I'm Versatile too!?

I was tagged with the Versatile Blogger award by Broot at Craving a Little Perspective! How cool is that? Broot and I have been online friends for about ten years, and while we've only met in person the one time, we feel like sisters under the skin. Helium is proud to accept!

This award comes with some rules.

✿♡✿   The Versatile Blogger Rules   ✿♡✿
1. Thank the person who awarded you and link back in your post.
2. Tell 7 Random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to 15 new found bloggers.
4. Contact each blogger you want to pass the award on to and let them know you’ve done so, and let the giver know you accept it. Or not.

Random Facts About Me:

1. I did not know that I had pretty eyes until I was 30, when I had LASIK and could see them clearly from a distance of more than three inches.
2. I used to suck at writing, because I had an issue with sequencing as an adolescent. Word processors are my best friends for this reason.
3. I get a silly thrill out of being at the age that is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
4. I had an umbilical hernia repair when I was 3. Therefore even when hugely pregnant, my innie stays in.
5. I got a compliment on a document I did here at work that pleased me out of all reason - because it wasn't about my writing style, or my clarity, or any of those things. It was about my formatting, proper use of punctuation, and lining up my bullet points correctly.
6. I have an aversion to non-natural-looking hair on me, but I think it's totally fun on other people.
7. I don't have a favorite flower. I have a favorite flower color - I like blue-to-purple. Hydrangea, iris, pansies, asters, you name it.

Fifteen Other Blogs? You'll have to settle for "up to fifteen":

Chez Fred - Yer Humble Host here is my friend and former office-mate. He mostly blogs about food and sports and Silly Things Famous People Do.
Dark Angel Designz - Dark Angel is a facebook friend of mine. Her blog is not usually linked on my main page because her artistic designz are not always PG-rated.
Fat Girl in Motion - Tiff is my friend (and if our 8yo's have their way, future in-law), and she's often inspirational in her meeting a scary diagnosis head-on.
Gmr Girl Fitness - Tonja's my friend who gets us moving and makes us sit down and rest when appropriate. Gamer Girl and fitness guru - she's got it all.
Nerdy... But Good at It - Laston's my husband, co-parent, and friend. His blog tends toward Weird Science and I reference it about four times a week.
Ruthless Diastema Games - this guy uses games in his classroom, as a teaching aid and a team-building exercise. Plus he uses phrases like "Pleasantly Backstabby", so what's not to like?

I have more, but I suspect - strongly - that they've already been tagged by others. So that's what you get for now. This versatile blogger award kinda made my day...

One More Week

I'm sad that I'll be leaving my job at the end of the week. Leaving aside concerns about future employment for the moment, I've really enjoyed my time here. But my contract expires Friday and the parent company disallows renewal of contracts after one year. And I'm not in the budget for flipping me to permanent status.

"Flipping" makes me sound like one of those run-down houses on HGTV, the ones that need lots of love and a good hand with tools to sell to the highest bidder. I assure you I'm not. I'm overweight but basically healthy, fairly intelligent, a quick learner, and damn good with people. I have lots of skills. All I need is a few high-tech appliances installed. (Oooooo - maybe I should flip on over to my husband's blog and see if they have any RNA skill sets installable yet. Why yes. Yes I have read my share of Larry Niven. Why do you ask?)

I had an interview today - it's not important with whom, because I don't want to portray them in a negative light if I don't get the job (which I really want; it looks like a great place to work and has Cool Gadgets Galore); I just wouldn't be the right match for them - and that was their main concern. I have the writing skills, the typing speed, the troubleshooting skills and the customer service skills; they are a little concerned that I won't be able to ramp up on product knowledge quickly enough to be who they need now. I know I can do it but there may not have been enough time to convince these people I'd never met before today during the course of an hour long interview - even with cool gadgets - that I can do it.

But I sure hope they were impressed enough with my other skills that they give me the benefit of the doubt on the learning curve.

My current employer did. I had no formal testing experience at the time I was hired; all I had done was some informal testing as a tech writer and a tech support geek. And I am so grateful they gave me the chance.

I'll miss them.

These are a Few of my Favorite Games...

I've written about our Friday Night games and assorted console RP games and the occasional Friday board game night at length (see the archives on the right). But I've only mentioned other games in passing, so I'd like to mention them again here... a few favorites, the ones I keep going back to.

I play a lot of facebook games, and I've tried dozens or even hundreds of them. But these are the ones I replay or continue to play, along with a few old standbys like The Dot Game and Scrabble.

• Frontierville - I've played Cafe World and Farmville and Yoville and Treasure Isle: The Adventure and Cityville. But the one Zynga game I reliably go back to is Frontierville. It's cute but not cutesy, and the Little-House-on-the-Prairie vibe just catches my interest more than the other games in Zynga's extensive stable.
• On that note, I'm enjoying Wild West Town, by ClipWire Games. It's different enough from the standard plant/build/harvest to hold my interest for now. Don't know about its staying power yet.
• Most games by Large Animal. I'm especially fond of What to Wear, Bananagrams, and Bumper Stars, and I'm a huge fan of their CD-and-download game Fashion Solitaire. I enjoy Office World, Spartacus and I've even taken a couple stabs at Lucky Strike Lanes. Since I don't do sports games of any type as a rule, bowling's a pretty big leap. And the Large Animals have the best, most responsive, friendliest tech support in the business.
• Wedding Street by Turpitude is a ton of fun. I tried it, thinking I would only play for a little bit; it's not usually my type of game. I like dress-up as much as the next girl - see What to Wear and Fashion Solitaire above - but this one has cake decorating and venue design and bouquet building as well. My girly side loves this game. Can't wait for the Invitation Design activity. There's a Romantic Dork hidden under all the Gamer Geek.

Then there are the downloadable giants here in Seattleish - Big Fish Games and PopCap Games. Some of these games are exclusive to the publisher and some are published by these houses but written by others.

• I like most of PopCap's titles, but my favorites are Dyno-Mite, Peggle and its add-ons and sequels, and like everyone else, Plants vs. Zombies. I even have the DS version of PvZ. Fun stuff.
• Big Fish to me has the best deals on games. I'm a member so I get pre-releases, and buy-six-get-one-free deals. I especially like Hidden Object and Adventure/Puzzle (remember Myst?) games:
• Any game by Gogii Games - We just played Empress of the Deep 2 and loved it (as we did the first one), and Twisted: A Haunted Carol was great. The mini-games are exceptional, especially the new spin on a match-three type in the bonus material in the EotD 2 game.
• Any game by Blue Tea - their Forgotten Riddles and Dark Parables and Enlightenus series, and several standalone games are great, and absolutely beautiful to look at.
• My Tribe - I love it and some of the puzzles are really fun. It's a city-builder.
• The Fiction Fixers series by Fugazo. Since these are based on classic children's stories (Oz and Wonderland thus far), we enjoy following up on our nighttime reading.

So that's it. There are a ton more that I play occasionally, or play with the kids, but these are my go-to titles when I want to exercise my Casual Gamer side as opposed to invoking my Gurl Gamer cred.

Gamers' Babes and Charity

Our older girls are pretty generous little girls, although they both have their quirks. Leanna historically has been super good about giving stuff away - to younger siblings or "kids who need them more" or whomever, as long as she's done with them. Abby is the opposite; she loves her things with such intensity that she's willing to share while she has them, but she cannot bear to give things away unless she can "visit them". Generally this means giving them to her little sister, or to the daycare when we attended on a regular basis.

Leanna's mom is a manager at a home for victims of domestic violence. This has led Leanna to have sympathy for said victims. And Abby's Brownie Scout status has her aware of people in need; the Scouts do canned food drives and the like as well as Operation Cookie Drop.

When they wanted to sell drawings they had done this morning, I told them they could not charge money, but they could ask for donations. And they were not to bug anyone, but if someone asked what they were doing with their sketchpads and pens by the mailbox, well, they could go ahead and say that they were giving away drawings and they were taking donations. No knocking on doors (that's what Leanna called "solicitating") and no nagging. They agreed, and went out, happily armed with a sketch pad and ball point pen apiece, and a ziploc bag between them. I had seeded them fifty-two cents (what I had in the bottom of my purse) for a cute pobby little dragon sketch, now magnetized to my door. I figured, hey, they're getting some fresh air.

Well, they may have their issues with giving away beloved things, but they are not stingy with money. They came in to use the bathroom, with a five dollar bill in their bag in addition to the change. And Leanna told me they were going to donate the money to "Mom's store", which exists to support the home for victims of domestic violence. And they thought this up themselves. Leanna will be eleven in August. Abby was eight in December.

I could not be more proud.

Friday Night Fools

Our Friday Night Game is extra fun tonight because it's April Fools' Day. The quotes and one-liners and situations (and double triple multiple entendres that I can't post here because they are not PG rated) are flying fast and furious.

• When one is riding a mind-controlled gryphon, yanking on its soft little ear-tufts is a good way to break the control and get its attention. Of course, a couple years ago, we performed the same service by whacking an elf in mithril armor with a road flare.
• Orcs come in clown cars. Or clown yurts.
• Orcs reverse the universal symbol for Creepy Ilithid// Mindflayer / Elder Thing
• "All night, from the yurts, you hear crossbows twanging. And the occasional grunt."
• Tugaliths look like the cover of Renegades of Pern
• Me to stepdaughter Leanna: "We don't need more of the squid things. Stop giving your dad ideas!"
• "The Men of Gotham have no chance against a Mindflayer."

No Foolin'

So, last night, hubby took me out to dinner (steaks, in Lynnwood) for our anniversary. They sat us in the bar.

So why would they sit us in the bar? We did not request it. They did not offer. They just did it. We're neither of us sports fans, so the televised team sports everywhere we looked was a little much. And being a bar, it was noisy as well. So we asked to be moved to the dining room instead, which they graciously did.

And we sat in the dining room and picked this apart. Why was it that sitting in the bar bothered us? Was it the noise (TV) the theme (sports) or the background chatter? And conversely, why did some loud-ish kids at the next table not bother us in the restaurant? I mean, we went to get away from kids, right? Granted, they were not our kids; they were someone else's, and therefore we did not have to deal with them, but why would their noise not bother us and the TV noise in the bar did? And what the heck was up with them just seating us in the bar in the first place? If we want to go to a bar, we'll go one of two places:

• AFK Tavern, by gamers, for gamers, with Games on Tap. 
• Big Daddy's, preferably when Platinum Spandex is playing. .

For steaks in Lynnwood, well, next time we'll go to the Keg.