Five Things Make a Post
Feb. 26th, 2017 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther1. Our production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opened this week. Everyone seems to be enjoying it so far. (Including us; not that we weren't enjoying it anyway, but it helps to be reminded how funny some of the bits are that had faded through over-familiarity.)
2. This weekend was the area final of the Toastmasters International Speech Contest and Evaluation Contest. I represented my club in the Evaluation Contest, and came second -- which came as a nice surprise, because I was pretty sure there were at least two other competitors who'd done better than me. My friend who represented the club in the International Speech Contest, with a speech about dealing with negative self-talk, was even more surprised to come first (but I wasn't, because it was clearly the best speech in the contest -- though I may be biased).
3. Now that rehearsals for Spelling Bee are over, I'll be able to start going to gaming group meetings again; I'm looking forward to it. Usually I just show up and see who's got a game that needs players, but this time I'm planning to suggest a few games of my own: Forbidden Island, which my brother gave me for Christmas, and Ingenious, which I gave myself for Christmas after getting hooked on the app version.
4. I've played a bit more Mass Effect since I last posted, and now know Garrus, Wrex, and Tali as more than just faces on Tumblr posts. I also, being me, managed to put my foot in my mouth with all three of them during their respective tell-me-about-your-backstory conversations. (No, that's not quite true; I did fumble things with Wrex and Garrus, but when I hacked off Tali I knew exactly what I was doing. Attempts to justify genocide make me prickly; who'd've guessed?)
5. Movie-wise, I have been to see Rogue One (I teared up at the end, in the good-heartwarming way not the bad-distressing way) and Moana (lots of fun).
2. This weekend was the area final of the Toastmasters International Speech Contest and Evaluation Contest. I represented my club in the Evaluation Contest, and came second -- which came as a nice surprise, because I was pretty sure there were at least two other competitors who'd done better than me. My friend who represented the club in the International Speech Contest, with a speech about dealing with negative self-talk, was even more surprised to come first (but I wasn't, because it was clearly the best speech in the contest -- though I may be biased).
3. Now that rehearsals for Spelling Bee are over, I'll be able to start going to gaming group meetings again; I'm looking forward to it. Usually I just show up and see who's got a game that needs players, but this time I'm planning to suggest a few games of my own: Forbidden Island, which my brother gave me for Christmas, and Ingenious, which I gave myself for Christmas after getting hooked on the app version.
4. I've played a bit more Mass Effect since I last posted, and now know Garrus, Wrex, and Tali as more than just faces on Tumblr posts. I also, being me, managed to put my foot in my mouth with all three of them during their respective tell-me-about-your-backstory conversations. (No, that's not quite true; I did fumble things with Wrex and Garrus, but when I hacked off Tali I knew exactly what I was doing. Attempts to justify genocide make me prickly; who'd've guessed?)
5. Movie-wise, I have been to see Rogue One (I teared up at the end, in the good-heartwarming way not the bad-distressing way) and Moana (lots of fun).
no subject
Date: 2017-02-26 11:26 am (UTC)I don't know if "your" Putnam County and "my" Putnam County are the same, or if any of the humor is Putnam specific.
But if it is the same, I wonder if the author chose it as a stand-in for any smallish community (because if you look it up in an encyclopedia, one of the facts you'll learn is that a) it's the smallest county in New York State, and b) many of its towns are "bedroom communities" for Manhattan, NY, which is one of the biggest commercial centers in the world.
And if those two facts together don't call out "Writing Prompt!," I'll eat my nonexistent hat.
Sorry for the ramble. Just seeing a word associated with my childhood home triggered the verbal equivalent of dog drool. ;-)
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Date: 2017-02-26 02:10 pm (UTC)Funny thing, though, since you mention it: one of the characters is a new girl in town who's just moved from Virginia.
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Date: 2017-02-26 03:36 pm (UTC)Bwa-ha! My fictional mirror image. Does she, by any chance, feel like she's moved to another planet? Because that's how I felt, when I first moved here...
And it's feeling that hasn't faded in 20 years.
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Date: 2017-02-27 09:31 pm (UTC)Yeah, Tali's whole thing about the geth genocide is full of facepalm. :P It sort of inches toward giving the geth POV airtime in later games, but iirc never really reaches "no that was Wrong you do not genocide people you created in order to avoid a moral dilemma about having enslaved sapient beings! what the fuck is wrong with y'all?" ;P
(Also, yay Moana! :D I haven't seen Rogue One, I'm in no shape for everybody-dies stories right now. ;S)