howeird | Entries tagged with cons

It took till 10, but when I finally opened the blinds the sun was very bright and it was 75° on the patio. In the sun. Out of the sun it was 59.

Kaan had wanted me to play fetch, but I didn't find this out till I made the bed and his toy was there. I slept through it. He's also not sneezing much, which is good. Meanwhile, Domino is being more affectionate.

Lots of targeted errands. Dropped the phone off at Click Away, did the math and it would be much less to repair than replace. Then to Penny's for a quilt and a wallet. The place is coming to the end of a vast remodeling project, the object of which seems to have been to hide the cashier stations, remove all useful signage (including all the directories by the escalators), and create long lines of angry customers. And make pricing a guessing game.

After a long hunt I found the quilts, most of them on clearance. Yay. I found three identical ones with a retail price of $100 , one was marked down to $80, one to $60 and one to $50. I took the $50 one. Waited in line for 10 minutes at the "customer service" counter (all the cashier stations are called this) watching two staffers in a 4-register setup try to handle President's Day Weekend sales crowds. When I got to the cash register, the cashier couldn't make the new remote control scanner work, she finally picked up the hard-wired one which worked fine. She said the quilt had been marked down further to $36. Excellent. When I got home and looked at the receipt it said $30. Even better.

Went upstairs, found the same style wallet I have been using (mine got torn and needed replacing). Was in line for 15 minutes, this time three staffers with only 2 registers, one of which was tied up by a lady whose receipt had not printed, and none of the three cashiers had the sense to call a manager right away and clear the transaction so it didn't hold up the line. The man behind her timed it at 17 minutes to get a receipt. :-(

Was not feeling 100%, so dropped the stuff off in the car, found a restroom and then went to the food court for a diet Coke. It didn't help much.

On the way home, stopped at the produce store for bananas and limes and celery. Also got tangelos. Backtracked to Safeway for kitty crack and ice cream, and on the way out bought some Girls Scout crack aka Thin Mints.

Home, finished the Brigadoon site, emailed the cast & crew.

Dinner was celery with home made onion dip (I used light sour cream, but there used to be something called Imo which was non-dairy I wanted to use but have not seen it in the stores. Must research that) and the last 8 pieces of frozen dim sum. And ice cream. And 3 thin mints.

Unpacking the groceries, there were only 9 Fancy Feast cans. I had put 10 on the conveyor belt. The receipt says I only paid for 9. I wonder where the 10th went...

Seeing lots of tweets and FB posts from friends who are at Gallifrey 1, the LA Dr. Who convention. I used to love that show, but then they brought on below-par companions and the final straw was Matt Smith whose face looks like he used it to break out of prison, and his skin is unnaturally pale. And I don't like what he has done to The Doctor. I ditched Torchwood when they traded intelligence for blood and gore. So that's not a con I'd enjoy overly much.

Put the last 600 Thailand slides back in their binders. Gathered up the B&W negatives from the same time period, estimated 1800 frames (but that's at 36 frames per roll for 50 rolls and it's going to be somewhat fewer). Found a place relatively nearby, Burlingame, which charges too much, but at least they do them. Costco doesn't. Boxed them up, went online and placed an order, which included UPS shipping labels and a 50% deposit. Ouch. Will send them off tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
Up early, 9 am team meeting
Ship the negatives
Brigadoon rehearsal

Current Mood: productive
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Well, the superbowl is not going at all well, so I thought I'd catch up on almost a week of lost journaling.

Last real entry was on the train Monday. Skip to Tuesday. They kept saying they were running late, but when we got to Sacramento we were more than half an hour early. The sun wasn't up yet. I stayed on the train, very sleepy. The rest of the stops we were early, but we got delayed somewhere south of Oakland, and managed to just make it on time into San Jose, about 10 am.

Home, feeling poorly, but managed to pet the cats, top off their water, unpack, shower & take drugs and get to work around noon.

There was a lot to do at work, but nothing worth writing about. They had a town hall meeting way too early, so I caught the replay. It was a pretty good update on the Arris acquisition, they gave a lot more actual information than we got when Google was buying us.

Can't remember lunch or anything except going home to very affectionate cats.

Wednesday my cold was still hanging on, work kept my mind off it for the most part, I had some bug fixes to verify and some automation to work on. Home, faked some soup for dinner from Chinese BBQ pork and a couple of frozen won tons. Bed, woke up often. Kaan mostly stayed on the foot of the bed.

Thursday I was able to wrap up an automation script which was just waiting on a bug fix. They fixed the bug and it was easy from there. Starbucks for lunch, I think. The one near the furniture store, not one of the usual ones. There was a Brigadoon rehearsal, I was feeling just well enough to go - not contagious, just a stuffed nose and a mild fever. This was a run-through of what they had done so far, and I had not been blocked in 3/4 of it yet. We did my solo, and I was very displeased that he has me take center stage for it, which doesn't match the lyrics. He has not made allowances for non-dancers, so I've had to make allowances for myself. It looks like we will keep rehearsing to the boom box, which sucks big time. Music rehearsals don't start till the 11th, which is bass akward. Normally you learn the music first.

The good news is there are lots of pretty women, and many of them hang around me a lot, since I am the candy maker. The bad news is the director has all of us onstage all the time, pretty much. It's one way to do the show, but I think it detracts from the leads.

There is a dance number which is annoying me a bit. We have a very tall ballerina of Amazonian proportions (except she has both breasts - big ones), who is beautiful, graceful and a joy to watch. The character she is dancing with is a foot shorter than her, has a significant paunch, and it just looks wrong. He has no dancing training other than country dance.

We're supposed to go at 9, he kept us till 10:30 to block the end of the dance (lots of ensemble stuff, some of which I can't do, I need to talk to him about that).

Home, crashed

Friday was not feeling much better, but not worse. Work was again busy and I was able to wrap up yet another automation project which was waiting for a bug fix. Can't remember what I did for lunch, but I know I didn't go with the gang because they went too early [again]. After work I went to Office Max and looked for something to ship the Boskone art show photos in. I found something perfect, except it was way expensive. The 10-pack of 12x18 envelopes comes in a box which was the right size, but it was $25. On my way out I found their cardboard boxes, and got one which was 18x18x12, and went home with that. Of course it was too small for 12x18 photos.

Faked some soup dinner, and went to bed way too late after making the bid sheets and control sheet for the art show. She sent us non-writable pdfs, there is no way I am writing by hand, so it was a lot of copy and cut and paste work. At least I had the titles on a spreadsheet already.

Woke up at 1:30 pm. The cold was worse. I got up and dressed and was headed for Office Max to spend that $25, but the garbage needed taking out, and lo and behold in the cardboard recycle area was the box from an ASUS video display which was pretty darned close to perfect, and free. So I took that inside, packed things up, weighed it, went online and printed UPS shipping and return labels, taped it up and blacked out all the bar codes that were not UPS, and took it down to the UPS store. Got that done in time to be an hour early to meet Janice at Starbucks, where I was going to start this tome but Facebook distracted me.

Janice was just back from 2 weeks in NJ as a Red Cross volunteer working with hurricane Sandy victims, and was pretty tired, so she had me fill her in on Conflikt, and we'll talk about her adventures next week.

Earlier in the day while things were falling out of the freezer compartment at me, I saw I had raw chicken thighs and drumsticks in there, so on my way home I stopped at Safeway and picked up the chicken soup makings I didn't have - which was really only green peas and gizzards (but they didn't have any of those). Decided to add corn, and buy a couple of fresh parsnips because the one in the freezer isn't fresh and was kind of small. I also bought a pizza and cream puffs for Superbowl Sunday, and some frozen dinners.

Home, hauled out the huge cauldron and filled it with chicken soup makings. This is basically my mom's recipe, but a little more generic. She used Manischewitz mixes:

and added a chopped onion and celery and sliced carrots. I buy the barley, beans, and split peas in bulk, and I start off with a gallon of chicken stock, and add chopped garlic, bay leaf, salt, ground pepper. Mom cooked it the usual way, I make it crock style - low heat overnight so to meat comes off the bones and the bones are soft.

So that was my 1 am snack.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Home

First full day of Conflikt, I was up and dressed just in time for the 11 am lunch. IMHO if it's before noon it isn't lunch. And this wasn't much of one. Salad buffet, pasta salad, sandwiches, soup. I plucked a tuna salad croissant from the pile, poured my own clam chowder because the server deserted her post to help a filker who was carrying food for three or more people.

Found a place at a table with 3 others, I think they seated 8 and eventually we had 5. I wanted to sit with some friends, but there was a baby there. We are talking baby too young to talk, but not too young to squeal. Maybe a year old. Maybe. The clam chowder was delicious until I came to a piece of shell and some rubber bits. The tuna salad tried valiantly to escape its prison, but somehow I kept it off my shirt.

There were many babies and children too young to be in a concert venue. They made a lot of noise, ran around, and their parents should be ashamed of themselves. Much applause to

hsifyppah, who stayed home with her baby last year, and braved the con without him this year. And a slap on the wrist to concom for not making any arrangements to keep the children out of the concert hall.

There also seem to be more transvestites here than usual, I think I've seen 4. Three of them very tall for men, let alone women. Just an observation, not a value judgment.

Once again the sound check process made everything late.

First concert today was Toronto's Heather Dale, who had Ben Deschamps mostly on guitar, and had gotten the incredibly talented cellist Betsy Tinney to join her. Heather is amazing, she has so much fun singing and playing music. Recorder, tin whistle, keyboard, lovely voice. I laughed a lot, especially when her pied piper conspiracy song ended with half the audience following her around the room. She made me cry twice, the most with a song about a French orphan girl who accepts a dowry from the King to go to Quebec and marry. The song is told fro the standpoint of a sailor on the ship carrying her to the New World, and of course ends with him proposing to her.

Some time after I went back to her table and bought the CD it was on, and I asked her if she knew the Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy musical Naughty Marietta, which has a French orphan girl with dowry going to New Orleans. She hadn't, so I told her a bit about the show. I expect she'll find a copy to watch. She is even more charming in person.

Next up were Interfilk guests Bob & Sue Esty, both on harps. Not my kind of music, I bailed after the 2nd tune.

Back in time for the Interfilk auction, where a "somewhat borked" music recorder which I thought I might snag for $50 went for > $200 as many of the musicians offered to record a piece on it if the bid was $xxx. By itself, worth maybe $100, with those recordings, priceless.

After my dark chocolate salmon sold for $45, it was time to head for the light rail. Got off at International District station, walked a couple of blocks toward the restaurant when I heard my name being called. It took me a while to triangulate it, and

susandennis was there to lead us to Ho Ho Seafood. Got a seat right away, the waitress gave us a grand tour of the menu, but I was decided as soon as she said New Year special - lobster is the same price as fish. So we got lobster in black bean sauce with ginger, and Susan added a beef dish.

We chatted like old friends, which we are, kind of. Susan found me in an LJ search about 5 years ago and "friended" me, so I jokingly think of her as my stalker, since at the time all my LJ friends were people I had met. I friended her back and we have read each other's journals since then.

The food was delicious, the service excellent, and we had a great time. I took a photo of us (2 really) with the camera GPS's remote shutter release, I'll upload those when I get home to a real internet connection. Watch this space.

I totally forgot I'd brought one of my calendars to give her. Oh well.

She walked me back to the light rail tunnel, it was about 15 minutes before a train arrived. Back to the con just in time to hear the last three numbers by the GoHs Jeff & Maya Bohnhoff. They were spectacular as always, standing O, encore.

Waited around for open filk, but babies. OMGWTF?

So here I am in the bar, finishing off a quart bottle of sparkling water. There's no wi-fi and no Verizon signal at all in the convention center, huge-assed FAIL.

Also, in order to get from the hotel to the con, you have to walk outside under a covered walkway - covered but totally outdoors, so windy and wet and freezing- up some stairs, up an elevator and to the end of the hall. No free wi-fi in the hotel rooms, just in the lobby & bar.

Bottom line - I won't be back next year.

Plans for tomorrow:
Lots of music to listen to
Lunch with

lemmozine
Meet my sister & her husband for dinner at 13 coins

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: SeaTac Hilton

Had a good night's sleep after the residual feeling of being on the train subsided. Had breakfast at about 10:30, very sweet rum raisin french toast with turkey sausage. It said sausage on the menu, but they were patties. Not the same thing and certainly not worth $6. Very expensive meal, I'll have to brave the cold and eat elsewhere tomorrow.

At 1, I went the mile or so to the con site. I'm staying at the Hilton, and the con site is the Hilton Convention Center, but our rooms are the furthest ones from the convention center, and the con is at the far end of that.

They said they were only registering VIPs, general reg would be at 3. The hike back to the room reminded me that my left knee is acting up too much for this kind of walking, so I went to the light rail station and took the train to Westlake where there is a Bartell's drugs, which I figured ought to have the three things I needed:
A cane
A folding knapsack
Reading glasses (I scratched the pair I had been using, and though I have a spare that would leave me with no spare....)

Found the cane right away - a nice folding one, quite solid.
Found the glasses hidden at the end of an aisle near the photo dept.
No travel knapsack.
I also found a small sewing kit and a dark chocolate salmon.

went across the street to the shopping center and did not find a folding pack, but did find a knapsack which looked like it was by Maurice Sendak, and paid way too much for it in a boutique. Kind of like this one:

Back on light rail to the airport, by now it was late enough to register, so I unfolded the cane, put on the pack and walked to the con.

Went to the con suite, a floor above my room, and was disappointed in the lack of diet coke and munchies. There were crock pots of soups and such, maybe 4 of them, but they didn't look that appetizing.

Stuffed the pack with some auction items & my camera and walked to the con at about 5:30, expecting the room for the 6:30 opening ceremonies would be open. But I forgot this was Conflik, where they set up all the audio for the evening before letting any of the fen into the room. As usual, it was not open by 6:30 either.

They started with announcements, not too many of them, then we sang the Bonhoffs' "Knight's in White Satin" spoof for the con CD. That went very well, it was done in on practice and one take.

we had a break, in which time I donated one of my calendars, the Bloggess' book and the chocolate salmon to the Interfilk auction.

Next up was a concert by a trio from Iowa, "Cheshire Moon". They were adequate musically, but their songs were tuneless, the lyrics utterly forgettable, and I was bored with them quickly.

Then came "burnt Toastmaster" bluesmancd aka CD Woodbury who turned things completely around with a wide variety of pieces and astounding guitar skills. Great showman, knew his audience (brought down the house by starting with a chat about blues, and then launched, blues style, into Code Monkey.). He started out with a Seattle theme. There was a patter song about coffee which drove the sign language interpreter up a wall. There was a lovely tune which described an octopus hunting and killing a shellfish from the shellfish's point o view. A couple of numbers I lost because his guitar drowned out his voice, but it was great guitar playing. He did a touching rendition of Tom Smith's Fantasy Lives and made me cry with a number I had never heard before - Uncle Bonzai's Just One Angel. That alone could have made the con for me. He also did a very scary version of Monsters Under Your Bed. And stuff I don't remember.

From there I went to the Bonhoff's workshop on parody writing, where they basically described exactly the way I write parodies. It was good to hear Anne Prather praising one of lemmozine's classic parodies.

Back to the room, dumped my stuff, hit the con suite because I am very hungry but all I got was a bowl of not quite cooked soup. Back to the room again to get the laptop and bring it to the area with free wi-fi. to write this.

Name dropping dept:
Chatted for a couple of hours last night with Anne Prather. hsifyppah arrived while we were chatting. Also Bill & Carole and Admiral Naismith.

walked back to the room with quadrivium aka Dr. Mary, chatted with lemmozine at the concert break, we'll get together for lunch or something. Good to see Frank Hayes here. Betsy Tinney and her daughter were in the con suite the first time I was there. They tell me Seanan is here but I haven't seen or heard her so it's probably not true yet. Chatted in the con suite with Fleetwolf, whose sketch book is remarkable. Talented guy. He said he wanted advice on what guitar to get as a beginner, and i suggested asking lemmozine, whom I asked at the concert break,and I relayed the suggestion to rent something, but Mr. Fleet lives in Whidbey island, so no chance of that. Saw filkferengi in the con suite too.

Dr. Kathleen was at the workshop with the same pack as mine. She got it at the Chicago Field Museum.

Plans for tomorrow:
Have too much fun at the lunch (used to be a brunch, I like it this way better)
Phone my sister to find out why she hasn't replied to my email about dinner Sunday.
Concerts
Interfilk Auction
Maybe go to the international district for Chinese dinner. Tempted to invite susandennis to join me. I'm not sure what time I'll get there, though. I'd leave here 5:30 or 6, depends on how lucky I am with light rail schedules. And not sure which restaurant to go to.
quadrivium said she has a concert at 10, but I don't see it on the program. I'll be there anyway.

Current Mood: numb
Current Location: SeaTac Hilton

After being 45 minutes late getting to San Jose, the Coast Starlight floored it and got to Oakland on time. They kept all the stops very short, even when we were on time, and made it to Seattle at 8:30 - about 10 minutes early. Last week they ranged from a n hour late to 45 minutes early.

Seattle rain. But I repeat myself.

when we got on the train, those of us in the sleeper cars were offered a chance for a late dinner in the dining car but when I saw that half of the people on their way were screaming-age children, I kept going and bought hot dog and a soda in the lounge car.

My bed was already made up, but for 2 people, with the bunk bed down. No tip for the attendant, who was nowhere to be seen, so I figured out the mechanism and pushed the bunk out of the way myself.

I was very tired, it had been a busy and frustrating day at work (I was on loan to a corporate department) but I got done by 4:30 and left early. Home, finished packing, spent some time with the cats. Got to Amtrak an hour early, plenty of parking, there was a greeter in the waiting area who chatted with all the Coast Starlight customers, but never bothered to call the train status line, so she didn't know the train would be very late until I told her. FAIL.

Mostly uneventful trip. Fitful sleep, but I got a lot of it eventually. I slept right through Dunsmuir and woke up at Klamath Falls at 7:40 am. It was not quite sunrise.

Got out the camera, fired up its GPS, and took a couple of shots just to mark the spot. The trip through the forests was not the winter wonderland it usually is this time of year. There was lots of snow on the ground, but none on the trees. One of the delights of this ride in the 70s was it goes through places people couldn't go, and the only tracks in the snow were animal tracks. Now there are people tracks and snowmobile tracks all over the place . :-(

In fact, at one point in Umpquah National Forest, there was a snowmobile trail with a fancy milepost/map marker.

Not many pictures, it was very overcast, and then there was extreme fog.

Breakfast was interesting. They impose 4-to-a-table seating in the dining car, and my table mates were a mother (60s) and her daughter (40s) and a skinny 30-ish man with many cheap tattoos, including bands across his knuckles. The man hardly said anything, and when he did it was too soft for me to hear. The daughter, however, had quite the tale to tell.

She had taken a cruise to Haiti to go zip-lining. It was for charity, she said. Everything was fine until she got on the plane in Miami to go home to Oregon, but suddenly she couldn't breathe. They took her off the plane, called an ambulance. She had a collapsed lung. Elven days in the hospital, somewhere in there her mom flew out to be with her. Bottom line is she can no longer take a plane. So she & mom got on the train. what caused the collapsed lung? 30 years of smoking. They said it was the pot more than the tobacco. So from no on it's nicotine patches and brownies.

Lunch the forgot to call the 1:30 reservations, I was late so I was seated by myself. Yay! Obnoxious waitress, tried to tell me what to order.

Dinner was in the parlor car, I expected to be by myself, but they paired me with a librarian from Phoenix on her way to a big librarian convention in Seattle. Congenial but boring.

When I got out of the Kind Street Station I turned toward

susandennis's condo and waved, but I'm not sure she still has a view of where I was standing, thanks to a huge building going up in between.

walked through the cold and dripping atmosphere up and around to the Link light rail, tapped my Orca card and went down the stairs just in time to see the train pull away. Good thing I had my Seahawks stadium jacket and gloves.

Arrived at the hotel at about 10, walked halfway around th building before discovering it was the service entrance, then hunted for the reception desk which was well hidden. The signs point in its general direction, but stopped pointing 20 feet too soon.

Fining my room was also a crock. The directions from the desk were to go past the bar and turn right. She forgot to say to then turn left, and look for the elevator. And that my room was on th 2nd floor. The signage did not help either.

Got to the room finally, it is lovely and large, but no fridge. There's a cabinet for one but nothing is inside it.

Unpacked, changed shirts, went back to the lobby to use the free wi-fi (it costs $$ in the room) but ran into many of the usual suspects, some of them locals, and chatted first.

And no to bed, before I fall out of the chair.

Plans for tomorrow:

Sleep in
Lobby, see who is around. Consume mass quantities.
Con officially starts at 6 or thereabouts

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: SeaTac Hilton

Last things first. We had our first rehearsal, the whole cast was called, and they started with a lesson in speaking with an Scots accent. A mild one, which can be understood by Americans. The teacher was someone I had done shows with in the 80s, but I hadn't seen for 20 years. Except on Facebook. He knew his stuff, did an excellent accent himself, and made the whole thing a waste of time for me and most of the cast by pointing out that we shouldn't try the accent while singing. Most of the cast have no speaking parts, we mostly just sing.

It was good to see everyone, and after the lesson the director did a preliminary blocking of the prologue, which I think will change when we try to sing along with it.

The real first rehearsal is next Sunday, potluck followed by intros followed by a read-through/sing-through of the whole show as is traditional. Tonight was the director jumping the gun, probably because the accent expert was available.

The good news is there are some very attractive women without gold bands, lots of redheads and several people I have been onstage with before and am happy to work with again.

Working backward, even though I stayed late at work, I had time to go to the McDonald's nearest the rehearsal hall. It is new and clean and understaffed. It is next to a Costco, so a constant line of drive-thru traffic. The wi-fi is very slow. There is a Starbucks across the parking lot, but I think it closes early. I've been there before.

At work I was able to test some bug fixes, then the boss found me some test cases to write for a different department which doesn't have test tracking software. Or literacy.

At lunchtime I went to Verizon because the Samsung was not getting a phone signal at work or at home. They changed the SIM, but it only raised the signal about half a percent. Did some online research and it looked like the S3 is known for a weak phone signal, but it sells well because everything else works great. I hated to do it, but went on eBay and bought a Moto Razr HD, which apparently solved the crappy camera problem, still has a strong signal, and long battery life.

Here's the funny: I went onto the Moto web site and looked up the employee price: $649.99. Verizon lists full retail as $599.99. On eBay new ones were averaging $450. I got mine for $432.

After Verizon I went to China Stix for the best beef chow fun around.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Pick up the 3rd set of slides from Costco
Make labels for the Boskone art show photos (I emailed them, they responded. They said they were planning on sending all the info on the 22nd. which is really cutting it way too close for a show which opens 2/15). But come to think of it, Conflikt is NEXT WEEK and they don't have a program listing yet.

Current Mood: moody
Current Location: Home

Washed the whites last night, put them in the dryer late, decided they can stay till tomorrow, I have better things to do.

Work was another adventure in automation. Automation Guy told me that a script I wrote in Jython to upgrade the firmware is going into his library. Brownie point for me, I guess. Finally discovered how to make a Do While loop with our scripter program - turns out the loop feature is all I need.

Lunch was stupidity. Four of us went to a new Korean chicken place - it took 15 minutes to get there, half an hour to get a table, 20 minutes to get food after ordering. I keep telling these guys not to go at noon on a Friday. At 1 there were plenty of free tables. We're not on a schedule, we can make lunch hour any time we want. The chicken was very good. The cole slaw was okay. They didn't need to put the cubes of what looked like Jicama in a little bowl on the plate. The stuff which was actually a radish.

After work I got my nails done. Vanessa was busy, she called Joy over. Joy is Asian, speaks Vietnamese to her co-workers, and no-accent American English to the customers. When I mentioned Thailand, she asked if I speak Thai. Turns out she is half Thai, was born there and left when she was 4. We chatted a little in Thai but she was more comfortable with English.

Next stop, the McDonald's nearest the nail place. It looks great on the outside but inside it's a lot older than the one I went to yesterday. Wi-fi was better, but there were no AC outlets. I got a chocolate shake, and sat down to write a book review. After about half an hour, the beeper on something in the kitchen went off, and it just kept getting ignored. Finally drove me out of there, I went home, put the doc on a thumb drive and ported it to the PC to finish it.

It is on its way to

johnnyeponymous for one of his ezines.

Got email from the Brigadoon producer, with a rehearsal schedule. No weekend rehearsals except for the Saturday before we open. This means I won't miss much going to

conflikt (they already know I'll be gone) and I can go to

consonance_con. So I printed a check¹ and an envelope and those will be on their way to Dr. Jim tomorrow. Yay!

Went to reorder litterbox refills, and Amazon has stopped selling them, with a note that there have been many complaints about defects. Yup, I noticed the quality of the last batch sucked. So I found someplace called "wag.com" and ordered from them for about the same price for a 6-pack.

12:15 am noticed I had not eaten yet. Heated up a bagel & yellow cheese-like substance after unwrapping it individually from a sheaf of plastic. Slapped on some lox. Yum. The cats both thought so too.

Everything online tonight took too long, missed the strip club. Must go there tomorrow, I am almost out of 1's. I ran out at work yesterday, had to go to the car and steal some parking meter quarters.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep
Spend quality time with my socks
Football games don't start till 1:30, 49ers at 5. Should be done at a good time for Cheetah's.
¹ Actually, I printed 10 checks. The first 3 were alignment adjustments I was too lazy to make when I first created the check design, then I noticed it still had my old address, and the rest were adjustments to the positioning of the payee, amount, memo and signature lines. I have several tons of blank check paper which came free with the check designer software.

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Home

Just did something I should have done years ago: got my sheet music, music books and lyrics sheets separated out. This stared as a hunt for the music for Edelweiss from The Sound of Music which it turns out I do not have. So much for using it at auditions tomorrow.

The morning started too early. I decided to go back to bed for an hour after the 7 am alarm, an hour being plenty of time to get ready for the 9 am earliest possible mattress delivery. I was up and prepped and dressed by 8:15. The truck arrived at 8:30.

They had not trouble with my request to haul away all the old stuff, including the ugly broken headboard. They were done in 10 minutes. I made the bed before I remembered I had left Domino locked in the office (the litterbox it there, but not food & water). She was parked in her usual spot for when I'm on the PC:

It's also her fave spot to sun herself.

SInce I had gone to bed late and gotten up early I decided to try out the new bed, after going online and seeing that the talk I wanted to go to at Convolution was not till 4 pm. It takes 45 minutes to get to the convention hotel from my place on a weekend. Weekday is more like 90, since it is one exit from SFO.

Managed to get some sleep, but the mattress is a lot more firm that the one in the showroom, and I don't think it is really the model they had in the sleep clinic. I'll give it a few more days before hunting for a softer one. Posturepedic has three models, and I am not sure which one the sleep center had. It's also possible my mattress cover is the culprit. I got up to work on the PC for a bit, and the fixit guy came to collect his blower. This meant finding something to wear in a hurry. I also had him look at the toilets, he agreed they are not doing the job.

On the road a little after 3, but the parking garage was big, the walk to the registration desk was long and there were no signs, and the registration setup was for a convention which was only expecting one walk-in every 10 minutes. So I got to the talk with 3 minutes to spare.

It was worth it.

kproche is an excellent speaker, he had understandable Powerpoint slides, and had a backup plan for when he found out that the convention's program rooms had no internet connection. The talk was 90 minutes (I was thinking 60) and it could have gone longer. Somewhere late in the talk some ringer came in who started asking questions he already knew the answers to. Annoying. I asked a couple of stupid questions, and got smart answers. Bottom line: I learned stuff.

There were no panels/talks after 6, and the only place in the hotel serving food was the overcrowded, noisy bar. I sat under an aircon vent, the only seat available, and was eventually served a pretty good fish & chips with garlic fries while watching USC not quite be a match for Oregon.

The only party advertised was the Klingon Dark Hole, which I went to for about 15 minutes. There were only two places to sit, and those were taken. Small room. I saw a tweet from

johno which got me making the 2-mile hike to the pool pavilion for the Doctor Who themed burlesque show. It was packed, I found a seat by the back door. The good news is there were a series of very clever striptease skits which all had a legitimate Whovian hook. The bad news (YMMV) is all the performers were plus+-sized women, well beyond Rubenesque, which I do not find attractive. The rest of the audience loved it, though.

I left to go to the masked ball, on the opposite side of the hotel, scheduled for 9 pm, but at 9:15 no one was there, there was no music, no nothing. Everyone must have been @ the burlesque show. So I paid the exorbitant parking fee and drove home.

This con is an attempt to salvage the fandom which Baycon has managed to alienate. I think it was a good first try, but they really need to find a 3-day weekend for it, get a Big Name or two as guests of honor, and fix some of the newbie mistakes like lack of signage, under-equipped/understaffed registration desk, too many panels crammed into too short a time frame, and insisting the hotel keep their café open for dinner. Oh yeah, and fix the wi-fi in the events areas.

Home, I watched some college football, gave Domino her whipped cream treat which she barfed a few minutes later, played on FB and wrote this.

Plans for tomorrow:
Shop for see-though drawers of shelves or racks to fit in a 3-foot-wide space in the bedroom so I can finally empty some boxes of things like sweats, linens and electricals which had a home in the old apartment but not here.
Identify & Practice my audition piece
Audition
Meet Janice for coffee
Maybe something after

Current Mood: exanimate
Current Location: Home

Ran out of tissues in the kitchen this morning, and when I went to get one from the cabinet under the sink in the small bathroom, I was hit by a cloud of moldy smell, and saw that all the TP and tissue boxes were soaked. A leak under the sink which I did not notice, maybe for a couple of weeks. I rarely need to look in that cabinet, and rarely use the sink. Went online this morning and placed a work order, but no one showed up today. Tomorrow, probably.

Work was work, a last minute snafu kept me there till almost 7.

Home, flipped between the football and baseball games. Football game was boring, for a change the baseball game was not. Giants were ahead 9-0 then it started pouring down rain harder then I've ever seen it at that ball park. With only half an inning to go (assuming the home team didn't blow a 9-run lead) the officials had them keep playing. It was a mess. They really should have stopped for an hour to let the field drain and the rain slacken. But the momentum was too high, fans were on their feet, and after one pitcher allowed two men on base, The Beard II was sent in to make the final out, which he did, pop fly to the infield, easy catch if it wasn't in a deluge. He made it, no worries.

I am thrilled that the Giants came back from near-elimination in two series in a row, and I was not even thinking that this meant a World Series is next. As far as I am concerned, no matter what happens they are The Little Team That Could™ and that's enough for me. I hope they win the series, but it would be best if they play their next four games like they played their last two, sans torture.

Am furious about the Lance Armstrong witch hunt. He has hurt no one, and he has saved many lives. He made a spectacular recovery from cancer to become one of the best endurance athletes of all time, and that would have been true whether he won 7 Tour de Frances or just finished them. I think the latest findings are a crock, due process has not taken place, and the Tour president is a total asshole for saying Armstrong should be forgotten. If the allegations were true, and I don't think they are, it's the Tour which should be forgotten for its shoddy testing, and their president should resign in disgrace.

Been coughing a lot. Dry cough, just a reflex, so this evening I broke out the flowering Jasmin tea. It helped a little, but not enough.

Last night I took 1/2 a vicodin, and it worked pretty well on the knee pain, and did not put me to sleep at work. The knee is not bothering me tonight so I'll skip it.

Yesterday I finally opened the tub of Tollhouse cookie dough and baked 2 1/2 dozen. I'd bought the tub originally planning to make the cookies for the Green Room for our final week, but there was a ton of food those three nights, so I never got around to it. Now I have munchies in the freezer. I like taking the frozen ones out and nuking them in the microwave for a few minutes

Now that my San Diego trip is done, I sat down with Word and put together my itinerary for Conflikt fil convention in Seattle at the end of January. I will be 62 by then, which gets me Amtrack's senior discount (better than the AAA discount) but not Hilton's, for which one has to be 65. When I thought I would be flying to the con, I booked just the weekend (Friday-Sunday) at the con hotel, but taking the train will add 2 days because it gets into SEA after 9 pm and the return trip starts at about 9 am. Awkward. Hilton has a pay-in-advance rate which is $1 less than the con rate, and when we get closer to the date and I am sure I'm taking all that time off, I'll cancel the con rate reservation and book the full Thurs-Mon at the pre-pay rate. It's a no-refund, no-changes rate. The regular rate is $15 a night more than the con rate.

Time now to get the shirts out of the dryer and hung in the closet.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Home

Is what it felt like. Team meeting at work, boss is back from Thailand. Closed one feature request, tested a new feature which was buggy in the previous build, the thing which was wrong was fixed in the new build, but they broke something else (less severe). So one giant leap forward and a micro step back.

Lunchtime was Costco for gas, refill inkjet cartridges (or buy new ones) and p/up Worldcon prints. Got gas, but they don't refill the cartridges I need and don't sell them either. Picked up the prints, was suspicious when both auto-corrected and non were in the same envelope. Got them back to work and discovered they had made a booboo and forgot to turn off auto-correct on three prints, which made two of them useless and one not quite as good as I wanted. Instead of going back to hassle them I just ordered them from the other Costco, to be picked up after work. After 7 pm, actually. That meant no BASFA.

Had time to drive down to Great America and take a peek at the 49ers stadium construction in high gear. Four big orange cranes barely fit on the site. Lunch at Togo's nearby, then back to work.

Not much to do, so I read some specs.

Home, took a nap, picked up the three prints at Costco in MV, then drove to Aaron Brothers in Svale and had to explain all over again what I wanted because the fellow I talked to last time was not there. The nice woman understood just fine, came up with the same price. Something I forgot to ask last time was if they shipped, but they don't. Not a big deal, I need to send by UPS with pre-paid return, and I think I have a box from the last move. If not I'm sure UPS will help with that.

Home, dinner was corned beef and stuffing. Domino liked the corned beef till it dried out. Replacement soda siphon arrived, and is working just fine. Same brand as the last one. Email from Amazon said the other brand was out of stock, so got only one not two.

Watched some Olympics, but this FF for hours is getting old. And Tivo's list of what's in each program is not always correct. I think I'll switch to BBC online or Youtube to see what I want. So far none of the boxing matches have featured actual boxing. Have yet to see any women's gymnastics except floor routines. And very few US team sports. At Togo's they had the USA-Hungary women's water polo, but they apparently left the horses behind. The TV display was broken, so we only saw the USA score. :-(

No rehearsal tomorrow night. Not sure what I'll do.

No plans for tomorrow except work.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: New Furball Hall

As planned Saturday was mostly about going through all the photos I had taken since the last Worldcon, and choosing 20 for the upcoming one. It took almost all day. There were patio breaks (lovely weather, not much of a view) with Domino, who has started to camp out there if I leave the door open. Now that it's cat-proofed I'm fine with that. In the mornings she finds a spot in the sun and splays out on the concrete, other times she either sits on her chair (it's a standard patio chair with a generic cushion) or on my chair (same kind of chair but the cushions are Chinese silk and there are 2 of them).

First pass was about 30 pix. I cut some good ones which I'd used before, and then a few which had no sci-fi appeal. That got me down to 20, but I remembered I wanted to have one of my Unwoman photos in the set, so I picked one and she gave me permission to use it, so it took the place of a not quite as good macabre make-up photo of one of my roller girl friends. Great make-up, less than great lighting job. And there was another tough decision to oust one of my model rocket favorites for a still life from Kanchanaburi. Thirteen of my best Thailand shots did not make the cut. They may not all make the 2013 calendar either.

That's one difference between hand-made art and photography. I can produce hundreds of gallery-worthy images a day.

Now I need to fill in the bid sheets and labels. Well, not now, but soon.

Next chore was to sign each photo using a macro I'd created in Photoshop last month. It's pretty nifty - I have a signature scan in cobalt blue which was sized to be like an artist's signature on my standard Nikon 12.3 megapixel JPGs, and the macro takes that, finds the right-hand margin and then the bottom margin and slaps the signature in the lower right, then merges it with the photo and saves the picture. It only takes about 15 minutes for 20 photos.

I had tried logging into Costco.com, but got a 500-level error which said the site was down for maintenance. It stayed that way all day and night, so uploading and printing would have to wait.

Part of the plan was to drink soda water with fresh-squeezed lime while I was doing this, but my soda siphon leaked all over the fridge, twice - the second time with a replacement tube - so that didn't happen.

After the photo project was as done as it could be without costco.com, I drove to Bevmo to buy a replacement siphon. They don't have any, they only have the cartridges. Boo. Hiss. There's a massage place next door which I had never tried, so I tried it. Very poor massage. She didn't know what she was doing. It didn't hurt so I didn't complain.

Home, ordered a siphon online (two, actually), watched some Olympics on Tivo. The only way to watch, because the commercials are repetitive and mostly stupid, and so are the announcers. Way too much intro crap, and they bundle events in the most bizarre way. They may show several hours of cycling in the same segment as a short burst of gymnastics. Swimming gets decent coverage, and there was some boxing which was contiguous, but last night one chunk was 11 hours, and Tivo can't FF that fast.

Slept well, almost slept in this morning. I tried Costco on the cell phone, and Google showed it was working. It needed the www. They really need to change the system down message on the costco.com site to a redirect. Anyhow, that let me upload and order prints. They should be done tomorrow afternoon.

Also printed out the music & script for Anything Goes and put that in a folder.

Noon-ish, put the baritone in the car and drove to the park for the monthly YOTB concert. The new guy showed up, and so did our student, so we had a record 6 baritones. Also 4 tubas, and two more trumpets than ever before. It was an easy concert for us, he chose music which was not lip-splitting.

From there to Fedex/Kinko's, where I bought a 3-ring binder and dividers and used their hole punch on the script & music. Then home for some Domino time and more Olympics.

6-ish, off to rehearsals. I was only half an hour early, but no one else showed up for 15 minutes. My friend David, another bass, who had performed in a matinee at Foothill that afternoon. People mostly arrived right on time or a few minutes late. It was not very hard music, though some of the bass line is WTF. I hate it when it jumps all over the place, bass lines ought to stay toward the bottom of the staff. The final note in the show is kind of a WTF, almost everyone is singing the same note. Ought to end in thrilling mind-blowing 12-part harmony.

It was good to spend the day being musical.

Home, dinner, watched some Muay Thai instead of Olympics.

Voted for the Hugos. The only one I felt strongly about is the short story, and I'm 90% certain my choice will not win, due to the overwhelming popularity of one of the other entrants, whose entry IMHO was either the worst short story ever, or a brilliant "best related work" which probably would not have fared well against Jar Jar Binks Must Die.

As a fan of irony and recursive humor, I sincerely hope

johnnyeponymous wins for the video of his 2011 Hugo acceptance ~~speech~~ melt-down. I also hope Drink Tank wins again because the sample submitted was one in which many of my photos were used as fillers, and I had an article in it too, which would make me something like 11/300th of a Hugo winner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Costco: P/U prints, get gas, see if they can refill Epson inkjet cartridges. Otherwise buy a set.
Aaron's - leave the prints for mounting.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Well hello there, using Dragon naturally speaking to dictate this and we'll see how it goes.

Okay well the first rule was it doesn't provide punctuation. So I have to provided myself! Even spaces.

Spent the morning playing with TiVo the new Wi-Fi was not very good or should I say it was about the same as the old Wi-Fi. That almost made me late for work but not quite - I got there about 10. And there was a lot of stuff to do. There were some bug reports to look at. And that was a thrill because they are written by people whose native language could be anything from Chinese to Hindu to Spanish and on rare occasions English. And these are all for a product that was suppose to have been end-of-life about two builds ago. But as with any company that is very customer conscious every time customers say no we need this piece of equipment will put new features in it and that's where we are right now.

So all day was spent looking at bugs that had allegedly been fixed by engineering and finding out if they really were and if they were closing them and if they were not reopening them and that really was all day and right about the end of the day, as I was looking at one last bug before I left, I found another bug on that same feature. That was a good place to turn off the computer and the decide to finish that bug tomorrow because writing bugs takes a long time.

Lunch was at a place called Dusit, a very tiny Thai restaurant which I have not been to enough, it was the first one my boss took me to when I was hired in 2007.

During the day I received e-mail from the theater inviting me to be one of the ensemble in Anything Goes. I can't say I agree with their choice of casting, so I had to think about that for a while and decided to ignore it since the e-mail said some people might not get back to them for a few days. More on that later…

Had a one-on-one with my boss it was mostly going over the bugs that I'd been working on all day, and talking a little bit about the transit of Venus photos that he'd "supervised" yesterday. And we were joking about the fact that he has a telescope in a box under his desk that he has been using as a foot rest, while I have a telescope that's been in my closet for months, because for both of us it's just been too cold outside to do any astronomy at night. Hopefully, the weather will get warmer and we will be able to use those wonderful toys.

After work was the expedition to buy the makings for chicken soup. But first as usual I stopped off at Starbucks and had a soy frappuchino and a morning bun. So the first stop after that was Safeway which traditionally does not have chicken gizzards which are essential in my homemade chicken soup, but one can always hope. I did manage to get some essential chicken soup ingredients like bananas only because they were on sale for $.49 a pound. But seriously I was able to get barley, split green peas, dried lima beans. yellow onions, carrots, celery, salad onions which I ended up not using, and about 96 ounces of chicken broth, low-sodium style. As usual, Safeway did not have chicken gizzards, but they did have a sale on chicken thighs and drumsticks (as one unit), so I bought a pack of that.

Since it was on the way home I went to Lucky's, which did have chicken gizzards so I bought twice as much as I needed, and while I was there I stocked up on hummus. Oh look! According to my receipt I actually bought the chicken broth at Lucky's.

Home, there was a box with Dragon naturally speaking inside of it, but that had to wait until I chopped up stuff and made a cauldron full of chicken soup, and set that on half heat. Easy to say but it took about an hour. And here it is about three hours later, I turned the heat down to simmer, and that will be on very low heat overnight sort of like it was in a crockpot.

Next order of business was to send e-mail to the producer and tell him that as long as they were okay with a non-dancing ensemble member, I would love to be in the show. He replied that they wouldn't have asked me unless they wanted me, and welcomed me to the show. So now I am really interested in seeing who they cast in the big parts that I wanted.

And after that I finally got around to sending in my bio and picture myself and a sample of my photo art to the WorldCon art show people.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Ye Olde Towne Band rehearsals

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Home of the Lost

Yesterday's Gone by the Beatles always sounded like "Yesterday's Gun" to me and big sister. We made up lots of alternative lyrics, none of which can I remember mumble mumble years later.

So, work was productive once I finally got there. Next stop: Aaron's art & framing, chatted with the guy who does photo mounting and what I want to have done for Worldcon is amazingly affordable, and can be done in less than a week. The plan is 20 12x18 prints, which ought to fit on two 4'x6' panels in the art show. I have enough prints to do that right now, but really want to wait till I get back from Thailand, since I usually get good fantasy-friendly photos there (temple dragons & demons, etc.). One less thing to worry about. Now I have to send in my application and $$.

Next door is Trader Joe's, and on the lactose-free shopping list was sardines. The Kaiser hint list said that without dairy products, calcium is an issue, which can be solved with the intelligent application of sardines (or any fish which have edible bones). Makes sense, and I love sardines, and so does Domino. TJ's layout is such that one person with a hand basket can block an aisle, so it took a long time to even find the nook where sardines were hidden. Before I found it I found corn, sourdough whole wheat bread, onion bagels, "this is not a tub of cream cheese" non-dairy spread (which I did not buy but was amused by), frozen ready-to-eat falafel and frozen egg rolls. In he sardine aisle was also canned kippers, so I got some of those too. Then it was my turn to block traffic, looking for milk-free chocolate which is in the kiosks next to the cash registers. It took a lot of reading at four kiosks before I found something which didn't look like it would taste like chalk.

On the way home the clock was seriously ticking because I wanted to get to Santa Clara to see The Nerd but needed to put away the frozen food first. Got to the theater with 15 minutes to spare, and it being Thursday and not a murder mystery, there were plenty of seats. My review is locked, so for the rest of you, it needs a lot of work. And it is not about a nerd, it is about an annoying person. There is nothing nerdy about the show. I'd say wait till closing weekend to see it, and don't be ashamed to go home at intermission. The final 3 minutes wrap things up well, but are also a big WTF. I did not stick around after to thank the cast.

Home, starving. Put on a pot of water, shucked two corn cobs, got out the cleaver and cut them in half, plopped them into the water and set the timer. Did some stuff on the PC, then dinner was the 4 pieces of corn with margarine, a can of sardines, and a huge spoonful of chunky peanut butter for dessert.

Current Mood: rushed

The only plan for today was to listen to some lectures at Contact, have lunch and pack up my photos.
All the talks had good content, two of the speakers actually knew how to speak to an audience.

Jim Pass - "Medical Astrosociology: A Combination of Space Medicine and Social Science" had a ton of interesting info about what to expect from various societies in space and in lunar and planetary colonies. Dr. Pass started out okay but by the end of his talk was not easy to hear. His slides made up for that, they were filled to the brim with detail. During the Q&A he got back to speaking into the mike.

Chad Rohrbacher - "Curriculum Guide for Using SF to Teach Science" is a subject I am fond of. Chad is a professor, he speaks well, has a sense of humor, and his slides were talking points rather than jam-packed with every word of his lecture. My only complaint is he cited three or four people on the slides, only giving the full name of one. None of them were household names.

Dennis Etler - "China's Vision of the Future" sounded like it could have been dull, and Etler not having any slides was not a good omen, but the guy has a powerful stage voice, he made the mike redundant, and he is super articulate, had good notes in front of him, and did a fine job of comparing and contrasting China's version of communism with the Soviet Union's, and basically gave a warning that unlike the USA, China has a clear vision of its future in space, and has a head start since most of those wheels have already been invented. Who would have guessed he is a paleontologist?

Lunch was at the Fish Market, delicious cup of clam chowder, right-sized crab & shrimp louie with blue cheese dressing instead of that godawful hundred islands of ketchup dressing, way too heavily sugared apple crisp. Pricey, but excellent food & service. At lunch I started reading Water For Elephants, having finished The Forever War last night. Riveting, is WFE. Looks to be a very quick read, unlike FW.

From there to the big Starbucks, got a view seat right away, and have been building April Fools images for FB. The first one was a Dalai Lama quote attributed to Abe Lincoln, the next two were Abe Lincoln quotes attributed to the Dalai Lama. I posted the first one here too.

Will go home soon and spend some quality time being ignored by the cat.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Lawrence & El Camino Starbucks

I had three Plan A's today:
Meet sis before she had to fly back up north
Hear at least the two talks on cetacean language learning at Contact (which meant obtaining a free pass)
Attend the art show at 5 and meet some of the attendees.

Done, done and done. Sis was at the Snot's Valley farmer's market when I texted her, and she was going to continue on to the one in Santa Clara from there. We met at the SC market at about noon, it was raining and half the farmers had already packed up but she still had lot of fun sampling cheese (cheese guy: "Have you ever tried curds" Me: "Not since Afghanistan") and then she told me all about the 14 different varieties of oranges at one stand, feeding me samples as she went, and fed me a slice of Asian pear at another (they are hard to find on the Olympic Peninsula), and she told the guy with the biggest selection of veggies he should move his beets to the front. A fun time with a master gardener. Then we went for a quick bite to eat, and then it was time for her to be on her way.

And me too - went to the Domain Hotel, found the art show director who took me up to registration where an old theater friend was in charge, and gladly made a badge for me. I saw four presentations and walked out on a fifth. Almost walked out on the second and third, they were like a bad movie you know has to get better but only gets worse.

First talk was Bill Clancey - "Belief Systems and Cross-Cultural Communication". Bill covered a lot of area in the world of psychology on how we develop our belief systems, and what it takes to change them. He lost my vote when he poo-pooed the scientists who try to convert human systems into mathematical formulas and study them through math. It's one of the things my dad did for fun, and it works if you understand math. Bill apparently does not. But he did have a lot of good stuff, most of it was work done by others with him giving his opinions about their work.

What I really wanted to hear was the talk by Roberta Goodman - "Learning Cetacean Languages". Turns out Roberta is a dolphin lover, not an effective researcher. The two can certainly go together, but in this case, not. She made a lot of claims about being able to recognize some dolphin words, but she had no recordings or data. Toward the end she put the nail in the coffin by asking if anyone knew how to slow down the recordings and clean them up a bit. I've had that technology since the early 80s. Any podcaster knows how to do it. Too much time underwater, I guess.

I was hoping the next talk would redeem the dolphin talk track: Peter Sugarman "DNA Code Principles for Two-Way Communication with Extra-terrestrials", but it had nothing to do with DNA or extra-terrestrials except in the very semantic sense that since dolphins are not land animals they are not terrestrial. Gag me. He was dead boring as a speaker, his slides were unreadable, and he ended by suggesting that we need to teach dolphins a language which we would learn together with them, and he suggested one called aUI by W. John Weilgart, who died in 1981. Gag Me^2.

Best presentation by far was billed as Gus Frederick - "Graphics of the Gilded Age: The Original Steam Punk Art" but it was really a brilliant Powerpoint presentation of American newspaper cartoons from the time of Pres. Grant to about 1901. He had half an hour to cover an hour's worth of stuff, I would have gladly stayed for more, but there was yet another speaker:

David Sanborn Scott- "Always Begin with the End in Mind: Hydricity" . I walked out when he looked at the microphone and said something rude about "technology". His opening slide was Just Plain Ugly and his opening line was that Hydricity is power from Hydrogen. Or something like that. He spoke too softly to be heard, even with the mike.

Went to the con suite, chatted with some folks but mostly Ed from BASFA. A litle before 5 I went to the art show, and there were maybe 25-30 people who walked though, some of them had nice things to say about my photos. The biggest hit was the close-up of a naked Hangar One.

After an hour the place had turned into a series of bottlenecks of non-art-related private conversations, so I left. Went to the Starbucks down the block, it's a big one, plenty of seating this time (spring break and the rain helped). Hit Lucky's in the same shopping center for some essentials, like bananas, goat brie and sauerkraut.

Plans for tomorrow:
If I wake up in time, the Contact talks from 10-11:30 look interesting.
3 pm start taking down the photos and packing up.
Maybe find someone on whom to pull an April Fools joke.
Or get a massage.

Current Mood: fulfilled
Current Location: Home

Got to work about 10 minutes after the donuts were gone. Work was mostly research today.

No lunch break, left at 3:30 to go to the Domain Hotel and help set up for the art show at Contact. Chatted with a couple of the artists, walked to KFC for dinner, then back to the art show where there was supposed to be a reception but wasn't. I think a grand total of a dozen people walked through. There was enough room for me to hang all 15 of the photos I'd prepared. Also had a stack of 2012 calendars to give away, only one was left by the time we closed up at 9.

Office Depot called, apparently the laptop I'd dropped off at the Sunnyvale store to be picked up never was picked up. When they called the store (I was on hold - I should have been part of the call) she came back on the line to tell me the store manager says that model was out of stock. IDIOT. I straightened her out, and she said she would refer the case to a higher authority. A few hours later the higher authority called back, said the package would be picked up on Monday, and I would get my refund when it arrived.

These people are complete idiots, I will not be buying anything online from them again.

Also got a reply from the cretin at Garmin. I asked how I could use my POI data and my new map at the same time. Instead, he emailed me a cut and paste canned response to "how do I make a POI data SD card?" This time I replied in 30 pt. type, very simple words with key phrases bold and underlined.

Sis had a great time at her workshop in SCruz. I think the plan is to meet up in the morning before her 1 pm flight back to SEA. No idea why she isn't staying the weekend.

Also, the photo shoot I was signed up for tomorrow night was postponed till May. Organizer claimed it was due to photog cancellations and not enough attendees, but looking at the meetup.com event listings, all but one of the three sessions was sold out, and that one only had 2 out of 10 spots open. Probably the organizer wasn't able to book a venue (it was still TBA on the listings).

Plans for tomorrow:
Meet up with sister
Attend some of Contact

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: New Furball Hall

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: rejuvenated
Current Location: Home of the Weird

The weekend was mostly spent staying up too late, sleeping too late and attending the local filk con Consonance.

First of all, I have to say that Seanan McGuire was brilliant and a half as toastmaster. She is smart as a whip, twice as quick, and COMMANDS a room. I am sorry I missed her Friday concert, in which pretty much every well-known filker on the planet participated, from what they tell me. But I've seen that before, so it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to attend BarBot, which I had not seen before.

I mostly went for the concerts, which were kind of sparse this year, or seemed so to me. They started well with Tim Griffin, who writes and sings mostly things for the grade school classes he teaches, and they are fun and he has a flair for understated showmanship. Check out his web site, where all his tunes can be played all the way through. I especially like this album: The Da Vinci Chord and identified with Leonardo's Mother and loved Lunch Lady. Next up was Brooke Lunderville, who sang mostly new stuff, and some covers I did not recognize. She did end with The Wreck of the Crash, which almost everyone in filk knows by now. As always, she added lots of laughs with her between-song banter.

Next were Two-fers. I ducked out to the con suite for a while and missed a couple. The con suite continues the tradition of being the best stocked and maintained con suite in condom. Wait - there must be a better word than that!

Next concert was Interfilk guests Partners in K'Rhyme aka W. Randy Hoffman & Kira Heston. They abandoned their usual a Capella funny songs to concentrate on a lot of ose numbers so they could co-opt the services of the many available instrumentalists (one at a time, mostly) to accompany them. I would rather have heard their usual presentation. The Interfilk auction was kind of sparse this time around, and mostly consisted of CDs and DVDs recorded at filk cons, which all went for >$100. There was less wenching than usual, bidding went too quickly. There was no chocolate. :-(

For dinner I went next door to Nijo Castle. It was way early (5:30) and I was brought to a table all the way at the back. At first the service was fast, but then a family group of about 20 took the row of tables between me and the kitchen, and from then on I was abandoned. I was impressed at how well they served the big group, though. But 15 minutes to wait for someone to notice I was done eating and another 20 minutes from ordering dessert to receiving it - from a busboy, who also kindly refilled my iced tea which had been empty half an hour before. I had the sashimi/tempura combo. Sashimi was cut too thick, and one of the pieces of tuna was full of gristle. The tempura was fine, as was the salad, and the miso soup, which was served in a cup designed to look like a little barrel.

10% tip was generous, if I go there again it will be with a group.

Back to the con, WTF concert of the evening by a group called Tell Yer Ma. They did some zombie numbers. There was some humor there. But it was hillbilly washboard stuff, not a match for a filk con.

Highlight of the evening I expected to be the GOH concert, all four of the 3 Weird Sisters. I ♥ their newest/youngest member Mary Crowell, so I had high expectations. Also, phenom harpist Gwen Knighton had come from England, and I ♥ her playing as well. There was a lot of sibling banter, some of which was ROFL worthy. A few of the songs were amusing, but for the most part they concentrated on tight harmonies, and it got old for me. Oppressive. There is only so much of that I can take. I know some folks can wallow in it forever, and I know it's a skill requiring a lot of rehearsal. But so does Wagner's Ring cycle.

They also invited in fiddler Amy McNally, who played in almost everyone's concert. That got old too.

The sound check ran long, and the concert ran longer. I'm very surprised that Kristoph was not as organized this year as usual, he did not have his wires labeled and kept plugging guitars into a busted port on his ancient Mackie mixer. Unlike Conflikt's audio staff, he and

johno had most of the sets up and running in minutes. Irony here - the couple who run Conflikt's audio, which had a similar sound check last for 90 minutes, were at the con, but I kept running into them outside the concert hall. They could have learned a few things by watching from the front row. They are the sweetest people in the world, I really would like them to do an award-worthy job.

Kristoph played some hilarious special effects games with Toastmaster Seanan. She rolled with it superbly. Love it!

I was filked out, so I went home and dumped the photos onto the PC and converted them to jpegs.

Slept in again, got there in time for Stich & Yammer with Gwen Knighton but did not see Gwen there, and they had shifted from the nice ballroom across the lobby from the main con to a nook in front of the restrooms by the emergency exit near the main ballroom. It made for some good WTF photography. At the same time in the ballroom was English Country Dance, but only the leader and two others attended.

Concerts started at 1 with Bill Roper whom I had seen a couple of times solo and with his wife. This time he had Amy joining him. I would rather have heard him solo for most of the numbers. Amy is an excellent improviser, and was the new toy of the con performers. I admire her skill, but since I am also great at picking up tunes I haven't heard before, I'm not all that impressed. It's called "playing by ear", and IMHO is a heck of a lot easier than playing from sheet music. Trouble is I only improvise well enough on brass instruments, which was not in high demand on filk stages. And I can't sing while I play them. Amy doesn't sing along either, come to think of it.

Next up was Instaband, which normally is two or three bands chosen from names picked out of a hat. This time there were only enough names for one band. Cute song by

figmo, sung by Nick and Bill, who needed a lot more practice.

Twofers followed, with Jeff & Maya Bohnhoff + Vixy doing one humorous and one ose song, Kathleen Sloan sang something which I have forgotten and then her own tune Box of Fairies which was based on the liner notes from Gwen Knighton's CD of the same name. It made me cry, and totally broke Gwen. Last one up was Kitty Crowe and her autoharp.

That was the end of official Consonance concerts, next was rock jam, which hurt my ears the last 2 times I stayed for it. Janice wanted to get together at 4:30 on the other side of the Bay, so I bailed and joined her for an hour.

Home, dumped and processed the con photos, interrupted by a low Hgl moment which prompted dinner. Domino camped out on the arm of the chair, but would not eat anything I gave her from my plate. Eggs & toast.

Photos are in two sets: ( Behind the cut )

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. 9 am team meeting
BASFA? Maybe.

Current Mood: drained
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Box of Fairies

Third and last day of the con. Slept till 10 again. By the time I got to the two-fers, they were done. Not much interest in 10 am by the performers. Songwriting contest started late - apparently an hour was not enough time for the concert sound checks. The contest had three entries, the theme was "red" and two of the entries were about red ink markup. Creed's song I liked best, he ran through a cornucopia of what red meant, ending with a stop sign. Abrupt ending FTW.

Walked to 7-11 for lunch, but more for the free ATM. It is up a very steep hill, and it was raining and windy. I am so glad I brought my Seahawks stadium jacket and gloves. Got a couple of hot dogs and some chips. Brought them back to the hotel to eat.

Concerts were half an hour late, but panels/stuff in the small room were on time. Saw the Betsy Tinney concert, which was interesting. She accompanied herself (on cello) on a looper. Skipped the next concert to go to Talis Kimberly's A Capella Crafting Circle. I had not read the description, and thought it was a workshop on crafting a capella songs or singing. Turns out it was a knitting circle with people singing. I sang a song.

Back to concerts, a group called We're not Koi, which included Judy Miller on banjo and vocals instead of signing.

Next was Allegra Sloman, someone whose name I forget soon after I've seen her, but I always enjoy her music.

Band Scramble was a workshop in how not to organize microphones. 10 minutes each to balance sound. And after all that there is still buzz and low-level feedback. And musicians yelling that they can't hear themselves or an instrument in the monitors. It shouldn't be this complicated. At least this time they had the mikes color coded and the jacks for instruments labeled.

The stage-left step had been rocky through the whole con, and should have been removed/replaced the first night, but wasn't, until this evening, when a cellist tripped, fell, and broke the head off the cello. Cellist says she is undamaged, and I hope that's true but it looked like there will be bruises, at least. A collection was started for the repair of the instrument, but something like this has to be covered in the con's liability. If the step was provided by the hotel, then they should be on the hook for it too.

Skipped the farewell jam, as things have tended to be more ose than I want at a fun con, and walked in the rain and wind half a mile to 13 Coins for dinner. The first time I went there was when it was new, 1967 or 1968, it is open 24 hours which was unheard of back then, and it's definitely high end. I had planned to sit at the counter, which has swiveling high-back seats which sort of wrap around, but when I sat down there was no leg room, so I switched to a table in the lounge.

Service was very slow, even though there were only two other tables occupied. I got to listen to two blondes gossiping about their friend who had to get a restraining order against some stalker or husband, while I waited to order.

No clam chowder. What kind of high class NW restaurant does not have clam chowder? Boo. Hiss. Settled for cream of mushroom, which was luke warm when I got it. However, the antipasto and sourdough bread made up for it. Ordered the crab Louie. It took 20 minutes, and was a minimalist version. Two lettuce leaves supported a glob of crab meat, recently liberated from its can. A weak 1,000 island dressing was drizzled over it. I should have asked for dressing on the side. Also on the plate were two artichoke hearts which had seen fresher days, two halves of a hard boiled egg from the fridge, maybe a week old. And four quarters of a small heirloom tomato. And two halves of a small lemon.

It tasted okay, but was not worth the highly inflated price. Hot fudge sundae for dessert was pretty good.

Back into the storm, but the rain had mostly stopped and the wind was at my back. Halfway to the hotel I passed all the con guests of honor apparently bound for where I had been.

Back to my room just to hang up my coat, then down to the smoked salmon filk. There was some entertainment to be had, but then a lot of strident stuff, and a lot of people banging drums which made it hard for me to hear the words.

I'd been checking my webcams all day and had not seen either cat, at all. Not too alarming, since they both have favorite spots to plunk down out of camera range. Finally found them both, Pumpkin curled up against the big water bowl, Domino on the bed near the pillows.

Left at about 9:30 so I could write this and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

It was a fun con, and maybe I'll go again next year. One perk is

bluesmancd will be Toast next year. It was wonderful seeing him at the con, he's been through way too much foo the past couple of years, and I love the way he plays guitar, especially when he gets roped into playing backup at a moment's notice.

Plans for tomorrow:
If I'm up in time for breakfast, I'll have that in the hotel, and with luck

lemmozine will be there too.
Pack
Check-out at noon
Flight at 4 pm, so lunch & hang out at the airport

Current Mood: fulfilled
Current Location: Seatac Holiday Inn
Current Music: Emerald Green

Woke up after 10. This is a very comfortable hotel - I'm sleeping longer and deeper than I am at home, and with more structured dreams. Though I can't remember any details.
When I tried to charge a couple of Cokes to my room, the front desk said there was no one in that room. They would not listen to me about the two reservations, and we had quite a 3 Stooges thing going with two desk clerks and a trainee, before one of them figured out that I was supposed to have been given paperwork for the 2nd reservation to sign. It took about 15 minutes.

I caught Anne's concert, a few minutes late, I think she did one number with the harp which I missed, the rest was on guitar. She's always enjoyable.

Then up to the top floor for the luncheon. In theory they had sold out, but there were several empty seats - two at my table. We had Bill & Carole & Harold & filkerferenghi & Neil &

lemmozine. The food did not impress me, except for the cheesecake.

We were given a stupid phrase and an unrelated word for the seeds of our instafilk song. I was uninspired. Bill & Lem had something going but it did not click for me. Carole wrote her own, which was pretty close to what I had in mind. Then only thing I could see doing with the stupid phrase was make it into a chant refrain, which is what she did.

There were a lot of good entries, a lot of it had to do with the luck of the draw of seed words. Every table had enough talent.

Twofers, which I love to go to, only got one sign-up, because they had it opposite Tony & Vixy. It could easily have been moved up an hour when T&V sound check was going on. T&V did an excellent concert as usual, but I was disappointed they did not play emerald green.

Riverfolk was next, and contrary to what their name sounded like, they did an all-filk set. I loved what they did with Popsicle Girl. The sign language signers were a total hoot in that one. Interfilk auction, as usual, went higher than I wanted to pay for everything, but that's good, they need the money, Unlike the BASFA auction, Interfilk bidders bid high to help fund the operation.

I wasn't going to the songbook singalong, which gave me time to take light rail to Othello Street for dinner. Unfortunately the one and only Chinese place was closed for a private party. I stopped in at Safeway for cough drops and donettes, then found an upstairs Pho place, which had a really good #8. $7 for dinner. $4.50 rail fare.

Back to the hotel in time for Talis Kimberly, except that something was seriously wrong with the sound system, or so they told us, and it started more than an hour late. Not cool.

I had never heard Talis in person, but had heard many covers of her songs. In person she is a perky, energetic performer, but I didn't understand hardly any of her songs. I hear the words, they don't make sense to me. It happens, especially when the writer is a fan of some book series I'm not interested in.

Toastmonster

hsifyppah killed. It was so good to have her awesomeness there again. She had a lot of new material, and closed with what is already a filk classic. She did not do my favorite song of hers, but I wouldn't have either, under the circumstances. It was really neat when she called her mother-in-law (stand-up bass) and father-in-law (guitar) up on stage.

I wasn't sure if I would like the GoH concert by Brenda & Bill Sutton, so I went to my room and pulled it up on streaming. There were enough buffer under-runs to make that not enjoyable so I went back to the concert room and listened. They did more filk than I expected, but much of it was heavy. Not my favorite music, but they are good musicians.

I think I'll go down to open filking for a little while.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast at the hotel
Two-fers II if I'm fed in time (10)
Song writing contest
Lunch break maybe at the con suite, or maybe hike up to 7-11 (and use the cash machine)
Concerts/panels as the mood strikes
Band scramble
farewell jam
sharps & flats
supper - Maybe go downtown again.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Seatac Holiday Inn

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