievalist hobby.
But hey, I'm not getting any younger!

On Change and Inevitability

Let me state up front that I support Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Philosophically, I wish he were more in the Kusinich and Edwards vein, and I was really torn in the California primary over who to vote for. Ultimately, I voted for Obama, because I trust him. Which is just ridiculous, but there it is. I trust him. I believe that he loves our country, and that he understands the concerns of middle and working class Americans. I also believe that he will people his cabinet with those who deeply understand the course ahead.

I'm a real sucker for idealism. I get teary-eyed reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and I'm not kidding. I carried a copy of them around with me for years, during my tenure in social services. I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution as a worker in the old VISTA program, and as far as I'm concerned, that oath is good for the rest of my life. I deplore people who wrap themselves in the flag, but I mist up when I say the Pledge of Allegiance.

And coming from an economically-depressed downstate Illinois city that saw its strong union job base rapidly decline in the Reagan years, I have a love of my own class. The working class. The blue collar class. One of the biggest frustrations of my life has been that my kind of people can't see that they are often played for fools by preachers and politicians.

I'm one of those people, because I believed in Bill Clinton. I cried, and I mean sobbed, when he won the election. And as time went on, even though I was uneasy about NAFTA and some of the social program changes he advocated, I continued to support him. Through budget deadlocks and shutdowns of Congress and Contracts with America and Monica-gate, I was there.
Prior to Clinton, I would vote for Republicans at times. I believed myself to be a moderate and largely non-partisan. I could not see what the Republicans were howling about, and my opinion of them became more and more negative, especially if anyone quoted Rush Limbaugh, who I thought was a self-serving buffoon.
Let's just skip ahead through the past 8 years. Suffice it to say that I moved from shocked numbness, through apathy and withdrawel, to shame and accountability and a re-engagement with the political process.

So, here we are again. And the more I hear from Obama, the more I like the guy. And sometimes, in fact a LOT of times, he makes me cry. When you get to be my age, a lot of your hopes and dreams have fallen by the wayside, and you begin to think that things will never change and that you just have to make the best of it and pass it on to the next generation and maybe they will be able to make progress. You settle. You learn to live with the machine and the inevitable. I believed, right up until recently, that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable machine President. Just like Bush in process, if not politics, and just as unlikely to give any credibility to anyone without a few hundred thousand dollars of influence money. I believed her to be benign, but also to feel entitled to the Presidency.
This is a far cry from the Hillary of my youth, a woman who challenged the role of a First Lady and who many of us as women admired (and others felt very threatened by). I admired her stab at healthcare reform, and her strong and outspoken advocacy of her husband's administration.
Maybe she and Bill were always the manipulative double-talkers that the Right was so frothy about, and I just didn't see it. I think to a certain extent that all politicians are manipulative double-talkers, and most of us accept that -- to a certain extent. But I am really beginning to see some truth in some of the obvious vitriol of the Right.
For many of us, one of the saddest casualties of this primary season may be the loss of the Clinton legacy. We've clung to it for 8 years, to this time of relative peace and demonstrable prosperity, when our wages were going up and our deficit was going down. We've looked fondly on Bill's work post-Presidency in the world community. We've mocked the conservatives who seemed to cling to a "Blame Clinton" outlook through the last 8 years of an increasingly incompetent and flawed W presidency. And let me be clear here: I believe that Bush's tax cuts and pandering to corporations, theocrats and Neo-cons has wrecked our economy and catapulted the US far down the road to the inevitable decline of what has been our empire. But the bottom line is that yes, I believe that some of Clinton's economic policies -- just like Reagan's -- have had and continue to have a negative impact on our middle and working class. Bush's policies have gone beyond "negative impact". We are all in for an epic struggle to move this country forward in a new age; one in which we are no longer ascendant. We can do it. We didn't need all those flat screen teevees and Hummers, anyway. We didn't need to live 50 miles from our jobs just so we could have a huge house on a small lot in a sterile "community". Besides, we couldn't really afford it. That's why we're all in such deep debt. Time to grow up.
But it would have been nice for the Clintons to have left us with that memory of good times. Instead, we are now forced to watch Bill live up to every accusation of duplicitous speech that the Right has been screaming about for years, and to watch Hillary skip merrily down the path of the triangulating neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council that believed that the way to beat the Republicans was to be just like them -- only without the bathroom sex and comb-overs and pince nez glasses.
I mean, come on, people!
No one owes you the Presidency, just because your name is Bush or Clinton or Kennedy or Roosevelt. Didn't we found our country on that premise? That "all men are created equal"?
But years of machine politics and Beltway scheming lead people to become out of touch with the electorate that put them in power in the first place. Massive money and generations of political influence can buy you a Supreme Court, but unfortunately the Clintons are a first-generation political dynasty trying to make a horizontal power move vs. the more typical vertical one, and at this point it seems doomed to failure and it's taking their legacy down with it.

My prediction, and I have to admit that a year ago this would have seemed pretty far-fetched, is that Obama will win the nomination and will win the Presidency. Again, I have hope. I believe that the more you see of him, the better you like him. And yes, I realize that he's not all that far left and that we're going to have to help him a lot to get to a solution to healthcare reform and to economic reform. But we'll get there. We have to. We have no choice.
Things won't be easy, but whether you vote for change or not, it is inevitable. Our lives are different from those of our parents and our grandparents. Some of those changes have not been beneficial. We've fallen behind in education, in work ethic, in sense of community and interdependence on one another. To paraphrase Obama, we reach for a video controller instead of a book or a hammer or our neighbor's hand. We WILL change; our choice is whether to embrace the inevitability and move forward, or fight it and let the world move further and further away from us.

Fork in the Road

When I started this blog, I never really intended for it to garner a lot of hits, which it doesn't. It was mostly a way for me to vent about stuff without bogarting someone else's blog. I'm verbose, but I have the good sense to know it and try to control it.
But lately, I'm feeling the urge to take the blog in a new direction. Maybe because I've gotten most of whatever-it-was out of my system. It was mostly a reaction to the housing bubble and frustration at wanting my own house, and to be truthful, if it was just a question of being able to afford to buy, I'd have bought already. Houses are dropping into my range. But it's moved beyond that, and buying a house is no longer as big a priority as it was.
So, this is going to be the transition post, just in case you stumble by. I am going to TRY to steer myself towards posting actually helpful information about simplifying your wants, meeting your needs, and maintaining your humanity.

My Shameful Pastime

That's me sitting in that purple chair. I'm the skinny pink Wookiee, Bowann, a foot soldier for the Rebel Alliance, a Rifleman and a Combat Medic. I'm actually sitting in a player-created shopping mall, on the planet Naboo, on the Bria server of Star Wars Galaxies. The alien creatures behind the counter are the employees of my other character, Bo'Ann the Twi'lek, who was a slightly notorious and wealthy chef, and financier of the Rebel Alliance. I just finished delivering some inventory for her to her shop-keepers, and I'm chilling. I had one other character, Boann Stryker, who was the mayor of a city controlled by the Rebel Alliance. A city built by players, and decorated by players. Boann controlled the layout of the houses and which style houses were allowed, and where the public starport and cantina and shopping centers were, as well as city hall. Oh, and the Rebel base we had until the "Imps" (Imperial players) came and fought us, and eventually took down the base. Star Wars Galaxies circa 2003 to 2005 took up a lot of my free time. The economy was entirely player-based, there was an active and very challenging Galactic Civil War in which some players were Imps and some were Rebels, and there was just a lot of tomfoolery and zaniness, such as scavenger hunts, silly contests (who can run in their underwear and with only a newbie pistol for defense, through the neighboring Imperial controlled player city, and return to the Rebel cantina -- first one gets a force crystal), pub crawling, and everyone's favorite: shopping at the hundreds of player-controlled and staffed malls, shops, cantinas, merchant tents, etc. SWG was the game that had my friends and family very concerned about me, and Sig nearly broke up with me despite the fact that he and I had both started playing the game at the same time. I was the one who lost it over SWG, and blurred the line between life and virtual life.
Sig, on the other hand, did this in EverQuest. He quite often played for over 18 hours a day, following his neck surgery. I also played EQ, and because I was very fond of Sig I played frequently, and enjoyed the game world, but it never took over my life like SWG did.
Other games that Sig and I have played -- because we always play together -- are City of Heroes (Sig loved it, I barely tolerated it), Dark Age of Camelot (we both enjoyed it a great deal), World of Warcraft (we liked it, but honestly couldn't figure out why everyone in the world wanted to play it) and currently we are playing Lord of the Rings Online. Most online role playing games are based loosely on fantasy or myths of Northern Europe. I think that's why Sig liked City of Heroes so much; because it was based on comic book superhero mythology and was in an urban setting. And I liked SWG because it was science fiction mythology, with exotic planetary landscapes and very modern urban settings. You can only be awed by so many dragons and fall in love with so many Elves before it all gets a little stale, if you know what I mean.

Sig and I spent probably 3 years playing EQ, and another 2 years playing SWG, and we played a year here and a year there playing DAoC. WoW, only about 6 months. City of Heroes, about 6 months. Currently, we've been playing LOTRO since it was released in March of 2007. Sig plays more than I do, but overall neither of us plays nearly as much as we used to. It's mildly amusing, and we have a decent group of players that we hang with (mostly from New Zealand), and we really are fond of the LOTR mythology, but again -- can only take so many drunken dwarves and flirtatious elven maidens. In addition, all of the progression of your character on LOTRO is based on completing game story arc quests, of which the most challenging are usually "chapters" which you complete to finish "books". You can go out into the wilderness randomly slaying Orcs and Wargs if you so choose, but you won't get much experience from it and very little gold or silver, either. All of the games we've played, and loved, have eventually been changed beyond recognition by developers who kow-towed to either very inexperienced and whiney players who wanted the game to be easier or very hard-core elite players who wanted more high-level content. Additionally, some games had broken things from the very beginning (many of the quests in EverQuest, as well as the boat-traveling system; the battleground feature in SWG that never worked) that they never bothered to fix, as they kept adding on newer content.

Most online games nowadays have beautiful graphics and very individual and detailed characterization; my Wookiee , Bowann, was recognizable from several meters away and no other female Wook looked like me. My current avatar, Sciath, is a little fat gray-haired female hobbit. You can customize your eyes, ears, mouth, cheekbones, hair and facial hair, color and body build. Most players invest a lot of their own personalities and looks into their avatars. In searching my hard drive for screen shots, I was saddened to realize that I didn't save many for all the time I spent in these various worlds. I had probably dozens of SWG that I erased when I gave up the game, because looking at them only made me melancholy. In gaming, as in real life, you can't return to the good 'ol days -- once they're gone, once the game has been changed and tinkered with by the developers ('nerfed') it is painful to keep trying to recapture whatever it was about the game that you loved. Sometimes, you become so frustrated that you erase all the game files, and you lose forever your shots of Ketzel and his pink light saber or Sig's Fir Bolg warden.

For some reason, admitting to gaming as a hobby is considered very shameful. When you consider that I was a young woman when Pong first came out, and that I graduated from game arcades where you bought a handful of tokens for a few dollars, you begin to realize that computer and video gaming has really been around a long time. Many of us who were young when the first Sega system began selling, are now middle-aged. We literally grew up with a game controller in our hands. And gaming does not have to be some furtive activity that adolescent males do in their basement. My kids and I played, and watched each other play, console games for an hour or two nearly every day when they were growing up, in addition to other more socially acceptable family activities. My eldest and I stayed in contact with one another when she lived in Maine and I lived here in Sacramento by meeting online in The Realm, buying clothes for our avatars, avoiding being "ganked" by the infamous Mech PK ('player killer') gang and drinking grog. Sig and I played EQ together when he was in Boston studying. Sure, we could have just phoned one another -- but online gaming is cheaper than long distance phone calls, plus it gives you something fun to do together while you're talking. And nowadays, with Teamspeak and Ventrillo and Skype, you can actually talk while you game, instead of typing. I'm old-fashioned. I still prefer typing. Without online RPG (role playing games) I would not have gotten the benefit of the opinions of people all over the US as well as countries all over the world about things that the media in the US does not bother to really report on any longer. You know, inconsequential stuff like the Iraq War and US economic and foreign policy. Without the framework of gaming I would have had no opportunity to talk with these people and form online friendships that enriched my own worldview. When was the last time the Bingo crowd or your bowling team had more people who were proud citizens of the UK, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Korea than Americans? It happens all the time when you are a West Coast gamer. Sig spends a great deal of time discussing movies and viewing movies, and occasionally making movies, with a wide range of people who have created a virtual Hollywood online through their love of The Movies, which is not a traditional online game at all. There are voice actors, producers, directors, writers, musicians and critics who have given their inner muse free reign. There are even "radio shows" devoted to The Movies, taking place on open channels on Skype at the same time every weekend. And let me tell you, some of the movies that this online community from all over the world creates are excellent. They rival anything that has won awards in the actual Hollywood industry. It boggles the mind that the creative talents of so many people are viewed as an adolescent pursuit, simply because the community producing this art is an online community.

You may have heard of Second Life, and you may have the impression that this is what online gaming is. Second Life is not really a game, it is a virtual reality of largely player-based content. There is no story to it, no quests, no goals, no "leveling" of a character. The people who are making money in Second Life are making actual money, selling virtual merchandise and real estate for real cash. Pornography and gambling are huge industries in Second Life. I tried it, and it was interesting to a point, but without the goals and incentives of the gaming environment I tired of it very quickly. There are "gold merchants" and various sordid virtual services in all online RPGs, but they are only ancillary. In Second Life, they are the game, and that is just a little too much like Real Life.
I'll take drunken dwarves, flirtatious elves, and a good dragon raid over that any day.