Maebius Musing

Short post, just to update the site and let folks know I havn’t dropped off the face of the earth…yet.

Recent news includes attending an awesome birthday party for my wife’s grandfather, who turned 100 (yes, one HUNDRED) earlier this week. Huzzah!

Also tried to add some fancy widgets to the blogpage, which apparently completely blew it up and corrupted the current database. I did have a New Moon post saved, but the latest backup I had to use to restore said blog to life again did not include it. Sorry!!! (It was a musing on what to do when the seasonal festivals are upon you, yet your spirit is not quite ‘there’ yet. Do you put up the pretense of celebrating in hopes of convincing your inner mind to get with the current program, or do you accept that where you are HereNow is not quite aligned iwth the official holiday, and celebrate your own quiet way once the festive spirit hits you a bit later in the calender? Comments regarding this are quite welcome below. I don’t have the mental stamina to re-type it all now, due to working on other new posts….

The Blargh part of the title is due to a wicked sinus/headcold thingy I’ve had. Tuesday at work, I lost a good half hour from my memory. Just can-not-remember where the time went, and apparently spent the better portion of the morning staring slack-jawed at the same computer screen until my co-worker asked how I felt, thus snapping my brain back to reality. Yuck! Still feeling really really tired and achy, but not sick any more. I just hurt in every joint. Kinda like I always here ancient 100 year old men talking as they hobble down the hallway. Blargh!!!

So… to those few (all, three?) who stop in to say hello here, I’m still alive for now. Thanks for your patience. Your tinycities are continuing to grow and prosper. (Partly due to my home page in firefox being configured to open four cities in their own tabs at launch)
-Maebius

PS: All I can say is: the End Times are upon us!

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Well, I managed to widgetize my blog, though I don’t think I’ll be going gangbusters and completely changing the theme and content here. However, for those of you reading this blog through feedreaders, hop onto the main site one time and let me know your thoughts on things. The only thing I really changed was to experiment with putting a last.fm playlist on the sidebar.
Specific areas of concern are the ever-growing blogroll list I have, and the archives list. not sure if I want to put them on a seperate page (for the blogroll), or otherwise figure out a good method of collapsing or reconfiguring them for ease of use.

Also pondering slightly different tags, and cleaning up the current ones, in order to make searches more valuable.

ALSO, also, I am going to be making this blog a bit more active hopefully. Less in-depth musing (like the recent ones had any depth to begin with..sheesh) and more “daily journal” style things. However, before I commit to such diary-style entries, I wanted to ask if you readers would even enjoy such a style, or would rather I concentrate more on the moon-musings and druid-studies? Let me know via comments, and if you want to add me to your own blogrolls, I’d be quite happy with a bit more exposure!

-Maebius

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Firstly, a quick update to the web template. Figured out how to make “pages” which are links along the top of the page, just above the sidebar and below the pretty green leafy-header-thingy. Current pages are ‘Home‘, then ‘Archives‘, then ‘Contact Me‘, then ‘Playlist‘. The Archive has been taken out of hte sidebar and put on it’s own special page, likewise the little widget that had my playlist is now on it’s own page. I tend to open a new tab to the playlist and let it run in the background while doing other things, so I can still groove to the tunes there. Try it out! More pages may make an appearance as I think of what to put there.

Additionally, this weekend was the first time I attended our local OpenDrum Meetup! I brought my djembe, my friend Varulv, and the sprogling (4yr old son). Got there a bit late due to my inability to find my way from our prior morning of swim-lessons at the YMCA to the proper section of town to pick up said friend Varulv. Once I got my bearings again, it was easy, though road construction didn’t help matters there.

When we arrived at the UUC where the meeting was held, we could hear a nice beat from across the parking lot. MY son was all excited since we had brought a small rubber-over-round tin type thing for him to drum with, plus a nice metal “shaker” we bought at Starwood many years ago.

The gathering went pretty well, not knowing what to expect really. We snuck in and were directed to “grab a chair” while the other 12 people kept a nice beat going. I just warmed up with a simple heartbeat, trying not to be too loud, and watching carefully what the others were doing. There were mainly larger djembes or Ashikos, the usual conga, bongos, Goblets, and smaller similar things. Plus cowbell, clapper, bonerattle, and such in hte middle which others could pick up (and did) from timeto time.

One unique instrument, which I had never really seen before, was a cajón. It made a nifty sound compared to the regular “boom/smack” of the other styles of drumhead. I think this one was one described on the site as “…may also have several vertically stretched cords pressed against the tapa for a buzz like effect or tone.” since it definitely sounded like there were beans or sand due to the “buzzy” effect (similar to if you’d roughly shake a rainstick and compressed the sound into one “beat”.

At one point, when the rhythm completely degraded into a few seconds of random ‘NOISE’ for some reason, the organizer chuckled and paused while we did some more proper intruductions. Before that point, there was a good 45 minutes of jamming, with the only communication being eye-contact acknowledgements.

After simple hellos were exchanged, she had everyone keep one beat and alternately sped it up, slowed it down. This went a huge way to re-define the cohesiveness, and the final hour of drumming that evolved from that was rather impressive for a group of relative strangers, more than one of which had admitted to just borrowing the public drums to “try their hand at” and having no formal training or practice. (About 5 of the people had just arrived that day, so didn’t know anyone either.)

The usual size of this meetup group averages 4-6 people, from what they said, and everyone was pleasantly surprised so many showed up this weekend. They gather once a month at the church, or the park nearby if the weather’s nice. Every so often, the main organizers (a husband/wife couple, with a lovely 1yr old girl who danced for us that day) try to do a simple workshop to introduce folks to drumming, or how to care for your drums, etc. Very informal, casual, and just all-around nice-people.

I can’t wait to go again next month!

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On the eve of re-dedicating my blog, and preparing a lovely solitary ritual of Moon-charged spring-ness, the celestial heavens aligned to bring a bit more magic to the night. While a full and glowing silvery disk rose in the southeast, casting the amazing “I can almost read outside” light, it soon began to darken…. [/epic prose]

Yes, this month’s full moon was a total lunar eclipse, which reached peak around 10:15 or so, and thus was quite easily watchable, without resorting to severe sleep-deprivation. It was awesome!Most of the viewing was spent from our enclosed porch, due to the temperature outside hovering around 28 degrees (kelvin) or -2365324.8 F.

Unfortunately, we had some company over, and a surprise sleep-over of one of our friend’s (15yr old) sons so that he could stay and help clean up the barn the next morning. (He has a standing offer, $$ from us, manual labor from him).

Thus, I had a little moon ritual on the porch after everyone else went to sleep around midnight. The eclipse was over, but the feeling in the air was wonderful. The light dusting of snow sparkled a bit more ’sparkly’ than before, and such.

I’m learning after a bit of experimentation that music can play a huge part in getting in the ‘zone’ for ritual work, specifically my recent forays into a sort of “trance-tripping” meditation, where I hold an idea or question, or intent in my head, then turn on the tunes and let myself flow out into the vibe. It’s hard to explain really, and am still playing with the technique, but it’s a fun adventure so far!
Random shuffle of playlist songs for the moon-celebration started off well with two back-to-back songs from Steve MacDonald Sons of Somerled, followed by a strangely trippy song by Kid Loco. After that, toss in Life Giver, one Dido song (”Life for Rent”), and a Freezepop “Just want to Rokk” and it seemed a good place to go back inside where it was warmer.

The meditation was mostly a freeform nature, to celebrate/witness the eclipse, mentally take note of the full moon, and ground out after a hectic start of the week at work.

Results: Formalized my intent for this blog, was inspired for something that’s been bothering me in Warcraft and playtesting resolved it works! (new spell rotation and talent distribution for easier solo play), and generally felt happier and more stress-free the last few days at work by thinking back to watching the eclipse.

Thus, the mini-ritual was a success, in that it brought me to a more balanced and happy day afterwards. Positive lifestyles are the goal of any religion, right? If so, I found my religion. w00t! *grin*

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Sorry for lack of updates… I have a few good topics I’d like to spend a proper writeup on, but lately, I’ve had a wicked cold, and it’s tax-season which means the spouse is at least elbow-deep in paperwork and limits my computer time in the evenings.

Don’t want to sound negative and just wine about things, because generally, life is pretty good other than the plague I am harboring in my head…but for now, I’m alive. No updates to the blog expected for a good week or two.

Topics in-draft form (meaning basically two lines so I remember the topic to write about):

1) New potential job opportunity makes Maebius a-feared?!

2) The fun & challenges of being a Guild Leader in World of Warcraft.

3) Closing arguments for This New Moon Musing (sacred food awareness experiment)

4) Thoughts on vacationing at a pagan-friendly festival with folks who have never been there, the non-attendance of friends who took you the first time, and thus sharing a bit of more intimate details of my personal spirituality with those new folks who may not completely relate or agree with said Path/preference.

Fun stuff, eh?!

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