"It doesn't have to be like this..."
So for the past n months I have completely failed at utilising LJ in any meaningful way.
Okay, that's not fair. I've used it for limited communications and occasional poking-my-head-up in a "here I am, world, I am still alive" sort of way, or in the travel/sleeping arrangement sort of way.
I haven't read anything by anyone in all that time, except occasionally when pointed to a specific post, and also checking out ziibminthalij's photoblog at ziibphoto once or twice since she started it this year (because she poked me to look at it as a result of an IM conversation).
So now I'm going to talk vaguely about highlights, lowlights, or possibly middle-lights of my existence since my last "had significant content about my life" post. I'll probably miss more than one thing. But I'll throw it behind cuts for those who wish to skip to the questions I ask afterward.
Past
August
I am surprisingly still working, except for the week I go to visit friends songwind, ladysea, mnfiddledragon, and offspring in Minnesota. Kids just as fun as I remember. Adults, too.
Get to visit the MN Ren Fest and see marcbs and dance with Minnesota Traditional Morris (I know enough dances with the right traditions to make it or fake it). Also get to meet a friend of torimuise, but not her ex.
Also get to visit The Source, a game store of which Monte Cook reportedly said "Wow." when entering. Neat place. No comic, game, or game product I felt compelled to buy - but I picked up a Star Wars novel I'd wanted, feeling that the pilgrimage wasn't complete without purchasing something.
September
I move out of Arthur Street, and in with lindyhop18 and blak_spyder, the latter of whom inadvertently hits my car with hers as I'm moving one of my final carloads to the new place. Complete lack of personal injuries, much amusement ensues. Her insurance company practically begs me to take money and sign a waiver so that I won't sue them. I should possibly have extracted more from them, but as I didn't have any injuries (the X-rays came back clear) I didn't feel good contributing to rising insurance rates, either in specific or generally.
Volunteer at ConQuest SF - almost completely a good time. Also partially eaten by wendelina2's adorable not-quite-kitten-anymore, Lily, who was a bit put out that I didn't play with her enough.
Acquire extra housemate in the spare room which was to be 'storage area' for all of our extra crap. Whoops.
Casa de Faire begins, I dance with Newcastle/Bruno and help out in the Cuthbert's kitchen. Limited amount of drama over the faire season.
Skip a weekend of faire to attend KoL Con 3D with darkmoon. Get to meet many fantastic and/or amusing people who have the same online "addiction" I have. Good times had by all. Especially on Sunday. Well, technically, Monday. Any party where the cops show up because the neighbours complained about the noise is a good party, right?
House wiring is fixed a bit and DSL arrives again and there is much happiness of Bob. Lack of internet access and dauntingness of unpacking is probably a contributing factor to Bob not getting back into LJ.
October
Faire continues/concludes. Huzzah. Carpooling to faire with housemates (when it worked) is the awesome. Meet one specific faire girl who is also pretty (and) awesome. Still dating her, distance is a bitch.
Extra housemate becomes less frequent resident in the house. Something about a girl. :)
Weekly D&D game manages to continue despite hounds of evilness (Jessie, one of the dogs of the house, loves to climb all over people) attempting to disrupt.
I completely fail to attend Gaskells. I think I was sick or something.
November
Extra housemate rarely seen. This is at least partially due to the fact that the poorly-installed skylight in his room is leaking. A lot. The carpet ends up needing replaced. As does the roof. Whee.
Dickens workshops begin. I audition for Naughty French Postcards on the advice/demand of some Ren faire folk, and am cast in a couple tableaux. Woo hoo!
Also, acquire new costume elements this year - comfier trousers at long last! Need new shoon next year, and I think some new shirts.
Thanksgiving with family - cut a bit short due to Dickens opening on Friday, but my first-cousins-once-removed are getting bigger! (I mean, duh, they do that. But you know.) Thanksgiving this year was more upbeat than last year. It'd been almost a year since my aunt died and people have made the adjustment.
December
Dickens fair. Stand around nekkid in NFP. Also dance with Bruno, not nekkid, (only one show a day, unfortunately, since NFP conflicts) and sing with the Carolers, also not nekkid, and still my primary affiliation at Dickens. Some days I manage to wander into Fezziwig's apart from Opening Tableau. (Estimated number of dances I got at Fezzi's for the entire 10-day run? A dozen. Maybe 15.) Also, occasional modeling in the Dark Garden window.
NFP is a fun show. I mean, apart from the obvious amusement value of a bunch of people in various stages of undress running about backstage, the people are just cool in general. It makes me happy. End up forging a couple new friendships, including one which rather surprised me.
My ceiling started leaking this month, which was very unamusing to me. Extra housemate almost never seen. Roof still unfixed, though his carpet was replaced, and we had a giant bucket to catch what water still leaked from the patched/tarped skylight in his ceiling.
Winter Bash was a good time. darkmoon came down for a little while, hurrah. I didn't do as much dancing, but did get one game played, and got to talk to people bunches.
Missed Gaskells again, this time due to performing in the participant-only version of Naughty French Postcards. Liveliest audience ever, of course, and also of course a few ... changes ... to the show. Incredibly amusing from my perspective.
Last day of Dickens was Saturday the 23d, NFP did an extra show because so many people wanted to see. Holy crapdamn. And then ... the goodbyes all 'round, and off to home.
Also, possibly tapped for an important role next year at Dickens. We shall see. Being considered at all is quite a compliment.
Christmas Eve was attending darkmoon's family functions and finally meeting her mother.
Christmas Day was her attending my family's Christmas functions and finally meeting my mother.
Also, sweetie got me Guitar Hero II for Christmas. Let's leave aside the fact that I don't actually own a PS2 - blak_spyder does and so I still get to play.
New Year's Eve I end up spending at home, where lindyhop18 and blak_spyder have invited a dozen people. darkmoon comes over, too, and we have a sum total of 3 GH controllers and both games, also a memory card with all the songs unlocked. Much amusement ensues. Some people play a fighting game for a while, and some crapass 8-bit DDR knockoff is played for about half a song before its execrability gets it banned, but GH2 dominates the evening on the TV. I think someone had even brought a Wii but it never got plugged in. Also, booze.
Present
January
New Year's Day involves a trip to Fuji Sushi for all-you-can-eat deliciousness, and also a trip to Fry's, where they had GH2 on display and I showed some teenager how the game worked after she was flailing a lot. Tried to hand her back the controller but her mom and (other mom? aunt?) said it was time to go. I encouraged buying the game anyway and put the controller back next to the demo thing. Didn't find anything that screamed "buy me!" except for some flavoured syrups for mixing with fizzy (or still) water. Dee-licious. Also, sillymesaysme, I checked all the bottles of sirop and they're all made with cane sugar, so you can give them a try if you want. The bottles of Torani in our house are also cane sugar. Just for future reference.
Finally they fix the damn roof, though there's still some damage to the ceilings in the house which hasn't been resolved.
D&D gamers finished current major plot objective in my campaign. I spent a bit of time preparing their characters in "alternate dimension" mode, and have thrown them into Arcana Evolved for a while. Bwaha. Should be a fun experiment.
And there was London. I went to London. Aww, yeah. Flew up by way of Calgary, where I encountered [KoL]TurnandCough at the airport, but fortunately it wasn't a combat encounter, so all that happened is we both increased our Moxie. Then it was on to London, a journey through the Underground, and mildly getting lost (my fault, [KoL]Jill_Bob, honest!), and we found the hostel. And thus began a weekend of reasonable amounts of alcohol and not nearly enough debauchery. And far too damn much cigarette smoke. I'm not returning to a UK pub until July, when smoking therein is outlawed. Feh.
On Monday, checked out the slides (and other things) at the Tate Modern with [KoL]Ichiban_Dashi, took pictures of the Globe because I didn't want to spend the time or money to go on the official tour, and then caught a train up to Glasgow to hang out with [KoL]Starkmoon and [KoL]Cat_Killer. Also "helping" them out on their radio shows, and receiving a couple rather nice compliments from Cat_Killer regarding my voice and radio abilities. Glee! Also embarrassing [KoL]Wombatilim (er, I mean darkmoon) by singing JoCo's "Code Monkey" to her on air. More glee!
Sadly Starky was feeling like crap due to post-con plague on Wednesday so we didn't manage anything particularly touristy. I was amused to watch an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus on the telly while actually in the UK, though. Also original series Star Trek. Wow, that series seriously showed its age.
Missed the last evening train to London, ended up on the overnight, sleeping poorly but adequately. Wandered into the hostel at like 9 in the morning, checked in ("sorry I wasn't here last night, missed the train!"), grabbed a bite, and then on to Cambridge to see suomarte. She took me on a walkies tour around the colleges, nifty. And then back to the bus station.
Ah, travelling on a day when there were gale-force winds of 80-90 miles per hour. (That's approximately 3.58 kilometres per parsec, in metric.) The M11 was closed in both directions, so my bus wasn't there. The trains weren't running. Only after the bus left for the Stamstead airport did they mention we could have taken that one and transferred. So of course I caught the next, but crowds at Stamstead were beyond belief and I ended up back in London too late to either (a) visit the whisky shop I wanted to purchase things from, or (b) try to catch a show in the West End. Bah! Next time, Gadget! I wanted to see either Tim Curry in Spamalot or Avenue Q, or maybe "random other show for half-price", but the fates conspired against me. So I did some shopping for people back home, got some Greek takeaway, and returned to the hostel to eat and pack for the flight the next day. Was still reading when my hostel roommate showed up after her long day, we met briefly, and then, since she was tired, I concluded my reading and put out the lights. Maybe I should have invited her up to my bunk, but man that would have made the rest of the night awkward if she'd said 'no'. Besides, complete stranger, even if sorta cute.
And there were no weather issues on the Friday morning, so I made it back to the States, got a ride from the airport and overnight accommodations from djericjames, met a friend for lunch in Alameda the next day, and made it out to SF to see more KoLers at BALLS. Glee! Finally saw darkmoon again, and she gave me a ride home. In her car, you perverts.
And then been kicking about at home, pretty much. I haven't moved pictures from camera to computer yet, boo. Had some rehearsals for a CD some folks and I are helping someone record this weekend. Went to a birthday party last weekend. Very amused by wildchildfbnbg's glowstick bra which she constructed at my suggestion, though decidedly disappointed that she decided to wear it over her clothes. ;-)
Extra housemate informs that he is beginning process of officially moving out of here and moving in with his girl, where he's been for most of the last several months anyway. That's okay, it looks like we have someone to move into his space real soon now. (mid-February?)
Will hopefully be at the Pryankster gathering in the late afternoon tomorrow after the first day of recording, and then back home to spend time with teh sweeties. And hopefully shall spend time on Sunday or Monday night with another sweetie. (remember, the geographically inconvenient one from Faire?)
Future
I have a maybe job-offer in the San Jose area. This would be good in the money sense (though I'd have to figure out living arrangements in the South Bay), but bad in the 'being close to darkmoon' sense. I just dunno.
I would rather have a job that paid well enough (and kept me in Davis) that I could start looking into home purchase. The house I'm in now is all-right enough, but there are these niggling repair issues that annoy. But I ought not turn down a good job in San Jose that will give me skills for future employment, either. Sigh.
So, gentle readers, I'm going to try to be back, really. I can't promise that I'll be able to keep up with everyone. I care about you all, I really do, but even though it's not fair season I have a consistent sense of not enough time to do everything I want. Once I am once again gainfully employed, I only see this feeling intensifying.
'Brutal' honesty: My friends list will likely stay the same size or even increase (since I want to have people who are my friends be able to read the rare locked post), but I'm (possibly? probably?) going to set up some custom filters to make sure I'm keeping up with the people with/to whom I need/want to stay closest, first, and read the rest of you later.
I'm taking a page from darkmoon's box, though, and asking: What do you want me to talk about? This journal ought to be for interested readers as well as for me, and taking writing suggestions will hopefully keep me active. If you make a suggestion and I don't get to it for a while, feel free to nudge me. I re-enabled 'nudging' a while back, and I think I have to have a week or two of inactivity, so if I see a nudge from you and you have an uncovered topic, I'll try to write about it.
Also, what did I miss in my coverage of the last several months that you want to know about?
Last edited 2 Feb 2007 at 1616 to clean up formatting/spelling/grammar and add a little content
Okay, that's not fair. I've used it for limited communications and occasional poking-my-head-up in a "here I am, world, I am still alive" sort of way, or in the travel/sleeping arrangement sort of way.
I haven't read anything by anyone in all that time, except occasionally when pointed to a specific post, and also checking out ziibminthalij's photoblog at ziibphoto once or twice since she started it this year (because she poked me to look at it as a result of an IM conversation).
So now I'm going to talk vaguely about highlights, lowlights, or possibly middle-lights of my existence since my last "had significant content about my life" post. I'll probably miss more than one thing. But I'll throw it behind cuts for those who wish to skip to the questions I ask afterward.
Past
August
I am surprisingly still working, except for the week I go to visit friends songwind, ladysea, mnfiddledragon, and offspring in Minnesota. Kids just as fun as I remember. Adults, too.
Get to visit the MN Ren Fest and see marcbs and dance with Minnesota Traditional Morris (I know enough dances with the right traditions to make it or fake it). Also get to meet a friend of torimuise, but not her ex.
Also get to visit The Source, a game store of which Monte Cook reportedly said "Wow." when entering. Neat place. No comic, game, or game product I felt compelled to buy - but I picked up a Star Wars novel I'd wanted, feeling that the pilgrimage wasn't complete without purchasing something.
September
I move out of Arthur Street, and in with lindyhop18 and blak_spyder, the latter of whom inadvertently hits my car with hers as I'm moving one of my final carloads to the new place. Complete lack of personal injuries, much amusement ensues. Her insurance company practically begs me to take money and sign a waiver so that I won't sue them. I should possibly have extracted more from them, but as I didn't have any injuries (the X-rays came back clear) I didn't feel good contributing to rising insurance rates, either in specific or generally.
Volunteer at ConQuest SF - almost completely a good time. Also partially eaten by wendelina2's adorable not-quite-kitten-anymore, Lily, who was a bit put out that I didn't play with her enough.
Acquire extra housemate in the spare room which was to be 'storage area' for all of our extra crap. Whoops.
Casa de Faire begins, I dance with Newcastle/Bruno and help out in the Cuthbert's kitchen. Limited amount of drama over the faire season.
Skip a weekend of faire to attend KoL Con 3D with darkmoon. Get to meet many fantastic and/or amusing people who have the same online "addiction" I have. Good times had by all. Especially on Sunday. Well, technically, Monday. Any party where the cops show up because the neighbours complained about the noise is a good party, right?
House wiring is fixed a bit and DSL arrives again and there is much happiness of Bob. Lack of internet access and dauntingness of unpacking is probably a contributing factor to Bob not getting back into LJ.
October
Faire continues/concludes. Huzzah. Carpooling to faire with housemates (when it worked) is the awesome. Meet one specific faire girl who is also pretty (and) awesome. Still dating her, distance is a bitch.
Extra housemate becomes less frequent resident in the house. Something about a girl. :)
Weekly D&D game manages to continue despite hounds of evilness (Jessie, one of the dogs of the house, loves to climb all over people) attempting to disrupt.
I completely fail to attend Gaskells. I think I was sick or something.
November
Extra housemate rarely seen. This is at least partially due to the fact that the poorly-installed skylight in his room is leaking. A lot. The carpet ends up needing replaced. As does the roof. Whee.
Dickens workshops begin. I audition for Naughty French Postcards on the advice/demand of some Ren faire folk, and am cast in a couple tableaux. Woo hoo!
Also, acquire new costume elements this year - comfier trousers at long last! Need new shoon next year, and I think some new shirts.
Thanksgiving with family - cut a bit short due to Dickens opening on Friday, but my first-cousins-once-removed are getting bigger! (I mean, duh, they do that. But you know.) Thanksgiving this year was more upbeat than last year. It'd been almost a year since my aunt died and people have made the adjustment.
December
Dickens fair. Stand around nekkid in NFP. Also dance with Bruno, not nekkid, (only one show a day, unfortunately, since NFP conflicts) and sing with the Carolers, also not nekkid, and still my primary affiliation at Dickens. Some days I manage to wander into Fezziwig's apart from Opening Tableau. (Estimated number of dances I got at Fezzi's for the entire 10-day run? A dozen. Maybe 15.) Also, occasional modeling in the Dark Garden window.
NFP is a fun show. I mean, apart from the obvious amusement value of a bunch of people in various stages of undress running about backstage, the people are just cool in general. It makes me happy. End up forging a couple new friendships, including one which rather surprised me.
My ceiling started leaking this month, which was very unamusing to me. Extra housemate almost never seen. Roof still unfixed, though his carpet was replaced, and we had a giant bucket to catch what water still leaked from the patched/tarped skylight in his ceiling.
Winter Bash was a good time. darkmoon came down for a little while, hurrah. I didn't do as much dancing, but did get one game played, and got to talk to people bunches.
Missed Gaskells again, this time due to performing in the participant-only version of Naughty French Postcards. Liveliest audience ever, of course, and also of course a few ... changes ... to the show. Incredibly amusing from my perspective.
Last day of Dickens was Saturday the 23d, NFP did an extra show because so many people wanted to see. Holy crapdamn. And then ... the goodbyes all 'round, and off to home.
Also, possibly tapped for an important role next year at Dickens. We shall see. Being considered at all is quite a compliment.
Christmas Eve was attending darkmoon's family functions and finally meeting her mother.
Christmas Day was her attending my family's Christmas functions and finally meeting my mother.
Also, sweetie got me Guitar Hero II for Christmas. Let's leave aside the fact that I don't actually own a PS2 - blak_spyder does and so I still get to play.
New Year's Eve I end up spending at home, where lindyhop18 and blak_spyder have invited a dozen people. darkmoon comes over, too, and we have a sum total of 3 GH controllers and both games, also a memory card with all the songs unlocked. Much amusement ensues. Some people play a fighting game for a while, and some crapass 8-bit DDR knockoff is played for about half a song before its execrability gets it banned, but GH2 dominates the evening on the TV. I think someone had even brought a Wii but it never got plugged in. Also, booze.
Present
January
New Year's Day involves a trip to Fuji Sushi for all-you-can-eat deliciousness, and also a trip to Fry's, where they had GH2 on display and I showed some teenager how the game worked after she was flailing a lot. Tried to hand her back the controller but her mom and (other mom? aunt?) said it was time to go. I encouraged buying the game anyway and put the controller back next to the demo thing. Didn't find anything that screamed "buy me!" except for some flavoured syrups for mixing with fizzy (or still) water. Dee-licious. Also, sillymesaysme, I checked all the bottles of sirop and they're all made with cane sugar, so you can give them a try if you want. The bottles of Torani in our house are also cane sugar. Just for future reference.
Finally they fix the damn roof, though there's still some damage to the ceilings in the house which hasn't been resolved.
D&D gamers finished current major plot objective in my campaign. I spent a bit of time preparing their characters in "alternate dimension" mode, and have thrown them into Arcana Evolved for a while. Bwaha. Should be a fun experiment.
And there was London. I went to London. Aww, yeah. Flew up by way of Calgary, where I encountered [KoL]TurnandCough at the airport, but fortunately it wasn't a combat encounter, so all that happened is we both increased our Moxie. Then it was on to London, a journey through the Underground, and mildly getting lost (my fault, [KoL]Jill_Bob, honest!), and we found the hostel. And thus began a weekend of reasonable amounts of alcohol and not nearly enough debauchery. And far too damn much cigarette smoke. I'm not returning to a UK pub until July, when smoking therein is outlawed. Feh.
On Monday, checked out the slides (and other things) at the Tate Modern with [KoL]Ichiban_Dashi, took pictures of the Globe because I didn't want to spend the time or money to go on the official tour, and then caught a train up to Glasgow to hang out with [KoL]Starkmoon and [KoL]Cat_Killer. Also "helping" them out on their radio shows, and receiving a couple rather nice compliments from Cat_Killer regarding my voice and radio abilities. Glee! Also embarrassing [KoL]Wombatilim (er, I mean darkmoon) by singing JoCo's "Code Monkey" to her on air. More glee!
Sadly Starky was feeling like crap due to post-con plague on Wednesday so we didn't manage anything particularly touristy. I was amused to watch an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus on the telly while actually in the UK, though. Also original series Star Trek. Wow, that series seriously showed its age.
Missed the last evening train to London, ended up on the overnight, sleeping poorly but adequately. Wandered into the hostel at like 9 in the morning, checked in ("sorry I wasn't here last night, missed the train!"), grabbed a bite, and then on to Cambridge to see suomarte. She took me on a walkies tour around the colleges, nifty. And then back to the bus station.
Ah, travelling on a day when there were gale-force winds of 80-90 miles per hour. (That's approximately 3.58 kilometres per parsec, in metric.) The M11 was closed in both directions, so my bus wasn't there. The trains weren't running. Only after the bus left for the Stamstead airport did they mention we could have taken that one and transferred. So of course I caught the next, but crowds at Stamstead were beyond belief and I ended up back in London too late to either (a) visit the whisky shop I wanted to purchase things from, or (b) try to catch a show in the West End. Bah! Next time, Gadget! I wanted to see either Tim Curry in Spamalot or Avenue Q, or maybe "random other show for half-price", but the fates conspired against me. So I did some shopping for people back home, got some Greek takeaway, and returned to the hostel to eat and pack for the flight the next day. Was still reading when my hostel roommate showed up after her long day, we met briefly, and then, since she was tired, I concluded my reading and put out the lights. Maybe I should have invited her up to my bunk, but man that would have made the rest of the night awkward if she'd said 'no'. Besides, complete stranger, even if sorta cute.
And there were no weather issues on the Friday morning, so I made it back to the States, got a ride from the airport and overnight accommodations from djericjames, met a friend for lunch in Alameda the next day, and made it out to SF to see more KoLers at BALLS. Glee! Finally saw darkmoon again, and she gave me a ride home. In her car, you perverts.
And then been kicking about at home, pretty much. I haven't moved pictures from camera to computer yet, boo. Had some rehearsals for a CD some folks and I are helping someone record this weekend. Went to a birthday party last weekend. Very amused by wildchildfbnbg's glowstick bra which she constructed at my suggestion, though decidedly disappointed that she decided to wear it over her clothes. ;-)
Extra housemate informs that he is beginning process of officially moving out of here and moving in with his girl, where he's been for most of the last several months anyway. That's okay, it looks like we have someone to move into his space real soon now. (mid-February?)
Will hopefully be at the Pryankster gathering in the late afternoon tomorrow after the first day of recording, and then back home to spend time with teh sweeties. And hopefully shall spend time on Sunday or Monday night with another sweetie. (remember, the geographically inconvenient one from Faire?)
Future
I have a maybe job-offer in the San Jose area. This would be good in the money sense (though I'd have to figure out living arrangements in the South Bay), but bad in the 'being close to darkmoon' sense. I just dunno.
I would rather have a job that paid well enough (and kept me in Davis) that I could start looking into home purchase. The house I'm in now is all-right enough, but there are these niggling repair issues that annoy. But I ought not turn down a good job in San Jose that will give me skills for future employment, either. Sigh.
So, gentle readers, I'm going to try to be back, really. I can't promise that I'll be able to keep up with everyone. I care about you all, I really do, but even though it's not fair season I have a consistent sense of not enough time to do everything I want. Once I am once again gainfully employed, I only see this feeling intensifying.
'Brutal' honesty: My friends list will likely stay the same size or even increase (since I want to have people who are my friends be able to read the rare locked post), but I'm (possibly? probably?) going to set up some custom filters to make sure I'm keeping up with the people with/to whom I need/want to stay closest, first, and read the rest of you later.
I'm taking a page from darkmoon's box, though, and asking: What do you want me to talk about? This journal ought to be for interested readers as well as for me, and taking writing suggestions will hopefully keep me active. If you make a suggestion and I don't get to it for a while, feel free to nudge me. I re-enabled 'nudging' a while back, and I think I have to have a week or two of inactivity, so if I see a nudge from you and you have an uncovered topic, I'll try to write about it.
Also, what did I miss in my coverage of the last several months that you want to know about?
Last edited 2 Feb 2007 at 1616 to clean up formatting/spelling/grammar and add a little content