Monday Meanderings - October 12, 2015

First Meandering ...

It's time for Bookmarked Bargains. A ton of great books are on sale from October 12-16, including my novella, Second Chances 101, which is on sale for $.99. Click here to check out the other books.

And, as always, there's an awesome giveaway, so be sure to scroll through a list of books to get to it.


Second Meandering ...

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about a class I attended that was taught by psychologist Bruce Christopher about dealing with difficult people--and getting results. 

He went over:

1. Types of difficult people
2. What they do and why
3. What you shouldn't do
4. The surprising effect of interrupting the difficult person's patterns.

As I was listening to his presentation, I saw huge motivational questions for characters.

Here's snippet of him on a video teaching this topic. It really begins 1:39 minutes in. Then it leads into another presentation he does about the differences between men and women. He's very funny and really knows his stuff.

Third Meandering ...

Best personal League of Legends weekend ever. 

When you play this game (the easier levels like I do right now), you play with four other real people against five bots. The game is simpler against bots. When you're ready to up your game, you go against humans. Yeah. I get spanked. My sons play the game and get impatient with me because real humans are so much better (and craftier) than bots are. I wish there was a level somewhere in between. 

Anyway, Karma is probably my favorite character to play. She's support--meaning she helps the champion she's teamed with--but she can also kick butt.

On Friday, the person I partnered in the bottom lane with said I was "the best support ever." *grins* I ended up with 31 assists (kills that I helped with) and something like 11 kills myself. Then in another game, I was asked afterwards if I was a smurf.

Smurf, you ask?

Just so you know, for someone like me, that's an ultimate compliment. See, there are some amazing players out there. In fact, right now the Worlds championship is going on.

I LOVE esports. Who knew? 

Just so you know:

• More people watch League games than watch the Super Bowl.
• ESPN even did an issue that touched on esports and focused heavily on League.
• ESPN's webpage is covering the Worlds' championship games. 

Back on topic.

A smurf is when a really good player creates a secondary (smurf) account and plays with less skilled players. They frequently do that when learning a new champion.

My score is the one on the top (I was playing Karma again) in the picture to the right. The 9 is for my kills, the 1 is the number of times I died, and the 22 is the number of assists. 

The second score belongs to the team member I was supporting. 

We're randomly put on teams by the computer, so I don't know the people I play with. Sometimes we don't match up so well. They don't get what I'm doing to support them, and they fail to take advantage of kills I set up. But it can be magic when things work.

Sorry. This post is already longer than I intended it to be.

Questions for you ...

Have you or anyone you know dealt with difficult people? Ha! We should ask ourselves if we're the difficult people. Have any secrets to share?

What about League. Do you or anyone you know play it?