Month: Oct 2020

Halloween Library

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I made an old woman cry yesterday. I was serving her and as I removed my mask behind the screen she did a doubletake. Then she said I was the absolute double of her son, down to the beard, eyes, and voice – and tears welled up. She left quickly after, as I told her I hoped it meant it could be something she could look forward to next time – which was the best I could manage at short notice.

I don’t know the context, I assume either death or estrangement figured in the story somewhere. I don’t think anything can really prepare you for moments like that.

And so we carry on. In this case to Halloween, which feels thematically consistent at least.

Your friendly Library Manager at large

And I have assistants dressed as witches, a bone suit and face mask at the ready, and loads of families wandering in and out despite torrential rain. There are far worse ways to spend a Saturday than dressed up and having a bit of a light hearted approach to the job. It would have been the last of MCM comiccon this week so at least I’m dressed up for something.

Quiet Moments

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I’m on my own, setting up for the day at the library, and there’s a certain calm to the quiet that eases my mind and nerves. Maybe its the sense of being master of my domain, or the reassurance of being alone with books and the promise of what may come today.

Either way, even with a building site next door, the quiet of a library first thing in the morning takes some beating as a way to set you up for the day.

All the computers are on, cash in the tills, daily timetable drawn up, and a clear set of shelving awaiting today’s returns. Time for a cuppa before I open the doors I think.

Ploughing Through

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I’m on holiday next week, partly for Lady Mrs birthday, and partly because its that time of year again when PTSD likes to rattle the bars. It isn’t as dreadful yet as it has been in recent years, and I’m putting that down to keeping busy with as many positive things as I can.

So just this week to go, and if I can get all the paperwork concerning the new hires set up properly before I disappear I’ll treat that as a win.

This should do as a warning, yes?

Hello Winter

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So, the clocks went back last night (or this morning, depending on your sleep patterns). As a result, anyone listing their activities in terms of GMT is now accurate for the next six months. So there’s that. I definitely needed that extra hour as our Pirates D&D game went on a bit later than planned – with a Halloween Beetlejuice-inspired caper.

Spooky is as spooky does

Oh, how we laughed. Well, more like screamed imprecations at the players who summoned him before finishing the containment bindings, but it did make for a fun and chaotic battle through a dollhouse.

The players learned that there was a reason I’d been grabbing and scrimshawing so many bones (healing potions reskinned as bones to break to activate). They also learned that my cleric’s version of turning undead was to shake bones and tell the zombies to f*** off back to their graves in fluent Draconic. And that said zombies tended to then explode when he did so. So that was colourful.

All of which was a good contrast to the week or so of prepping and undertaking interviewing of prospective saturday staff for the library I’ve just had. A night of mayhem was a good antidote.

Oh, and I did have time during the day to go see myr s for a few hours as well, which was also much needed by us both.

South Coast Sauntering

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Its been a good day today, albeit one with a lot of driving. myr s invited me down for breakfast, and this coincided with Lady B having arranged to pick up a vanity table from a friend, so we thought we’d make a day out of it, kidnap Lady J too, and bustle over to Eastleigh for the morning.

My sat available decided that with all the local roadworks on the motorways that it would try and ratrun us cross country, so we had an enjoyable bought of trying to work out where it was trying to take us and then willfully ignoring it based on my passengers’ local knowledge.

If nothing else it made for cheery conversations as people recalled past jobs, workplaces, or relatives in places we passed. We duly picked up the vanity table, tetris’d it into the car with only one seat needing displacement, and went on search of food before myr s could turn into the hangry hulk.

The last time I was there was for Pride a couple of years ago, so bits of the street layout started to come back to me, enhanced by Lady Best memories of working at a now defunct club that seems to now be an empty space. We allowed the mental stretch of imagining reworking it as a split use site with an LGBTQ+ coffee/bookshop space during the day and club/bar space for the evening. Maybe when the best sellers and/or lottery wins roll in…

Oh, and we hit Poundland, partly for sugary drinks, and partly to raid the Halloween supplies. We’re all cosplayers, it’s what we do…

I also got told that the cub had explicitly demanded I not leave until we’d picked him up from school, so we did that and treated him to McDonald’s for his supper before I headed home. The grins and hugs were well worth it.

And so home, with a bag of goodies for Lady M from myr s, for a curry, mindless nonsense on the TV, and more tinkering with scenario details for the next game.

Can’t complain really…

Housebuilding and Tabletop Shenanigans

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The D&D session on Sunday was a quiet one with two main goals – to allow the group to finish outfitting the house their adventures have now bought outright, and to ensure that everyone had transferred their character sheets to http://www.dndbeyond.com and installed the Beyond20 extension in their browsers.

Why? Well the character sheets and their management is more user friendly than Roll20 in our opinion. They’re especially more useful for newer players in terms of managing items, actions, and spells. I’d found them so much more intuitive while playing with my other group that I suggested a sidestep.

The browser extension makes for a seamless transfer of rolls to the virtual tabletop in Roll20 during the game, and has some nice configuration options that allow some tweaking along the way. I’ve had to shell out a bit of money to rebuy some source books and upgrade my monthly subscription, but in support of a regular group I really don’t mind that.

All the tests seem to be working, so now I’m fleshing out some encounters using the tools available on the site, and we’ll see where the group wanders next.

An Apprentice Appears

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It sounds like the title to some High Fantasy Detective novel, but in this case its actually a work post. We’ve taken on some young apprentices at the library as part of a structured course; and today I met the one assigned to our neck of the woods (mostly because where they were due to be working is currently having its floor dug up, but that’s another story)

I don’t say this lightly, but so far I’m impressed. They’ve had previous retail and customer service experience and it shows. For their sins they’ve got to work with me again tomorrow, so there will be some interesting dynamics at play, with a very young set of people and varying degrees of motivation.

What’s the worst that could happen?

A Calm Centre

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I had a brief chat today with a friend about how we’re each coping with everything going on, and how it is reported. We both agreed that we were each actively working on not letting ourselves get angry on a regular basis.

I went on to say that I was doing lots of focusing on being firm but kind with people that came in to the library, and helping where I can to at least make my small corner of the world less beastly.

What’s the alternative? Hopelessly screaming, shouting, and ranting is therapeutic to be sure, but helping keep everything stable for others helps me in the long run by requiring less sets of spoons to maintain after a while.

It just feels a lot of effort to be getting there. Being kind is full time work.

Fairhaven Moments

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Sunday’s game was quiet, but some important foundation-laying happened, and a lot of laughter. There are some interesting mechanics in 5th Edition to support the GM in arbitrating Downtime activities, and with the adventurers finding their feet it was a good excuse to play along and add some colour

Caeluma spent a lot of time knitting a chunky “Jumper of Friendliness” for the warforged urchin the group adopted. He in turn has been hanging around with a bemused air to see what happens next. A beanie hat is apparently the next project.

Valenia and Thorin spent the week carousing and, between sessions in the pub, teaching Thorin to read. They’re not sure how, but after one particularly black-out night they seem to have earned the nickname of “benchslayers”. Nobody will tell them why.

Kerne stuck to studying the texts retrieved from their last adventure, as well as doing some ancillary research suggested by their contents.

All well, so far, and then the group decided that a good use of their haul would be to rent out a house together, rather than continue living in an Inn. After some searching, they settled on a tall house about half an hour from the university in one of the nicer suburbs.

I got them to suggest some street names on a grid map that I’d made earlier, and will this week be fleshing out some of the local landmarks for them to explore. There is one house on the map that is absolutely not a brothel. A house of negotiable affection providing reasonably priced love, perhaps, but not a brothel. Honest.

Mod Mode

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I can write about this now its been announced: I’m trialling being a moderator for the UKCC Facebook group for a few months to see how it goes and how it fits with my other commitments.

The UKCC is the UK Cosplay Community group, and I’ve been involved with them over the last five years or so as a positive and family friendly bunch of folks. I’ve made good friends both at conventions and just generally during the lockdown as online support has become more prominent and helpful.

Purely by coincidence I turned down an invitation to become an administrator for Squad UK about the same time because I knew I wouldn’t be able to give it the attention it really needed. By even bigger coincidence one of the UKCC admins has just taken on that role with Squad, further proving how small the cosplay world really is.

Good luck everyone!