Get up on your feet, yeah, dance to the beat...
I keep meaning to post more often here. The reasons I don’t include laziness, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope - wait, no, that’s the Spanish Inquisition. Well, the laziness part is mine. And also I don’t post much because it would just say that I wrote, that I went to dance, that I failed to clean the house. Or that I cleaned the house, that I went to dance, and that I failed to write. There does seem to be an inverse proportion of cleaning to writing. Dance is mostly constant, with occasional bouts of “Ow my knees.” But that is slowly getting better, and rehearsals for this year’s show start this week, so … we shall see how the increase in the constant of dance affects the other variables.
Wait, how did this turn into math? Oh, crap. Physics!
Anyway, I have signed up to be in two pieces in this year’s dance show; one modern and one jazz. I’m pretty sure I can get through the modern, partly because I bet Marlo will just have me run off stage or stand if there’s a bunch of jumping and really hard stuff to be done. Less fun than crazy jumping, but it means my knees will live to dance again. The jazz is provisional on how my knees react. I went to my first jazz dance class since last year’s show this preceding Thursday, and got through it all right. It felt good, except for when I felt slow and bloated and ow. But hey, first jazz class in 9 months, I am giving myself a little slack.
In other reporting news, I went to Radcon in the Tri-Cities with Mr. Sweetie and a host of other folks this last weekend. We drove over with Paul and Julie, Paul graciously consenting to drive over the pass both ways so I didn’t have to. Much better. In fact, Paul drove all the way there from Seattle, and said he was happy to do so. I got to be a passenger in a car! It was very nice of him.
The con itself was fun, if low-key for me. Friday night I was tired, and I realized I’d forgotten any jammies, which is awkward when you’re sharing a room. So I ran to Walgreen’s and bought a cheap t-shirt and shorts. Which turned out to be a waste of money, since actually wearing them in bed was so uncomfortable that I ended up changing into a shirt I’d brought to wear, and my yoga pants. And still not sleeping. I did go see people Friday night, and hang out with folks, and then when I got tired I went back to the room and wrote for awhile. So I was writerly and productive! Although just as a note, Google Drive doc stuff SUCKS for novel length works. It took forever to load my document, (more than 10 minutes) wouldn’t let me page up or down easily - it took more than 5 minutes just to get to the page I needed. I was close to giving up. And then as I was typing, it would lag behind, and only catch up if I stopped for a minute to let it figure out what it was doing. I “wrote” for about an hour, but a lot of that was spent swearing at Google Drive. I wrote about 3 pages. Sigh.
That night was spent not sleeping at all. Not one minute. My clothes were uncomfortable, and there were loud people outside, and the bed was uncomfortable, and etc, etc, etc. I put in my headphones and turned on ocean noises, but the earphones were uncomfortable to sleep in, and on and on. I lay there, thinking sooner or later I will just fall asleep, but I never did. So at 545 I got up, changed into workout clothes, and went to the hotel gym. I worked out for an hour, and hoped that would help. I ate breakfast, then went back to the room and tried to nap for a couple hours. I think I slept for 30 minutes or so, because at one point no one else was in the room, and I didn’t remember Paul leaving. So that’s something. But then the upstairs neighbors started playing “Elephant or Rhino - who jumps loudest!” and I stopped sleeping. I took a shower and whined to myself a little, then met up with folkses at the con.
Despite being a zombie, I had a pretty good time on Saturday. I think that owes to the awesomeosity of my friends. J Lori and Amanda and I hung out a lot, and there was much laughter and silliness. Also, the punchline to any joke is now “Physics.” In case you were wondering. This will only be funny to the three of us, but trust me, that $#*^ is hilarious. We hung at the scotch tasting party, not drinking scotch, and talked to lots of our friends (who were drinking scotch, and other things. It was very lively). Then there was good dinner with fancy people. Or fancy dinner with good people. I don’t know, I was pretty tired. Scott bought me steak, I remember that part. And there was much merriment, and he and Edgar told Radcon stories. Then after that there were parties, which we hung at for awhile. Lori, Amanda, and I checked out the dance, but it sucked big rocks, and the oil smoke was visible in the hall a good 200 feet away, which made it look like the hotel was on fire. I do not approve of oil smoke to make your lasers look cool. It’s bad for everyone’s lungs, it doesn’t look as cool as you think, and dry ice makes a much better special effect. (Crab, crab, crabby old person ranty crab.)
Since the dance sucked, we returned to the Not-A-Small-Press party (long story) and commandeered the back bedroom for our own dance party, using my iPhone. It wasn’t perfect, as the phone’s speakers can only do so much, but it was actually not too bad, sound-wise, and the three of us boogied for about an hour. At that point it was 1 a.m. or so, and Amanda’s allergies were reacting to something in the room, so we called it a night and headed for various bed-type objects. Due to caffeinated beverages, friends, and adrenaline, I had made it through a con day without face-planting. We’ll just ignore the drooling idiot part.
I did sleep that night. Not as much as I needed, and there were AGAIN loud people outside until after 4 a.m., which COME ON, PEOPLE! DAMN KIDS! GET OFF MY HOTEL COURTYARD LAWN! And I again went for my headphones, which were still uncomfortable. But I slept fitfully, which is better than not at all. I thought about working out again, but decided against it. Partly because this time I could *feel* the tired in my bones, not just my head, and I figured the workout and dancing the day before would have to do.
Sunday I went to two panels (I did go to a panel on Saturday that Lori was on, and Dr. Dave, about … uh, smart stuff. I was really tired. They were talking about math. I kind of lost track, even though the applications of physics stuff was interesting.) Scott was on the Sunday panels, one with Patricia Briggs and the other with Tanya Huff. So I tagged along and sat in on them. The panel with Briggs was about how to take a story from concept to publishable work, which, as everyone on the panel said, was ridiculously large for a topic. So they mostly answered questions. John Dalmas was on the panel as well, and another woman I didn’t catch the name of, and it was smart and funny. Afterward, Scott introduced Amanda to Ms. Briggs, as she’s a friend of his, which was thrilling for Amanda, and will be the envy of several of her friends. Ha! She says, HA! HA! Because they didn’t think the con would be fun or interesting, and they didn’t get to meet cool authors they like. And get photographic proof.
The second panel, with Tanya Huff, was about monsters in F&SF. I think it was supposed to be about the difference between fantasy and SF monsters, but it became more about what makes a monster monstrous, what we like in our scary, and the horrible things and people that live in Washington state. Ms. Huff was less than thrilled with WA after that, and expressed a relief to be going. I swear, it’s not as bad as it sounds! Er, the pink slimy mold in all bathrooms is negligible if you just clean your house. And Scott is mostly upset about the fact that his body thinks all of nature is attacking it, and responds accordingly. That ghost story is unproven! The serial killers … well … uh … I got nothing. I did chat for a couple of minutes with Ms. Huff afterward, to tell her that I love her work, and how it was a shame Blood Ties was canceled, and segued into other genre tv shows we liked. I tried not to fangirl on her too awkwardly.
After that, we said our goodbyes to some, gathered up other folkses, and went to the Atomic Ale Brewpub for lunch in Richland. Kennewick? One of those. I forget. Anyhoodle, we had lunch and conversation and the traditional end to the con, and beginning of the drive home. I drove us in the gathering twilight from Richland to Cle Elum, where I realized that my eyes were not happy with the dark and driving both, and also the pass was coming up, and hey, Cle Elum has a Dairy Queen, let’s get some. So we had our pit stop and driver switch, and Paul got us over the pass and back to Seattle. Yay! Home. Kitties were happy to see us, I was happy to get into my robe, and much sleeping was had.
Thus endeth the Radcon 2013 account. And also this post. I’m still tired.