Brain Flotsam V2.007

This evening the lovely alisanne was in town, so we met up for dinner and tea and much chatter of fandom and other topics.  It was quite a nice time. 
Now I must prepare for my weekend adventure in Austin, plus try to make some progress on my art coming due.

I ran away to the circus.. er, Renaissance Festival today!
It was pirate weekend, so I got into a pseudo-costume (I wore jeans), and met Donna, Jon, Lando and some friends.
It was a long drive, by the way. Geez. It seems so much shorter when there is another person in the car.
This is us in front of the waterwheel by the carousel, which was the designated "let's all meet here" location.

• my best friend really really really wants me to read Twilight.  sigh. I probably should read it just so I'll have a point of conversation with my younger cousins, who aren't readers but have apparently all finished the series.
  
• she also spent some time discussing the ways that she thought my characterization of Draco Malfoy in Far Away as Moonshine echoed that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather series.
  
• and we spent our lunch talking racebending and white-washing in film, something she's been aware of and talking about for longer than I.
  
• good times, despite the sparkly vampire complication.

• Friday evening I actually went out. Yes, really. Had dinner and then drinks with friends. I visited a new bar I'd never been to, and had some lovely Scotch.
  
• The lightning on Friday was apocalyptic.  Made me wish I had a camera with instant shutter speed, to capture it.
  
• Saturday morning at the gas station, a lady saw my "I'm blogging this" t-shirt and said, "Hey, can I ask you about blogging?"  So we ended up having a conversation about social media while my tank filled. Bizarre.
  
• Spent Saturday evening at my aunt's house. We had dinner and conversation and played two rounds of Scrabble.  Fun times.
  
• Today Mom and I made a HUGE dent in my cleaning. We moved the sewing cabinet, and put away almost all the books, although actually really they're all thrown willy-nilly onto shelves, not actually organized.  It'll take me weeks to get them organized.
  
• I hung two more pictures on the walls, too.
  
• Baking soda really is a miracle cleaner.
  

• I have two more bigbang arts to do, and then a fest to illustrate before Snupin Santa hits.
  
• I'm working on a concept for a series of fairy tale illustrations in Prismacolor and ink, for my Advanced Visual Arts studio class this semester.
  

-- Jaye and I are going to hell.
-- Jaye fell asleep in the panel on Consciousness.  (I fell asleep in the Putting the World in WorldCon panel)
-- I feel like I walked several miles along the corridors at the party hotel.
-- the Polish restaurant in Old Montreal is awesome, as I remembered it, and I really must get back there for dinner.
-- We are still in search of decent coffee, but the place in the Palais serves "cafe mocha" ghetto-style, which is hot chocolate with regular coffee poured into it. OMG, it is So Damn Good.
-- became a pre-supporting member of the Texas 2013 bid. Yay.
-- found Jake randomly by the elevators at the party hotel.
-- random guy in the panel about Genocide in Literature spent 5 minutes of panel time summarizing the most recent Star Trek movie.
-- Charles Stross predicts human drivers will be illegal in 30 years...
-- Paul Krugman to Charles Stross: So where do you get your ideas?
-- Opening Ceremonies included a really good contortionist. Those folks always make me cringe a little, though, when they fold their spine backwards just below their diaphragm. Eep.
-- Neil Gaiman seemed shorter than I am when I ran into him (almost literally in a narrow doorway). That is so weird. Also, he did not offer Jake a blow job. (But hey, it's only Thursday.)
-- Margarita ok. Aquavit excellent. La Fin du Monde local microbrew AWESOME.
-- Now Jaye and I are going to bed.

Happy Pi Day!

Last night I went to see Jonathan Coulton with Paul & Storm, of whom I had never really heard before last summer, nor ever seen perform, whether on youtube or live.  It was a really fantastic performance with lots of humor and audience interaction. Paul and Storm's opening show had me falling over laughing. Jonathan broke a string on his guitar in the first song, then later discovered his mouth harp was in the frame backwards. It being Friday the 13th, he joked, of course things went a bit awry. But none of that really interfered with the show, or the music. I could have done without the hair-flinging, loud-singing guy sitting one row down from me, but every concert-goer has crosses to bear, and as concerts go a hair-flinging, loud-singing obnoxious dude is better than drunken groping or being fallen on.
At one point near the end the entire balcony was doing Thriller-type zombie gesturing from their seats while shouting "All we want to do is eat your brains." Yeah. Nerds in groups. I should have taken photos. (The few I did take will be posted later, mostly of House of Blues itself.)
I went out with a party of six folks from the Houston SFF community, all active con-goers or organizers. We had dinner first with a few of them, then met at House of Blues downtown, where there were a bunch of other local nerds that folks in my party knew.  We ended up with seating right near each other in the balcony, oddly enough.
After the concert, we all went to a diner/coffeehouse on Westheimer and had food and drink and conversation until after midnight.  I did not get back to my car (I'd been ridesharing to avoid the downtown/midtown parking crunch) until 1:30 am. 
I haven't had a night out like that in quite some time, so it was pretty awesome.

Today I woke up at an ungodly hour to take care of my unruly stomach (it's pretty much a clockwork alarm all on its own - 6:25 am it wakes me without fail, just before my alarm.  I nibbled on a rice cracker and some orange juice and chatted with mom for a few minutes, then crashed again. I got up for real at about 11, and looked soberly at the packing I should be doing...  and turned away.
Instead, I cut some batting and the backing fabric for the quilt in progress, pinned it all together and trimmed it, and now I'm working on attaching the border pieces to the front before getting in there with the machine quilting.
Ideally I would like to have this finished in time to take it to New York at the end of April and present it to the recipients in person. I may not finish it before I move, but I'll definitely try to get as much done as possible before then, and keep the pieces in a separate box so I can find them pronto in the new place.

I just finished giving the kitchen floor a sweep and clean and mop, so I'm taking a sit-down break in front of a fan to type this up. My only minor angst today is that I really wanted to watch Ghostbusters while I did my sewing but I couldn't find the DVD.  I am pretty sure that I actually bought my own copy, but I could be mistaken. (Sorting out my stuff from the family stuff will be such fun!)  I put on The Last Unicorn  with Real Genius in the bullpen instead. 

Ok, and Dad just told me a joke he heard on Prairie Home Companion and I didn't know enough about music to get the pun in the punchline without clarification. FAIL.  :P   He needs to tell it to Peter.

Post #1:
Here are the caveats:
I don't tend to watch TV, so I have seen neither the show nor any clips.
The web site video doesn't work if you're logging in outside the UK, so all I had to go on were the character descriptions and stills. 

Transcript of chat below:
( a plenitude of snark and a lack of saxony goodness, or evilness as the case may be )

Post #2:
I have now seen the first episode of the BBC's Merlin.
Here is my running commentary.  bwahahaha.

( snark and hilarity )

Oh, interwebs, I love you! I'm going to watch the whole show now!
Except not right this minute because it's time to sleep.

Things I have done that are fun:

- went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still with my dad. We snarked. And enjoyed ourselves. And snarked. It was good.
- played two rounds of The Downfall of Pompeii with my mom. w00t! Sacrifice them to the volcano! Muahahahaha!
- made cinnamon pecans, watched Donna bake while entertaining the little one, played with Lando, danced Lando around the kitchen, introduced Lando to Sandra Boynton's brilliant Hippos Go Berserk! counting board book, and ate yummy festive holiday pound cake (which isn't fruitcake. really).
- watched A Muppet Family Christmas  and A Muppet Christmas Carol with Donna and Lando and, later, Jon.

also done:
- laundry. lots of it.
- moved furniture, re-arranged my room, sorted books, sorted more books, including antiques, moved boxes of toys, and helped mom hook up her computer to the network printer.

coming soon:
- baking cookies! (maybe.)
- playing more games with the family.
- big extended family Christmas meal and game playing.
- making art.
- sewing.
- moving all the boxes to make space for the new craft table.
- packing for Philadelphia (what do you mean it might snow in December? Where did I put my boots?)

Where are people talking / planning for Azkatraz?  Am I missing a crucial post on their LJ comms full of comments, or an especially active area on the bbs?
Or is it just too early to see anything?

Is anybody else arriving Thursday or earlier for the movie, who wants to hang out?
:D   I should take some touristy photos of SF just to prove I was there and that I left the hotel.  (Good grief, leaving the con hotel - what a concept.)

We're having a good time!



So are the Storm Troopers!



More photos to follow when I get a spare minute to process them. Plus of course we're going back to the Festival tomorrow.

I'm still not totally caught up on my deadlines, but hopefully I'll get that taken care of very soon.

I'm very excited this morning because this afternoon Julie is landing in my town and we are going to have an awesome time!  We will be visiting the Butterfly Center, the Planetarium, at least one major garden, and the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Now I'd best get myself going and get ready for the day.

Rather than copy and paste this into everybody's comments (although perhaps I'll do that, too), here are my answers to the 36 questions.

( it might be more than you really wanted to know... )

I'm back from my second wedding weekend, with good news!
Mom called at 10:30 to tell me our power came back on! Hurrah!

Wedding weekend was lovely, but wow it was cold in the Catskills at night. I hadn't packed for that, had to borrow clothes.  ;)
Wedding itself was a fairy tale, and it was wonderful to see so many friends, old and new.  I even got a referral while I was there; one of the groom's friends was so enchanted with the ceremony he wants advice about his own wedding. Not sure if that will be another wedding for me or not, as he lives in the UK and that brings its own special brand of legal hurdles, but it would be nice. Still, interfaith weddings are what I do, so I'm happy to email the couple about theirs. Fun times, indeed.

Now that we have the power back I can't wait to really get going on my pending art projects. Whee!

I am marrying some good friends of mine this weekend in New York.
Don't burn down the interwebs while I'm gone (you know how well fire travels through tubes.)

Well, I signed up again this year, and since the Author Search is turned off at the moment, here is a link to my profile if anybody wants to add me as a Writing Buddy on the site:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/1699

Leave a comment to let me know, or with your own link.