Spring is almost here... Gardening indoors today

I am so happy to be planning out a garden, of course I found this wonderful book called The Essential HERBS handbook by Lesley Bremness, it appears to be well-researched as far as any herb book ever goes. I of course want to plant nearly every herb in that book in my garden. Which of course is not going to happen with seeds averaging in at about $3 per packet, and the one I really wanted is of course sold out.

I wanted to try growing Bilberry as it's just perfect for my temperate zone of 7 and 8 and I think I might have all the symptoms of demacular eye disgenerative disorder. Even though both my doctor and eye doctor both say they can't see anything wrong with my eyes. I've looked at all the symptoms using WebMD.org and I would say I definitely have it from what I've been seeing. Probably it's just not gotten bad enough for them to see signs of it yet. I really don't want it to get so bad that I need surgery, or go blind, or get's much worse than it is now. But they can't 'see anything' with their tools so they won't prescribe anything, leaving me pretty much on my own to solve this.

I think if people just paid attention to their bodies, and read through books of symptoms themselves, we could probably reduce the cost of a lot of healthcare in this country simply by being self-informed, and aware.

So anyway, I want to try growing this plant and see if taking a few leafs a day might help me with those strange dark things and flashing dots I keep seeing with slowly increasing frequency. I think I first started seeing them when I was about 18, and that was about 1 dot every 6-8 months, now 10 years later, it's more like I'm seeing a dot or two every couple of days.

I've started my Loofah plants on time, there's really very limited information on growing them. I've gone for covering them up with a blanket, and keeping an electric gas heater next to them all the time, I'll be watering them again in a couple of days. Being a tropical plant, they had to be started indoors and they need 300 days of sunlight, or I'm suspecting warmth and artificial sunlight, but that means I'll be germinating and growing them indoors for at least 2 months.

I am so looking forward to trellising them, and I am really hoping for several hundred loofah from the final harvest, so I can have my very own affordably grown scrubby sponges for embedding in my home-made soaps.

I actually have extra loofah seeds dated 2012, I don't have room to start them all, if anyone would like to trade seeds or plants. I am interested in Bilberry, Angelica, Lavender, Sage (medicinal), Alecost, Ginkgo, Sweet Violet, Hawthorn, Red Clover, Lemon Balm, Blue Skullcap, Black Currant, Clary Sage, and Gogi berry bush.

Essential oils and southern floral tinctures also interest me, as I am in the business of making fine scented soaps.

Locally, I also have the following forages available in the spring, summer and late fall.

Burdock, Dandelion whole plants available, wild miniature strawberry, white, pink and purple lilac, Forget-Me-Not, crab-apple, Willow twigs, Blackberry, Cattail (early September ONLY).

I will most likely be attempting a dandelion flower tincture, and a forget me not tincture for floral scenting this summer, possibly bluebell one as well, but only if I can find enough of them.

You may mail me SkaldSircha.at.yahoo.com serious trades only.

Cured Maybe?

Well I suppose myself might be cured, I thought of it only on Birthday, sort of wistful because I've always wanted to throw a Dragonrealms birthday party for myself and my character, our birthdays are on the same day because I made my character on my 16th birthday oh so long ago. I've always thought I wanted white fox fur items, black leather, and purple -blue gems and jewels -stylish but only to my mind though. I have a few projects that, I can't quite seem to get too. Don't know if I'm holding myself back from them or if I'm afraid of them, because of how it will change me and who I am. One should both confront ones fears, and leave the past in the past without disturbing sleeping dogs. But if your fears drive you to never sleep peacefully, to waken at midnight and beat one's fist helplessly against the floor until bloodied, shouldn't you awaken it, and face it so that you can reach the best of your potential? That is the choice I face, before dragonrealms I was tormented by some people, and I found solstice and friendship in a game. But the memory of that torment lives on within me. It drives me, tempts me, scares me. It tells me I should seek revenge, it tells me I should do that to others, it scares me that I might do either of the previous two. Previously, whenever it cropped it's ugly head up, I just threw myself back into a game, or series of games, any game at all to forget. The real problem is... games don't stop the memories anymore.

It's been 4 years and...

I am still addicted! Waaaah!

I cannot stop thinking about my first gaming love. Does this happen with everyone, that first game that you absolutely loved to death and can't bring yourself to part with?

I keep thinking. Wouldn't it be nice to just sign in today. I have more than enough money. I could sign in today if I wanted. I could buy a Wedding Package and schedule a birthday party for my character if I wanted, and if any male or female dared call me "Sir Cha" and tell me that the character I made back in 1995 was broken I could slap them for it! First time in 4 years. I've been obsessively reading the DragonRealms Forums. New Enchantes, new spells, 2 new continents I haven't begun to explore yet, new music system. Bagpipes! Harpsichords! Some bard dreams came true right there!

Worst. My sweetheart discovered the 'old Sircha' figurine I had been holding onto. He looked at her and he looked at me, and he looked at her, and said, "Can you be like her for me please?"

Ugh! I've spent the past 4 years to be as un-like Sircha as humanely possible. I've been trying very hard to split myself from the character that has grown to be too much of me. As a character "Sircha" was heavily narcissitic didn't know the meaning of humility. As a person behind the character I didn't know what the 7 pillars of good meaning were, and I went on a personal quest to find out. I don't intend to return until I have all 7 of them down. (As I understand this may take a decade or two.)

The first of the seven treasures is to know and love yourself. If you can't accept your own faults and love yourself for who you are, then you are truly lost.

The second of the seven treasures is to treat each person you meet as an irreplacable treasure. (I'm working on this one)

The third of the seven treasures is to be polite to others. (No bad habits infront of others.) Something I struggle with daily.

The fourth of the seven treasures is humility. Not all conversation you hear means that people are talking about you. Usually they are talking about someone else. You need self love the first treasure to keep yourself from falling to narcissism.

Narcissism is actually self-hatred posing as self-love. At it's far extreme you may become the Joker from Batman. You direct all attention to yourself and resort to acts of crime, terrorism, anger, and violence to always have everyone's attention on you. You may also change everything in your wardrobe/den/home/blog every week, and nothing truly satisfies you. That is an earmark trait of a narcissist. However, when you do not have everyone's attention your thoughts immediately turn to how your not perfect, your not great, your terrible, your stupid & ugly until you fall into a deep depression. That only awaits your next genius and deeply narcissistic moment can bring you back out of.

The fifth treasure is Respect, it draws from the 2nd pillar of treating each person as an irreplacable treasure, that also goes for that person's belongings, status and other people around that person.

The sixth & seventh treasures. I'm afraid I'm not sure what those are, although they were explained to me several times. I've been struggling along so hard with understanding and practicing the first five.

It's worst in November/December

I've realized the DR cravings are worst in November and December, it's because the turkey and holiday season bring out so many wonderful memories of multiple invasions, the bloodiest battles, the triages, gore and best of all! All of my old friends always come out of the wood work in those months to spend a few months together playing in DR. It's like... it's like being a caged wild bird and seeing all the other birdies fly south for the winter and wanting to join them, but being stuck in a cage.

Addictions particularly internet ones like this drive you crazy because you know all of your friends are going to be there, waiting for you to show up, spending plats and give them a good ole' round of hugs and kisses. It's particularly bad since they now have a war going on. Oh how I love those! I'm addicted to being helpful, it's the nature of a bard to be helpful. All of your skills and magic bend you towards it. Seeing the smiles of grateful folks as you maintain your continuous Aura of Vitality, while you hand out healing supplies to those who need it. It's so... addicting because it feels so good, and then there's the adrenaline rush you get when the area you thought was safely defended gets overrun by monsters.

Yep! I want to go back there, with a personal and quiet desperation. I want to go play for another 3 months by paying the extravagant monthly subscription fees. I want to explore P5 and check out the new Shard. I want to see what the heck they did with the bardic instruments, bagpipes?! I have to get me one of those!

I think I have the worst kind of addiction, I'm addicted to helping others who play in DragonRealms. Worst of all it costs me something like $50/month to do so because I can't have just one account while I play. Nope, I have to open all 5 of them.

The return of the Cravings...

Oh I thought I was free and clear and totally over it...

I'm not. It's thanksgiving season and I just know that all of my DR friends, in many respects I consider them all to be a massive part of my online family. I recently figured out that 'we' being all of us kids who started playing DragonRealms are all about the same age range of 11-18 when we started playing. Imagine that, an entire online family of teenagers who came together to play an online game, to hang out, roleplay, josh around with jokes and generally just try to have fun together as a massive online community.

When I was younger I never suspected that 90% of those I was interacting with were actually MY age! We all come together on Thanksgiving, on Christmas then we start to drift away back to our normal lives by mid-January. It's a massive family reunion online, all 3,500 of us.

It's not the game that makes a game worth it. It's establishing yourself within a community, one that accepts and loves you for the part you play within it. That's what drives the cravings I now believe. I don't know if it's anything I could ever defeat, or if I should just accept this and start showing up regularly for 3 months every year.

Possibly last post

Dunebless (11:05:28 AM): yo
Dunebless (11:06:39 AM): I didn't lose an eye and I'm not suing, I was pulling a bit of a joke on a bad situation.
Dunebless (11:07:16 AM): I have an unfortunate tendency towards doing that, and I'm sorry.
Dunebless (11:07:40 AM): dramatising real situations
Dunebless (11:07:46 AM): and there's no excuse.
Dunebless (11:08:18 AM): that's why I make a better DM, but I poor reporter.
Dunebless (11:10:12 AM): I'm not a credible source for anything mroe than small talk, even then the Sircha personality sometimes takes over.
Dunebless (11:10:41 AM): I can't ever go back to DR, the Sircha personality is to strong and too much for me to ever get a handle on.
Dunebless (11:11:39 AM): I try not to think of Sircha (the bard) of DR for this reason.
Dunebless (11:12:15 AM): just thinking of S immediately puts me into her character, whether I want to be or not.
Dunebless (11:15:07 AM): S became a very strong character personality, very dramatic, always making a big fuss over an anthill and warping the truth to fit the character's needs.
Dunebless (11:16:00 AM): while this was terribly fun to play, I've found the character personality to be incredibly hard to turn off, and she unfortunately does turn on a lot when I don't mean to.
Dunebless (11:16:13 AM): Infact whenever someone mentions Sircha she usually turns on.
TincanX (11:16:34 AM): i see
Dunebless (11:16:48 AM): For those reasons, and because I don't want to be her, I've retired the character permanently.
TincanX (11:17:06 AM): so make another one
Dunebless (11:17:48 AM): I could but I've found better games than mud's to play.
TincanX (11:18:09 AM): yeah right
TincanX (11:18:10 AM): lol
Dunebless (11:18:11 AM): table top DnD is 100 times better.
TincanX (11:18:14 AM): better than muds
Dunebless (11:18:22 AM): yes
TincanX (11:18:22 AM): hahahahha
TincanX (11:18:25 AM): sure!
TincanX (11:18:30 AM): just kidding
Dunebless (11:18:32 AM): you find a good DM, and a good bunch of roleplayers
Dunebless (11:18:46 AM): and there are suddenly no limits to good fun

Life and Living: My lessons on politeness

I'm having a very hard time surviving in the so called real world.

I totally missed the lessons on politeness growing up so I'm learning it the very hard way, through losing friends. Politeness is some mystic thing that everyone else in the world instinctively knows very well.

I'll say it right now. I don't have the politeness instinct. I was raised in a rude family that spoke loudly, yelled at most everyone, and farted whenever the need arose. I'm trying, but I feel like as soon as I get my head above water I drown in my own words and actions again. Words and actions I always viewed as normal regular codes of behavior. That everyone else besides my family thinks is gross, disgusting, impolite, bad, and terribly rude behavior. The way my family raised me taught me things is drastically different from everyone else I have encountered in the past year as I try to emerge from my shell.

I'm very emo sad right now. I'm thinking maybe I should just slam the shell shut and stay locked away in there forever tossing away the map out.

I'm starting to understand that the root of my own shyness and inability to talk to people is because I completely lack any politeness or idea on how to act around normal people. I lock myself up because it's the only way to feel accepted in a group setting as the 'quiet' one. I can't warm up to anyone without an insulting incident. It's saturday now, that makes 2 people insulted this week. I usually don't say anything after insulting someone.

I feel very bad about it, but I also feel I can't do or say anything without making things 10x worse. When I try to make amends after insulting someone, I usually end up pissing them off by pushing my conversation on them, and when this happens my victims claim that I can't admit that I was wrong. Maybe I can't, maybe they piss me off because they arn't tough enough to take a minor insult that's a sign of affection in my family. You try showing someone a sign of mild affection and tell me what your reaction is when they get pissy at you.

Everytime I F' up like this I feel like withdrawing into that protective shell and not saying more than 2 words in any put together sentence again.

My boyfriend's a sweet guy and he's been trying to teach me, but it's like teaching a 20 something how to write for the first time. Metaphorically speaking: I got the letter A B C D, but I have no concept on how to form the other letters. He's getting very tired of this, I can tell.

Returning to the game

Bards In Real Life... intended post

Return of the Sircha

So what's new? Other than playing a bard in stormreach not much... but a few enchantes/abilities were inspired from there. Oh and guys, I've decided to change my name. Please refer to me as Syrcha Wynnrose from now on.

Having been gone for the greater part of 2 years, and having returned periodically with different faces to check up on the Bard's Guild. I have to say, you guys do seem to be doing well. Yes it is the same old person behind the same old player, I don't believe I'd ever sell my account to anyone after all of the effort and love I've poured into my characters.

Shavay and others might be clamoring to say, we saw you back in January, someone named a character Syrcha and invaded the bard's guild and tried to get us to accept her as the old Sircha! The story behind that was that the place I had worked for had shut down shop, destaffed to a skeleton crew and since I was extra, left me to hang with promises of work, and no work for a very painful month and a half, only the grace and extra money provided from my parents during this rough spot kept me going. I was bored with nothing to do except surf internet and visit boyfriend and watch tv movies and even those grew dull with no great source of entertainment. So I rolled up Syrcha and strolled around DragonRealms during the free trial period. Shavay took the time to explain to me how wrong this was, so I backed out of playing and sat around brooding and reading books out of the library all winter.

Things are slightly better now, can afford 2 game subscriptions this month DR and stormreach, and will soon have enough extra to start a new savings account.

My new favorite authors that I have just started to read books of are Anne Rice and Terry Pratchet. At the age of 24 I finally had my first taste of booze. It was Peach Schnapps. I have tried a very limited amount of booze including Festive Sangria YUCK!, Peach Schnapps 30% proof good for pouring on boyfriend and licking off, Manischewitz Pure virgin wine 5% proof kosher I love the concord grape and blueberry flavors, Twisted Lemon Tea 10% proof Mmmm it's okay, not an experience I'm eager to repeat, Camelot honey mead 15% proof good stuff, like it better without the spices, and whiskey 90% proof. My boyfriend screamed at me in winter when I came in freezing, grabbed the bottle and drank 6 servings worth without putting it over ice. Instantly warmed me up from mouth to belly in 8 seconds.

Tier 4 & 5 & 6

Tier 4

Sub-Sonic Shield: Shield that extends to pole range from you that blocks sounds, deals 1d6 sonic damage +1/circle and deafens creatures passing through. For a circle 55th bard to take this spell would automatically deal a minimum of 56 damage to creatures passing through it.

Aethereal Mount: You transform touched mount into an Aethereal mount which can gallop at twice the speed of a regular mount as it is unhindered by any physical obstacle. Also makes mount and rider invulnerable to attack by non-aetheral spells

Lay of the Land: allows you to get a geographical peek at all areas surrounding yours, including monsters, barricades, and directions.

To the North you see: All rooms north, northeast, and northwest within 6 movements.
To the South you see: All rooms south, southeast, and southwest within 6 movements.
To the East you see: All rooms East within 6 movements
To the West you see: All rooms west within 6 movements
Special areas: Bridges, gates, doorways and where they lead within 6 movements are included.
Portal and special protected areas cannot be pierced by Lay of the Land.

Ray Deflection: Ray attacks are reflected away from the bard onto any other targets as random blasts of the reflected and diffused ray.

Protege': Subject can use bardic music and bardic knowledge as a bard of half your level.

Resonating Bolt: Bespells an arrow or missle one use only to deal extra damage of 1d4 bard/circle up to 50d4. Enchantment is temporary and only lasts 10 minutes.

Rune Word of Fortune: Self ONLY In desperate need, you cry out a word, a word so ancient and powerful that it was entrusted to you by the Naga.

How I envision this working, you prep the spell Rune World of Fortune, then when your ready to cast, you say the key words to casting the side of the spell you want, whether it's vitality healing, poison immunity, fear immunity, or additional evasion points. Now I'm just using latin to explain as an example, if I could've found elothean or naga spellings I would have used those instead. These words of power will buy valuable time for a bard, without needing to wait for an enchante.

Rune word of fortune 1: salvenenum combination latin word saleus 'good health' and venenum 'poison'. Immediate Effect: Temporary immunity to poison, and you gain a luck bonus on saving throws to poison equal to your charisma modifier. It only lasts about 12 seconds.

Rune word of fortune 2: Immediate Effect: You instantly flush with new vitality, and your wounds begin to close. This is a temporary effect, it doesn't really heal you just slows the bleeding down and the serverity of your injuries lessens. It only lasts about 12 seconds.

Rune word of fortune 3: Immediate Effect: You instantly gain your level in evasion points, and your charisma modifier temporarily replaces your reflex modifier. So if your level 50, you gain an extra 50 ranks in evasion, and if you have a charisma of 28, and a reflex of 20, your charisma modifier suddenly acts as your reflex modifier for 12 seconds.

Rune word of fortune 4: Immediate Effect: You instantly gain a luck bonus on will saves against malicious spells this bonus is equal to your level as a bard. It also makes you immune to fear effects.

Sirin's Grace: You gain bonuses to Charisma, Dexterity, armor class, perform and swim checks

Vocalise of the Performer: Magically enhances the ability of Voice throwing and adds ranks in bardic music on the target. Suggested actiin descriptive text: oo-lol-do-si-pop

5th Tier

Bolts of Pure Light: One ray of pure light is shot off at each cast. Momentarily gives light to dark places and dazzles all monsters in a given room for up to 9 seconds.

Disharmonic Body: One living creature, Piercing tone deals 1-10 damage to one ability/3 seconds. Using your voice and a glass of water you are able to cause any creature in the room to vibrate in tune to your voice and the water you hold. This deals elemental damage to the victim, causing them to lose temporary stat points or physical and mental damage, Bard's choice, the ability effected needs to be changed every 8 seconds, and the bard cannot focus solely on one ability for multiple rounds or the spell will fail. The victim under this disharmonic spell will whine and hum discordantly. The victim suffers a severe penalty to all hide, stalk and movement checks while under the effects of this spell.

Hidden Lodge: Creates sturdy cottage camouflaged to blend into natural surroundings. Lasts 10 min/circle. Has moderate amounts of every mana type.

Reflective Disguise, Mass: Viewers see subjects in the bard's group as their own species and gender.

6th tier

Ray of Light: Ray blinds/destroys the eyes of subject. Makes it impossible to see any room directions.

Revenance: Restores dead creature to life for 1 minute/circle. Note: Effect is temporary! Once spell wears off creature dies again!

Symphonic nightmare: Can be cast on a creature already induced magical sleep. Saps it's internal vitality down to half, and causes it to scratch and gouge at itself in a frenzy to tear free of the nightmare.