Once in a while I imagine myself as the beautiful, slender, fashionable and diamond wearing Princess Tatianna. Coming from some old world type of family, whether they be Russian royalty or something touching on the paranormal like Fey creatures. Although my sisters may be the typical blondes, I am always brunette. (Stay true to your roots, even if it eventually has to come out of a bottle). Princess Tatianna, not always her name, has an extensive glamourous and gorgeous wardrobe. The woman must have a palace just for all the clothes I have imagined her wearing at this point.

Quite often she is going to elaborate functions. Quite often she wears someone like Keanu Reeves on her arm because he has the important things like good looks, strength (an assortment of strengths, possibly a few mystic powers thrown in too) and conversation. Quite often Princess Tatianna is in the midst of some adventure. Not always a dramatic adventure. Once she found a lost crown belonging to the dragons, once she led a revolution for the trolls who were being badly picked on, another time she was running away from the dastardly villain on an amazing horse built like a Clydesdale but able to run like it was lighter than air and yet another time she merely had to make polite social conversation at a party thrown in her honour.

I have a lot of fun being Princess Tatianna. She is great company on a long bus ride or while waiting for laundry at the laundry mat. Do you have your own Princess Tatianna, whatever her name and description? Write a little about her. Don’t be shy or feel too silly. Everyone should have a dazzling secret identity/ alter ego. Only, why be secret when you can brag about it a little?

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I was reading an old copy of Chatelaine, a Canadian women’s magazine. I found a little blurb about giving the hostess of a party you attend a gift basket  which she can use the morning after the party to have herself (and family) a decadent brunch (or breakfast if there are children, to be realistic).  Chatelaine suggests you “tuck in some tea and muffins, jam and berries, plus bubbly for wake-up mimosas. I think the idea is lovely, yet lacking in some practicality. Think of the women you know. Most would find it hard to have a leisurely brunch the morning after hosting a dinner party.  I would be able to do the decadent, leisurely brunch… but I’m single and wouldn’t have been hosting a dinner party anyway. (Not that I don’t think it would be fun, I have a romantic, perfect ideal of the whole thing in my head).

What would you pack for the hostess in her decadent brunch basket? What would be both practical and decadent and not require much cooking, time and mess to make? Be creative and yet keep grounded in reality.

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Chocolate Caramel Latte:

1/4 cup hot espresso

1/2 cup steamed skim milk

1/4 cup HERSHEY’S Classic Caramel Topping, room temperature

Foamed milk(optional)

Stir together hot espresso, steamed milk and caramel topping in large mug or cup. Top with foamed milk, if desired. Serve immediately.

Think of this as writing inspiration. I know I will. I just have to pick up the caramel sauce next time I am at the grocery store, which should be tomorrow afternoon. Yummy.…

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The suffix of one word can lead to so many other interesting words. In looking into the theme for Doodle Week on U3 this Friday I knew I wanted to draw some kind of city skyline, a cityscape. That led to looking up other kinds of words with ‘scape’ as a suffix. That led me to think of words like metropolis, necropolis and cosmopolis, which I had heard of before. I started to look them up, wondering if they all meant the same thing more or less. They do and yet they don’t. The differences were what made each one unusual.

Metropolis: A city or an urban area regarded as the center of a specific region or activity.
Astropolis: Star-scaled city/industry area; complex space station.
Cosmopolis: A large urban centre with a population of many different cultural backgrounds.
Ecumenopolis: A city that covers an entire planet, usually seen in science fiction.
Megalopolis: Built by merging several cities and their suburbs.
Necropolis: ‘City of the dead’. A graveyard.
Technopolis: City with high-tech industry; room full of computers; the Internet.

Cityscape: A view of a city, esp. a large urban center.
Townscape: A scene or view, either pictorial or natural, of a town or city.
Landscape: A section or expanse of rural scenery, usually extensive, that can be seen from a single viewpoint.
Seascape: A panoramic view of the sea.

Skyline: The outline of something, as the buildings of a city, against the sky.

The drawing of the cityscape/ skyline is for Doodle Week. This week the theme is cityscapes.

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Posted by Claire on Twitter:

Claire code: shirt = short and pie = pre. You can tell when I was tired, those days I just stopped writing mid sentence.

How would your writing be if you just stopped mid-word or mid-sentence a few times? Do you need all those words? Should some of your sentences be split into two, or even three sentences of their own? Is the meaning still there if you say less, stop telling earlier than you had planned?

On another topic… have you ever written your own short code?

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From a poll on Facebook:

How do you think the world will end?

Floods — 12%

Earthquakes — 24%

Politics — 64%

84,250 people voted.

Isn’t that interesting? How many other options could you add to the list: Tornados, Aliens, Environmental Disaster…? Would people still pick Politics first? I did and would probably keep to that.

How many other ways can you think of that the world (the planet or just our civilization on it) might end? Which do you think is the most likely and why?

If you have the inclination, try the Survival game for the 2012 movie too.

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My nephew and I were talking one day after school this week, we want a game that is a combination of StrongHold and Fallout. A game where the world has gone through an apocalypse and is being rebuilt. But rather than being just a basic shoot them all, we want it to include building towns, villages and be about gathering straggling civilization back into order again. We want to rebuild the world from it’s own ruins. A game where you gather resources, likely have to fight off other survivors and others who are rebuilding in their own way (possibly with a conflicting philosophy to our own).

Also, this game must be playable on the PC as well as PS3 and gaming media.

That is your challenge, game developing and designing people.

What would your ultimate game be if you were designing or developing a game of your own? A new board game, not a computer game at all? What would the rules be? Is it cutthroat or more about learning and building things?

So far the ultimate game to me has been Carmageddon.  But, I also like Stronghold, Caeaser and it’s international variations, Civilization and The Sims. Others, but I can’t think of them right now. Mostly city building type games. I like the challenge of making it all work and then, if they dare to defy me, I kill them all. (End the game, quickly and not in a nice way).

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I’m frustrated with myself. I know what I want and I am pretty sure I have the skills I need. What I lack is the trust in myself to try to do what I want to be doing.  Maybe I just need something or someone else to tell me I can do all these things. Which is silly and backwards. If I know I can why can’t I just believe I can, why do I need an outside source to tell me what I already know before I can believe it?

I know some part of the whole thing in my head are from my past. Even though my Dad has been dead several years his words won’t leave my head and their impression is still as fresh and strong as ever. My family treat me like I’m not capable of anything and expect me to screw up, make bad decisions. That is frustrating too. It makes it easy to give up on myself for one thing. No one really expects much from me so I don’t have to try really hard to meet their standards.

Accomplishing the things you really want takes courage. You need to risk at least a few things, like rejection, failure, imperfection. I wonder if I could find the courage at all, even without my past and lack of support from my family. Maybe none of that stuff even matters because I wouldn’t have the courage to really try anyway.

But, I do keep trying, in little ways. It’s like it can’t die but it can’t flower fully either. Not quite in limbo. Staying almost in place, making a little progress and then fading back into my shell would be not so bad if I had unlimited time. I could go along on cruise control with little highs along the way to keep me going, but each day passes and becomes a week, a month and then another year. When do I shake off my past and my fears and grab the brass ring?

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Have a look at Flavors.me. This link goes to the profile I made for myself. I think it’s great. Like having a business card online without anything else like a blog or forum. It’s a quick introduction, like a business card.

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Can you leave 1,000 comments this month? Though the button says leave me comments it is actually myself who will be leaving the comments, 1,000 of them over the month of March.

Sign up on the blog, Harriet and Friends.

The only downside is keeping track of how many comments you make. If you know of a way to track them leave a note in the comments here. I can’t think of anything at the moment, other than the old fashioned taking a tally as you go along. I spent the day (a lot of it) looking for some kind of plugin or widget to track/ tally comments. But nothing was what I wanted. A couple that would have been good, did not work when I tried them out. So I am doing it by keeping tally on a piece of paper, hoping I don’t lose that in the clutter on my desk.

Happy commenting. Thank you to all those who come through to comment here as well.

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