Virginia Garcia McShannock

All it takes is one Paramore song to get me missing my college days studying audio engineering, when I used to kill time recording covers with my friends in the studio between classes, sitting in corridors and class rooms all of us singing and playing for fun. I miss singing like I did back then.

To add to this list:
Making Tax Digital: 🙄
Pictures of cute slugs: 🤗
Bank Accounts: 😴
"Why does indesign keep deleting my text?":😡

How I feel about things I've had to look up in the last week, without context and in no particular order:
Cost of ISBNs: 🤢
General vs Limited Partnerships: 🤔
VAT: 😵‍💫
GPSR: 💀
Flannan Lighthouse Mystery: 🥰

I am nap trapped by an ill, sleeping toddler and I have just spotted a MASSIVE spider on the ceiling above me. I can do nothing without waking the toddler who desperately needs this nap. So I just sit and stare at the spider, silently willing it to not move until I can get up to rehome.

I can't believe I wasn't already following you here haha!
The little one is very good aside from the teething, having a cold, and little sleep as a result. Though somehow it doesn't stop him from having the energy to be a little chaos goblin!

I'll keep an eye out! :)

Thank you, Matt. I really needed to read something like this today :).

Photograph of a book titled "Starting a Business for Dummies" and a uppercase box full of children's magnetic building tiles on.

My day today is comforting a very upset and tired teething toddler, distracting him with magnatiles, and doing some long overdue reading for a future venture (also long overdue)! I've had 3 hours sleep, more coffee than a human should, and much work to do later when the bub (hopefully) sleeps.

We do like apple pie! That would really be lovely! We can bring board games in return haha!

GPSR when it comes to TTRPGs and digital files is confusing as fuck.

I miss my friends. I miss hanging out, playing video games, playing TTRPGs. Becoming a parent has meant my ability, time, and energy to socialize has been non existant, and I have no idea how to reconnect without being like "Hey, remember me? Sorry I dropped of the face of the earth for 2 years."

I am! Though I'm not massively active on discord at the moment! The coffee mornings always sound great but sadly anything pre-8pm is impossible for me to sit down and interact with on account of a very active 1 year old who sees me at my desk as a challenge haha

While the small goblin napped, I found a bunch of my personal RPG WIPs that have been sitting unfinished since like 2023. Tempted to post some screen grabs of the ones that got some graphic treatment to see if any of them interest folks whenever I eventually have time to finish them.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of doing a recorded thing where each week I just chat with friends and folks I think are cool about their work in TTRPGs AND what else they like to do outside of RPGs. Maybe if I ever get some more free time and folks are interested.

Yes! Its basically treasure hunting!

Shopping second-hand in thrift, vintage, and charity shops is not only better on my wallet and better sustainability wise, but I tend to find much better quality items than what's new in store. Plus you get the thrill of the hunt. Now I just need some thrift loving friends to come with me...

Went to a vintage kilo sale today in the hopes of finding some trousers that aren't polyester at a reasonable price...
Came away with 3 pairs of 97-100% cotton and one 100% wool pair, all but one of the cotton pairs was designer. I paid £40. New, I'd have paid over £350 for it all.

I also have to show off my Christmas Eve picky tea charcuterie platters. First time doing these to make them look pretty rather than just everyone grabbing stuff out of packets, and I am *very* pleased about how good they ended up looking!

Remember me talking about these earrings? My husband is the best. He quietly remembered me showing them to him and he got them for me for Christmas because he knew I didn't around to getting them for myself.

Merry Christmas folks!

I've not had much of a chance to reach out individually to folks to say Merry Christmas as I've been hosting and running around after my one year old goblin, but I hope everyone is having a lovely day (however you choose to spend it!)

Happy Birthday! :)

At some point, I hope to reconnect with folks I've fallen out of contact with and miss dearly.

There's no real point to this thread, just getting it off my chest 'cos I miss my friends and hanging out, and I miss having the time and mental bandwidth to be present in all those places I was before.

I want to reconnect with folks but it's never been a thing I'm good at, and finding the time and the bandwidth to do that meaningfully is hard (and also very anxiety inducing).

Dragonmeet very much reminded me just how much I miss people and the spaces I used to be in both on and offline.

All of this is really to say that despite being 'away' I'm still here, doing all the things I do (mostly, just with added parenthood responsibilities). I'm rubbish at reaching out at the best of times, but especially this last year.

While it's been healthy in many ways to be less online and more present offline, it does mean that I've also been kina distant socially. Which was never my intention, but happens when all your time and energy is put to parenting and parenting-adjacent things. I haven't figured out the balance yet.

I have been super MIA and stepped back from a lot online spaces (and some IRL ones) over the last year.

This has been because parenthood has taken up most of my focus and time, and because I hit overwhelm and anxiety in ways that weren't healthy or sustainable for me.

This is the only convention this year I've been able to go to so I am so excited to see everyone and all the cool shit they've been making!

In the chaos of everything recently I forgot to say, I'll be at Dragonmeet today mooching around the Con doing my best to say hello to everyone. Please feel free to reach out if you wanna meet up to say hi! (assuming we actuallg know each other and aren't strangers, you know.)

We bought it on a whim. We discussed reselling it but we have no idea what it's worth and quite frankly we both think it's a fun coincidence that on the eve of our wedding anniversary, we'd be reminded of where our friendship first began.

This charity shop never really has any TTRPG, nerdy, or geeky things. It was purely by chance that I noticed the debossing on the cover. Aside from a tiny bit of spine damage, it's in good condition. It cost £30.