I’ve thought of making up my own world or using some existing world already created. I’ve tried to get into two different writing worlds and I just didn’t feel right. So now I’m back to making my own. I wanted something quick and easy for me to start up and I wanted little maintenance on my part. So I created a Wheel of Time RPG. I am familiar with the world, as are my friends, and many others out there, so it was a logical place for me to go.

You can visit us at Web of Destiny. This is run a little differently than most rp sites I’ve been to, it’s based on the honor system. Basically it’s Peer Administration. We’ll see how it goes. There are no admins to run things, there are admins but only to serve the purpose of fixing things when broken or to rectify a concern that couldn’t be resolved by the individuals involved. Moderators are only around to insure we remain spam free and to remove or edit inappropriate material.

There are no title, no power to be had. It’s all about your character being the hero. We are currently several years before the books in the series began. The Dragon has not been found much less revealed. One day in the future we might start adding in current events, but there will be no major interaction with those events, just your reactions to them.

I choose an out of the way place that we can have a pretty light hand with what exists and what doesn’t exist – Mayene. While we know the First and we know a little bit about them, the main characters never go there, and we don’t see any minor characters, we don’t have much going on there, so we can establish a city that is under our own fine tooth comb with out getting in trouble with what’s in the books.

The city is our world to create, ours to push into a direction we’d like to see. I know with out major direction some people might not feel comfortable, but there are those of us who like to come up with ideas, and I will try to create some city wide events that everyone (or a few) can participate in. I hope that you will come check us out, make a character (or lurk around) and help with the creativity we can unfold in a world we know but in a place we have mostly unlimited control over.

This kinda hit home. I like American Cheese. I love the way it melts on my grilled cheese sandwich. I grew up with American Cheese. But this does not mean that I don’t love “real cheese”, because I absolutely adore cheese (just not on my grilled cheese sandwich). I typically keep cheddar and mozzarella cheese in the house at all times. But we occasionally get other kind for different things – Swiss for chicken cordon bleu, pepper jack for various sandwiches. Since we are on a budget we don’t get to spring for the a more varied cheese selection.

American cheese isn’t the only food that I typically prefer in situations. I still love boxed macroni and cheese, even though I can make a pretty grand (yet very fattening) dish of macaroni and cheese from scratch.

No matter how many times I go to a coffee shop to get hot chocolate, I always end up saying that I still prefer my instant from a can hot chocolate or the instant stuff they typically server in gas stations. I was never big on homemade hot chocolate.

Same thing with mashed potatoes, up until a few years ago the only mashed potatoes I would eat were instant. The biggest reason was because almost all homemade mashed potatoes were lumpy. I can’t stand lumpy mashed potatoes. I do make some nice mashed potatoes now with my lovely food processor, and I even will eat it with the lumps cause no matter how long I puree it, it still has lumps.

There might be a few other things that I truly enjoy that is prepackaged, but I rarely if ever buy prepackaged foods (except for these things and a few others I’ve not yet mastered from scratch). I realize my cooking has grown since coming down to Mississippi, and I thank a lot of that to the Food Network and all their afternoon instructions.

Poor Kathleen was so sick I was worried about Pneumonia. So I took them out to the doctor to make sure it wasn’t that. We couldn’t get an appointment so we waited 3 hours before we were seen. They were giving two shots – steroids and antibiotics to help them recover faster, and then we spent another 1.5 hours in the hospital waiting for chest x-rays to rule out pneumonia.

They started perking up halfway through that evening, while they still have a nice cough and runny noses they are doing much better, even their appetites are returning, thankfully. But I’m still not well. I feel better today, I didn’t wake up with a hard cough, so I’m thinking I may have broken it, we’ll see tonight. If I set back into the way I was feeling last night then I’ll make an appointment to see the doctor. But today I think is a much better day.

So we’ll wait and see. Meanwhile the girls get to finish off their antibiotics and work in some breathing treatements a few more times and hopefully they’ll be cough free soon.

Today I think I will try this receipe for Oat Bran Blueberry Muffins. It doesn’t look nearly as good as the other ones, but then again I don’t have all those ingredients either, so we will try this one:

1 c. flour
1 c. oat bran
1/2 c. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 c. milk
1/2 c. salad oil
1 c. (at least) fresh or frozen blueberries

Combine dry ingredients. Stir in liquid and berries all at once, just until blended. Fill standard 2 1/2 inch cups. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Makes 15 to 18 muffins.

INGREDIENTS

* 1 teaspoon white sugar
* 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast over the top, and let stand for about 10 minutes, until foamy.
2. Stir the olive oil and salt into the yeast mixture, then mix in the whole wheat flour and 1 cup of the all-purpose flour until dough starts to come together. Tip dough out onto a surface floured with the remaining all-purpose flour, and knead until all of the flour has been absorbed, and the ball of dough becomes smooth, about 10 minutes. Place dough in an oiled bowl, and turn to coat the surface. Cover loosely with a towel, and let stand in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
3. When the dough is doubled, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into 2 pieces for 2 thin crust, or leave whole to make one thick crust. Form into a tight ball. Let rise for about 45 minutes, until doubled.
4. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Roll a ball of dough with a rolling pin until it will not stretch any further. Then, drape it over both of your fists, and gently pull the edges outward, while rotating the crust. When the circle has reached the desired size, place on a well oiled pizza pan. Top pizza with your favorite toppings, such as sauce, cheese, meats, or vegetables.
5. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes (depending on thickness) in the preheated oven, until the crust is crisp and golden at the edges, and cheese is melted on the top.

I made this a while ago but I didn’t write about it. I split the dough in half and made two pizza’s. One was great, the other was okay. The great one was made on the top shelf in a rectangluar cookie sheet. So this time I’m going to cook them one at a time both on top to see if that really was the case. First one on top, if it’s too cruchy put it on the bottom but i’m pretty sure that the top rack is the correct one.

It was really good last time, now to test it out again. It’s not a simple recipe cause of the yeast, but it’s yummy anyway.

Patterns are courtesy of Din Patterns

First Methodist Preschool runs from 8:30 to 11:30 for $180 a month and First Baptist Church Day Care Center runs from 8 to 11:30 for $250 a month. I like the First Baptist one better from the enthusiasm the woman who answered the phone had about it.

The problem being we really can’t afford either of them. I really wish we had a public preschool. There is only so much I can work on with Kathleen. She can’t start Kindergarten this September because of her age. And she isn’t quite ready for it. Half a day school would be great for her right now. Learn and then come home and play with Sissy.

Hopefully we’ll be able to work something out. I can’t rely on my freelancing to do the job as I don’t make the same each week, and can’t guarantee I’ll make enough that we won’t struggle with the rest of the bills. So we’ll wait and see I guess.

We are now all officially sick. Shea caught what we’ve had the past few days, unfortunately he’s home from work today, but when he bent over this morning and got dizzy I kinda didn’t like that so pushed a little more for him to stay home and get well instead of going to work. We need the money, but I need him more than I need the money. Dizzy and heights do not go well together and what he does is already dangerous enough with out me worrying about that. So I’m glad he’s home. I just hope he can get some overtime this weekend to make up for it, but we’ll see. Good thing is I got a maintenance contract that expired and my client is renewing so that’s some income and I had a quick project last week so in 4 weeks well start making some extra money that way too. Hopefully my next project will be as quick. I’ll try to pick one up today after the girls doctor appointment.

We aren’t completely accident free now, but Kathleen has made excellent progress in that department in the past week. I tried threatening wearing diapers for accidents since nothing else seemed to work. But all it did was allow her to go in her pants with out much care. So after the second time of diapers I changed strategies and removed diapers and pullups from her completely. No longer are we doing pullups at night. Yes it’s far more annoying to wake up and have to make a dry bed, but it’s far easier in the potty training now. We’ve had only sleep time accidents since we started this particular thing. We are also on a timer, Grandma and Grandpa bought a potty watch for the girls. It has a set 30, 60 or 90 miniute count down on it and it restarts itself, which is awesome. It plays a song and lights up. She wore it the first day but now it just sits on my desk and she goes when it says to. I do turn it off and try to get her to go on her own, it has worked okay, we’ve not had any accidents.

I think it’s also helpful that they are spending time in our room watching the Roku with it’s new cartoons – dora and thomas the train that are streaming from netflix. I think in terms of what we paid for and what we have watched since getting it the thing has paid for itself already. I think being in our room has helped her as well, the potty isn’t too far away.

We’ve also instituted a sticker regime again. She seems to like that a lot. When we first established it we crossed out a lot of stickers, but I’ve not had to do that in a while. She gets 1 sticker for her board, and 1 sticker for herself when she potties and she gets 1 sticker for her and 2 for her board when she poops. And she only gets the poop ones when she shows me lol. So I get a lot of “Mommy, do you want to see the poop?” She likes to try to fake it out when she has an accident so you have to check the panties too. But we have made decided progress, and I hope we can get her in this most of the time so we can start working with Sammi, first thing with Sammi though is getting her to wear panties at all, she just won’t wear them. And if I put them on her she just takes them off so we have to work on it.

For the past year I’ve been working on the next revision of the website, not the design but all the back end work from research to making sure it covers exactly what the site needed. I had a unique perspective as I was a user of the site as well.

A month or so ago I stepped away from the site for personal reasons but I was going to finish what I started. Today I was informed on all the stuff they want to do differently that I wasn’t being a part of the discussion, so instead of wait for them to finalize this I’m going to have to walk away.

I have nothing to show in my portfolio for the past year of work I’ve done, and it’s looking like it’s going to be yet another year for things to be done with something to show clients that I did or had done. I can’t spend that much time not getting paid, not right now, not with things piling up on me.

So today I stepped away from 11 years of my life and 11 years of my design work “inspiration”. Hopefully when the site owner calls for a site re-design that is paid I might step back into that world again, but for now I must walk away, too much time already wasted.

I would like to express to all those who are gritting their teeth and turning away saying she’s a wuss or something of that nature. I have lived in three different types of climates in my life in three different types of areas – completely land locked, northern but by the water, and southern by the water.

Colorado had nice winters. Yes it snowed, there were blizzards, but the cold was just that cold, it didn’t have the added chill that comes with the humidity in the air. I hated winters in New York – hated! The cold and the snow, no, I just can’t think of that as being “warm” or better than anything else. But the cold weather in the south, it just doesn’t get out of your bones. It has been below the 20s at night, one night we were one degree away from tying the record low, and while it’s not as “cold” as -7 degree I would much rather be up north in -7 degree weather than down here with 19 degree weather.