Maebius Musing

First, a Happy (semi-belated) anniversary of birth to one of our good friends.   In honor of the festivities, here’s a song with animals, and plants, because it’s all ‘nature-like’.  *wink*

Hippo, Birdie, Two Ewes,
Hippo, Birdie, two Ewes,
Hippo, Birdies, Deer, Urtica Dioica,
Hippo Birdies. Twoooo Ewwwwees!

Ahem….Anyways.

This weekend, in the midst of a final stint of swing-shift working, and packing for Vacation (leaving in about 20 minutes! W00t W00t!),  the wife and I went on an actual date!

Just the two of us, to the movies, no sprogling.   We saw “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in wonderfully exciting 3D, and staring her pretty-boy Brendan Fraser.   It was a lot of fun, and while the movie wasn’t what I’d call Emmy-award-winning, it was sufficienhtly entertaining, and the full 3D experience made it extra fun.

On the way to the movies, we passed a field of green beans being harvested, and chuckled about the line of cars waiting by the side of the road filled with people all set to glean up afterwards, including one late middle aged woman who was almost “following” the combine machine, picking up beans.

We returned after the movie with whatever bags we had in in the car, and even after tossing about a third of them out at home due to rust, squishy spots, or general un-fitness, we had quite the bounty of beans!

I’ve never actually gleaned so recently after a harvest, and was a bit hesitant about it, since ther ewere literally tonnes of beans leftover in the fields, perfect for picking!  I was a bit surprised to learn how much actually gets “wasted” but had it explained to me that the amount we gathered in a short hour of hand-puicking, filled the dump-truck via machine, so on a time/cost ratio, it did not make sense for hte farmers to go through and hand-clear the rest of the field.

Back in Lititz, I distinctly remember gleaning through crops after a harvest, but us locals were always the “third wave”, as church groups or the local amish generally took first crack at hand-clearing, so while I remmeberd it as a fun activity, I don’t recall thinking it could be a self-sustaining practice to pad our pantry.

However, (to keep this brief as the car’s about packed for vacation now), after we cleared a section easily reached from the car, about 20×30 in size, and spending a good 45 minutes, we have enough beans to eat for the year, based on our general freqency of green-bean-feating.    The pressure cooker canner ran for a few hours, in the background of other chores, so it was not a huge time-hog last night.

The result:  14 quarts of regular green-bean chunks.  4 quarts (plus one jelly-jar) of larger beans which I pickled whole, (or in tiny single bwean-bits for the small jar to use up the last drops of pickling brine I made).

That’s a quart of beans a month, all year, plus some extra.  All for a grand total, canning included, of about 4 hours work, in between other chores.    I’ve never had such a difinitive example of how easy it is to prepare for winter, life “off the land” in a sense, and as a side-note, how wasteful modern agripractice is.   I saw enough beans to feed an army, destined to be turned under as compost next week.

Almost makes me want to organize a phone-tree of like-minded folks here, and have “Gleaning Parties” with spies at each harvestable field in the county.   Heck,  I could easily imagine setting it up as some sort of charity, where the excess that my helpers don’t take, would be donated to a food bank or shelter.   Hmmm….

I’ll be watching the other fields aronud here a lot closer, and we already spoke of making this an annual event if possible.

I tend to avoid overly gaming related comments here, since this Blog is more to get a peek inside my head and ponder things, with a smattering of vacation news, and My Life events…but playing World of Warcraft is a steady part of my life as well sometimes.    I’m feeling chatty, so will gush a bit about the game I love….You’ve been warned.

I play in the evenings, casually, and socially.  I have one max-level character after about 3 years of playing, while most sites online say that milestone can be reached in a solid three months with daily, focused playing.   Meh.   I play to chat, to explore the world, and to unwind after work. Spending a solid 40 minutes to swim around two zones instead of walking through the roads, just to see if they stuck any cool little landscape things on the otherwise cliff-like shoreline is my idea of a time filler, instead of killing boars.

And so, I claim no title as “Raider”, or even “hardcore” in my playstyle.   This flagrant disregard for the XP system boggles some friends of mine, (possibly even one reading this) and does impose some limitations on my gaming.   I may never see the end bosses of end-game dungeons, though I would really like to peek at them once, someday, before dying horribly and quickly.   To this effect, even my high-level (and non-maxed) characters take an evening every so often and solo the dungeons I never really explored.  The survival may be easy, but I like seeing the layouts, and noticing the nifty abilities and object-textures used for the bosses.

This casual aspect of gaming, also has recently resulted in my guild (which I became leader of due to my dazzling social powers, and generous nature) recently fragmenting and losing quite a number of players. This has happened before, where people join us fun friendly folk, level up to end-game, then realize that we do not have the numbers to properly Raid Instance, and leave for “proper” end-game guilds.  The tough part is trying to keep people in the guild so we DO have those kinds of numbers….but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.  For now, Kanandi, my main priest-character is leader of that bunch.

Over the past month or so, I’ve run with a few PUGs (pick-up groups, ie: random folks who get together for a quest of dungeon who are not in the same guild) and befriended some folks in an actual honest-to-Myrgatroyd Roleplaying guild, who is just starting the 10-man raids (entry-level end-game stuff).  They like the fact that I RP even while regular questing with a bunch of random strangers.   They invited me to join their guild.

So, my second highest character left the main guild I’ve been struggling to keep together, and is now a member of Serendipity.   As part of the interview/acceptance process, I had to supply a backstory.    A few readers here will have gotten emails with my over-the-top Backstory which greatly impressed and surprised those folks requesting a simple paragraph or so.

The issue now is,  over the course of the last week, every evening with Serendipity has been refreshingly awesome.  We ran some high-level dungeons, using my priest as main healer, (plus speed-racing my lower level hunter Nookni through over-hard content for some nice gear upgrades and fast XP).  It was challenging, it was frenetic, and it was a whole tonne of fun!   I’ve made three virtual friends, and got involved in a massive guild-related RP event, which bodes extremely well for my chances at staying involved with that guild.

My main character, the guildleader of The Refugees, now has a problem.   I don’t like playing with that guild anymore, due to the abandonment of it from my original friends there, and the still-levelling drama-whores who are current members.    I really like playing with this new guild, which matches my playstyle much better, and involves considerably less responsibility as a “new recruit” with them.

However, my own guild no longer has the mix of trusted officers, who I could pass the reigns of leadership over to in a smooth manner.   Two of the original active folks are still there, and have been talked with in depth regarding this topic, yet do not with to be saddled with the responsibility.   They enjoy just playing the game on their own, and are active donators to the guild bank, and use it to help others.   As officers, they are all I could ask for, in terms of helping lead a casual “Levelling guild”.   But they do not wish the title of Leader.

As for myself,  I’ve pushed aside my character’s own development for the benefit of this lacklustre guild as well.  Personally having donated about 1200 gold to buy bank slots and such, as well as bags for all the officer’s alts.   I’m too generous it seems, as those groups either play far too inactively, or moved on to progression guilds now.  *sigh*   I don’t say this to invoke pity, or stroke my own e-peen, but merely to describe how invested I am with this old guild, and thus feeling a certain loyalty to the old ways there.
So,  it is with mixed feelings I play the game this week.   On one hand, if not for the ties I put on myself, I would transfer my other characters to the new guild, and join the fun RP.  They match my playstyle much better, and are quite willing to run dungeons and such, with the intention of dying if hte content is “bleeding edge” and we are not yet geard for them. Of course with this outlook, there WILL come a time when some impossible boss falls down dead, and there will be much rejoicing.  I’d love to (even vicariously) be a part of that experience, glad of my cohorts and their victory.

I’m not sure what the overall point of this posting is, anymore, other than to act as a stream-of-mind writing to help my brain consider the options.  As a network of friends, it may be just a game, but it is so much more.  I’m glad to be a part of it.

I just need to figure out which part I am best suited in.
Strength and Honor!

Unrelated Intro:   Ever have one of those mornings where you get paged to come in night-shift, it’s about 2am, you went to bed at 10:30 or so, and you sit down at your desk with a nice fresh cup of coffee?  You know the one, where you’ve just added the tiniest pinch of sugar, and a touch of actual cream (not those sterilized little flavour-cups)….You set the lid back on the cup, tip it to your lips, and enjoy the warm comfy feeling that spreads through your stomach, your waist, ..your legs?…and your nether-regions!, only to THEN realize you never actually Secured the lid properly to the cup, and you are now a dripping sod of “peed-my-pants-feeling” at work, with no spare clothes?   Yeah, that was my morning….   *grin*

Otherwise, I’m sure most of the people reading this blog have seen various movies, shows, and books where a character partakes in some amazing adventure, only to return, once completed, to the beginning of the story and finds that no (or little) time has past.  It seems to be a staple of sci-fi and fantasy archetype.  Narnia did it, a great episode of “Star Trek:TNG” did it, and there are a myriad of other stories and shows that I can’t quite name right now which had similar endings.  Even popular culture tells of reliving one’s entire life the moment before dying, or the slowing down of time in accidents.

Today’s night-shift work involved a strange lapse in temporal physics, where I would swear a week went by, in the course of about 2 minutes.

I was mentally planning Starwood stuff, like what to pack, thoughts regarding picking up some hand sanitizer for the porta-john trips, and such.   Then, I was out hiking in the woods, at “My place“. (the mental landscape I like to ground and start meditations from)

From there, without going into a huge long post full of rapidly fading details, I’ll summarize the story as me finding my way out of the woods to a nice pseudo-replica of my real life land & house, but not having any furnishings or garden, or other signs of habitation.  I vividly recall having to go BACK to the woods, track down a neighbor a good mile or two away, who could do carpentry, haul logs one by one to the clearings near my house, and carve it up into a proper bed, chairs, and such.   Then, we hand-dug the garden, tilled it under with a pile of well-aged manure compost, and planted seeds and moved some wild herbs from the wooded edge, to a more convenient spot on the land.

A few days passed, and the first sprouts were peeking up (a bit faster than normal reality, obviously) in the garden, and my bed was finally finished, when I laid down to rest, and “woke up” to being at work again in this reality.   Glancing at the clock, about 2 minutes had passed, and the job I was printing was just finishing up.

Throughout the “dream”, the only other person I remember seeing is a strange neighbor with a saw and lathe.  The face I could not describe accurately, and was more an “everyman” figure, more than a specific person.  Otherwise, there was nothing overly unusual to key the experience in as anything ‘dreamlike’, other than a strange, yet normal, life.
It’s odd to think it, but I honestly felt like a few days passed, and even “dreamed” that at least two full nights passed.  I fell asleep, I woke up, did chores, and fell asleep again.   Very disconcerting now that I’m thinking back and writing it all down here for the blog.

I’ve had those epic-feeling semi-lucid dreams when I was actually asleep in bed at home, and always assumed they lasted for a sizable chunk of time (even though I have read that dream-state REM happens in short increments).  Yet this is the first time I could say, unequivocally, thatmy perception of time passing was at such great odds with the usual chronological progression.

Strange, and probably pointless, but it was kinda interesting to think about today, and thus, worth posted Musing here.

Comments are welcome….for now, I’m going to sleep.
…zzzZZZzzz…zzzzZZZzzz….zzzzZZZZzzzzz…

Inspired (if not directly taken from) by this posting from Crafty Crow, and to avoid actual cooking in the house last night, the Everthorn Men made bread-cookies!

(sorry, still can not find Digital camera in the house or under sofas…no photos from us.)

The sprog insisted he was not hungry, and since I was too lazy to whip up something in the oven or grill, and had a huge salad for lunch, we made our rendition of those adorable bear thingies.  I toasted the bread, grabbed a few appropriately sized cookie-cutters in the form of a big Star, a Gingerbread Man, and a Pooh-bear.

Toppings were arranged in those little glass bowls that all cooking shows use for ingredients. Rainbow sprinkles, assorted unsalted nuts, mixed raisins, toasted wheat germ, tiny apple chunks, and mini marshmallows were available as toppings.

On standby in their respective containers were creamy peanut butter, Nutella, home-grown Elderberry/Grape Jelly, and local organic honey.  Also,  two stainless steel butter knives for spreading the aforementioned sticky stuffs.
Mise en place.

We toasted eight slices of wheat bread, and each picked out choice of shapes.   The individual “cookies” were spread with whatever toppings, with me preferring a PB & Nutella combination, and the sprog trying just about everything (one topping per toast, which surprised me).

All in all, while I could technically answer the question “What did you have for dinner?” with the simple reply of “peanut butter on toast“, it was a helluva lot more fun that that sounds!   Definitely something to do again at parties, or camping, where even the simple ingredients turns into a full 45 minutes worth of “play time”!

And I managed to avoid any actual cooking, (beyond the toaster)!

First, sorry for this being quite a bit late for official New Moonage. Been a busy month, both at work and at home. Sit down, grab a drink, because this is going to be Epic wall O’ text time… I’ll wait…..

We watched a movie “What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole” with friends of ours, and got into a rather enlightening discussion about reality, my concenpt of magic, and such.   The movie and big debate happened at Watkins Glen (briefly mentioned here) with the frineds we are going to Starwood with, and we plan on re-addressing it further there.

Essentially, the movie tries to explain reality in relation to Quantum mechanics, and add a sort-of meta-scientific aspect to the metaphysical/spiritual world.  It seemed (to me) to go out of it’s way to avoid the word GOD, but implied that we are all capable of a vague divinity because we create our world, and are all interconnected.  Not in the sense of our souls or spirits as most neopagan or spiritual religions describe, but by the mere fact that our atoms and molecules are governed by quantum mechanics, where time and space break down.  Of cours,e it is MUCH more complicated, but that’s the summary I took away from it, funneled down to a single short paragraph.

We also discussed the book/movie “The Secret“, which follows similar teachings about creating your world, and altering reality to conform to Will.  …Sounds awefully like Crowley’s definition of Magick, doesn’t it?

The Secret tends to focus more on the “self-help” aspect of conforming reality to your will, and is almost a better “scientific magickal primer” in the fact that it tries to show a method and “ritual” way of viewing the world so that beneficial things happen to you.   Concentrating on the Law of Attraction, whereby one surrounds himself with good people and good places, and good thoughts, so that good things happen, is rather similar to a basic description of spellcasting from a wiccan perspective.  Remove the spiritual cues and concept, and you’ve got The Secret.

The movie “What the Bleep” tends to focus more on a holistic quantum worldview, and is meant (again, to my perception), to shift how the average atheistic person sees the world, and enable reconciliation of scientific paradigms to the social/ethical questions of “why be good to each other”.
While on the surface, and described in such brief and general terms, both of these movies I can agree with, to a point.   However, I feel that they specifically seem to avoid the concept of an Otherworld.   Granted, quantum states and such (almost by definition) point towards alternative dimensions, but this is not what I mean.  Quantum dimensions are still described as scientific “mundane” levels of reality that are too small to see, yet have an affect on reality.  They exist in my personal paradigm, but are still just mathematically relevant structures that comprise the current view of the fabric of reality.

What I think is missing from both of these ideas, is that they avoid questions of Faith, Spirituality, and the like.   It’s wonderful to teach a way to improve your life, by stressing personal accountability, yet it still seems a bit selfish.   God may not be a man in a white robe and flowing beard, nor may she be a naked dancer leaping around ancient bonfires, but in both these visions of divinity, there is the concept of Other.  God/dess exists to the spiritually aware as ’something outside’ your own soul, though often part and parcel of it as well.  The Divine embraces, and is embraced by, reality.  It may only be a vague animism, or a full fledged Creator.  Yet, to me, is an important aspect to consider.

In the discussions regarding these two movies, my friend posed the hypothetical situation of waking up for work, and Knowing there will be no traffic to delay him.  He phrased this idea in terms of The Secret.  Asking the universe there be no traffic,  sending out his energy to prevent traffic from happening, and then driving to work Believing he will not run into traffic, and then Receiving the drive without the hassle of other cars on the road.  Essentially, he cast the spell to prevent traffic, and there was none.

I countered why he didn’t jsut do that every day, and thus never encounter too many other cars, since his 45 minute commute would greatly benefit from such a ritual.  He said us humans arent quite perfect yet at “Truly Believing” in such a power, and thus it only works every so often, and sometimes he can’t “raise the energy” properly and convince his brain that “It works”.   The more we practice, the less traffic he will get into.  It’s only a matter of Will.
My take on the situation of waking up Knowing my drive will be quick and care-free is less active and more reactive.  I may go to sleep sending energy out to prevent traffic, but those rare days when I wake up with an honest Knowing, and finding the roads all but empty, are a more complex inter-play of my own energies, and the current State of Reality.   In my worldview, I am tapping more into the subtle energies and ripples of Here/Now so that I leave my house at precicely the right time to avoid traffic.   I have, in some sense, actively nudged probabilities in my favor, but there is still a reactice/receiving aspect of this “magick” so that my life benefits from my wishes, with minimal disruption of the flows around me.

Another metaphor for our different views is a fish in a stream.  Does the fish swim wherever it wants, and leap waterfalls because it’s strong tail allows it, or because the fluid currents allow it to pass through them?
Do we make reality in our own image, or do we make our image into reality?
It’s quite a deep and interesting topic, and one we plan on exploring further during a late-night bonfire and drinks.  I think both answers are correct, and diversity is a wonderful thing.  I can’t change someone’s worldview with my own, just as they can not change mine.  However, compromises and discussion often opens unseen doors to perception which expand our own insights.  I’m sure quite a few spoons will be bent as we exchange concepts and thoughts….We’ll see how much each of us bends as well.