Hobbies

"If you could consider the nature of the project before you, 'twould be obvious where one of my passions lie. I love to design web pages for myself, family and friends; but 'tis not a passion in and of itself. It is the marriage of several loves: reading, research, writing, art and the internet. To my mind there is no single activity so well suited to the use of these interests than the act of creating a website. This hobby is a recent one, begun in the latter part of my life, but the ones from which it grew were life long passions.

My creative writing came into it's own in middle school and by the time I graced the halls of my high school I had won several contests. I won a nationwide contest in my senior year and among other things was invited to an award reception at the State Museaum. I was also a student correspondent for a local newspaper. I entered no contests in college, though I was frequently complimented. Except for periods of extreme emotion, my pen lay ignored after college until about 5 years ago when I realised how much of my self was missing and rekindled some old passions.

Since then, I have had several devotionals published in a theological magazine and had poetry published in compilations. Two of them placed nationally. Indeed, 'tis a good thing to write once again. I am probably years from my dream of being nationally recognised like Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King or Maggie Shayne but I am enjoying myself greatly. I currently have three novels in progress and write short stories, essays, and some technical material. However, I primarily write poetry.

In art, my forte' is black and white pencil/charcoal landscapes and still life. My greatest regret regarding this hobby is the time I refused free art lessons from a locally renown artist. Such opportunities rarely appear more than once and in my case it has been so. I have won only a few awards for this passion and I am sure I would be more advanced had I acted with clarity all those years ago. The use of the pencils still pleases me and I have made a few coins with this hobby. Indeed, at first it broke my heart to release my work to another. Now I draw as I wish for my self and sell only that which others have asked me to create. This way 'tis not so hard on me.

My third great passion is photography. I am now employed as a portrait photographer conventionally and do freelance as well. My great love in this genre is much like my other art, black and white and landscape/still life. I also love to go to old cemeteries, historical monuments and older churches to capture the history available there. I love to take sunsets and sunrise as well, but of course one needs colour for that or it means nothing. I am also a fan of taking the picture nobody sees, like looking up at the sky through the trees, or down into a bush to capture the ants on the branches. I do like portrait photography, but since that is how I earn the bulk of my living conventionally and have begun to freelance with it, I tend not to do it for pleasure.

Another great passion of mine is reading. This I do for pleasure and to aquire knowledge, which I also enjoy. Indeed I can polish off a James Michener novel in two days if left to my own and a thick historical or gothic romance in a single evening. When researching a topic I love, such as philosophy or history, I will read voraciously for weeks on the topic. I also must own the tomes with the important bits of information, since ofttimes I will learn a thing with all the conclusions but fail if not frequently exercised, to remember the logic and proof of the matter. My books are not just sources of entertainment, then, but truly they are pieces of memory for thoughts in the formative stages. I'll wear old clothes and eat beans in order to purchase another book, and that is as true as anything I have said or will say.

I also turn my hand to crafting and interior design. I love to make the space I live in reflect my personality or the personality of the child who lives there. Nothing rates as high to me as finding an old, worn, disgusting and seemingly useless cabinet and converting it into a "new" old worlde style entertainment center or wardrobe. Except maybe using a special bag, tissue, paint and varnish technique on the walls or putting decorative etchings on a cheapo $4. Mirror.

I also enjoy the traditional 'homey' pursuits of cooking, sewing, crochet, needlepoint and decorative painting and I do dabble a wee bit in cabinet making and woodworking. But please do not ask me to do laundry or dishes or regular household cleaning for fun. It isn't, it's a chore and I avoid it until it must be done or do it quickly to get it over with, but find NO pleasure in it at all. This lot is a total bore and a nuisance.

I do like physical activity, as long as it comes naturally with living or is gentle like yoga, tai chi or walking. Games like badmitton or volleyball are good, as is swimming or playing in the snow. I like bowling, I like hiking and camping. However, I do not run unless I'm being chased by something bent on doing me harm and do not climb fake stairs. If one packs enough fun in their lives, they should not need these artificial forms of exercise. I also do these things at an entertainment pace rather than a "work out" pace. I'm sure I could tone more than I am and my form does get better with each activity I pursue but I am not out to become Ms Olympia and I believe that such things are a form of falsehood. If you are athletically toned because you're a lumberjack, that is real. If you are because you waste 2 hours a night in a gym, you are a lie and a poor mother/father/son/daughter who wastes valuable family time. (Don't bother sending nasty emails about how being fit helps you be a better person. Sure it does. Go play tennis with your family, go for a walk. Don't waste your life in a gym building a facade)

I have recently begun designing my own clothing and jewelery, this is allowing more self expression at a very fundamental level and I have begun experimenting with essential oils and creating bath products and crude perfumes. I have pleased myself with these to an extent though I am far from being able to market them or give them as gifts.

I admit it, I like media. I love movies, particularly historical and gothic dramas and action features. Some of my favourite movies are Underworld, Dracula, Brave heart, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, the Highlander Series, Hero, The Last Samurai, The Ring, The Crow series, and anything with vampires, werewolves or fantasy. I also like a film which few have ever heard of called Gypsy 83 and some of the more artsy ones like A River Runs through It, The Remains of the Day, and Howard's End. When it comes to thriller/horror films, nothing beats the old school thriller as opposed to the slice-em and dice-em crap popular today...and of course I will go for a good chick flick. I also love educational television including all the DIY shows, and discovery/history channel genre. I like some of the newer anime like YuYu Hakisho, Rurouni Kenshion (Samauri X), Wolf's Rain, and Inuyasha and really dislike cheesy, insipid sitcoms which seem to be based on the banal, adolescent sense of humour which seems too common in middle and high school boys. I like to listen to the radio and will often turn off the television and do so. I like just about all forms of music (though I do not like much hip-hop and rap) and will often listen to Public Radio.

I like tech stuff, I love to learn what a computer, camera, video camera, television or whatever can be made to do if you know how. I used to love an old Tech TV show called Fresh Gear which described all the new stuff we all don't need but really really could put to good use if we had it. We play Gamecube and Playstation 2 as a family and we are planning on more systems eventually. Trading games is fun to the children as a flea market is to me.

I like fantasy games, and my greatest love amongst those is good old fashioned table top pencil and paper role play. I rarely choose humanoid characters, preferring instead to be a fantastical creature like a centaur or an aven or an elemental. So far I have had earth or neutral type alignments though I want to invent a dark aligned vampire type character eventually. I want to become involved in a LARP but I do not have the money right now. It is an easy thing for our family to consume hours on end during our family RP and prefer to do it as a weekend activity.

We also play Magic the Gathering and my children play YugiOh. My best deck so far seems to be an elf deck, though I am still working on the mechanic for the other half. I'm in the market for cards necessary to invent and elf and nail deck which would be suitable for type 2 tournament play. I prefer green and white and despise running black and blue although they are very effective.

I enjoy shopping. Oh don't run away in horror thinking "ack a typical female!" as I have never been typical. I prefer thrift stores and flea markets where I can recycle things for my own use and also love to go antiquing when I know enough about an item not to be taken for a ride. I'm usually looking for the out of the ordinary thing like vintage jewellery to be used as a curtain tieback or a piece of wrought iron fence to use as a household decoration. I also like to go to storage facility auctions, I have found coin collections, vintage aftershave bottles and a lot of books which I have either used or resold on eBay.

Another of my hobbies is faire/festival hopping. Each year the state of Maryland has a Renaissance festival, and my children and I go faithfully each payday weekend and as many other times as we can afford. I like Christmas light displays, historical enactments and many other community events like this. We like the festival type and we also like to old fashioned state fair type as well."

Lady Raven sips her tea and looks at you intently to see which of her hobbies has interested you the most.

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