The Last Word

Exactly two weeks ago, Piete and I were at the jewellers designing my engagement ring, and late on Thursday just gone, Rebecca contacted Piete to tell him that they've found the stone for my ring!

The ring on the left is one that I tried on whilst we were discussing ideas, and the stone is 7mm on each side. My stone is 5mm on each side as the 7mm one looked pretty over the top when I tried it on.

It's been pointed out that I've not given links to some of the bits I was talking about for my ring, so I'll describe it again, with links!

It's going to be in palladium, which is a white/silver metal, with a green tourmaline trillium (the stone is cut so that it looks like a triangle, as you can see in the picture!). The stone is going to be set in tension style, which is apparently safer than an actualtension set ring, and so I won't loose the stone!

There's also going to be along the lines of this ring, which you might be able to see from the pencil design, but there's going to be a couple of diamonds on there as well.

All in all, I'm counting down the days until it's finished, and I'll let you know when I know more!

During the Big Snow of '10, I drove in to work from Colchester at about 5am on Monday morning. It was such a roaring success that I tried it again. Unfortunately for me, everyone else thought so too, turning what should have been a 3 hour trip into a 5 hour one.

This means it's entirely possible that I'm hallucinating due to sleep deprivation …

Regardless, I came back to mum's tonight to find a photo album open on my bed with a ring box¹⁾ on top - it's my fathers signet ring, bought for him by his father.

With the engagement and all, it got me to thinking about heirlooms and what we owned as a family. Turns out not a whole lot. Jewellry is typically handed down from mother to daughter, so my aunt got most of that on my father's side, and there just was never very much on my mother's side. She still has her wedding band, and had kept this signet ring.

I've seen the photos, many times, but never felt like I did when I looked through it tonight. It was strange, seeing my parents at age 19, getting married. Suddenly I could relate to them in those photos, and I longed to be able to go back to that time and visit them.

History has never been a passion of mine, and while I love a good story, a lot of my family history was hard to relate to. I could see the value in it, but I had no real interest. I've often wondered if this would ever change, or if I'd live my life rarely looking back.

Tonight, looking into the album and seeing my father's face beaming back at me, I realised that the small heirlooms we have, and the small traditions we have are part of our family, and the family name may not mean very much to anyone, but it's important to me. Sooner or later (later, I think) I'll be passing these traditions and heirlooms on to my children, and they to theirs. I could have written the words at any time, but only now do I really feel how much that means and how excited I am by the discoveries to be made.

It would be nice to have some of these stories recorded for posterity, especially as time marches on relentlessly. My plate is rather full at the moment, however. Next year, I'm sure I can make room for one more massive project.

Yes, next year I think I'll try my hand at annals.

This post should've been written and finished and posted somewhere around the 1st of January, as a sort of introduction to the new year. It seems to be a common trope that bloggers put up a list of what they will do in the coming year, and then review the list 12 months later. In a GTD kinda way, I can see the benefit, and as human beings it definitely helps to have hopes and dreams to provide a little direction to ones life.

The thing that's always made me pause over bullet pointed plans for the longer term has been that hopes and dreams were attached to educational success, career success and financial success, and therefore weren't long term at all. My formal education is over, I have a “permanent” job that I love and I'm comfortable with my bank balance.

So, now what?²⁾

Skipping over the first chapters and heading straight for the whodunnit-page: I really hope my new job stays every bit as exciting as I find it now. It's really given me a lot of energy that I wasn't ever sure I'd get back. Being in the wrong job really does affect you that much.

2009 was the Year of Music; which got off to a slow start, but has made me sort out a lot of things that I would otherwise have just not done. 2010 (that's twenty-ten: welcome to the future!) is to be the Year of Gaming. Video games, board games, card games, roleplaying games, and whatever kinky games I can get Pam to play now that she's got the promise of a ring! Although, forgive me if I don't write about those …

Specifically I'd like to start working on some chronicling of what I've played, and really examine what I like about a game, and what I don't like. I'm thinking about a new site to dump some of these critical ideas, and I think I may have found a use for Twitter, even! Coupled with this self-examination, I've been threatening to write a game or parts of a game for a while, but never quite gotten around to it. My programming skills are the best they've ever been, so this will be an excellent stretch for me, and could lead to some interesting discoveries.

I think originally, the Year of Music was intended to produce an album that I could be proud of - in reality what got kicked off and set up was much much bigger than I really planned for, and has paved the way for far more than just a handful of well recorded songs. Already plans are in the works for a digital pop act, song remixes, and alternative versions of our own songs.

So that's how you should view the Year of Gaming - a focal point for me to get my shit together and do all those things that have been bubbling away for too many years. I'm not going to list the specific things I want to get done, because that would mean knowing it all up front, so instead look out for more bits and pieces to come.

The crux of all of this, however, is ensuring that I'm not dropping one focus for another, but rather adding to that focus. Less specific to 2010, but specific to me, is that I see myself adding to the number of concurrent tasks I have, instead of trying to get them all “finished”. I'm testing myself to see how much I can make progress with at the same time before I'm overwhelmed. By increasing the number of focal points slowly, I'm hoping to not only get a lot of different things done but also stretch and train myself to be able to do more.

Game on.

23 January is a day that should have been a lot sooner. We went to design my engagement ring today, after having to postpone it from 9 January, which was when there was so much snow that we weren't even sure if Piete could come home for the weekend, let alone try to get to the jewellers, without getting stuck in any snow drifts (even though Piete had a duvet and a spade in the back of the car, it still didn't seem to be a great idea!)

Piete and I had done some research before today. I knew that I didn't want a heart shaped stone, or for it to be too gaudy, and that the long term plan for when we actually get married would be for my engagement ring, my wedding ring, and Piete's wedding ring to have a matching theme/echo across them all. Not the best description, but here's some links to sets that have this idea in mind!

After some excitement on the drive ('dear good lord! If anyone tries to come down this hill while we're going up it, we're toast!' for example), we got to a beautiful showroom, where we spent just under an hour and a half designing the ring with Rebecca.

And (drum roll please) here's the rough design! Yes, it really is a rough design, and so you can't see that the stone is a trillion, and going to be a tourmaline. That the setting is meant to look like it's tension set (yay!), and that the metal is going to be palladium (very white looking metal – think silver), and that there's going to be some diamonds in it (had to be done, after all, it's an engagement ring!)

I'm absolutely thrilled, and can't wait for the six weeks until it should be ready! Don't worry, there'll be more pictures when I actually get it, and I'm very sorry, but I am going to be bouncing about it for a while!

I have no objection to charity work, and even less when there's some damn good bargains to be had.

$1481.31 of digital downloads for $20. Oh, and the $20 goes to Doctors Without Borders.

In that bundle, for you mainstream people, is the Serenity RPG ($30 normally).

It's a bit of a win-win really!