Category: my life

A quick note

Leave a comment

I aren’t dead.

Seriously, Baycon got extraordinarily busy from Saturday afternoon on, and then I had to make a sudden and sharp return to reality from the alternate dimension I had been inhabiting all weekend. Then work has been extraordinarily busy as well this week, and what time I haven’t been at work, I’ve been sleeping. Add to this the news from CA last Tuesday and the fact that if I fail to take one specific pill I’m supposed to take, I spend the next day in an absolutely foul mood (and unable to concentrate to boot), I wasn’t exactly coherent enough to make much sense.

I’m just starting to get my equilibrium back to the point where I can converse like a reasonable human being as opposed to an ogre, and so I’ll begin typing up some of my impressions of last weekend. I’ve got a bit to say. So stay tuned, folks.

Wow, it’s been a day.

1 Comment

Current ribbon count: 31, plus gopher ribbon, plus three I haven’t attached to the badge yet, for a total of 35.

Current fun being had: Loads.

Permission for live broadcasting from the Fanzine Lounge: Authorized.

Picture taken of me: Possibly for the newsletter, need to get somebody to snap me with my own camera, probably in my natural habitat (in front of a door).

Things that are crucial: Make up signs for the unofficial Sactown BOF in the consuite tomorrow.

Things that have made me feel really awesome: Getting a nice note from the lady who cleaned our room since we left her a tip. Getting mentioned at ribbon panel as having one of the possibly hot ribbons of the con.

And that’s about it.

More later, or you can always check my twitter feed as I can get to that on my phone and may be inclined to update it more frequently. Or not. I mean, as it is, I’ve made more posts this week than I have in weeks…

Friday Cat Blogging, Shiny Happy Spring Edition

Leave a comment

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for cat blogging! So here, have a shiny photo of Ebony-kitty outside on a beautiful spring day this week.

Why you should never let katster play with her food

Leave a comment

So the neighbors made us cupcakes for Easter. This, of course, ends with me goofing around with cupcakes, microwaves, and the digital camera on my Blackberry…

Our story starts with an innocent Peep on an innocent cupcake, a normal residence of Cupcakelandia, on the fair continent of PlasticaPlate. Obviously, all is right with the world. But little does our peep know that the world is going to get very … interesting. Yeah, that’s the word we want, interesting. It is a tale most foul…

Of course, in Cupcakelandia, sitting on a cupcake without the permission of the monarchs is a crime. So our innocent little peep gets thrown to the wolves and is oppressed by the two Peeps who sit in judgment on the Cupcake Thrones! Help, help, we're being oppressed!Photo by retstak
Oh noes! Our innocent little peep is being oppressed! What is there to be done? Well, it seems the rulers of Cupcakelandia are looking for a peep to be experimented on! And they pick our poor innocent peep! What will become of him or her, as we completely failed to give our peep gender when we started this story!

At the Kenmore Nuclear Test Chamber, our peep is strapped to a gurney and placed inside to be radiated by powerful forces for thirty whole seconds! Will our peep survive such awful treatment? In the wreckage of the test range, we found a journal with the following entry:

Incident at Kenmore Nuclear Test ChamberPhoto by retstak
Subject Y. Peep was accidentally placed in the test chamber for approximately thirty seconds. Subject emerged as a irradiated SuperPeep and stormed off in the direction of the capital muttering something about those bastards on the Cupcake Thrones. I fear the worst.

The scientist who recorded this missive was obviously lying on at least one point, as the irradiation was done quite deliberately and with malice aforethought. Also, I suspect SuperPeep trashed the Kenmore Nuclear Test Chamber before going on his mission to destroy the Peeps on the Cupcake Thrones! This would make sense given his awful treatment at the hands of the scientists at the place. Perhaps our mystery scientist was trying to cover up his role in this plot. We may never know.

Uh oh!Photo by retstak

News photography in Cupcakelandia brought us this last image before we lost all transmissions. It shows an obviously larger SuperPeep behind the thrones, just before SuperPeep ascended the thrones and destroyed them and their rulers. It was a marshmallow bath, folks, and that sort of thing is just not okay for the kiddies to see. I mean, marshmallow all over the place? Are you some kind of pervert or something? It didn’t really matter, though, as our cameras lost power, possibly from SuperPeep’s irradiated hide, shortly thereafter.

(Read: katster got bored with taking pictures and decided to eat peeps instead. Note, microwaved peeps are not as good as normal peeps, as the chewy goodness becomes sugary tasting rubber.)

Look what came in the mail today!

Leave a comment

Yeah, my plaque for Best New Fanzine Fan showed up in the mail today, and that’s me proudly holding it. And yes, that’s a shirt from the Denver Worldcon I’m wearing. For those who want a closer view, here’s a picture of the plaque I took.

Anyway, gotta get back to writing. The end of the month fast approaches…

My gast is well and truly flabbed.

1 Comment

So, not two weeks ago, I wrote here joking about winning a Hugo in 2014. Would I like that? Oh, sure. Who wouldn’t? But that’s a huge dream and one I suspect might not happen at all.

But that’s not why I found my gast well and truly flabbed yesterday. It had started with my pal Ei dropping me off at my grandmother’s so I could hook up with my folks and my ride back to Sactown. While she was there, I made mention of a possible Baycon ribbon I was thinking about, and then had to explain to my grandmother what ribbons were and why I wanted to make them for something called Baycon, which led to me explaining in general terms about science fiction conventions, specifically Baycon and Worldcon. (Also, there was a digression on how con-commuting is a bit painful and the turn-around times and I were pulling in Denver last year.)

The conversation drifted, as conversations are wont to do, and at a lull I pulled out my phone and glanced at my email. There, I found an email from Peter Sullivan (). Now the two of us are friends and fellow eAPAeans, but generally we don’t exchange email. But it wasn’t the fact I got an email from him that had me staring at my phone in shock. No, it was his subject line: “Congratulations on your FAAn award win!”

Now, a bit of a digression here. The FAAn awards stand for “Fanzine Activity Achievement Awards”, and they are voted on by whomever in fandom chooses to participate, although in practice, it works out to being mostly fanzine fans. There’s several categories: best fanzine, best fanzine writer, best fanzine artist, best letterhack (person who writes letters of comment to fanzines), best online fanac site, and best new fan. They’re given out at Corflu every year, and this last weekend was Corflu Zed up Seattle way, simulcast on ustream so that us fans who couldn’t make the trip could hang out and watch the proceedings. Unfortunately, it was also the weekend of my grandmother’s seventieth birthday party, so I couldn’t spend as much time as I would have liked hanging out in the chat and watching the feed.

Which leads me back around to the email informing me I’d tied for first on best new fan with Jean Martin of SF/SF. Now see, I’d fully expected that if I was going to win it at all, it would have been next year, since I was planning to become more visible in the fanzine fandom this year instead of mainly writing my APAzines. So to find out I’d won this year — yeah, it completely came out of the blue.

Hopping on Twitter, I’d found that Peter had announced it there too, and then there was a followup from Chris Garcia, the man who runs the most excellent Baycon fanzine lounge as well as being a whirling dervish of fandom, saying much the same thing. So I guess this had actually happened, and I wasn’t dreaming. And after getting back into Sactown, I hopped back on the virtual con and had a couple people congratulate me there, too, which just went to make it all that more concrete.

So yeah. It may not be a rocket, but it’s a truly wonderful surprise nonetheless. I’m pleased as heck that the folks who voted for me in the awards thought highly enough of me to do so.

Yes. My gast is well and truly flabbed, even now on Monday morning.

Proving physics concepts the hard way.

Leave a comment

If you had been following my twitter on Saturday, you would have seen the following entry:

Was in an accident.

I twittered that from the ER, where I was waiting to be seen for injuries sustained in said accident.

The key point here is that I’m alive. Injuries were a sprained right knee and a sprained right thumb, as well as a cut/bruise across my chest, which I suspect was caused by the seatbelt. It’ll all heal, given time. The occasional replay of the accident in my head will probably also fade, although at the moment, it’s difficult.

What happened? Well, I had just come over a hill, and was scanning ahead, when a U-Haul truck down in the intersection I was approaching caught my eye. Which means I didn’t see the brakelights in front of me until it was too late. Whoops. I tried to stop, but I suspect the brakes locked. (There’s some skid marks on the pavement.) The airbag went off.

This all wouldn’t have been so bad, except the car belongs to Mom and Dad, and I feel awful because they didn’t need to have to be looking for a new car now — money’s really tight. And I’m also in the market for my own car, because I had been driving theirs because my car simply wasn’t reliable.

They’re being really nice about it. But I’m just frustrated at the whole thing. And I need a better job, because if I could help my folks out…

But I’m alive. That’s the important part, right?

…go climb a mountain

Leave a comment

Okay, so why in all of the seven hells am I looking up the best approach for climbing Blanca? I mean, other than the fact that my brain seems to think that climbing a fourteener is a really good idea? (And yes, kat, if climbing a fourteener is such a great idea, why don’t you go climb one of the fourteeners in your state instead of traspising all the way out to Colorado? Shasta’s been a goal for a long time… aaaaaaaugh.)

, somehow, I blame you. ;)

In all seriousness, I like hiking, and I would like to climb a fourteener, which is mountaineer slang for “a peak over fourteen thousand feet in height.” Most of the fourteeners in the Lower 48 are in Colorado (duh), but there’s a few in California and, of course, Seattleites will point to their own fourteener when they can see it through the rain. Or snow, as the case may be. See here for a complete list.

And I would probably do Shasta first, simply because, dude, that’s my mountain. But… :)

kitten, one night only

Leave a comment

7eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffffcccccTZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZ

oOPS…sorry about that, kitten on my keyboard. Found the CapsLock key too. Anyway, the neighbor boys found this little guy last night and brought him to us, as the local “cat people”. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to call the animal shelter and see if they’ll take him. Normally, we’d hold the feisty little guy and put up signs, but there have been ironclad plans made for this weekend since June of last year. *sigh*

But if I were in the sort of situation that would enable me to keep a kitten, you bet like heck I’d do so.===========””””””””””””””””””””””====================
================================================
================================================
================================================
================================================
==========ooooooo99999

ack, kitten on keyboard again…

Anyway, just wanted to show you pictures of kitten. More pictures here

wish you were here…

2 Comments

At Worldcon, and having a blast. I’ve done some filking, hung around in consuite, went to a panel, trolled the dealer’s room, partied with folks who want to have a Worldcon in a bleak post-nuclear wasteland and have already spent too much money. And it’s only Thursday.

(But that’s okay!)

Also, I nearly took John Scalzi out with my backpack in the reg line. The best part is? When I did that, I didn’t realize it was Scalzi. (Imagine my surprise when the nice dude behind me who’s been cool about the backpack thing walks up to the reg table (while I’ve got my badge and am waiting for the goodie bag) and says “I’m John Scalzi.”)

Yeah. I’m having a blast. Wish you all were here.

Anyway, there are other things I ought to be doing other than hanging out on the computer, so I’m going to do them. See you all later!

every plane has a tale…

Leave a comment

I’m flying to Denver tonight.

Of course, this story’s been about twenty-eight years in the making. It starts with a two year old in Redding. This was back in the bad old days before airline deregulation, which meant that a couple airlines actually found it profitable to run jets into Redding.

Now, my dad worked at the airport, so I practically grew up there, conning travelers into buying me candy from the vending machines as soon as I could talk. And because I was always there, the airport employees adopted me and gave me free run of the place.

Maybe I was destined to work with computers, because a story that’s often told about me is that I once brought an airline’s computer down when I was barely two. I had found the keyboard open and decided to smash around on the keyboard, much like a two year old does. My mother tried to get me away from it, but the airline employees dissuaded her, saying they had locked the computer and I couldn’t do anything to hurt it.

And so they let me be until a customer came, and they found their computer unresponsive. It took a reboot to get things running again. Nobody was quite sure how I’d done it, but it had happened, just as if I had decided to show them just what I could do. I like to think it was because I was destined to work with the things for a living.

Of course, you might ask what this has to do with the flight tonight, although I’m sure the more shrewd of you has guessed.

The airline all those many years ago is the one I’m flying to Denver tonight — Frontier Airlines.

You bet I’m amused.

dangerously cute

Leave a comment

The nice people at the county remind us that it’s time to get Stormycat her rabies shot and license again. They sent us a postcard. It contained the following vitals:

Name: Stormy
Sex: F
Color: Calico
Breed: Pitbull

I guess that’s dangerously cute for you.

caution: contains water and smiles

Leave a comment

So, in the process of cleaning up my room, I found my old Nalgene bottle I used to carry around when I was in grad school. I’ve been trying to drink more water, so I’ve gotten back in the habit of carrying it to work:
My Nalgene bottle

But this has its problems. If you’re not familiar with Nalgene bottles, they have a wide mouth. This is great for filling it, but not so great for drinking from it. Also, the only way to attach it to a bag is to weave the cap through a strap. Both of these are problems, so I went to REI yesterday to fix it.

The attachment problem is simple: I now have a carabiner on the cap loop to attach it to a bag. (Okay, technically, it’s a carabiner keychain. It’s even stamped “Not for climbing” on the side. But the REI guy and I both figured that a real carabiner would have been overkill for the situation.)

But the coup is the little piece I bought to fit in the mouth of the Nalgene bottle and make it easier to drink from. It covers most of the mouth, and it looks like this:
Smile!

Yes. It always gives me a bit of a smile when I open the water bottle.

Worldcon planning

Leave a comment

I’m about to enter the pay period just prior to Worldcon. That means that I’m about three weeks out. I think it’ll be three weeks tomorrow that I get on a plane and leave for Denver. That means I need to figure out what has to be done in those three weeks.

  1. I need to get my ribbon order into the ribbon printers. I know Worldcon isn’t as ribbon-happy as Baycon (there are very few places that are as ribbon-happy as Baycon, and I have the badge to prove it), but does anybody out there care to give me an estimate of just how ribbon-happy Worldcon can be?
  2. I need to find and pack books that I might want to get signed while I’m in Denver. This will require a long perusal of the attendance and a trip to the storage shed. It’s cheaper to mail than to take the box on the plane with me — I’m already going to have trouble keeping myself to one bag to avoid the $25 charge for the second. The book box needs to be mailed no later than Monday August 4th, and probably should be mailed the Thursday or Friday prior. Also, doublecheck with Mal that the address you have is correct.
  3. I need to check with about what plans are being made that may require my technical expertise.
  4. I also need to put together an issue for the August eAPA mailing. This is mandatory for two reasons — one, I skipped July, which means I’m falling dangerously close to failing to meet minac, and two, I’m trying to make plans to meet those members whom are going to Denver. I should probably start on that sometime this week so the end of the month doesn’t creep up on me. Again.
  5. The weekend prior (Aug 2nd and 3rd) I need to make sure that most everything is packed. I need to doublecheck this on Monday. Tuesday is going to be a whirlwind of a day, as I’m working a full eight hours and catching a flight to Denver, and there will not be time for last minute packing such as I’m famous for. If I’m packing on Monday, it’s a problem.
  6. Hopefully the preliminary schedule will be up soon so I can go over it. It’s probably a good idea to walk into this at least having a vague idea what might be coming up.
  7. Anything else? I know I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what that might be. Any help from those who have attended prior Worldcons?

It is going to be an interesting three weeks.

at least the dog is happy

Leave a comment

I spent most of the weekend mucking out my room. That is, I’ve been in there cleaning it up from the disaster-area state that it was in and moving things around.

It’s not completely done. There’s a lot of things in boxes, and I’ve got a lot of sorting ahead. But my carpet has been revealed as a completely depressing shade of red and you can actually walk from the door all the way to the bed.

I’m not used to this!

So you can imagine my surprise when I’m curled up on the bed relaxing after having worked rather hard on the room, re-reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and munching on some black licorice I bought at the store earlier when, suddenly, there’s a snuffling and the dog appears at the side of the bed, looking longingly at my treats and giving me the sad puppydog eyes.

I moved over to let her get on the bed, and shared a few of my treats (I know; I’m so cruel) and she’s been on the bed since, staying put even as I fetched the camera and took the shot.

Such are the perils of clean rooms, I tell you.