Awesomeness!

I decided that I wanted to go back into event coordinating, so on a whim I started looking and applied for two jobs. I got phone calls for both of them yesterday, and subsequently had two interviews this afternoon. After the interviews I was exhausted, irritated, and I just wanted to go to bed. However, tonight I had book club at my home so I had two hours to bake and decorate a cake, clean my kitchen and living room, and convince myself that I could keep going throughout the night. Book club went two hours, and now, finally, I can relax.

The bright spot of my night was hopping onto my podcast site and seeing a thread of things that need to be changed to make the show better. In a post discussing how I had replaced a woman who had been ill this was said:

It's most sad to see Kelly disappear especially if it's for health reasons, and it's in fact quite worrying that we haven't heard anything at all. But to be fair I think Annalee makes for a better replacement on the panel. Not that Kelly is a bad host (au contraire, I love her to bits like everyone else), but there was too much goofiness and cutsieness on the show with her and not quite enough substantial discussion. Annalee OTOH brings a bit more balance: she's somewhere halfway between Kelly's silliness and my seriousness, which does the show a world of good. If/when Kelly comes back you may have a real problem -- I certainly wouldn't want to kick her off but I for one wouldn't want to lose Annalee either...

I was shocked, but oh so delighted!!! They like me, they actually like me!

The Secret Life of...

Hi, my name is Cartimandua. I got my name from a real historical figure who lived in Britain around 40 AD when the Romans were conquering the area. She was a pragmatic queen who decided to turn against her loyalist husband and side with the Romans. The Roman historian, Tacitus, wrote about her and the 10 other kings who surrendered to the Romans without a fight (can you really blame them, the Romans were the biggest and the best of all armies!). I don't necessarily agree with everything she did, but she is intriguing. Tacticus called her "treacherous" because of her loyalty to the Romans and said she had "cunning strategems". Okay, so it was the last thing that hooked me. Cunning strategems? I loved it! Thus, I am known as Cartimandua.

I am most frequently found lurking on a gaming forum called Apolyton. Poly (as we call it) is home to Civilization fanatics. Civilization is a PC game where you can play as a historical figure, build your own empire, explore your world (which changes with every game), interact with the historical leaders of other empires, and basically see an evolution of society from the discovery of the wheel to the medieval ages to the atomic bomb and beyond. It's addicting and fascinating and infinitely re-playable. It's my secret obsession.

On Apolyton, Cartimandua has a reputation for representing the females in a very male dominated world. I tell the guys off when they are disrespectful and intrigue them with tales of women who let their men play computer games, who don't nag, and will actually play with their husbands. This fills them full of false hopes of finding the perfect woman as they continue to live their entire lives online. It's very entertaining from my point of view. :)

I realize that I am coming across as very cynical, but it's that time of the month and the Midol is just barely kicking in, so whatever.

This morning Cartimandua got up at dawn (okay, it was 7:00, but that's close to dawn on a Saturday) to do a podcast/internet radio show. This was my second appearance, and in my opinion the first one was better. This time was fun, however, because my husband, who is known all over the internet as Alexander I, was also co-hosting with me. It's even funnier because nobody knows we are husband and wife except for the main hosts of the podcast. We really had fun.

If anyone is interested (which you probably are not) you can listen to the Polycast Christmas Special: Girls Playing Civ at http://polycast.apolyton.net/polycast/season1/
christmas2007.mp3
The one I recorded today will not be published until next week.

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