cherydactyl

Via nuadha_prime
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate
with you. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

He assigned these topics to me:
Buddhism
Well, this is either a very tangled subject or a very simple one. Like many Westerners who gravitate toward Buddhism, I had and have problems with the faith in which I was raised. My birth family attended a Presbyterian church when I was a kid (still do, just a different one), but I have other relatives who tend toward the evangelical. Some parts of Christianity make sense to me, but other parts I find utterly nonsensical, and the nonsensical parts were usually the tenets considered most important and central. I was rather reluctant to actually declare any other religion for a long time. I researched other faiths, but they were all just sources of interesting stories to me. Nothing resonated, even when I tried, sometimes tried hard, to make myself fit into them. I'm not really sure what turned me on to Buddhism, though I suspect it may have been me reading Mark Epstein's Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, which I did about seven or eight years ago. Buddhism, like other major faiths, have lots of different sub-types. Some of those are devotional in nature, like much of Christianity. Some are not. It's quite possible to be a Buddhist and an atheist/humanist at the same time, unless I am much mistaken. And that's what I have gradually decided I am, after a lot more reading, trying out Vipassana ("lovingkindness") meditation, and other adventures in the last several years. I'm still not really "official" in that I don't have a sangha (congragation) and haven't gone through formal training or acceptance. Some of the stories about the Buddha strike me the same way the story of Jesus' conception does, as allegories that have little literal truth in them, but they do not seem so central to Buddhism in the way that the virgin birth is central to Christianity. And the basics, the central points of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Triple Gem, the Eight-Fold Path...those *do* resonate for me. So there it is.

Kids
I love my kids, and I tend to like kids in general. I sometimes wonder if I relate to kids better than to other adults. :/ I certainly act more like a kid than an adult at times. But, I'm in step with the times on this point, I think. lol.

Board Games
Easier to schedule than role-playing games, these are my major hobby. I only wish they didn't involve so much sitting! I actually got started with cribbage and pinochle as a kid. Dad was a ruthless cribbage player. My sister M and I learned pinochle at age 6 and 7 respectively. It was our evening family entertainment nearly every night for a long time. I didn't really get into the hobby in its present form for me until college, when it became the biggest thing illyaa and I had in common. They are an easy escape, especially now in the age of online games. It keeps my too-brainy-for-my-own-good self busy when I might otherwise be tearing my hair out. By the way, have you tried BSW? I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately. And Power Grid before that. And I'm teaching my kids to play board games. And other people and other people's kids when I get the chance. And helping run train games tournaments at the major conventions.

Cooking
I have always liked cooking, but it is a love I have been re-discovering the in the last couple of years. I have been using my crock pot more often. I even acquired a second, smaller one, since there have been times that the leftovers, though delicious, were too much. The larger one is the right size for roasting a chicken. The smaller one is just right for a curry for dinner. Too much of our diet had become factory food...pre-prepared foodstuffs with unpronounceable ingredients and no care in their preparation are not good for our health, in my firm opinion. Slowing down to cook also helps fight the temptation to go along with the hurry-up world out there. There are so many great cooking resources on the internet. And I'm very grateful for the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers. I'm a rather peripheral member of this group, have not yet contributed to the joint blog, and am grateful to have been included in some of the gatherings.

Mythology
The myriad ways humans tell stories to explain the inexplicable and contain their own fears and doubts are endlessly fascinating. We create gods in our own images, the best and worst images included, to try to get a handle on the big, wide, wild world. And then we re-tell, and morph, and alter and re-combine and tell again. Mythology is storytelling with high stakes.

via gizelnort

What has surprised you the most about me (if anything) since joining my flist? Was anything completely unexpected or have I always fit the picture of me you have in your head? Post this in your own journal and see how you have surprised people!

via mkb_cbr, an idea I've been seeing him use that I think I will appropriate...

Five things that make me happy:

1) playing phrase hangman on a micro school bus with middle schoolers
2) playing "my father owns a grocery store" in the dark on that same bus
3) thunderstorms
4) bookmooch.com
5) my new Earth sandals

Just five things, mind you. Not the top five, just some five.

From a fill-in-the-blank meme via bitter_lilly

1. My username is cherydactyl because my long-ago-boyfriend and gm, tlatoani, kept calling me that due to my having a character who was a were-eagle in his DragonQuest campaign. The exact form? "Graawww, it's a Cherydactyl!" whenever my character morphed. Or just because.
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