Indulgences: Sowing Confusion and Chaos

Evil has a new, fiery nemesis. Granted, so do the vaguely annoying, the 'has-to-die-cause-he's-in-my-way', and the 'what?-he-looked-at-me-funny'. I wander Azeroth, purging wrongdoers from the land, one magically-induced fire at a time. If I throw in a couple of explosions for good measure, well, a girl has to take some pleasure in her work, right? I am Oopsifizbang, gnomish fire mage.

World of Warcraft is my preferred indulgence. Oh, sure, I could have gone with books. Or music. But those things seem to be necessities for me. Perhaps not entirely on par with food, water and shelter, but they're up there in the top twenty. World of Warcraft is - well - an addiction. If you look Oopsi up in the WoW Armory, you'll see she's still sporting an unimpressive item level (gear in WoW is rated with item level - the higher the level, the better the equipment and the better your chances of surviving certain quests within the game system - in some cases, you can't even attempt to defeat bad guys unless your item level meets a minimum standard.) Her progress through the raid instances is trivial. Writing books on deadline plays hell with raid schedules. But that's okay. Oopsi is first and foremost a character - an alter ego that spills over into this life. My husband calls me a fire mage - as if *I* could start channeling massive bursts of hellfire from my hands. Course, it could be he calls me that to get me to light the fire in the woodstove so he doesn't have to...

My husband and I play the game together on a role-playing server, meaning that when one logs into an RP server, it is with the intent of acting as and in the voice of one's chosen character. It's acting hour, after a fashion. We're in a medium-sized guild with a group of really terrific people, several of whom actually live within driving distance. We've met in person and a bunch of us are good friends in game and out of game. My guildies were some of the first people to celebrate the sale of my first book. When I have a block of time, word goes out and we log into game, group up and go beat down some of the most difficult dungeons in the game. No, I'm not one of the uber-l33t players. Oopsi is about personality. Presence. She is a diminuative, disarming bundle of cute, ambiguous morality who favors Sulferon Slammers - a drink so strong it lights the drinker on fire and does a few points of damage every second for several seconds. She's sweet. She smiles a lot. While she's lighting your socks on fire. 'Living Bomb' is her favorite spell. In a dungeon, when four or five bad guys attack at once, she casts Living Bomb on every single bad. When it goes off, the bomb blows up every bad guy within a certain radius. It tickles Oopsi (and me) to have the mobs blowing up their friends, although, the exploding sheep had some appeal, too...

Yeah. After a long day of flogging my brain for action! adventure! and romance! there's nothing quite like logging into game and reducing some poor critter to charcoal.  I leave you with a short my husband filmed for his film class: An Interview with Oopsifizbang. (Filmed pre-cata.)


An Interview with Oopsifizbang from Keith Burnard on Vimeo.

The Small Things.

I was a pretty lonely kid growing up.

Like so many writers, I was shy and somewhat introverted and picked on terribly. I was awkward and nerdy and believed in faeries and unicorns and hobbits all kinds of whacked out stuff that other kids didn't. (Or at least, not the ones I went to school with.)

So it wasn't much of a surprise to find myself buried nose deep into books, or listening to music, or engrossed in video games (nothing quite like Bard's Tale on that old Apple IIe, eh?)

Looking back, I can understand they were escapisms, and I get that now. Couple that with the fact that my family was terribly practical moneywise, and it probably explains my spending tendencies these days.

That's not to say my brother or I lacked for anything, because we didn't, but there was a certain methodology to the way they did things. (We almost never went out to dinner, for example, or to the movies, etc.) Anything that was required - clothing, etc was perfectly fine, but so much of the frivolous stuff was pushed off as something that could be bought later.

Only sometimes it can't.  And sometimes, that sucks.

My birthday was in the summer, for example - which basically meant that I never got one of those in school birthday parties, and most of the friends that I did have were often hard to round up. Hell, half the time we were somewhere else ourselves, but I seem to recall things coming to head mentally the summer of my 11th birthday. We were in Vermont, staying in a friend's cabin for a week (one of those places on the lake where you couldn't drink the water that came out of the tap - so everyone had to go into town every few days and fill up gallon jugs from the public water fountain. Good times.)

I'm pretty sure my parents forgot my birthday was that week because when it rolled around, I don't think we even went out to do anything for it. I don't think I even had a cake. I vaguely remember getting an apologetic smile from my mom before they handed me my gifts, which turned out to be an I LoVermont night shirt and a Find-a-word magazine.

So yeah. That felt a little pathetic, even to me. Yes, my parents got better about things as we got older, and as a parent myself, I can see some of the wisdom behind not spoiling the kids.

However, at this stage of my life, I deny myself very little. Not that I go around blowing wads of cash at every intersection. I live within my means as I need to...but the small comforts I will purchase without a second thought. Books, certainly.

(No, I don't know what this guy is doing here, but it struck me funny =>)

Music. Games. Movies. Anime. Manga. Pedicures. Things that make me happy and in the grand scheme of things really aren't a big deal.

Sometimes it branches off into collective type things, like the anime cels I pick up from time to time, but those are harder to quantify. They're more expensive and I can't always justify that. (On the other hand, I will make snap-judgement splurges, particularly when I am stressed. Yes, I'm looking at you, framed Captain Jack Sparrow giclee painting I bought in Disney World 4 years ago.)

Yeah. They printed 295 of them. I have number 16. It's sold out. It cost me about $700. Reason? I had to do a live presentation at a conference in front of 200 people the next morning. I had a four month old with me. I freaked out. I saw Captain Jack. I said, "Hey tasty Jack, you come home with me now. Here is my credit card."

Best bet? Don't take me shopping when I'm stressed.

*cough*

Yeah, I get that I'm probably compensating for something, but I'm not out buying a new Ferrari every weekend, either. (Apparently, I *am* buying up costume dresses I don't need for RT, however. >_< )

Of course, if I ever did buy a Ferrari, it would be black. And the license plate would say Nazgul.

Indulgences: A Moment on the Lips...

by KAK

This time of year marks the pinnacle of gluttony for me. No, no, it’s not the Valentine’s Day discount chocolates or the epic poetry written in conversation hearts. My weakness is…

Girl Scout Cookies

They’ve been a culinary constant throughout my life. My mother likes to say I was born in green diapers. Flatulence wise-cracks aside, what she means is I’m a fourth-generation Girl Scout. I hawked cookies from my Brownie years straight through Seniors. I competed for Top Seller in ways that would make Celebrity Apprentices cry. For my sweet sixteen, my mother gifted me with a Girl Scout lifetime membership. 

~crickets~

Go ahead, take a moment to visualize my “are you effin’ kidding me” expression. I was sixteen. My face should have frozen in that slack-jawed sneer; after all, I was too cool for everything. My sister, being older and therefore omniscient, flicked me out of my pubescent funk with three little words.

Girl Scout Cookies

 Visions of skipping through endless boxes of reds, purples, greens and blues drifted through my mind, causing my stomach to rumble. It was merely a matter of time before that dream came true, for whenever we were stateside, my mother was the Cookie Depot. She ushered truckloads of cookies into our garage. “Box-trucks” took on a sweeter meaning at the end of February. Where cars once parked would be transformed into a maze, a towering labyrinth, of cases of Girl Scout Cookies. Cookie Moms descended on our home at all hours of the day and night to pick-up their troop’s allotment. Panicked pleas for someone to bring more Tagalongs or Samoas to a booth sale were guaranteed every weekend during Cookie Season.  For six weeks a year, I breathed Girl Scout Cookies. 

Mmmm, Cookies

When we were abroad, there were still Girl Scout Cookies. The Girls Scouts of America is everywhere American girls are. Did you know they have four world centers where girls can stay and attend seminars? That doesn’t begin to count the military bases where dependent daughters plan weekend excursions to another country using funds raised from the sales of cookies. Stateside and international troops do trip exchanges too, much of which is funded by cookie sales.

Girl Scout Cookies: Bad for Your Butt, Great for Girls’ Minds

Regardless of location -- Paris, France or Pairs, Kentucky – if you want to light up a loved one’s face, get them Girl Scout cookies as a “just because” gift. Want to thank deployed GIs, cops, or firemen for putting their asses on the line? Send ‘em Girl Scout Cookies. Can’t find Girl Scout Cookies? http://www.girlscoutcookies.org/

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a labyrinth of sweet-smelling cases to dance through. Mind the trail of Thin Mints, eh?

My Favorite Indulgence: Journals

by Laura Bickle

I'm a big fan of indulgences. They don't have to be big. But I think it's necessary to indulge ourselves once in awhile, to demonstrate that we care for ourselves...after all, if we won't, who will?

I have many...my Tarot card collection. My collection of Wonder Woman dolls and action figures (yes, my inner ten year old is alive and well). I occasionally bring home fresh flowers just to bring some life to my desk.A long, hot soak in the bathtub is a daily requirement. And an occasional massage at the spa is just wonderful.

But my favorite indulgence are journals. Especially ones with gorgeous colors, textures, and bindings. I devote a journal to every project I work on, to fill with notes and research, outlines and hooks. I cut out pictures and paste them into the pages. I doodle maps and sketch the characters. It becomes my Bible for the book I'm developing - part scrapbook, part journal, part file folder.

It's a way of honoring the work that I'm doing at the moment - and a way of keeping a record of the past. I always smile when I run across a journal of a past project on my bookshelf, all tattered and lumpy and full of paste and scribbles and cut-out articles. No one else ever sees them, so it doesn't matter.

They start out pretty. They don't stay pretty. But they're all mine.

My Expensive Hobby

by Jeffe Kennedy
My great indulgence? The thing I splurge on, even when I shouldn't?

Art.

I know - it sounds kind of harmless. After all, it's not like I can't stay off the crack cocaine or that I'm on the home shopping channel compulsively buying things that stack up in the spare room. And, art is an investment, right?

Not the way I buy it. For it to be a real investment, you have to know the market and purchase artists who are likely to gain in value. Kind of like stocks. I buy out of love, which is akin to always betting on your home team, regardless of the statistics.

I blame my mother, really.

Some of my earliest memories are of cruising in and out of art galleries. My folks would go on vacation to Santa Fe or San Francisco, giggling over whatever outrageous art purchase they'd made. Once, after a particularly wonderful and wine-filled dinner in downtown Denver, they fell in love with a painting in a gallery window and resolved to dig up the (piles of) money to buy it. If the place had been open, they wouldn't have had the sober reflection of the next morning to change their minds.

Dutifully following in my mother's footsteps, I've spend a lot of money on art. The one to the left, Straight is the Gate, is something I saw in Newport, Oregon and had to have. Over a year later I got a new job with a shiny new salary - to celebrate, I had the gallery ship this to me.

I buy art from people I know and those I don't. Hey Arnold, up above, was painted by David's sister. I've informed her that I'm expecting great things and ample return in value.

The painting at the very top is by a Santa Fe artist. I fell in love with one of her paintings, resisted buying it, like a good kitty, then experienced severe non-buyer's remorse. The painting I'd wanted had sold, but she painted me one on commission, from a Celtic symbol I love.

It's gotten so that David can tell the moment I've spotted a piece of art I have to have. He just shakes his head at me and says I might as well just buy it now, instead of hauling him back multiple times to gaze at it and yearn.

One of the worst things about this habit is, you begin to run out of wall space. We actually bought our last house partially because it had lots of lovely places for me to hang all the art I've collected. In our much smaller house, a bunch of it remains packed up in storage.

It would be lovely to have a splurge that doesn't cost me hundreds or thousands at a pop.

But then, this was never about logic. Only love.