Writing Wrongs

I moderated the panel on The Care And feeding of Performers with my tummy grumbling because I had another panel just before it and no chance to eat lunch. And then Match Game SF half an hour after that. So I bailed on the opening ceremonies/meet the guests and drove out to the mall and had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.

As I was eating dessert there was a lot of banging going on and I was about to complain to the waitress until I saw the fireworks through the window behind the bar. I took half the cheesecake to go, and went outside and watched from the sidewalk, kind of through trees but they only hid the low stuff, so I saw enough. went to the car after, mostly to get away from all the smoke, turned on the engine and air conditioning for a bit, but after 5 minutes it was clear that there was no way I was leaving any time soon the way the traffic was. Sacto drivers have no consideration at all, cutting each other off and making a huge mess blocking intersections and making intersections that aren't there. The mall had a minimal amount of traffic minions, and they were stationed ineffectively.

As I was waiting (turned off the engine, rolled down the windows, took out the Kindle) I saw what looked like a designated area for people to shoot off their own fireworks, and it was strategically located near the Arco station.

I was there for an hour. Still a lot of traffic when I left, but mostly sane. On the way back to the hotel there were two other fireworks displays going on not too far away. went up to the party floor 12) but none of the parties on that side of the building were paying any attention to the fireworks, most of them had that window blocked.

So I went downstairs and caught the last 1.5 episodes of MST3K with voiceover done by two of the guys who were on the comedy panel, who do a Dr. Who podcast. The episodes were Dr. Who, Sylvester.

Back to the 12th floor in search of hydration and munchies, but there was not much by then.

And then the power went out.

The whole hotel was blacked out, it was half an hour before emergency lights came on. About another half hour and lights came on again. It was fun, except for three or four people who thought turning on a flashlight was a good idea. I found a party  which had a battery-lit lemonade dispenser which was dispensing sangria. Very pretty.


Found another party which had opened its balcony doors, I joined folks out there and we watched two or three fireworks which were still going on at about midnight. Professional grade stuff.

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Back to the beginning. Got my butt out of bed and dressed and downstairs for breakfast by 9:30, pancakes & bacon & berries. No panels till 3:15, so I went to the dealer's room and picked out some earrings from Springtime Creations, dinogrl's emporium. There was a bit of a challenge to get the credit card reader set up, but it worked and I got the confirmation email right away. Walked around the dealer's room but there wasn't anything else I was interested in. Back in the lobby my phone rang, unknown number for I didn't answer. Called th voicemail and it was Discover card, that last transaction triggered a fraud alert. So bogus because I used the physical card. I called back, told the robot the last 3 transactions were real, and it said okay and let me go.

Next, the art show. Total FAIL. More than total. It needed three times the space, and a very different layout. The way it was set up there were three rows of paneling, each starting at the door and dead ending into the far wall. Once you got to the wall you had no way out except the way you came, and that was too narrow for someone to be looking at a picture and for anyone to get past. Lighting was terrible - poorly placed mini spotlights, clipped to the panels at acute angles. I am so glad i did not participate in this show.

Then 3:00 I worked my way to the cleverly hidden Folsom Room for the panel Comedy in SF - aka the David Gerrold Show. He is a long-time Star Trek staffer, he wrote the script for The Trouble with Tribbles. Very articulate and entertaining panelist, also the Guest of Honor. I was sitting next to him, and lots of people were taking pictures of him so i suppose there will be one or three popping up which include my 15 nanseconds of fame. I didn't contribute that much, but did get in some good lines. That was an SRO crowd.

Then off to the other side of the hotel for a panel I was moderating The Care and Feeding of Performers. There was one no-show, but fortunately figmo had agreed to join the panel when I asked earlier in the week, and the three of us were barely outnumbered by the audience (I counted 10 at the peak). Storyteller Todd Gallowglas was the third, he had lots of amusing anecdotes.

Just enough time to buy a K protein bar and mounds candy, which I scarfed down in the ballroom aka Atrium, where Match game SF was happening at 6. I was one of the panelists. It was a lot of fun, though i only matched the contestants once. Lots of laughs, and lots of audience joy. Wish I was also on the R-rated panel Saturday, but I'll at least be in the audience.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in 'cause it's about 2 am now
My first panel is at 3 pm but there are others I want to see, including mettemu's Making Molded Pieces.

Slept well last night. Both cats joined me for most of it, and managed to cohabit without fighting.

That's me taking this photo with the phone's webcam app.

Got up & drugged and dressed by 10, headed over to Fry's after one last check to see if I could find the camcorder remote. There was an actual Sony camcorder expert on site, he told me every HDR series camcorder uses the same remote, and I could go online and buy a used one on eBay, or call Sony parts, and they ought to be able to provide a replacement based on my serial number. The latter I know is not quite right - they would charge a lot, the camcorder is way out of warranty.

I also went hunting for the Bose earbuds for Android, willing to pay too much for them, but Fry's doesn't carry them. They carry almost everything else by Bose. So home I went, and bought both of those items online.

Watched some of the NFL Combine, highly annoyed that the commentators insisted on running not a commentary but a private conversation between them going off on all kinds of tangents. I wanted to hear the action on the field, not them. Even worse than Sunday football games.

Also watched an episode of Shark Tank in which the investors all consistently refused to put money into projects which had not already sold a huge amount of product. The theme these days is "I just want to make money from your proven idea" and not "I want to help your new idea make both of us money". Pansies.

And another Elementary. I absolutely hate, despise, am reviled by two things about this show:
1. They have named the leading characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
2. The fellow playing Holmes. Jonny Lee Miller.

The show is a ripoff of Lie To Me, which I thought deserved more than just the 3 seasons (it was killed last year). Tim Roth was brilliant as its star, and the fact that both men are Britts is a major clue of how stolen the idea was. Miller has no charm, acts like a wooden automaton, and speaks way too articulately for someone who is supposedly recovering from years of heavy drug use. I like many of the supporting characters, Lucy Liu is miscast but a good enough actress to not let that get in the way. Aidan Quinn is very good as the skeptical police captain and Jon Michael Hill holds up well as the detective usually saddled with Holmes as a consultant. The story format is a lot like The Mentalist, usually starts with a murder, which Holmes almost single-handedly solves by seeing clues no one else has the skill to observe. Hmmm. Maybe that's the show it is really ripping off. Hmmm.

Somewhere in there I finished highlighting my part in the Brigadoon vocal score, added the latest set of vocal parts to the web site, took out garbage, did laundry, ran the dishwasher and made pot pie for lunch. Safeway brand's latest, pretty good.

At about 5 I turned on the Oscar red carpet show, on channel 7, ABC. I'll be going to an Oscars party at the home of one of my theater friends in 15 minutes. Except Janice called. She is home, and can't get any audio on her TV. She insists the Oscars are on channel 3. She says the football game was fine, so what is wrong? What football game - there are no football games. The Superbowl. That was almost a month ago. She says her TV is saying ABC is on channel 3. I have no idea what is going on, so I tell her to call Comcast, which is what she should have done in the first place. Well actually she should have gone to an Oscars party as she had done for the past 25 years. Way later I figured out that she uses the TV mostly to watch DVDs, so she probably forgot to push the button on the DVD player to use the cable feed as the source.

So, a little late getting to the party, but in time for the first award. There were about a dozen people, including two from the Anything Goes cast. The hostess went all out, there was a lot of food and cheese and cookies. A red carpet from the door to the livingroom. From the start I couldn't hear the show because half the guests were shouting quips across the room, and the TV didn't stand a chance. I took lots of photos for her FB page, but after the Les Mis cast was shouted down I left. Totally appalling that theater people would be that rude to performers. Got home in time for best actor, director and film. I disagreed with all three, but at least I got to hear the speeches. Also in time for the In Memoriam which would not have been audible at all over the snarks and shouting by the riff raff at the party. I will have to catch the best supporting actress and best actress on youtube.

Made a small dinner, did not eat much at the party (it was mostly Mexican food). Posted the party pix to FB and fond some cat pictures to post to Flickr.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Rehearsals (music)

Saturday Kaan needed to be poured into the carrier to go to the vet. They told me his poop sample was clear before they took him to have his blood sampled and a distemper shot. That took about 20 minutes as I waited in the lobby.

Home, watched some college bowl games, and finally got up and got stuff together to make Kourabiethes. Greek shortbread cookies. It comes with a short story: When the Daily Astorian social editor, Vernice Berg, found out I cooked, she signed me up to do a "cooking for bachelors" column. After 11 months there, I took a  Greek cooking class at the local community college, taught by the woman who owned the local pancake place. She was Greek, and hoped one day to open a Greek restaurant. Her son was often her assistant in the class. Several months later, I was in a production of Camelot in Astoria, OR, and he was our Sir Lancelot.  For dessert night, one of the things we made was Kourabiethes. I loved them, they were melt in your mouth, and made with cardamom they had an exotic flavor. The recipe was so simple I never wrote it down for myself. But guess what? I just found it in my string book:

( Cut for kindness )

Wish I'd looked for it yesterday, because what I found online had baking soda, baking powder, almonds (which I ignored), and called for far more sugar in the cookies. And now I am wondering where I got the cardamom idea from. Maybe we made some other cookie with them that class, or maybe the teacher added that in class but not on the printed recipe. I wonder. Probably not the latter, because when I wrote those cooking columns I usually put in all the variations.

I had gone online and found three recipes which seemed close to what I remembered, and merged them. They called for baking powder and baking soda, which I did not have, so I went to Lucky's and got that, and more flour and more powdered sugar. Turns out I needed both.

The cookies I made yesterday had too much flour, an extra egg, baking powder and baking soda, and came out too dry. They still tasted great. I like the hint of cardamom too.

Cookies done, time for more football. About an hour before party time (it takes about half an hour to get there from here), I realized I did not have the address. I had been there a few times before, but had always just punched the address into my GPS. But I have changed GPS systems a few times and it's not on the one in the car. I didn't have their phone number either. ( The way I found the address  )

Got to the party with two containers filled with cookies, returned with 1 container full, left about a dozen behind for the lateniks. I think they would have all been eaten except the desserts were down two flights of stairs from the wine and beer, and the snacks and horses d'ovaries were on the dining room table next to the wine and beer table. Many people never knew the cookies were there. :-(

Excellent party, lots of people from many walks (and limps) of life, some brilliant conversations, and I managed to catch some of the hostess' photos from her summer teaching in China, which was in slide show mode on a laptop in the conversation pit. Huge turn-out, many people arrived after going to the movies, or dinners or other parties. I left at 2 am, it did not feel that late, probably because the party was still going strong.

I wore my new SF Giants jacket, it got lots of compliments.

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One of the party latecomers produces an online fanzine called The Drink Tank. I am not sure where the name came from, I suppose I can ask him some time. I am an irregular contributor, mostly photos, but sometimes an article. He had put out a call for 2012 nostalgia, and I sent in some words and lots of pictures of the shuttle Endeavor fly-over at NASA Ames. At the party he announced that the issue was sent to the web site, and my article was in it, along with articles from two or three others at the party. Click here to see the zine.

It was good to see figmo at the party, she said she'd seen my posting about it, and thought she had forgotten, but I think what happened is they had several possible dates and she missed the final choice. Anyhow, I'm tagging susandennis here, because figmo is a brand new IBMer, going for her disorientation this week, and she posts about it on LJ. Susan has been posting a bit about her 25 years with IBM, now that she is retired. Both have a background in writing, too.

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Sunday. Nothing on the agenda until 5 pm coffee with Janice. After a 3 am bedtime, waking up at 9:30 was about an hour too soon, blame the automatic light switch. There was a lot of football, but most of it was not what I wanted to watch. Bummed that they did not show the Seahawks game, but the Raiders and 49ers were at the same time slot. I also wanted to see the Jets get beaten again, but that was not available either.

Lunch was a major project, which involved taking a leftover lunch of leg of lamb with veggies which had been made in Awful Sauce™ and remove the offending bitter flavoring. Long story short, 4 sessions of simmering in water for 10 minutes, drain and refill each time, then make a casserole gravy. My mom used to do this all the time, but she never taught me how to make the gravy. I tried a simplified version of what's in the Fanny Farmer cookbook, which worked okay but needed salt & pepper. It was very filling, half of it is in the freezer for a later meal.

Maiming time until I needed to leave for coffee, I ordered a pair of oven mitts and a set of no-longer-sold-in-stores food storage containers online, watched more football, played on FB and Twitter, and just as I was about to leave my tummy said it needed to check the plumbing. That done, went to the car and once again tummy decided no, not yet,

I got to Starbucks with 5 minutes to spare, plus Janice had emailed she would be late. But she wasn't, she arrived just as I was paying for my drink.

Long conversation, as usual, she gave me a CD to copy for her. I thought it was photos, but it turned out to be a recording of a speech at an AA meeting by a friend of hers who passed away recently. It is an hour long, which surprised me, I thought maybe the original was defective, but nope, he talked for that long. Without going into details, it was the most incredible story of how much denial an addict can sustain.

So now she will have a copy, with an attractive printed disc.

Home, hungry again, ate a whole can of stuffed vine leaves (15 small ones) in two shifts. All the time, Domino is standing beside the recliner staring at me, even though I've offered her a piece and she did not like it.

Took a break to try to feed Kaan his liquid meds, because they have been working well but I missed last night's dose. He hates being dosed, and ran all over the place to get away. I finally went back online for an hour, and got him while he was half-asleep on the recliner. It still was difficult, but I think I gor most of it in him and only a little bit on him. But tah's okay because he will lick it off.

I am a happy sports fan, as little as I pay attention to these things. Oakland almost came back from certain defeat, only losing by 3. Seattle won again, putting them in next week's playoffs. Washington won, making them the Seahawks' next opponent. Baltimore lost, but they already clinched a playoff spot. 49ers won, it was ugly and against a vastly inferior team, but that gives them next week off before they play their first playoff game. I wonder if Baltmore sister, whose husband works in DC, will be going to next week's game there. We are both Seahawks fans, being from Seattle, but she also roots for the Baltimore and DC teams since she lives there now.

Posted more pix of the cats here. I espeically like these:( Read more... )
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Plan A: Troll Facebook for a NYE party to go to.
Pan B: Make pigs-in-blankets, take out the egg nog & nutmeg, and have my own party while I watch it on TV.
Midnight, take down all the 2012 calendars. Confirm the world did not come to an end. Put up the 2013 calendars.

 

Finally got the cloned drive to work in the netbook. Long story short, the stupid clone program moved the blank, unformatted 4GB of space to the front of the drive and made it the boot partition. The software has a cleverly hidden, but once you find it very simple widget for deactivating any partition and activating any other. So it was just a matter of deactivating the blank section and activating the one which has Windows on it. Now it works fine.

The main purpose for this exercise was to replace the biggest moving part in my travel laptop with a non-moving part.

I have decided to put off doing the swap with the Ultrabook, which would upgrade it from 128GB solid state to 240GB. I think I will instead return the second SSD drive and buy a 360GB SSD. Amazon has a good price, maybe Microcenter will match it. Fry's won't - they don't stock that size. Come to think of it, neither does Microcenter, according to their web site, but I'm petty sure I saw it in the store.

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Had coffee with Janice at 5, then home to read for an hour. I put the harness on Domino and brought her out on the patio, but she was not happy and went inside after 5 minutes. The leash is way too short, but it's clip-on, I can get one of those reels.

Almost done with Water For Elephants. it just keeps getting better. I don't want it to end, but it's got a built-in HACF.

8:30 I took off for SJ and photog Rich C.'s birthday party. Only two of the models he invited showed, one is his girlfriend, the other brought her bad-boy boyfriend. Many pretty makup artists, but all the women were significantly othered. I had a nice chat with his GF - turns out she graduated from the UW in business admin. She started the conversation when she saw my UW alumni band t-shirt.

One fellow there had halfzheimer's. On three separate passes through the room I stopped to chat, and each time he told me the same story about jury duty. Word for word.

There was a nice spread of food, everyone brought something, though most brought wine or beer. A German photog brought a mini-keg, but he had bounced it too much coming up the 2 flights of stairs, and much of the beer ended up going down the drain. He was smart enough to open it in the sink. He starts his new job at MSFT in Redmond next week. This will raise the cumulative IQ of both places.

Bailed at about 10:30. There was not much traffic, but what there was drove either way too slowly or way too fast. And there were at least three bozos who thought it was a great idea to drive in the lane to my right, parallel with me, and match my speed. Makes me wish I had side rocket launchers.

So, what to do tomorrow? A train ride might be nice. Probably not, unless it is a short one to Sacto. The schedules are so thin that most automobile day trips take a full weekend on the train. Unless one takes the Amtrak Thruway buses, but that's not nearly as fun as a train ride. I get carsick trying to read on a bus, not on a train though. TSA has made day trips way too annoying as well. I'm not sure when I have a free weekend again. Next weekend is Songkran, 21-22 is robo games, 27th is roller derby, May 5 is free, but the following Saturday is National Train Day, so I'll be taking a trip that weekend. I'm usually more of a hermit than this.

Caught the first morning 3D non-IMAX showing of Harry Potter at the Mercado at 10:30 (actual movie started at 10:50), I was there at about 10, but there was no line, and the theater never got more than 15% full. Mostly adults.

Non-spoiler review is pretty simple.( Read more... )
Bottom line: worth matinee 3D and the online $1 ticket fee.

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Next on the agenda was Costco, to pick up the 12x18s I'd ordered. Last night I mapped out three possible layouts for RenovationSF art show, and sadly I can only display 11 or 12 photos. It depends a lot on how many landscape and vs portrait I choose. 8x12s would have allowed close to twice that. Considering I have 43 valid candidates, 5 of which are costume portraits I have permission from the subjects to display. So I need to pare the remaining 38 down to 6. Boo hiss. I wonder if it is too late to buy another pair of panels. No, that would be overkill. Probably. Deadline was July 15 to reserve space.... I suppose it would not hurt to ask if there are panels left.

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And the final project for the day was to find something to wrap Heidi's present. It was going to be in a padded envelope, but I wanted something birthday-ish around it. Office Max had a possible bigger envelope. CVS gave me too many choices: boxes, bags, paper, tissue paper. I selected a roll of wrapping paper and one of those annoying swirly ribbons (I like the traditional ones better but they had none). Home, had a snack in case the promise of lots of food at the party did not come about, wrapped the gift, grabbed the camera and my SJ Sharks jacket and headed out to HMB.

Half Moon Bay State Beach is lovely. Heidi had reserved a camp site (I will try to spend a weekend there soon) , but it only allows two cars, so the rest of us had to park half a mile away in the beach lot. I brought my camp chair, and my Sharks jacket which I never needed because the famous Half Moon Bay fog never made an appearance. I spent a lot of time talking with Heidi's dad, who was a photographer for a lot of his life, and I'm guessing he's about my age, though he looks much younger. Chatted with a lot of people, was surprised I did not know any of them, because most are theater people. But come to think of it, in the 20+ years I have known Heidi, we have never been in a show together. We've never auditioned for the same show either. Very odd, that.

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They close the gates at sunset, and since there wasn't any real food at the party I bailed at about 8 and attempted to have dinner at a local Thai place called Bangkok House. It took a while to get a menu and order, food was delivered quickly. The fish cakes were over-cooked and the little sauce in the dish with cucumber, carrot and onion bits was something unidentifiable, and not Thai. It was watery red, maybe ketchup way watered down. They were served with a steak knife. Knives at the table are taboo in Thailand (no weapons at the table!), and fish cakes should be cuttable with a spoon.

BBQ pork ribs were served piping hot, again with a knife, and with a sauce dish which was billed as spicy lime. This is finger food, the knife was an insult. The sauce was inedible. Thai BBQ is done with sweet/hot sauce - usually watered down honey and chili pepper maybe with a touch of lime leaves, which are bitter. I took the ribs home, I'll make the right sauce for them and they should be fine.

The tip went down to 10% when it took 15 minutes for anyone to notice I was done eating.

At 8:50 (they close at 9) a family of East Indians, complete with infant in a car seat, Mom, Dad. brothers, sisters, grandma and grandpa barged in. The hostess tried to tell them they were closing, but they stood their ground, and the hostess asked the cook, who agreed to stay late. A good business move, maybe. It rubbed the curmudgeon in me the wrong way. I won't be going back there again.

By then it was 9, traffic over the hill was reasonable, and I was home in 35 minutes.

Party photos will be on Flickr Real Soon Now.