Readercon 20 was my best con experience to date. I'll post more detailed stuff later, but for now, some stats:

Programming:

--4 panels (notes to be posted later)
--3 single author readings (Laird Barron, Jennifer Pelland, Catherynne Valente)
--3 Kaffeeklatches (Ellen Klages, Jeffrey Carver, Catherynne Valente)
--2 group readings (Goblin Fruit/Mythic Delirium and the Rhysling Poetry Slan, and I read in both of them, woo!)
--1 workshop (Mike Allen's poetry workshop)
--1 solo talk (Caitlin Kiernan's reading Dr. Seuss as weird fiction)

Extracurricular Activities:

--1 party (Goblin Fruit Summer launch)
--1 dinner with friends (cucumberseed and darkpaisley)
--1 coffee with friends (cucumberseed and asakiyume)
--1 dinner with Viable Paradise people

Acquisitions:

--Complete works of JoSelle Vanderhooft (5 volumes)
--Mythic Delirium 19 and 20
--Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties (Goblin Fruit sponsored collection of poems by Nicole Kornher-Stace)
--The Coyote Road (anthology of trickster tales edited by Datlow and Windling)
--Clockwork Phoenix 1 and 2 (anthologies of pretty, strange stories edited by Mike Allen)
--Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

Well Being:

--1 Migraine (ate up most of Saturday, booo!)
--0 meltdowns in the car because of con-induced anxiety (wooo!)

Just checking in briefly.

This was my most successful con yet. Third time's a charm, apparently. I think we managed to pace ourselves well, so we got to see several good panels, attend a few socializing events, and still eat, sleep, and generally not wear ourselves out. I also noticed that my hard work on the networking front continues to pay off. I was more comfortable at this con than at Arisia (and I did pretty well at Arisia, if you'll recall... well, pretty well by my standards anyway), and I even introduced myself to some new people on my own, without help. Woo!

I have a lot of notes, and I do intend to do some panel recaps and responses in the next few days, but tonight we're off to see Coraline. Thanks to my lack of depth perception, I thought 3D meant half red, half blue, and blurry up until I was 15, but the new 3D is meant to work for people like me now. I'll let you know how it goes.

We voted at 8:30, and didn't have any lines, though our neighbors reported longish lines at 7:00 when the polls opened. As we walked out, Moss marveled that ballots have only been secret since 1890. Of course I couldn't have voted back then even if I'd been alive, being a woman and all. I'm happy I got to walk my female body down to the polling station and cast my vote for the person I deemed best candidate, who happened to be non-white. Yay for societal progress!

I also called my mother in CA and made sure she went to vote before work, and urged a no vote on Prop. 8. I'd love both my home states to keep same sex marriage legal. I have lots of friends there who might want to get married someday, and I think all of them should have that chance. I'm really unsure how that one's going to go.

Now, waiting. Moss said he was hopeful. I am just anxious to have this over and done with. I want to know the results already. Gah. This makes it extremely hard to focus on the writing and critiquing I need to do before my writing workshop tonight. It also makes me wonder just how mentally present the rest of my workshop group will be.

I suppose I had better get back to the grind.

She will be 17 on Christmas Eve, and she's been a perfectly healthy cat up until last night. Now she's in the kitty hospital getting a barrage of expensive tests done, and hooked up to an IV drip. Poor kitty. The rest of this entry is going to be a bit graphic and detailed about bodily fluids, so if that makes you squeamish, best not to read on. Please send good thoughts, though!


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Here's another picture from a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, she likes to help us type.

First, gleaning. I can't believe I forgot to explain the point of it yesterday. All the gleaned fruit goes to local food pantries and halfway houses.

Second, I decided to play a little bit more with video editing. This is not as high quality as the hedgehog video, but it amuses me.



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I've taken a while to write about it, I know. Mostly I've been recovering. Large events where I don't know anyone and have no idea what to do with myself are super stressful for me. It was really great to meet asakiyume and cucumberseed, and to attend a couple of panels and so forth, but I think the next time I attempt a con, I need to volunteer so I have some direction. Since I had no specific assignment, I spent large portions of Sunday at the edges of rooms, trembling, nauseated, worried that people were staring at me, and feeling incredibly stupid about all of the above. I had a major meltdown in the car during our lunchbreak, complete with tears and protestations of, "See, this is why I knew I should wait until I had a better plan before going to a con!"* Is this rational? No. But that doesn't change my feelings. I'm throwing this out there so that if you meet me at a future con and I seem unbearably awkward, or reserved to the point of rudeness, you'll understand that it's not you, it's me and my panic!brain.

And now, the first panel I attended:

( Trolls Got Rhythm? )

It seemed like everyone was a afraid to step too hard on this topic for fear of seeming racist. I would have liked more exploration of ways to communicate that the terrorist was a lesbian, or of how not to make your aliens seem like cheap knockoffs of Japanese businessmen, but as it was the panel seemed mostly to acknowledge that racism is touchy and tricky, and that writing diverse characters is hard. Please feel free to explore the topic further in the comments here. I welcome discussion.

I'll try to get my other panel notes up soonish.





*Moss, it should be noted, was very good about the whole thing, and took me to a drive through so I didn't have to go in a restaurant with my splotchy meltdown face.

I'm not a terribly handy person. Sure, I can put together IKEA furniture, but I never acquired basic home maintenance skills when I was growing up. I know some people who have Mr. Fixit dads and Ms. Fixit moms, and it seems they all either learned how to fix things when they were still in diapers, or never learned and never mind since the knowledgeable parent will take care of things for them. Not so with me.

My father was not at all the handy type. True, I did spend a fair amount of my youth in grimy hangars reading books while he fussed around with airplanes, but he didn't really pass on a lot of mundane skills (possibly because he grew up with servants and never lost the "it's someone else's job to worry about this" attitude). And although my mother was a single parent and a homeowner, I don't think she knew how to fix things anymore than I do. I remember her renting a wet vac to clean up a flooded laundry room when I was ten or eleven, but other than that my memories of pesky household problems correlate pretty keenly with my memories of family friends or (if we had no other option) professional repairmen coming to take a look.

Now I'm an adult, and more importantly, an adult who suffers from social anxiety. I know it sounds silly (especially when you consider that I have worked in call centers on multiple occasions, and that my customer service skills are quite good), but I hate calling people. And even more than that, I intensely loathe the idea that strange people (or the landlord!) might come into my house and ... See it? See me? Here the fear gets a little hazy. I never said it was rational. In any case, this drives me to be the best, most self-reliant renter I can be. If there is a problem, you can bet I want to fix it fast, and on my own.

Surely I can't be the only person with this desire. I mean, okay, most of the others probably want to for less dorky reasons, but still. So why isn't there an obvious, universally read manual out there; The Joy of Basic Home Maintenance or some such? Maybe there is and I am just ignorant. Please tell me if that's the case! I'd really love to correct my error. As it is, whenever there's a problem, I run to the internet (thank humanity for having invented such a beautiful series of tubes) and spend hours trying to find any relevant information.

What I really want is a magic book.*

In the ridiculous (but fantastic) Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Melissa Joan Hart was constantly consulting a giant old book (with inexplicable rhinestones on the cover, as if someone in the late 20th century had decided that plain brown leather was not showy enough, and rectified the dullness with a [warning: link talks] BeDazzler), and it occurred to me this morning as I was fretting over our lack of hot water that a book like this would be extremely useful. Yes, Sabrina's book was all about magic, but it talked, it was arranged by topic, and it was full of helpful information and instructions. Now imagine that kind of resource applied to home maintenance, with sections for the water heater, circuit breakers, sink and toilet repair, how to change a lightbulb, care and maintenance of all types of floors, how to get stains or bad smells out of things, and so on. This book would be huge (but portable!), and everything would be cross-referenced and explained in simple language. Wouldn't it be glorious?

I did fix the water problem, by the way. It was as simple as flipping a switch in our circuit breaker panel. Still, I'd love to know where your fixit knowledge comes from, and any reading recommendations you might have in that area.

*I'd also take a primer like the ones in The Diamond Age. Same basic concept, really.

I've been stuck lately, unable to get anywhere with the projects I am meant to be working on. I sit in front of the documents and then feel helpless and antsy, and turn to blog reading instead. I know this is probably just backlash from pushing myself so hard through the first 3 and a half months of this year, but it's still worrying.

I've been having anxiety dreams about looking at the walls in my house and noticing that the paint is uneven and ugly. Instead of bright uniform color, I see splotches of dirty white drywall in glaringly obvious places. I realize, horrified, that either I did a terrible job to begin with and just didn't notice, or that my paint job was not solid enough to last, and is now eroding.

Every morning this week I have awakened only to glance nervously at the walls in my bedroom, seeking reassurance that they are still purple. I am writing this as a sort of talisman. Maybe setting it all down will protect me from it? Maybe today I will actually write something I can feel pleased about.

The last week was really rough for me. I was super stressed and overly socialized and generally overwhelmed.* I think I started a few posts here and abandoned them when a gnawing anxiety took over and blanked the intended content from my mind. I spent a full day reading about something that upset me, then resolved not to read the internet for a bit, and instead panicked about not writing enough, while also worrying about how I was supposed to entertain Moss's mother when she came to visit while he wasn't here (he'd gone to New York for work). Yay!

Happily, I have made it through the week of horror, and am now enjoying a day of Not Doing Much, because I have come to the conclusion that if I am to preserve my sanity, I must take things slowly. Today I've caught up on my friendslist (all 300+ entries! My, but you all write a lot), printed out something to work on later, done minor household chores, and spent a considerable amount of time petting the cat. Next up I will take a bath, write for half an hour (timed), and go out in the rain to Downtown Boston, where I will attempt to buy a copy of the next book group selection, and then have a cup of coffee with my printed pages while waiting for Moss. After work we're meeting friends for dinner and then seeing Eddie Izzard (short video link, mild swearing) at the Orpheum. I am not going to worry about all the things I haven't done. I refuse to worry about these things today.

*The userpic is me last September in the midst of a minor furniture assembly fiasco. I'm buried under bookshelf parts and an overturned Poang chair, overwhelmed, and grimly amused that I have (quite literally) brought this all down upon myself.