[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Asha]

I agree with Ronan, I am super excited to learn more about past life guidelines. Ever since I heard about reminiscience I've been pumped and aching to explore Asha's past life in whatever avenue is available.

[Xalet]

Why you make magic that make me want magic when I don't want to want magic !?

[Gossamer]

. Weekend Plans If I do not have to work this weekend, and it looks as if I might get the first full weekend off in a couple of months, I have plans to unroll a new feature that will hopefully positively impact a great many pc's RP experiences in the genre of faith and religion. I'm excited and giddy about this and hope everyone will love it. I've been mulling over a problem we have with game mechanics and religion - which is the only hint I'll give on this topic - and hopefully this will solve a few major in-game issues that exist by adding a new dimension to people's ability to communicate with The Gods. So stay tuned about Sunday Night and we'll see. I'm hoping this is surprise to everyone, so no grilling other Founders. I haven't told them either. .

[Paragon]

*excited face*

[Eridanus]

Oh man *anticipates*

[Cachet]

Sweet!!!

[Xalet]

Marriage to Priskil may be possible after all!

[Gossamer]

. A Break From NaNo This picture shoes a newly hatched worker bee licking honey off the finger of a beekeeper. Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey, a Lewis County Beekeeper So, for NaNo one of the things I had my PC learn was beekeeping. Unlike most people on the planet, I'm not afraid of bees or getting stung. In fact, I took a class when I was back in college studying to be a Wildlife Biologist that was all about Animal Behavior and one of the key components to the class was bees. Bees can effectively communicate with each other by dancing. They dance and through that dance tell each other were food resources are. It's something that scientists have been able to physically test, observe and interpret. In essence there's some amazing men and women out there that do a heck of an incredible job staring at bees all day long and laying out experiments that involve baiting bees to different spots and then watching their marked and baited bees dance for the other workers when they go in and out of the hives. Crows do exactly the same thing, by the way. My professor even had a beehive made of plexiglass in his office. It had a long narrow tube that went out his window letting the bees come and go. It was fascinating stuff. So, when I started learning beekeeping for my PC, I kinda ate everything up and ended up generating a total of six training threads for part of NaNo that helped me sail forward. And this part of me is jealous of her because I want to keep bees too. So, almost by accident, I started looking around and found out that my rural community, in association with Washington State University, has one of the largest beekeeping clubs in the United States. Washington wasn't even on the map in terms of honey beekeeping before Hive Collapse Syndrome started to happen and the honeybees started dying in droves. Then, it was discovered that parts of Washington State never experienced HCS and researchers started investigating why. It seems in our wickedly wild temperate rainforest (the only one in the world) we have naturally badass tough honeybees that are all but immune to a great many pests... the HCS, and even some mite and mold infestations. So these researchers started appealing to Beekeepers everywhere to raise more queens and sell Nucs (I call them cores in thread because I don't think Mizahar understands the term Nucleus yet) of four or five frames of brood and food WITH young queens to beekeepers all over the US to save our domestic honeybee populations. I was astonished and soo proud to know that my state is doing this. So digging deeper, I learned that Washington State University has an apprenticeship for Beekeeping that is taught twice a year with once being on the weekends and once beeing on the weekday nights. So come April, Gillar and I are heading to the Spring Beekeeping program and every Saturday we're going to learn bees 101. The cool part about this is that we get ASSIGNED a mentor from here in Lewis County via the Lewis County Beekeepers Association and basically they'll do everything they can to get us started and into beekeeping. The club also does Swarm Removals for free, so if we get enough swarms this spring, I might not have to pay for anything but a queen as long as we go help collect them. I guess Swarm Removals are the beekeepers best friends for expanding a beehive. So I'm hoping that during this winter, Gillar and I will be able to both build ourselves hives, get all the equipment needed, and start on the journey of becoming bonified beekeepers. I'm utterly and incredibly stoked about this. Having the largest club in the United States and a ton of expert Beekeepers absolutely delighting in having new blood come into the fold means that this is going to be an incredibly fun journey. I've already got in touch with the club, and they've already got a mentor assigned to me, and I'm already asking them questions and they are getting me hooked up on hive building plans and answering ALL my questions! And did I mention honey? ALL THE HONEY YOU CAN EAT? And the beeswax, for candles herbals etc? I'm so stoked. One hive can yield up to 30-45 lbs a year. .

[Sira]

So.. what you're saying is.. by the time I ever get around to visiting you, you will have delicious honey for me? I like this idea.

[Gossamer]

. Small Update Yes, Ron. Awesome honey... if we, you know, are successful at beekeeping. Sometimes people aren't and colonies don't work or die or fail or have bad queens or get attacked by bears named Poo! Anyhow, I wanted to issue a small update. Work is in chaos because of the US Holiday. I'm getting Thanksgiving (tomorrow) totally off and all I plan on doing is writing since my family consists of Gillar and my mother is going with my single (and depressed) brother to some of his friends houses for Turkey Dinner a few towns away. So its just Gillar and I and we'll be cooking bird and NaNoing and probably making the rounds later in the evening to friends etc. So.. I'll be dropping my giant NaNo word bomb to update my word count and stay on track tomorrow not today. I've been doing tons of writing offline in solos away from the net when I can, so I have a new series to post with my PC on Falconry... whoo hoot! Also, the religion addition Ive talked about I think I'm going to hold off on until the season change namely due to the fact its going to be a kinda big thing that me as a mod will find time consuming so... I want to not be NaNoing and be so it has my full attention. I thought I was going to stop at 100,000 but I guess my little writing brain is saying shoot for the moon. So expect what you guys are calling the religion addition (or was it patch?) out the first weekend in Dec. .