Tue, Aug. 19th, 2008, 02:57 pm reluctance: as usual, tomorow trumps yesterday
(or as I'd have put it when finding my way around everything.blockstackers.org, "always looking forwards, never looking up")
If memory serves correct, I brought this postcard back with me from a gallery after my pilgrimage to Assembly '99. I suppose the primacy of the future is preferable to the opposite.
I'd like to perform an autopsy on my notes and discuss the tour with you (now plus a bonus Tofino weekend, soon plus a Robson Valley festival stop, soon plus a handful of further dates on a second tour possibly leading directly into a visit to Portland!) but between catch-up and the hatching of schemes laid long ago there's just no time. I'm playing at the Railway Club tonight with the Planks (last, likely starting around midnight) and yet have you heard a peep out of me? No, the big news of the day is Geoff Berner (the man who revelatorily demonstrated the un-champagney possibilities of accordion music to me opening for a Dan Bern show in the Britannia High School auditorium) headlining the 1st annual Accordion Noir festival October 3rd at the Railway Club with Natasha Enquist, Amy Denio, and the Creaking Planks. Score! Consolidating the different realms of my life has always been a streamlining goal. Now I just need to get a poster together, turn the poster into a t-shirt, and come up with a Planks album to release at the show. No problem -- I have almost a month and a half!
No sunburn yet! I have been hiding out in the shade. I saw 2 geckos last night! Dad says they are everywhere and that he practically trips over them leaving the apartment, but I was pretty excited. Joe totally melted in to a puddle, only able to utter "Gecko! GECKO!" when we saw them. It's like when he sees tiny catfish.
So everyone with a mac can pick up a wifi signal no problem while my poor linux pc pouts and pouts and says DOES NOT COMPUTE and smoke comes out of its ears and Captain Kirk frees the people from their papier mache robot overlord. Alas! I have been borrowing one of the gleaming white macbooks everyone else in the family favours once a day so that I don't PERISH from internet withdrawal, a COMPLETELY REAL DANGER, but mostly I've been lying on the patio reading Charlie Stross (Saturn's Children; LOVE IT) and eating creamsicles.
Joe and I drove to Hana yesterday! Hahaha that was a disaster. The road to Hana is very pretty! It's also very, very twisty. We spent 7 hours in the car going 110 miles total roundtrip. I was so seasick from the drive. I had to close my eyes and lie down in the car on the way back to keep from emulating the Vomitron 3000. But it was very pretty. Blarfff!
Hee, oh man, so something like one car in 10 on the road here is a mustang convertible, because the rental car agencies are stuffed to the gills with them. That's what we're driving. WHY ARE THESE CARS POPULAR? There's no space inside (with my mum, 5'1" in the front and me, 5'3" in the back, we're squashed,) the trunk holds a postage stamp, there are only four seatbelts, they're bad on gas, they look kind of silly, and Joe says his 250cc clown-car motorcycle has more pickup. We found ourselves longing nostalgically for Marge the Barge, our faithful crapmotron car back home. Then we cracked up.
We celebrated mom's birthday yesterday, a day late. Happy birthday mumma! I remembered it was her birthday while I was waiting for my flight at Pearson, so I got her a $5 Dora the Explorer sticker activity book for her birthday. Oops. But it was a big hit, actually. We all have Dora the Explorer stickers on our computers now and Dad has been singing the Sac-a-dos, sac-a-dos! song.
The grocery stores here sell buckets of delicious marinated raw tuna and octopus! I have been stuffing my face with raw fish and american candy. I am considering eating a vegetable some time today. Hah! Okay no, but maybe another bowl of papaya with lime juice.
I'm watching my sister give everyone haircuts for the wedding. Except me, of course. I personally think my hair is getting unreasonably long and shaggy, like, it's almost a centimeter long, but she sneers at me. Aroo!
Tomorrow morning before the wedding we are going on a boat trip to Molokini for to snorkel our brains out. I am told that I might see a cuttlefish!!! I am trying not to get too excited in case I don't, but CUTTLEFISH!!!!!!!!! Even if I don't there should be lots of wiggly, garish fish. In any event this should assure me of getting my sunburn taken care of.
In Maui! HAS A HUSBAND! Internet situation dire. (Jeez, no one leaves free wireless access points on the beach anymore?) Am tragically reduced to eating pineapples and lying in the sun instead of refreshing LJ. (I think you all know me well enough to know that this actually depresses me slightly...) If I don't find an internet cafe I might have to go snorkeling. Alas!
My banjola arrived here intact! This is noteworthy because they threw it on to the regular baggage carousel, first in line, so it went THUD! down the chute and then got schmucked by the heavy bags belonging to the other 339 passengers. I almost bowled over some poor little kid in my mad dash to haul it off the baggage carousel. Unbroken! It was MOIST inside, which made me VERY UNHAPPY, but now that it's dried out there is nothing obviously wrong. I owe my hard case a big kiss. A big dry kiss of moisture removal. My banjola wasn't that expensive and wouldn't be too hard to replace, but OOH IT'S MY BABY. It's funny how emotional you can get over a musical instrument. (absentmindedly strokes banjola tattoo.)
Okay I'm pushing my luck on this sketchy connection. Ta ta! I will report on my sunburn when I get home.
I wish the article actually quoted people talking about the supposed dissent in the police force in how they should be intervening in the neighbourhood, but it goes in depth anyway...
I have landed in Toronto! I am in the FilKONtario hotel and man it's kind of weird being here without wearing a nametag. It's not weird at all to be lugging my banjola case through the halls, though. I had a wonderful train ride here. (Thanks for the ride to the station, miss Clare!) I sprung for business class and finally got a window seat (with no one next to me, which was good because oh man did I smell bad,) and the ride was all daylight. Going across the bridge to the Niagara station was just totally breathtaking. We waited quite a while at the border because someone had snuck a bag on to my car before I got on, apparently. The border guards exasperatedly quizzed everyone on the train about exactly which bags were theirs and then finally took the bag off to bag prison and let the train go an hour behind schedule. But we zipped along and made it across some canal just before it was going to... snap? raise? squirt? whatever canal locks do to trains, and got in to TO only about 45 minutes late. I was amused to find that the Amtrak staff were completely replaced with VIA staff as we crossed the border! The very chatty, very québecoise VIA conductor was a vast improvement over the Amtrak guy who took my tickets with earbuds in, talking loudly to his buddy on his cellphone. (Seriously, WHAT?) And hee, the main conductor's announcements in French were a lot longer than his announcements in English as he added a lot of humourous editorialization about the English script he was reading from. YOU FRISKY FRANCOPHONES YOU.
Today is my 5th wedding anniversary! I love you, my Joseph! To celebrate we are spending the night thousands of kilometers apart. Oops. But I will see him tomorrow. IN MAUI. WINNAR.
I finally opened my ASL dictionary yesterday, after lugging it across the continent. I learned to say dissect (very similar to autopsy,) whore (which sort of looks like wanker-woman,) and water. I also taught the 40-fest-izens how to say classy a few days ago: you hold an A-hand at your chin and then extend your index finger. Crowjoy promptly altered it to: hold an A-hand at your chin and then extend two fingers to make a K - this means KLASSY with a K. She had everyone there signing klassy at each other by the time I left. Bwahahaha.
Ooh, I totally have an icon specific to this hotel! That's me sound asleep on my banjola case at my first FKO 2 years ago.
It's Friday night and a bajillion digsters have shown up. Crowjoy whipped up an AMAZING feast and we are all sitting by candlelight stuffing our faces. Everyone has two nametags, one for each boob, one with their digs handle and one with their real name. The full moon shines on the flower arrangements we picked at a farm today. It's pretty sweet.
Last night I played a house concert here! The highlight for me was getting to sing my Dr. Breana song (Worm Herder) to Dr. Breana. Although playing Livejournal Shanty to an audience that had never heard it before (but are avid LJers) was pretty awesome too. I'm kind of bored of LJ shanty these days because I've played it SO MUCH and I had kind of forgotten how exciting it is to play it for a new crowd. Whee!
Tonight I am to sleep in the Zesterhorn Enterprises Van, which as of yesterday has a very comfortable couch bolted in to the back of it, lengthwise, instead of bench seats. Riding in the van on the couch, looking up at the circus paintjob and the neon pink fringe is like being in a hallucination of a limousine. Heart heart heart.
This is my last night here (one more campfire! I roasted strawberry marshmallows last night) and tomorrow I am off to Syracuse again, to catch the train to Toronto for a very brief Canadian booster shot. I get in to Toronto in the evening, stay over at the FKO hotel and then boot it to the airport early in the morning on Sunday to fly to Maui where I will at last get to see my sweetie. I am getting pretty homesick. I shouldn't go away from Joe for so long I think. But just 44 hours to go.
Fri, Aug. 15th, 2008, 12:46 pm woobeans: are they interesting or innnnnnteresting?
i got the glasses this morning before work, 3 days before i expected them. yay!
suspiciously, no one has said anything about them yet except for one person. this person also digs weird gigantic glasses, so his opinion doesn't really count.
i also haven't yet talked to my girl-homies, who would probably be the only other people at work to notice.
the lack of noticing could be attributed to any or all of these things:
1. i'm eccentric enough that people would expect me to show up with giant glasses one day 2. the near-complete lack of women around here also means that no one really notices when i get a dramatic hair cut either, so they wouldn't notice glasses 3. haven't seen my homies yet 4. the glasses may actually be normal enough not to comment on 5. or maybe it's just utter shock: "what the hell is she thinking? i'm not going to say anything because i don't know what to say."
Fri, Aug. 15th, 2008, 06:03 am jbailey: Mouse hunting?
Not the plastic kind, the squishy furry kinda that need to GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE.
GRRR
Yesterday was visit 4? 5? from the exterminators. We got them to lay more traps. And this morning (I love my son dearly. Especially the opportunity to cuddle him to sleep at 4am. *sigh* I'm actually mostly serious. I've only been able to hold him for a few weeks now, and weaning means that I'm getting to do a lot more with him that only auzure_skies could do before. And how long will a child let himself be cuddled to sleep? This is just mixing poorly with the jetlag from the recent trip) I had the joy of watching the mouse run out from beside where one trap is, and behind the couch where another trap is, triggering neither of them.
What I really need is a flame thrower and a forgiving insurance company.
new glasses arrived in the mail for me yesterday and everyone hates them except for me. woohoo! that's ok, though, i don't give a crap. i bought them for me, not you.
andrew said they were ugly. i pointed at his face and told him his glasses were uglier, because they are. they're from like 1990 or something, and they are complete circles, and they are so old and dirty that i want to throw them in a dishwasher. i bet when he wore them he had that long bowl cut hair that was parted in the middle, the kind that most boys had in high school in the 90's.
i'll get them back on monday after the lenses are done. my hair stylist, who collects a tonne of vintage frames from ebay, recommended a super cheap place for getting lenses. it's only costing me $98! i am stoked. i hope it doesn't suck. it probably won't because my vision isn't that bad.
even the woman there, at this grungy cheapo factory optical warehouse, looked at them very puzzled and asked, "are they safety glasses?" "nope." "oh, then... fun glasses!?" "um, yes! yes..."
but what's with the big fuss over expired prescriptions? my eyes haven't changed in like 10 years despite a sharp increase in computer usage. and it only expired in 2005. people without vision impairment never go get their eyes checked so, whatever. i asked the optometrist to fax me the prescription (they did it last time) but this time the lady was not having any of that. but she read out the numbers to me. thanks, lady!
anyway, if you're wondering why i'm getting new glasses it's because the vintage ones i'm wearing are way too heavy and they hurt my ears and nose. but mostly my ears.
we won an ultimate game last night. this is a rare occurance, but mostly because we played half the season in the wrong division. oops.
with no female subs on our team (and more than two full lines on the other team) i was taken for a long and hard 2 hour full-on sprint. i was so tired by the end of it i think i actually experienced a runner's high. it felt like my legs were spinning underneath me and i was floating on top.
i also biked there and back, and today my knees are complaining a lot. combined with my morning commute i logged almost 30km yesterday, which is kind of decent i guess. just for pride, here is the route. (sorry, you have to zoom out to see the whole thing).
on the way there, right after the cemetary, andrew tailed me for 10 blocks or so without saying anything. somehow i knew it was him, though, because i didn't think a stranger would follow me so closely without passing me, and silently, making noise only to change gears. asshole!
i just walked down the stairs to the corner store to get a snack. i don't think i want to see stairs for another day or two. :P
OH NO, I AM COMPLAINING ABOUT MY KNEES! fuck. i am the people i loathe!
---
also? i went kayaking on the weekend to Cabbage Island with ziola and a crew and it was pretty cool.
I am in Ithaca at Zesterhorn Enterprises! Dr. Breana just showed up and as the treasurer of the OMG DR. BREANA Fan Club I am INSIDE OUT WITH JOY. Currently a cockatoo is screaming at me while Sofia yells "Yee-haw!" and flips her pink cowboy hat in to the air. Ruby, excruciatingly polite, inquires if I have seen her hot pink parasol. A rooster walked over me earlier and I had a sudden craving for a chicken sandwich.
Oh man, when did I last post, Friday? Worldcon was fantabulous from start to finish. In the end I went to one (1) non-filk panel. So maybe I should just stick with filkcons, eh? But I met so many people who told me "that was my first exposure to filk! What else should I do?" and then I handed them a Conflikt flyer and a Concertino flyer. MUAHAHAHA YOU WILL ALL FALL UNDER OUR FILKLY DOMINION! Hmm, hmm, worldcon highlights:
- Seeing Andrew Ross do a concert! He is always so busy running things at Orycon that he never does a concert so it was such a treat to see him get the spotlight. Plus watching the faces of people who had never heard his Hamlet (by John Woo) song. Dang is that man a performer!
- The My Favourite Sings circle, in which Kathy Mar, temporarily appointed queen of the palace, commanded people to perform. She coaxed so many wonderful songs out of people, beautiful songs, funny songs, songs they hadn't played in 20 years, songs at all from People Who Don't Sing, oh, it was just a wonderful couple of hours.
- Meeting new people! I came to filk just a couple of years ago (but enthusiastically!) so I am still filling in the gaps as far as meeting people. I met Terence Chua and Paul... okay his last name can't be Snark. Estin? for the first time at Worldcon and was totally charmed by their songs. (And them!)
I have had very little sleep since I last posted. I stayed up through the all-night filksing on Saturday, of course. There were 17 people at breakfast! That's the most I've ever seen. I guess it was 15 if you don't count Char & Randy who cheated and had a nap. But still. Then we dashed off to the hotel to pack and then bused to the airport and very groggily checked in for our flights. Dr. Filk correctly checked in after only two tries; it took me three. BLeaugghhhgrghhhgh braiiinnnnssss. I got a sweet deal, though: they were going to charge me $40 for my "extra" bag, or I could upgrade to first class (including 2 free bags) for $50. I thought about that for, oh, 2 or 3 seconds.
OH MAN FIRST CLASS. They give you REAL FOOD. My salad had fresh blueberries and shaved parmesan. They gave me warm chocolate chip cookies from a cookie warmer. AIRPLANES HAVE COOKIE WARMERS AND THEY STILL SERVE YOU CARDBOARD IN COACH?! I am hoping I will forget about how nice first class was soon, otherwise my flights in coach are going to seem so awful from now on. Oops. I didn't really sleep on the plane at all, though, because they brought me a snack or a drink like every five minutes the whole way. Which I am not complaining about!
So I got in to chicago and took a cab to the train station. I wanted to take the public transit trains so hard! They come right to the airport and everything! But after worldcon my knee was cranky and I had my banjo case and a huge suitcase and alas, no. (Oh man, thank you Dr. Filk for carrying my banjola for me so much at Worldcon. I am such a bitch queen and I have no idea how I rate a wonderful friend like you. I assume you are being cosmically punished for your sins in the 70s or something.) I got a pretty nice view of the skyline and a lot of rusting industrial hulks from the cab, though. I like rusting industrial hulks. Train views have a lot of those too. The train station was kind of scary! I had lots of Helpful Gentlemen Without Red Caps offer to help me with my bags, but I fell for that in Vancouver once and once is my lifetime limit for baggage extortion, thank you. I got my ticket printed and tried to get my next two tickets printed too, only one of my reservations had disapppeared. Erk! I went to the ticket booth and they said "Oh, that's an illegal route! See, it only gives you 3 minutes to transfer trains." "But... the website suggested it!" "Uh." (pause for 5 minutes.) "Here, call our 1-800 number." So I did and they said "What? There's nothing wrong. Oh. Oops. Okay now try printing them." And then the tickets printed, so I can, in fact, get back to Canada. Yay! I have 3 minutes to transfer from the same train to itself, which I think I can manage.
Then Amy McFiddler showed up! Bearing a giant octopus and wearing robot trousers! Miss Amy is very excellent. We couldn't get on the same train so I waved goodbye and hopped on my train. No window seat, blast! But I was SO TRASHED that I spent most of the trip half-asleep in my seat. Although it took me two hours to figure out how to get the footrest up. But now I'm a pro. I got off at Sandusky at 2:00AM, and then got a taxi at 3 and took a nap until 5am when Amy showed up and then conked off until 9ish. Then we went to cedar point!!!!! We rode every spinning ride the joint had, fed cheese fries to seagulls, and played squee-ball. I took 85 pictures to induce jealousy in you all. Thank you for being a fantabulous tour guide, roller-coaster-girl!
I had a nap and then caught the 4:42 train out of town, which was actually the 5:32 train that day. (There is only one train a day out of Sandusky.) I was assigned a window seat, woohoo! But there was a woman already sitting in my seat, and she spent the whole ride softly swearing to herself so uh... I sat in the aisle seat and spent a lot of time in the dining car. I got in to Syracuse at about 13:00 and found Crowjoy and Chris waiting for me!!!!!! We toured Syracuse for a while with our native guide, Deadboy. We visited the Salt Museum! Friends, I am here to tell you that the life of the salt boiler is GRIM. Was grim. I don't think they have salt boilers anymore. Salt boilers that are humans anyway. I got my third wooden nickel of this trip so far: I have a gnome / buffalo nickel from denvention, and a dandelion/ship wooden token - Kathy gave out some of her beautiful specially made poker chip bardic chips to the folks who stayed up all night, a precious souvenir to be sure. And a salt museum nickel, although it doesn't say anything about salt on it. We went to get Sprout from the airport and then hit the road for Ithaca, home of Zesterhorn Enterprises!
So that was yesterday. I don't really remember anything that happened after I got here; I was SO tired. I slept 10 hours last night and have had 4 multi-hour naps (one in a hammock!) so far and now I feel sort of human-ish again. Yay!
Still in, y'know, Denver! Apparently I make it rain by posting on LJ, because it's been ridiculously sunny since my last entry and just now it started pouring rain. Sorry, worldcon. But I must post.
We did a concert last night! It was totally fun. We had 55 minutes and we had like FOURTEEN songs ready and still finished early. I learned this lesson earlier in life, because I had my filkbook at the side of the stage instead of in my hotel room, so we got out a fifteenth song, and I fooled around tuning for a minute and then we finished on time in the end. Judging by the number of people asking if my lyrics are online, it went well! I should get cards printed with our URL or something, because it's too long to say. Anyway. High five, drfilk!
Kathy Mar also had a concert last night, a huge huge concert! It was so delicious to get to hear more than an hour of her songs straight. She is such a wonderful performer and writes such amazing songs. But she is a dedicated filk gardener and tends to hang back in the filk room until it's quite late, when she suddenly starts playing a lot to keep people awake, because by god, if you've made it to 3:00 AM she is NOT letting you leave until breakfast. But at that hour it's more short peppy songs. So what a treat to hear her concert. And it was a HUGE double-ballroom and it was packed! I was so, so happy that (A) worldcon actually had a music guest and (B) that it went so well.
All the music programming has been fabulous, actually. lemmozine and kbeader are doing a really fantastic job with the filk track. Three cheers!
1. Hip hip hooray! 2. For they are jolly good fellows! 3. Give me an A! A! Give me a B! B! Give me a C! C! Goooooooooo alphabet high!
Okay I'm done cheering now.
I brought my sign dictionary but I've been too busy to crack it open even once so far. But! jenrose1 taught me the signs for Moose Lobotomy Time! So my education is not being neglected here.
Oh man, there's HAIL and LIGHTNING! Maybe I will be tornadoed in to Oz! I hope not, because then I'd miss my regularly scheduled adventures.
Thu, Aug. 7th, 2008, 05:23 pm woobeans: omg guys floss your teeth
ok, so i suck at taking care of my teeth.
actually, not really, because apparently i am awesome at brushing. but i know i suck at flossing. and i have like 3 more cavities. and an old filling from 1990 popped off because of the clenching. and i chipped a tooth on the other side. and a pocket where bone is wearing away, probably because of bad flossing and clenching.
so are mouth guards like glasses now? everyone has them? i'm getting one, too. welcome me to the club.
i am trying to eat yogurt but my face is frozen and it's going all over my face. but i am so hungryyy!!!
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