Tuesday is Gratuitous

Body: My back was killing me when I woke up this morning, but it seems OK now.

Reading: I'm reading A Sundial In A Grave: 1610, a novel about what some of the secondary characters from The Three Musketeers were up to 15 years before the events of that book. Still good, although I don't think it's for everybody.

Hearing: The Roadhouse. I've decided to take some the the podcasts for which I have huge backlogs and focus on them until I'm up to date. I have 85 archived episodes of this show, so I'll be listening to it for the next 11 or so workdays.

Etsy find: A fun tote bag

Project Follow-up: I did dinner and some dishes, Tom did laundry, other than that we took the evening easy.

Tonight's Project: I'm staying at work until at least 5:30, maybe 6. After that, I need to hit the grocery store. Between that and making dinner I'm not going to try to do anything big tonight.

Randomness: In my constant search for new stuff to keep me awake at work, I'm looking for recommendations. What LJs should I be reading? What communities should I be part of? Any websites you think I should check out?

Tuesday is Gratuitous

Body: My back was killing me when I woke up this morning, but it seems OK now.

Reading: I'm reading A Sundial In A Grave: 1610, a novel about what some of the secondary characters from The Three Musketeers were up to 15 years before the events of that book. Still good, although I don't think it's for everybody.

Hearing: The Roadhouse. I've decided to take some the the podcasts for which I have huge backlogs and focus on them until I'm up to date. I have 85 archived episodes of this show, so I'll be listening to it for the next 11 or so workdays.

Etsy find: A fun tote bag

Project Follow-up: I did dinner and some dishes, Tom did laundry, other than that we took the evening easy.

Tonight's Project: I'm staying at work until at least 5:30, maybe 6. After that, I need to hit the grocery store. Between that and making dinner I'm not going to try to do anything big tonight.

Randomness: In my constant search for new stuff to keep me awake at work, I'm looking for recommendations. What LJs should I be reading? What communities should I be part of? Any websites you think I should check out?

Arisia 2010

Arisia was a great con this year.

I made it to several good panels, my favorite of which was "Humor and Fandom." The discussion there was about what makes geek/fan humor different from mainstream humor. The conclusion we eventually came to was that fan humor tends to depend more on references than other types of humor do and that word-play, absurdities, and context are also more important. Another great panel was "The Undefended Borders of SF," talking about books that blur (or completely erase) the line between science fiction and fantasy. I don't remember many of the specific things discussed, but I got a great list of titles and authors to look into out of it.

This was the first time that I used my Kindle to take notes on panels rather than pen and paper. I think it will work better eventually, but I still need to work some bugs out of the system.

I made to two of S.J. Tucker's shows. They were both good, but I liked the Saturday show, which was mostly songs related to myth and legend, better than Sunday's pirate themed show.

I did a lot of browsing on Dealer's Row, but relatively little buying. My big purchase was twenty dollars worth of beautiful silk embroidery floss from some folks sharing a room with Poison Pen Press. I think it was Terra Incognita, but they don't seem to have a website for me to link to. I was lusting after the beautiful hand dyed silk clothing from this dealer, but I decided that I shouldn't spend that much money right now. I also bought another pin from Nancy's Buttons. This one says "Intelligent Design?" my knees say *not*. That one is not going on my con bag. It will get pinned to my shirt at each and every con I go to.

Speaking of my con bag, I was told by a couple of people that they remember me by my bag rather than my face. This gave me the idea of using a picture of it for the icon on fandom and con related posts. onyxhawke took a picture of my bag, which I'll post after he does. I made the icon on this post from that picture, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep using this version or if I'll make a new one from a better lit picture.

I spent time at two parties on Saturday night. The first was the Carl Brandon Society's party, where I chatted with onyxhawke (and he took the picture of my bag), yendi, and shadesong. I didn't stay very long there, since it was a lot of people in a fairly small room and I reached my noise & body heat tolerance fairly quickly. After that I went up to the LunaCon party, which was fewer people in a bigger room. I spent a couple of hours there sitting at a table and talking to a bunch of people, most of who's names I never caught. The only name I did learn was Esther Friesner. She, and everybody else I hung out with at the Lunacon party, was a pleasure to talk with.

Sunday was much like Saturday. Panels, people watching, and browsing the dealers. Tom & I hit the road for home a little after 9pm. The weather kept going back and forth between rain and snow, and the roads were awful, so what should have been a three hour drive ended up taking closer to 4.5 hours. However, nothing exciting happened on the drive, so I'm going to call it a win.

Arisia 2010

Arisia was a great con this year.

I made it to several good panels, my favorite of which was "Humor and Fandom." The discussion there was about what makes geek/fan humor different from mainstream humor. The conclusion we eventually came to was that fan humor tends to depend more on references than other types of humor do and that word-play, absurdities, and context are also more important. Another great panel was "The Undefended Borders of SF," talking about books that blur (or completely erase) the line between science fiction and fantasy. I don't remember many of the specific things discussed, but I got a great list of titles and authors to look into out of it.

This was the first time that I used my Kindle to take notes on panels rather than pen and paper. I think it will work better eventually, but I still need to work some bugs out of the system.

I made to two of S.J. Tucker's shows. They were both good, but I liked the Saturday show, which was mostly songs related to myth and legend, better than Sunday's pirate themed show.

I did a lot of browsing on Dealer's Row, but relatively little buying. My big purchase was twenty dollars worth of beautiful silk embroidery floss from some folks sharing a room with Poison Pen Press. I think it was Terra Incognita, but they don't seem to have a website for me to link to. I was lusting after the beautiful hand dyed silk clothing from this dealer, but I decided that I shouldn't spend that much money right now. I also bought another pin from Nancy's Buttons. This one says "Intelligent Design?" my knees say *not*. That one is not going on my con bag. It will get pinned to my shirt at each and every con I go to.

Speaking of my con bag, I was told by a couple of people that they remember me by my bag rather than my face. This gave me the idea of using a picture of it for the icon on fandom and con related posts. onyxhawke took a picture of my bag, which I'll post after he does. I made the icon on this post from that picture, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep using this version or if I'll make a new one from a better lit picture.

I spent time at two parties on Saturday night. The first was the Carl Brandon Society's party, where I chatted with onyxhawke (and he took the picture of my bag), yendi, and shadesong. I didn't stay very long there, since it was a lot of people in a fairly small room and I reached my noise & body heat tolerance fairly quickly. After that I went up to the LunaCon party, which was fewer people in a bigger room. I spent a couple of hours there sitting at a table and talking to a bunch of people, most of who's names I never caught. The only name I did learn was Esther Friesner. She, and everybody else I hung out with at the Lunacon party, was a pleasure to talk with.

Sunday was much like Saturday. Panels, people watching, and browsing the dealers. Tom & I hit the road for home a little after 9pm. The weather kept going back and forth between rain and snow, and the roads were awful, so what should have been a three hour drive ended up taking closer to 4.5 hours. However, nothing exciting happened on the drive, so I'm going to call it a win.