katster | Entries tagged with friends

So there I was, in the fanzine lounge.

As I said before, I’ve made my home in fanzine fandom, although I’ll admit, I’ve had some differences with it over the last few years. That’s a long story that’s not worth hashing out here, but it does mean that’s where I tend to gravitate when I go to cons. I wanted to make sure that my WOOF zine made it into the contribution piles. I can’t recall if I did this before or after I went off to the business meeting. I think I did it before, which means I’m slightly out of order. Memory is a weird thing.

This year, a good friend of mine from past Bay Area conventions — Craig Glassner, aka Ranger Craig — was running the joint. He had a couple moments before he had to run off somewhere, which gave me a chance to say hello and let him know I hadn’t forgotten about an obligation I owed him. His response to me was enough to take another weight I’ve been carrying for years off my shoulders. I’m still not going to forget, but just those words were enough to give me one less thing to chew on during these hard times. (He also let me know that my WOOF contribution had been stashed with the others, so it was safe.)

Now a convention is not a convention without a turn around the dealer’s room. (I’d have also made a turn around the art show, but there’s only so much you can do when you’ve got a day and lots of people you’d like to see. Besides, I’d have been tempted to buy art, which I wouldn’t be on site to pick up.)

The dealer’s room at any convention is a treat. The dealer’s room at Worldcon is even more so. There’s the booksellers because Worldcon is, second to being a fan convention, a literary convention. There’s the costumers, because costuming is also a big part of Worldcon. There are the artists and the writers working their way up, taking a risk by self-promoting their own stuff. There’s fannish organizations selling books and magazines. Lastly, there’s the other random stuff that might just appeal to science fiction fans. It’s a rather impressive place — and one I’d normally make several turns through before deciding to buy anything. Today, I had only a bit of money left over from the gas/food/parking budget, so it was mostly just looking at what was out there.

At the two prior full Worldcons I’ve attended, I’ve drug double-digit numbers of books with me to be signed, and braved the autograph lines. I flew to the 2008 Denver Worldcon, packing a second duffle bag full of books with me — I’d just barely made the cut-off of being able to take two pieces of luggage with me for free. On the trip back home, the bag weighed 38 pounds, a distinct relief as I’d feared that I’d be trying to move items between bags in the airport to make weight limits. I drove in 2011, which meant there was no such worries about weight limits. This time, between only having one day at Worldcon and so much to do, I did not bring a load of books.

However, I had noticed in my Twitter feed that Borderlands Books would be hosting a signing by Ann Leckie at noon. I had two of the three books in the Ancillary series, so I figured I could pick up the third — it’s always nice to buy a book from a bookseller when you’re crashing their autograph session — and have Leckie sign my copies. As I was checking out, I noticed the paperback copy of Provenance was out as well, so I picked that up as well. Ann Leckie is a wonderfully nice person — I wished her luck in the Hugos, but we both agreed that N. K. Jemisen was probably going to pick up the three-peat, and that was going to be special.

Another thing I found in the dealer’s room was dice. When it comes to dice, I happen to be a bit like a dragon accumulating shiny treasure. I am proud that I managed to keep myself from buying only one set of dice, as the temptation was there, because there were so many that I wanted! But I managed to narrow my choices to two: psychedelic dice and muted psychedelic dice. After a quick debate with myself, I picked the latter. Now I just need to find a role playing game to use them.

Those were the only things I bought from the dealer’s room, and it was actually much less than the money I had spare after paying for the things that I needed. I also picked up a copy of Amazing — I’d been a small supporter of their Kickstarter earlier this year, and it was great to see them passing out copies of their magazines after a successful funding.

After that, it was due to the convenience of modern technology that I was able to find another friend I was looking for. But we’ve gone long again, and that’ll have to be saved for the next post.

Series:
Worldcon (Part the First)
Worldcon (Part the Second)
Worldcon (Part the Third)
Worldcon (Part the Fourth)

Mirrored from katster's closet.

(What is this? An Introduction)

So, it’s Thursday. Who’s going to get the first nod as a person I happen to think is quite keen? Well, it’s actually two, partly to make up for the fact that I’ve just decided to start this, thus I missed last Thursday, and partly, they’re married, so it’s fitting to honor them together.

So, the first entry in the people I think are quite keen goes to my good friends Richard and Jennifer Crawford.

I’ll start with Richard. I’ve known him since 2006, and have been herding cats, err, Wrimos with him in the Sacramento area since 2007. He’s the best damn co-ML anybody could ask for. He’s also a really good writer with a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. (Don’t believe me? Just go peer at his bibliography page. Anybody that writes zombie stories about Santa’s elves is my kind of person.)

Ah, but that’s not all Richard does. He’s also an excellent code monkey, keeping systems running. Always good, and it means he’s inclined to a technical bent as well. This comes in handy at times, such as the wonderfulness of the Virtual Plotbox, a virtual rendition of the black container I carry to Sacramento NaNoWriMo get-togethers. This means he’s a geek.

Lastly, he’s my GM. I’ve never actually played at a table with people and real dice before, but now I’m getting the chance. So very awesome. Add to that the randomness he posts to his twitter feed, and it’s really a shame not a lot of people know about Richard, because he’s just that awesome.

Ah, but somebody as cool as Richard needs somebody just as cool to be married to him, and that’s where Jennifer comes in. Jennifer is quite amazing. She’s a bit of a tech geek too, but more to the point, she’s a singer, a hell of a baker (she made Richard Dalek cupcakes for his birthday once and a Cthulhu cake another time, and does a wonderfully tasty kitty litter cake), and an artiste with the knitting needles. Totally an amazing woman.

With all this, she still manages to keep Richard and I on task when it comes to keeping the region organized and she’s decided to join us in writing every November. She’ll never share, but I consider it awesome she just comes and writes.

She loves cats. (Richard does too, but Jen does especially.) Between the two of them, they’re host to six furballs — Rosemary, Azrael, Nutmeg, Rupert, Ingrid, and Sherman — and manages to find the time and attention for all of them as well as happily posting their pictures to the internet, which is required. Cat people are generally good people in my book.

Plus they are both big-time geeks. Don’t believe me? Go look at their posts on the Dalek invasion at their house: Infested! (Richard) and The Doom That Awaits You All (Jennifer). Such geeks. Such wonderful, wonderful geeks.

My kind of people, and I’m glad I know both of them.

Want more of either/both of them?
Richard can be found at his blog and @underpope, his twitter.
Jennifer hangs out on her blog and @jenipurr, her twitter.

Mirrored from retstak.org.

So I’ve been poking around Ryan Macklin‘s blog. He’s a wonderful creative guy whom I worked with on the (now no longer available) Finis project (and I kick myself that I didn’t get a PDF copy while they were still around!), and he came up with a little series called “People I Admire”.

So…like a good creative does, I’m stealing the idea and filing off the serial numbers to come up with my own little series called “People I Think Are Quite Keen”. This is a collection of folks who are my friends or whom I otherwise think are really cool for various reasons. I’m going to try to do this every Thursday in my quest to put words on this here blog in 2014. There’s 52 weeks in a year, and I should be able to wrap it up on January 1, 2015.

A bit later today, you’ll find the first (two) people I plan to honor with this little exercise (one for last Thursday, and one for now), but for now, just consider this a bit of a note and an explanation.

(Photo credit: John Morgan, “People of Berkeley – Up a Tree“. CC BY 2.0)

Mirrored from retstak.org.

So yeah, this weekend went really well. If I had to ring in the start of another lap around the sun, this is about the way I want to do it. Bear with me, for long kat is long.

It started at work Friday, where there was cake. We do this for birthdays at work recently, but one of my co-workers made sure there was cake for me. It was supremely good cake, too.

Saturday started out a bit meh, as I had to go do schoolwork in the morning, but once I was done with that, I headed out to Folsom, stopping along the way to treat myself to In-and-Out for a hamburger as my celebratory birthday weekend. Yum.

Then, at Folsom, we had a party. It was supposedly for those not going to SF the following night to have fun, but they decided to let me come and celebrate my birthday. One of our Wrimos even baked me a cake. This was sweet.

And then to top it off, Saturday was also the 112th Big Game, which I was fairly certain Stanford was going to win. But my Bears somehow came out of nowhere, had the score close at halftime, and then proceeded to first pull away, and then let Stanford back into it before sealing the deal with an interception. It was Cal Cardiac Football at its finest, and so I got a nice surprise gift — an Axe. It was pretty funny because I was so not writing at the party, but listening to my game, and towards the end, the feed started cutting in and out, which made it hard to follow. The feed cut out just as Toby Gerhart tried to win the game for Stanford, and didn’t come back up until I heard the word “INTERCEPTION!” in my headphones and was trying to figure out what had just happened and whether that meant my Bears had won the game.

And then there was Sunday. Oh god, what can I say about Sunday? Besides the fact that San Francisco is probably my most favorite city on the planet and I love any chance I get to visit, the Night of Writing Dangerously was way more fun than I was expecting. It started simply:

It’s about 5:40 in the evening. The scene, a round table in a ballroom high above California Street in San Francisco. Seated there are seven people from Sacramento: myself, Richard, his wife Jennifer, Jenny, Candace, Temperance, and Stephanie. There’s some idle chitchatting about where people are and stuff like that. In front of the room, the bell is introduced — you come ring the bell when you’ve become a winner at NaNoWriMo (that is, hit the 50k mark). And that’s when the following happened:

Temperance: “So, Kat, you going to hit 50k tonight?”
me: “You’re kidding, right? I’m nowhere close.”
Temperance: “You’re in the forties, no?”
me: “Well, yeah, a bit over 43k.”
Temperance: “There you go. You can hit 50k tonight.”
me: “I’m not so sure about this idea.”
Temperance: “Look, how many words do you have?”
me: “About forty-three five.”
Temperance: “That’s about 6500 words. We’ll not count this hour. But six — we’ll not count seven — eight, nine, ten. That’s four hours. You only have to write about 1500 words an hour.”
Rest of table: “Yeah, c’mon, Kat, you can do it.”
me: “Okay, fine, you all. I’ll try.”
me (thought): This is going to be impossible and I’m going to fail and feel rotten at the end of it. Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Table: *cheering*

So I spend most of the evening sitting and writing frantically, although there were several breaks to take advantage of the candy pile and the hosted bar (too bad I don’t drink, but there was plenty of ginger ale and soda) and eat something resembling dinner. Oh yeah, and there were the most crazy donuts I’ve ever had with toppings like Cocoa Puffs and Nilla Wafers and Oreo cookies and Butterfingers and …the list goes on and on. Also, I went and took my author photo.

But most of the time I was writing. It was a write-a-thon after all. And after frantically typing all evening, writing a grand total of 6,481 words — a personal NaNo daily best — this happened.

Later that evening, about 10:15 PM:
Jason (peering over my shoulder): “So did you make it?”
me: “Give me a second, I just put it in the wordcounter.”
NaNo website: *loading*
Everybody: *waits*
NaNo website: katster has 50,182 words.
me: “Wait, what, I made it? I made it!”
Table (and Jason): “Go ring that bell!”
me: “Give me a second to recover and bask in my glory.”
*moment*
me: “Alright, now I’m going to go find Sarah [the coordinator of this glorious event] and let her know that I made it before I ring the bell so she doesn’t have to come frantically running.” [Backstory: People had been ringing the bell all evening, leaving poor Sarah frantically running to the stage. I felt bad, so I wanted to make sure she didn't have to run.]
*By sheer random coincidence, Sarah walks by at just that moment*
me: “Hey Sarah! Just to warn you, I hit 50k!”

…and so I nicely followed Sarah to the podium where I grasped that bell and rung it just about as hard as anybody had that evening.

And the rest of the night I wore a crown on top of my Cal hat and a manic grin. Kinda like this:

me, after it’s all said and done. Photo by my friend Richard

All in all, the best birthday weekend ever. Thanks to everybody who helped me make it to the Night of Writing Dangerously — cards should go out next week.

And no, I don’t know how I’m going to top this next year.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

You know how I was speculating how bad it was in Redding in my last post?

My friend Linda Raven Moore lives up Weaverville way. For those of you not in the know, Weaverville’s in the mountains west of Redding. It’s the county seat of Trinity County, which is the most rural county in the state. A large chunk of Trinity County is the Trinity Alps Wilderness, a stretch of land that has been left to be natural — there aren’t even roads through it. (All firefighting in the Wilderness has to be done by hand tools, that’s how strict they are about it.)

Needless to say, Trinity County is on fire at the moment. This is about what it looked like a day or so ago:

picture courtesy Linda Raven Moore

Linda’s got more pictures at her blog entries on the subject: Smoky Weaverville and Smoky Ride. They’re worth the time to look at all her pictures.

Actually, Linda’s blogs are worth the time in general. She’s got four of them: Raven’s Roads, her travel blog, Raven’s Rides, her motorcycle blog, Raven’s RV, about life in a motor home, and Raven’s Range, the general catchall blog. She’s a good writer, and a master of the photoessay. Check it out!

(In comments, my friend David says that things are clearing out a bit. It’s more smoky in Sacramento today. I’m staying in as much as possible.)

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

me: mutters about the yummy and delicious eyeball that didn't want to come out and be ate.
friend: ?
me: is there something there you didn't understand? ;)
me: finally got it out. For I am a dexterous monkey and have opposable thumbs.
friend: Yeah that whole last sentence you sent! :P
me: ...you mean you don't normally hear about yummy and delicious eyeballs? ;)
friend: No.
me: what planet are you from?
friend: Earth.
me: You can't be. 'Cause I'm from Earth.
friend: I am too.
me: and you've never heard of yummy and delicious eyeballs?
friend: Nope.
me: What backwards culture were you raised in? ;)
friend: :P

...at which point I had to admit it was a gummy eyeball. (Which, weirdly enough, do not trigger my eye squick. Don't ask me why.)

In other news, I have antibiotics and codeine cough syrup, so maybe I'll feel well enough tomorrow to pick back up the pace on the Nano novel. The official diagnosis is definite outer ear and sinus infections, probable bronchitis, and possible middle ear infections. And my chest hurts from coughing so much. So I think I'm going to go sit in the bathtub with The Great Deluge s'more and then take some wonderful cough syrup and go to bed, free from hack hack hacking.

Current Mood: sore

We're all doing well.

Tomorrow is packing and straightening, for DJ and Zoe get their mommy and daddy back. :)

The last couple days have been a whirlwind, but it's been wonderfully fun. I've started a new book (Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth by Marcia Bjornerud) which is very interesting thus far (and I read it all the way back on BART tonight). Last night, I had dinner with

spitgirl, whom I hadn't seen in ages, and

luns, whom I have seen fairly recently, seeing as how it was just a little over a week ago I spent a night at his place. Tonight was a sudden whirlwind run into the City (which there are some musings on in my notebook, and there shall probably be more written on it later) to have dinner with

damienroc Somebody said hi to me as I was walking to Metreon, and they looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place them. (If that was you, speak up.)

Also, the Antacalypse happened yesterday, and the result is no more ants. Always good.

Lastly, I straightened out a bit of a misunderstanding with

mrfnord, so it's been good for my sanity. Also, in relation to sanity, I think the pills work when I bother to take them. ;)

That's about it. Anything else? Dunno.

Current Mood: sad this week is almost over

It's been a good couple of days. DJ is scared of me when I'm standing, and when I first arrive back after being gone, but as she grows used to my presence, she gets a little more trusting. Enough so that I'm sitting at the kitchen table and was able to give her a bellyrub. Zoe is Zoe, just her usual happy-go-lucky self. Last night, we had chicken for dinner, and the dogs loved that. Tonight, I was out for a bit, so I brought dinner home and shared.

Also, you haven't lived until you've had dogs wrestling across you when you're lying in bed. %)

Yesterday, I sat around, talking with folks on the net and reading Curse of the Narrows, which is about the Halifax Explosion, and why Halifax gives a Christmas tree to Boston every year. (The book's fascinating -- so much that I think I'm going to get a copy of my own. And maybe one for

zibblsnrt too, because I like giving him stuff, and I think he'd like the book.)

Today was the busy day, since I had lunch in Berkeley and evening in San Jose. I stopped off at the base camp in between, so I wasn't gone overly long at any point. The funny part was that I let DJ and Zoe go out front while I was packing things into my car to go to Berkeley, and I left a door open. I wasn't thinking very hard, and suddenly I had two dogs in the car, ready to go. I was sorry to disappoint them. :) In Berkeley, I met with Aaron and Cathy, two folks who were instrumental in getting me through my grad program. Down in San Jose, after driving through commute traffic, I got to the Starport and was able to catch

gridlore and

kshandra briefly. It's always nice to see

chaoswolf,

mdlbear,

super_star_girl, and

flower_cat.

Speaking of commute traffic, a few tips. One, the merge lane means "get over when it's safe", not "speed to the end of the lane and bludgeon your way into traffic." Two, there's a nifty little invention on your car which is called "the blinkers". There's probably a little lever right next to your steering wheel, and you push up to signal right and down to signal left. If you get confused, think about how you'd hit it if you were turning the wheel to execute the turn. Please use this to signal your intention before you change lanes, not during. Three, it's a stalled car and/or an accident. It's nothing special. It's probably not the president. There's probably nobody being carted from the burning wreckage with blood everywhere. Keep driving, fool, and pay attention to the person in front of you, or you'll be the one everybody's gawking at when *you* have the accident.

And now Zoe's passed out on the shelf in the kitchen, and I think DJ is on the bed, and I've been going to bed right around midnight, so it's time to turn in.

Tomorrow plans to be nice and relaxing, I'll get some necessary chores done and some studying, and then I'll meet

luns and

spitgirl at a place nearby (E. 14th and Hesperian, I think.) I know where both those streets are in relation to where I am, and I have a local map in the car. (It cost me $5, but $5 to be able to navigate without getting utterly lost in a maze of twisty little neighborhoods all alike and getting eaten by a grue is worth it.)

Friday night, I have tentative plans with

damienroc in the City for dinner, which, if I'm going to do that, I'll BART in.

Saturday is devoted to packing and loading.

It's been a wonderful week so far. I'm saddened that it's more than half over.

Current Mood: cheerful

It's getting close to bedtime here, and the three of us are all curled up here, Zoe sprawled across my sleeping bag in front, DJ tucked between my knees behind me. So I just reached over carefully and started gently petting DJ, and she didn't jump off the bed and run away as she's done so many times before when I'd reach my hand to her. Instead, she let me pet, and scratch her ears, and pet under her chin, and licked my hand clean.

I think we're getting somewhere. :)

That said, today was fun. I met up with

whytraven, and after going the wrong way on 580, we ended up on 680, and went around to 24. The scenic route, I suppose. :) Then we ended up eating Thai food and wandering around the campus hitting up as many historical landmarks as possible. I know the place well because I've spent several years there, and I've picked up a thing or two about workings around the campus, and thus I was able to provide informed chatter about the different buildings. The best part of the trip, though, was the ride up to the top of the Campanile, a trip that is worth the two bucks if you're ever in the area. We hung around for fifteen minutes so that

whytraven could hear the hourly bong. :) Also, we snarfed Room 307 Gilman Hall, which

whytraven says is the first room she's ever snarfed.

(In that room, Professor Glenn Seaborg synthesized plutonium for the first time. To this day, it's still a working lab. I got to meet Professor Seaborg about 52 or 53 years after the event that would change the world, after he had won his Nobel Prize and became the first living man to have an element named after him (106, which is Seaborgium.) He came to talk to my History of Cal DeCal class, and I ran his slide projector for him. Later, I shook his hand, and somewhere in my piles, I may still have his signature. Unfortunately, Professor Seaborg passed away a few years ago, and the Berkeley campus is less without the man whose name was an anagram for 'Go Bears.")

Then we came back here, and Zoe wouldn't leave

whytraven alone, and after she'd headed on her way, I wandered into the living room and watched Eight Men Out, which is about the 1919 Black Sox. (They're the ones that threw the Series.) It wasn't a bad movie. And if Christopher Lloyd didn't have a distinct way of speaking, I'd have sworn he wasn't in the movie.

Tomorrow is a down day. Other than maybe running to the grocery store, there's not much to do, and so I'll probably do a bit of studying and other work.

I really need to get

spitgirl and

luns together long enough to figure out when we're all going to have dinner. I still have Thursday tentatively marked, but I don't know if that's going to hold.

Other than that, we're all fine and happy. And while I should get under the covers, I don't want to disturb two resting dogs. Plus, I still have the light on. :(

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Five For Fighting - The Riddle

Since I'm not feeling well at the moment, you get this.

( How many comments have you made to my journal? )

Current Mood: tired

I went to a party! Down in midtown at

katbrows' place!

And I had fun! And beer pong is highly amusing to watch!

And yeah, I'm tired, but I had a good time. :)

[I need a yay! icon, but this one will do for now.]

Current Mood: chipper

I found this in Tomes of Ancient Lore in

pernishus's office:

Why are you on my friends' list?

Reply, then copy the question in your LJ

Current Mood: bored

I got it from

kightp who got it from

wild_irises, who got it from

womzilla:

I'd love it if every single person on my friends list - well, those who care to, anyway - would volunteer a personal nugget of information that
might be evidence of a defining trait. Yes, even (especially?) those people who think I know them reasonably well. Then post this in your
own journal if you like.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Любэ - No more barricades

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Kat

retstak.org

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Page Summary

Worldcon (Part the Second)
People I Think Are Quite Keen: Richard and Jennifer Crawford
People I Think Are Quite Keen: An Introduction
most awesome birthday weekend ever
Worse Air
fun with leftover halloween candy
All good things must come to an end.
Days 4 and 5
Day 3.
I feel memeish.
shocking news!
Yet another meme...
tell me about you

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katster's closet

i followed it knowing there's no other way

Entries tagged with friends

Worldcon (Part the Second)

People I Think Are Quite Keen: Richard and Jennifer Crawford

People I Think Are Quite Keen: An Introduction

most awesome birthday weekend ever

Worse Air

fun with leftover halloween candy

All good things must come to an end.

Days 4 and 5

Day 3.

I feel memeish.

shocking news!

Yet another meme...

tell me about you