Emotional Intimacy Question: Your Life Story

Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. I'm starting with this list.

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

For online purposes, you may:

* Choose a few highlights (or lowlights) to share.

* Summarize your life in a paragraph or so.

* Set a timer and write as much of your life story as you can in four minutes.

* Link to a bio about yourself that is already online.

* Take this opportunity to write as much about yourself as you want in your blog, and link to that.

* Or whatever else you can think of along these lines.


I have a mini-bio of myself on my profile page.

Cardinals

... have built a nest in the bushes right outside my western office window.  :D 

Poem: "Marks of Devotion"

This poem is spillover from the October 2, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from jennyevergreen.  It also fills the "bites" square in my 9-30-12 card for the Hurt/Comfort Bingo fest.

This microfunded poem is being posted one verse at a time, as donations come in to cover them.  The rate is $.50/line, so $5 will reveal 10 new lines, and so forth. There is a permanent donation button on my profile page, or you can contact me for other arrangements. You can also ask me about the number of lines per verse, if you want to fund a certain number of verses.
So far sponsors include: DW user kengr, general fund

FULLY FUNDED
142 lines, Buy It Now = $71
Amount donated = $40
Verses posted = 14 of 25 
Amount remaining to fund fully = $31
Amount needed to fund next verse = $.50
Amount needed to fund the verse after that = $2.50

( Read more... )

"Marks of Devotion" is now open for microfunding!

Thanks to a donation from kengr, you can now read the opening of "Marks of Devotion."  Kande ventures into the underworld in search of her brother.

This is the third open epic, so that's enough for now, until one of them is completed.  I am pleased to see another series represented. This one is from Kande's Quest.

Today's Adventures

Today was warm with intermittent rain. We went up to Champagne.

We ate lunch at the International Grill. <3 chicken tikka tacos. This place also makes very good mango lassi and ras malai.

After that, we ran errands and did some shopping. We managed to find most of the items on our list. One was the same kind of grass seed, Kentucky 31 tall fescue, that did so well last season. That stuff is all over our streetside yard now. :D So I have yet more stuff to plant if it doesn't rain tomorrow.

We went to Dr. G's Brain Store. While I didn't buy anything this time, I am more intrigued by Evolution after our favorable experiences with Planetarium. I see similarities in that it's based on science, involves resource collection, and demonstrates increasing complexity of life.

Another game I spotted today is one I don't need, but I suspect some folks on this list may like. I Heard Your Feelings has cards with anthropomorphic animals in social situations, and discussion questions on the back. The art is amusing but also quite precise in detail -- while the facial expressions are humanesque, the ears and tails maintain much of their original behavior. Happy animals have ears and tails pointing up; sad or angry animals have ears and tails pointing down. The body language is amazingly good for such small art. The questions are open-ended and invite players to justify their interpretations, rather than pushing too hard for a prescribed answer. I suggest starting with a general "What do you see in this card?" or "What do you think is happening here?" because some of the questions on the back give more information about the scene. This seems like a good activity for young children, for anyone who struggles to learn social or emotional dynamics, and as a foreign language activity to prompt conversations. You could probably also use these to play Blink for gauging emotions very fast, a useful skill for anyone. They could definitely work as storytelling prompts, especially if you also have a set of animal puppets or a feltboard.

Contrast this with another game by the same company, What Do I Do? This one has a situation on the front and a solution on the back. One solution. Not a question. It's much less useful for starting conversations, and much more prone to problems caused by prescriptive focus. Frex, one card says, "When you play... Play together, not just side by side!"  That privileges extroverts over introverts.  We already have enough trouble from people being trained that only babies enjoy parallel play, and everyone is required to grow out of it.  Except that introverts often retain a preference for parallel play or other activities, such as reading side-by-side on a couch.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I suspect the rest of the game is raddled with narrow-minded expectations too.  Which is sad, because the other one is so flexible, and "What do I do?" is a great question for social situations.  You just need to consider that there are many different options, which may work better or worse for different people.

For supper, we went to Cracked.  I had half a Sweet Cheesus.  I really like that apple cider jelly.  :D  For dessert, we got Thai ice cream, doubling back to the banana/Nutella flavor.

All in all, it was a good day.  \o/