So I’ve shown my Big Crazy Things before, but I always show them when they’re finished. This one is big enough and crazy enough that it’ll take me a long time to have it done. But this is it at about 1/4 finished.

Basically, the entire Big Crazy Thing is a 4′x8′ game board (for miniatures gaming) that is based on the movie The Hobbit. This front 4′x4′ square (built in 4′x2′ sections) is the front of Erebor. I haven’t been trying to do an exact replica–just to get the feel of it down. (My main goal has been to make this Big Crazy Thing more playable than my previous Big Crazy Things, so there’s wider paths and broad flat sections.)

The second half of the board, which I haven’t started yet, will be the Goblin City, inside the mountain. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated as the craziness ensues.

This is the main, pulled back view. You can see the more open fields in front, with the stone path leading up to the gate of the mountain. There’s a bridge, and there will eventually be another bridge.

A close up of the bridge and entrance. There will be more battlements along the mountain face, and more decoration on the gate and pillars.

A front view. (You can see a couple of the other Big Crazy Things in the background.)

A secret mountain path between two peaks, just wide enough for one person.

The view from the right. Over here you can see the extra break in the wall–there will be a wooden bridge built crossing the gully and leading to that breach.

Here’s Big Crazy Thing #1

Here’s Big Crazy Thing #2

Big Crazy Thing #3 isn’t quite painted yet. I’m lazy.

Anyway: more to come!

As you know, I have a whole host of mental illnesses. I’m a giant ball of preexisting conditions. Aside from the medicine (which I take) and the cognitive behavioral therapy (which I’m doing) we’ve been looking for other treatments that could possibly help make this mess better. And one of the things we ran across was Mental Therapy Dogs. Now, a real, certified therapy dog is hard to get: not only do you have to jump through a lot of hoops, such as being approved and being legally declared as disabled, they also cost a lot of money and they have a nine month waiting list. So, I set out to see if I could find a dog that could meet all my requirements, but without the certification.

My requirements: I wanted a lazy, mellow dog. A dog who would be my constant companion and want nothing more than to hang out with me and get its belly rubbed. I needed a dog who I could bring to my office everyday, so it would have to be a quiet dog, and one who is both obedient and fully housebroken.

I went to various shelters, and finally, at a place run by BestFriends.org, I told them my criteria, and they immediately pointed across the room to Annie. It was love at first sight, and I took her home that day.

Annie sitting in my office. She’s officially a “beagle mix”, and the best I can tell she has some foxhound in her and maybe some shepherd.

Annie sitting on her bed.

Annie sitting by the window. She likes to watch the world go by and lazily sit in the sun.

How she spends 80% of her day. And lest you think it’s just because she’s bored at the office, it’s how she spends the weekends at home, too. She’s just SUPER LAZY. And perfect.

I was asked by the Mormon blog RealIntent.org to write an LDS-oriented post about my experiences with mental illness. The article and subsequent discussion can be found here:

Understanding Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, and OCD

The survey is closed, the results are in, and my conclusions confirm my hypothesis: many of the most commonly used emoticons have very different meanings to different people. I’m not anti-emoticon. I’m just pro-lucidity. And there’s some pretty non-lucid stuff going on in the realm of emoticons.

First off, let’s answer at least one thing conclusively:

97.5% of respondents said that smileys should face right : ) while only 2.5% of respondents said they should face left ( :

In conclusion: people who face your smileys to the left: STOP IT.

Okay, moving on to some specifics.

First, 96.7% of respondents agreed that the : ) conveys a positive emotion, but they could not agree on which specific message: “I am happy” led the herd with 57%, but “I am trying to be funny” took 17% and “The sentence is silly (in a good way)” took 14%.

Conclusion: I can overlook this mixed messaging because it’s uniformly positive.

Second, the winky smile ; ) is also uniformly positive. But it’s interesting that only 2% of the respondents use it to mean “I am happy”. By far, it’s used to convey funniness (53.4%) or positive silliness (22%). But it’s also used in the more literal flirty kind of wink, meaning “I like you” 18% of the time.

Conclusion: I could overlook all the mixed positives for the : ) but I can’t overlook the whopping 18% of people who use a ; ) to convey their affection. Essentially, four out of five times someone is simply conveying funniness or silliness, but every fifth time they mean something COMPLETELY different. Still positive, but problematic.

Third, and most egregiously guilty, is : P also known as the tongue-sticking-out face. While mostly positive (funniness and positive silliness represent 71% of meanings), the other 29% is very negative: negative silliness, anger, confusion, and disgust.

Conclusion: People, get it together. Stop using stupid emoticons that people don’t understand. Or, if you insist on using the : P then create some kind of emoticon dictionary and preach your definitions to the world. Until then, I refuse to acknowledge the sticking-out tongue.

This is further exacerbated when I gave you an ambiguous sentence to put an emoticon after. For the sentence “Puppies are cute, but I’d rather have a kitten”, the same number of people used : ) as used : P  . And a slightly greater number used ; )  .

Conclusion: WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE MEAN? Why does a kitten warrant a wink? Or a tongue sticking out?

Ultimate conclusion: In the end, all I can say is this:  : P

*Note: I had to space my emoticons out (putting a space between the colon and the parentheses, for example) so that WordPress wouldn’t automatically re-format the emoticons to images.