First Sunday of the weekend

[howeird]

Once again, I did nothing. Or as close to nothing as possible.

I stayed up way late, 2:30 or so, but slept all the way till 8:30. So after checking the plumbing I went back to bed. Domino tried nudging me out from both sides. She finally gave up.

Did some Worldcon OCD stuff, looked at the loncon3 site, which now has enough major programming info to do some planning with. Tagged things onto my Google calendar for each day of the con. Am kind of upset that my plan to check out of the hotel on Monday and start traveling after closing ceremonies got blown away by them scheduling a major guest at 7 pm. WTF? Scanned their call for volunteers, and there are about a dozen things I could do, but I'll let the locals handle it, at least until the actual day of the need.

Sent email to my London area cousins with dates we could get together, which included my preferred dates to hop on a high speed train Elsewhere.

I watched about 10 minutes of the Netherlands soccer game, was disappointed at how slow the pace was and how Colombia was no match for them at all except for their goalie. And even then, it was more because the Dutch kept hitting the ball right to him. Boring. So I got into the car and drove the Shoreline park, because I had a date at the nearby Starbucks at 4, and it was a gorgeous day. There was a very fancy wedding being set up at Regsdorff house, and the videographer was blocking the pathway with the bride and bridesmaids. There seemed to be two brides, and while the bridesmaids were all in bright red, one woman who looked to be one was in black. Who wears black to a wedding?

I had parked in the golf course lot, the main lot being a mess. And kicked myself for forgetting the camp chair. Canada Geese made the lawn a non-starter. I found a spot on a rock wall in the shade and read some more Hugo verbiage. Equiod, the last of the novellas. It started out great, a British Men in Black rip-off. But then the author inserts letters from HP Lovecraft in what he believes to be HPL's antiquated style. But he overdoes it to the point of obfuscation, and then he starts to present the letters in modern style. I finally gave up when I got tired of the author forgetting which voice he was using, when. No guilt because two of the other novellas were Hugo worthy.

Had a good chat and a bit of a stroll with Janice, but it would have been nicer if all of Starbucks' outdoor umbrellas had not disappeared. They have a huge patio, but no shade. Indoors the aircon was brutal.

Home, checked to see why Discover had sent me a fraud alert when my Starbucks auto-reload went through. No fraud, just that I had not updated my card's expiration date or my address on Starbucks' site. Took care of that, reset my Starbucks password while I was at it.

Looked at my list, and saw there was enough there for me to submit votes for Hugos. Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Pro and Fan Artists, Fanzine. Voted "No Award" for Graphic Story because IMHO the category is not worthy. Many of my friends deeply disagree, which is their right. Also voted no award for short form dramatic presentation because (a) half the entries are from the same series and (b) the other half require a subscription to see. IMHO the rules should only allow one entry per series, or punt the whole series to long form.

Did not vote on novels, because I haven't read any of them, and the freebies are only samples. Can't judge a book from an excerpt. And I won't have time to read all the books, I am a slow reader.

Next, opened up the retro ballot, which I had not expected to vote on, but was surprised that I knew enough to vote in all the categories except artist and fanzine. I had actually read all the novels. 1938 was a good year.

Dinner was a reheated lamb shank from Costco, which comes in a thick plastic pouch. Note to self - next time, poke holes in the pouch before putting in the microwave. Major cleanup ensued.

Watched some Dateline, and for some reason kept watching to the end. What a brainsuck.

Organizing my Nexus, decided to download the Hugo novel snippets just for something to read, and also saw that though I had checked "no award" for the Campbell, because none of them held my attention, there was one I had not read, so I downloaded that. The Campbell is for body of work, but the Kindle app separates out the individual works and does not always display the author's name on the cover graphic, so I missed Ramez Naam. And may also have missed Max Gladstone.

Domino continues to divide her time between working on her tan and being very affectionate, sitting on the arm of the recliner and sometime with two paws on my thigh. She is so woefully thin, I gave her a little canned food as an experiment. If she doesn't barf it up I'll give her more tomorrow. 1/4 of a small tin.

Cut the sourdough starter again, this time the discarded half went into a mason jar and was also fed, but with a lot more water. Tomorrow is Day 5, which means put it all in the fridge and let it grow slowly.

Plans for tomorrow:

Sunday. Maybe see a movie, but more likely go to Bayshore Park.
Maybe take the emergency committee's advice and put up some spare water. Check out the emergency rations aka camping meals at Walmart.