Enchanted Forest Chronicles

In all of my years reading youth novels I have never come across over a book I love as dearly as the first Enchanted Forest book, Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede.

Dealing with Dragons follows the story of a Princess Cimorene. Cimorene isn't like her simpering blond sisters. No, she is tall and dark haired and adventurous. So adventurous in fact that when her parents arrange to marry her to a man she despises, Cimorene decides to take fate into her own hands and runs away.

With the help of a talking frog and a great many handkerchiefs, Cimorene finds herself in the Mountains of Morning, working as a Dragons Princess.

Throughout the rest of the book Cimorene comes across a great many interesting characters and a few twisted plot lines. The story unfolds into a beautiful and positively hilarious bout of unfortunate events, melting wizards, a friendly witch and a borrowed crepe pan or two.
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Searching for Dragons, the sequel to Dealing with Dragons, is the second book in this fantastic series. The main character is Mendanbar, King of the Enchanted Forest. Mendanbar is not a King who holds to formality, in fact, he finds most formal events quite stuffy and dull, so much so that he prompty cancelled all of them after his coronation.

Mendanbar doesn't regret his decision until one day when he finds a part of his forest burned to the ground. Suspecting the Dragons, Mendanbar talks to Morwen the witch, who sends him on a visit to Kazul. Only, Kazul is nowhere to be found, and Mendanbar finds a worried Cimorene instead. As the name implies, Cimorene and Mendanbar then head out to find Kazul, and figure out why patches of the Enchanted Forest are becoming barren wastelands.
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By far the most kooky of all her Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Calling on Dragons follows Morwen the witch, her nine cats, and her trip to find the Mendanbars stolen sword. This book hosts the most interesting collection of adventurers by far: talking cats, an 11 foot tall floating blue donkey with wings, an inquisitive magician, Morwen of course, Kazul and Cimorene.

This book ends in a stand off for the forces of good and greedy.
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Talking to Dragons is the final book in our Chronicle, centering on Daystar. Daystar lives on the edge of the Enchanted Forest with his mother until one day a wizard walks up the house and starts screaming about a sword. His mother then turns and melts the wizard, walks into the forest and brings back a sword. Daystar is confused and surprised - his mother has never done magic before this - and is instructed to go into the woods. Without another word, his mother walks back into the house and Daystar must find his own destiny.

Daystar was raised to be polite. When you live on the edge of an Enchanted Forest, you don't know if the person or thing you are talking to was once a prince or a king or an evil sorcerer who will turn you into catnip. This comes in handy when he meets some angry bushes, a young fire witch, a crazy magician, and a runaway dragon.

The end of this series comes with an epic battle of dragons, wizards, elves and other odd and wonderous beasts. It was a wonderful story along the way, and it is a wonderfully happy ending.

Blarg

Is read time, Jazzy is lost in her book. Go away.

Psychonauts

To start off my page of awesome games you should be playing, or at least have played, I have to dub Psychonauts as the greatest video of all time. This is an opinion, not a statement.

Yatzee puts it the best when he does his Zero Punctuation post on Psychonauts , but I have to reiterate it's amazingness for you.

Psychonauts features a young boy named Raz who runs away from the circus to go to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. After showing an aptitude for strong psychic ability, he trains by delving into the very psyche of his teachers to help them overcome their phobia's and / or harmful childhood memories.

While Raz, you, are wandering around slipping into the messed up and deranged minds of his fellow campmates, a dastardly plan is afoot. Someone is stealing the brains of all the psychic children. As non of the camp trainers realise what is going on, it is up to Raz to save the day.

I wont give anything else away by telling you anymore plot, but know that you may come up against telekinetic floating bears that want to eat you, a giant Lung Fist, psychic death tanks, and well, need I go on?

This is a colorful, imaginative game that harbours all the twists and terrors ones mind can hold. It takes you through butcher shops and disco lands, and a city of talking fish.

So don't pass up the chance to play Psychonauts, the only thing wrong with it is the lack of a sequel.

For my Paranoid Guardsmen

I may not have mentioned that Tamerin has a fear factor of negative 10, and just so happens to be a horrible scaredy cat. In honour of him I wrote a special song to sing tonight around the campfire... *evil smile*

Oh the night was dark and dreary
and the watch was tired and weary
they didn't see the signs in time
Oh foolish watch were they

And the russle in the bushes
could be heard amounst the rushes
They did hear the leaves in time
Oh foolish watch were they

And the creatures bloody fangs
was waftling where the flesh did hang
They didn't smell the rot in time
Oh foolish watch were they

And the web came out of nowhere
And snatched up each napping traveller
They felt the sticky web entwine
Oh foolish corpses they.

Our beloved clueless dwarf

A song dedicated to Basil by the Elves

Oh the night was gay and merry,

And the dwarf was short and hairy

how could we tell, you may ask

He wore not cloths with which to mask

and the sight of him was quite scary

We brought out the mead and the wine

we were having such a great time

he brought our his kit

then had a fit

and passed out, which we felt was quite fine

Now the festivities are hoping

we aren't planning on stoping

and the prone dwarf

was pranked on of course

till Tamerin came over and knocked him

The crowd rose up in a rawr

For the dwarf awake was a boar

and with narry a pout

the dwarf stayed passed out

and fell over onto the floor

Merp Yay ~

This is my first table top game that lasted longer than one night, and I am happy it continues on because my teammates are amazing:

Me, a short human female who was raised by dwarves
Tamerin :A low resolve, recently married eightteen year old guardsmen.
Basil, a non apathetic dwarven scientist who is looking for deseases and their cures.
Grey, a high level beautiful - 100/100 for appearence -  bard
Thumbs, a still-the-closet flamboyantly gay dwarf pirate raised by humans
and Frank, a 12 year old super genius messenger boy/ street urchin whose slumming in his house.

let the fun begin...

Further Fun with Spoooooons!

To further establish my love of spoons, here is an excert from their menu :)

It was a dark and stormy night... well, more like a grey and appropriately rainy westcoast night in january 2008. The lease was signed on the new restaurant and we had just two weeks to renovate, acquire staff, and figure out just what we were going to do...

We opened February 1, 2008 as Floyd's 2 Diner (the original plan was to franchise floyds and slowely but surely take over the world).

However, the recession put a damper on our plans of world domination as only creatures of economics can do. Franchising at this time, we decided, was not so jolly.

In the summer of 2009 we changed the name to spoons!

Same staff, same management, same funky flare... no more franchise.

The summer of 2010 the owner/manager/cutlery polisher partnered up with john (big cheese of the kitchen) and together as co-owners are frolicking off into the proverbial sunset (in restaurants 'sunset' translates to an exciting yet terrifying mix of unique vision, constant headaches, complete lack of sleep, but the never-ending dream of what you want to create).

Spoons diner is a unique, funky soul that serves up homemade comfy food with a dash of whimsy.

Welcome to our Happy Place.




And the Thought of the Day for Feb 12, 2011

You Never Really Learn to Swear until you Learn to Drive.

Saturday Morning Brunch

A while back I started school full time, while working full time, which meant I had no time. No time to socialize, no time to chat etc... BUT I have recently become a true full time student, leaving those other eight hours a day up in the air. With such a beautiful opportunity to get back in the game.

And so I created this, the Saturday Morning Brunch, whereby I invite all of my associates, friends, and Merp members to come socialize and eat at Spoons Diner.

Aside from the fact that Spoons is called Spooooooooooons, it is also retro, relatively quiet for a diner, and has the most friendly and amazing staff out there.

So here I sit before the storm (I like to get here early enough to injest enough coffee so as to welcome people with more that 'grunt, motion, growl'.

So readers, if you are out there and bored and could use coffee, come to spoons - the food is amazing, the atmospere too, and the service beyond compare - and i'm not just saying that because the server just filled my cup with steaming goodness...

An Intro Into Everyday Life

Have you ever been in the same room with someone who you look up to? You stand there knowing that at any moment you are sure to commit some faux pas, say something absolutely stupid, or come off as a total douche bag.

Well, today I hung out with Loading Ready Run to do a film shoot PSA for the upcoming PaxEast2010, and I almost made it the whole time without messing up! It was wonderful - they were wonderful. Intelligent conversation, witty humor, curiosity and general fun was abound. Ya so what if I panicked and brought over 30 cookies, if one has to panic then the end should result in delicious macaroons for all! And as for the mess up, well, nobody is perfect, and I may have said something silly in regards to viewing their new post as 'Sure I'm not uptight... unless you want me to be.'

I thought I was talking about acting uptight, not reviewing things. Silly mistake that, but at least I brought cookies to make up for it.

Anyway, I'm hoping to hang out with them again soon, they are a knarly crew who could entertain for hours.