Chasing Dragonflies

Dia de los Muertos figurine, photo by Merlina McGovern It's the day after Halloween, and there's something mournful about taking our Halloween decorations down after the parade of tiny trick-or-treaters have all gone home. I traveled a bit this month, so didn't get to partake of a lot of fall fun, like apple picking, haunted hay rides, or visits to the Topsfield fair. Nothing especially spooky about Manila, which is where I was traveling, in October (well, that is, if you don't count the double whammy of landing just as super typhoon Lando was hitting and feeling the rolling tremors of an earthquake during a meeting). But, with my collection of Dia de los Muertos figurines, there's always a bit of Halloween in the McGovern household, even after the ghosts have all flitted away. The photo in this post is a wedding set crafted by the same artist, Javier Benites, as a figurine highlighted in a previous post. They look so dapper in all their macabre finery, don...

Reading list I've been wanting to do this for a while. With all the gaming that I've been doing recently, and with all of the social media I've been devouring, I feel like my attention span has wasted away to almost nothing. And so, I'm beginning a project where I actually read all of my actual, real, sitting lonely on a shelf books. We've accumulated so many books over the years that even though we've started to buy more and more digital books, we still have a small library's worth of books in our house. The project is daunting, so I'm starting small. One small shelf in one of our shorter bookshelves. It's full of classics mostly, with some contemporary fiction. Some of them I've already read, but that's OK. First up is: You know, an light and easy read to start. Happy reading everyone!

The Three Kegs Inn, The Black Mirror Just when the heavy humidity, draped over everything, became oppressive, the clouds ruptured and rain sluiced down, saturating the roads and earth.  Hah. Gloomy days always fill me with buckets of purply prose. Summer's coming to an end for sure. Yesterday, evening crept in earlier than ever, and this morning, it's 841 am, and the angle of light coming in my window is flatter, no longer high and sharp as it is during the hot days of July.  It's the perfect morning to play a bit of The Black Mirror . I've been slowly replaying this cult classic, which was released back in 2003. If you read the comments for the review on AdventureGamers.com , you'll see they run the gamut from "one of the worst games I've ever tried to play" to "black mirror ROCKSSSSS." The prerendered backgrounds are detailed and full of atmosphere, but, yes, the voice acting is emotionless at times and nonsensical at others....

It's 83 degrees outside, and it's 937pm. I wilt in the heat. My brain stops. I don't want to move anything. But, it's garbage day. Dishes are in the sink. The dryer in the overheated basement is beeping.  This heat is oppressive.

Picture of a gate by the Old North Bridge by Merlina McGovern It's one of those restless, near-rainy nights. It's a cliche, but yes the wind is whispering through the trees. It's starting to pick up because I can hear the heavy swinging of my neighbor's wind chimes. If I close my eyes, the sounds of wind and rain bring me back to when I was visiting my sister in her final days. Her lovely husband had purchased soothing ambient sounds to play on a small radio; it calmed her restless nerves. I usually turn to games to take my restless mind off of the crazy hectic blaring noise of life. But not tonight. Tonight is a night for thoughts and remembrances. I took this picture of an old gate when my parents came to visit for the winter holidays. It was an unusually warm December day, so we made the trek to the Old North Bridge. I loved the look of the rusting curling iron framing the red, red brick that looked to be almost held up by, but also crumbling under, the gnarle...

My view right now isn't quite so messy as the crime scene above. It's a beautiful cusp-of-summer day, and I'm sitting on my deck and watching little breezes shiver the leaves on our willow tree. It's nice to take a bit of a break from gaming and just breathe. I had picked up Criminal Case , a free-to-play hidden object game (HOG). I find HOGs to be soothing, mindless fun, filled with too-pretty oversaturated graphics and melodramatic storylines. Some of the tales are quite bizarre (like Mystery Case Files: Escape From Ravenhurst ), and all of them usually involve missing relatives; haunted houses, boats, lighthouses, and more; or spooky retellings of literary classics.  The free-to-play subcategory of HOGs are a bit of a different beast. You get limited amounts of various game currencies, such as stars, energy, gold, that will sometimes refill over time. These aren't the type of games you pick up if you want to sit down and play for a few hours; that is, ...

This game is just so gorgeous. Well, when you're not killing ghouls, foglets, wraiths, and all manner of foul beasts. I could just ride around on my trusty pal, Roach , for hours. The sound work is terrific, too -- wind rustling through the leaves or the sound of rain pelting the ground. Just tried my hand at streaming today. I'm thinking of doing a regular stream on Monday evenings, maybe Tuesdays. Since I'm playing The Witcher now, that's usually what I'll be streaming. But I may look into leveling up an Alliance Warcraft character as well. If you're bored, feel free to stop on by:  http://www.twitch.tv/mernellie . Today's stream was actually pretty funny since it involved me scaring myself silly while exploring a haunted house. Twitch is a funny thing; I've got to keep another monitor open to see if folks are chatting. Only have seven followers so far, so it's fairly quiet. Thought it is interesting to see people pop in and then back out. ...

It's been a busy week gaming wise. I finished a game review for AdventureGamers.com (and hope to see it posted next week). I should probably volunteer for another review since I've been slacking on that front for a while. I've, of course, got my weekly raid on Warcraft. Sigh. We're really at an impasse. It's the summer months, so attendance is spotty, and we're at the toughest bosses (Blast Furnace and Blackhand) in our heroic raid. Not sure we're going to down them before patch 6.2 drops. It's fun just hanging out though. And, I've been playing through The Witcher III . This is a massive game, and others have done better reviews of this game, so I won't even attempt that here. What has been interesting to me, though, are the discussions about race and people of color (PoC) (or lack thereof) in the game. It is an absolutely amazing open world RPG, don't get me wrong. It's beautiful and surprising. I've played hours and hours...

Picture of Dia de los Muertos figurine crafted by Javier Benites Every year I visit my parents in Albuqueque, New Mexico. When my sister was alive, she lived there as well, and it would be a wonderful time together with my entire family and my sister's children and husband. Julie and I had so much in common. It's funny how much I've come to realize that now, now that she's gone. She loved all things spooky, as do I. My parents wonder at my fascination with these Day of the Dead figurines. And, at times, I wonder as well. But I shouldn't. They represent life amidst death. The Day of the Dead is a celebration of family, including those who have already left us. When I look at these little lively and, at the same time, deathlike figurines, I think back to those days when Julie and I would talk with excitement about an upcoming Halloween. She, of course, already had her costume planned out a year in advance. And she'd share recipes like spooky witches' f...

In one of those restless creative moods again. I've lost count of how many different blogs I've set up across the interwebs: blogs about gaming, blogs about Warcraft, blogs about reading and books, a blog about my sister and cancer. I've decided, as I'm sure I have in the past, to consolidate all my thoughts to one site. Why chasing dragonflies? I don't know. I like them. They remind me of adventure and beauty and just a little bit of danger. They remind me of my sweet sister and of earlier, more innocent times before we knew about pain and loss and sadness. I'll be posting here about my adventures in Azeroth and my hobby of reviewing video games. I'll write about my love of collecting Dia de los Muertos art and figurines and about my love all things spooky in general. Basically, this will just be a catchall for my random thoughts and an outlet for when I get that restless creative energy.