Chasing Dragonflies

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...