Wot I did on my Labor Day weekend (plus miscellany)
Work gave us a half-day on Friday, and Monday off, so I had an extended weekend.
I'd like to say I spent it productively. I spent it relaxingly, at the very least.
- I took a long trip to the Framingham Savers on Friday afternoon. Brought back a nice haul for $35--three new shirts and a sweater, 5+ yards of red velvet for $4 (!! ), a true crime book (Ann Rule's The Stanger Beside Me, about Ted Bundy), and some storage containers for the sewing room.
- Saturday was helping natbudin and v_cat, who are moving to Bellingham, WA for a year, to move their stuff into storage. It was a melancholy day, but good to spend with friends. In addition, lightgamer and twilighttremolo were there to help and lend their excellent company. Andrew S. joined us later.
After we were done with all the moving of large items, we ate an early dinner and then spent hours sitting on the floor of their basement, chatting about everything and nothing--college, books, the situation in Syria, etc.
Interestingly, one of the things I remember best from that day is Kamm's stories about finding specimens of extinct birds when he worked at Mass Audubon, and telling us more about why the passenger pigeon died out. (Apparently it was only really adaptive in huuuuuuge numbers, and once they were reduced from billions to merely millions, began a steady decline).
- I was supposed to go to laurion/asdr83's Labor Day party on Sunday, but felt wiped/socialed out, and the bad weather did not contribute to my enthusiasm. I did go out to brunch at the new Sunrise Diner in Fitchburg with Nat and Vik, and apparently utterly terrified a waitress somehow.
Instead I mostly spent the day alternating between reading my new true crime book and playing CKII.
Monday I tried to somewhat make up for the lazy weekend by doing a ton of laundry. I also played some SWTOR with Chrisco and Kamm, trying to finish off Heroic 4 portions of the Macrobinoculars questline. We (re)did the "chasing the Data Skiff" part, and then moved on to the final, absurdly puzzly final quest.
Not only did it take us forever to figure out the damn puzzles, but Chrisco's game bugged out, making him unable to click on many of the puzzles that required four people to interact with stuff at the same time. So we were unable to finish before Kamm had to leave :( Hopefully we can get back to that soon?
--
I finally got back to writing yesterday, and was up early this morning to write. I'm up to nearly 20k words on Lioness. Huzzah. Unsurprisingly, given the sketchiness of my outline, I had fallen into a plotting pitfall--a place where my outline said "now this happens!" but didn't express how. Probably because I didn't know! So I had to work out how our dear protagonist, Yfre, goes about getting information on a murder investigation, before I got back on my feet.
Surprise: the answer is not seduction. For once.
I also need to work out if there's any pattern to the pseudo-French/Latin I'm using for proper names. As I actually have some knowledge of French, the names do mean something. Lucernica, Petrochon, Yfre, Malarme, Maraisude.... these are all names I created quite conscientiously. I just don't have a complete French<-->Lucernic dictionary :)
... not that I need one, but it might be good to work out a few common correspondences.
--
I didn't pay all that much attention to the Hugos this year, as I wasn't voting. Most of the nominated works were more SF than fantasy, too, so I had read vanishingly little. (Although I have no excuse for not reading Throne of the Crescent Moon, or The Emperor's Soul, except that I am perpetually behind on my reading).
I was excited to see an email from James Macdonald to the VP list on Monday morning, congratulating Mur Lafferty for her Campbell Award win. Apparently she is a VP10 graduate! Well, that's a rousing endorsement for the workshop.
--
Speaking of VP, I started reading Crown Duel/Court Duel, by Sherwood Smith. I'm... not sure what to say about it yet. There are some parts that make me roll my eyes, but I also look at those same parts and think that 13-year-old Lise would have loved them. And I mean. This is YA, so that's appropriate.
I just have to live with the fact that in a YA novel, it's okay to just say "the battle was resolved quickly." Or to gloss over a setting which implies torture and war and death.
It's just kind of weird to me.
But it's grabbing me, at least, and I read on. That's all I ask.
--
I seem to have signed myself up for two big(ish) projects ahead. One, I have volunteered to make a wedding dress for acousticshadow2, since she was having a hard time finding what she wanted--which was basically a tea-length, full-skirted gown, with lace, not sleeveless, in a 50s style. I think I can do that in a year's time. It's basically a white evening dress. In fact, she's hoping to dye it after the wedding and use it as an evening dress.
Two, I told Alison I would develop my "Dinner with Malice" murder mystery into a mini-larp for her annual Christmas party. By "mini-larp" I mean 15 characters with very, very, very limited background, and dead simple mechanics (if any). Alison is a big GoT fan, so I suspect I will do something warring-family-ish, in a fantasy setting, around some midwinter/Yule holiday.
Can I actually write in this format? It will be an interesting challenge. Let us see :)
--
I signed up for Lace and Steel, the fall weekend-long at RPI. As it happens, it conflicts with a number of things--the DC-area run of Kings' Musketeers, and a Cottington Woods event. As it further happens, I'm not involved with any of those, so I can go! (But Matt cannot. Le sad).
I was in the moment I saw it was a fantasy setting and there would be fae involved. We know how I feel about fae. Mel, too--she joked about us making up Team Fae.
(If we're going to give it a Twilight-fandom style name, can it be Team Cluracan? Team Bast? One of those ;))
--
Matt teases me about my love for the New England Aquarium, and how he doesn't understand how one person can go so many times. First of all, I get free tickets from work (up to four at a time!), which is as compelling a reason to go as any. Secondly, I have only been twice, which does not seem excessive to me. Thirdly, and most importantly, now that they have renovated the giant ocean tank and added new exhibits (axolotls!), that seems as good a reason as any to revisit.
If anyone's ever interested, do let me know. You won't need to pull my arm very hard. The most difficult/expensive part would be getting into Boston, for those of you who don't live in close suburbs.
I'd like to say I spent it productively. I spent it relaxingly, at the very least.
- I took a long trip to the Framingham Savers on Friday afternoon. Brought back a nice haul for $35--three new shirts and a sweater, 5+ yards of red velvet for $4 (!! ), a true crime book (Ann Rule's The Stanger Beside Me, about Ted Bundy), and some storage containers for the sewing room.
- Saturday was helping natbudin and v_cat, who are moving to Bellingham, WA for a year, to move their stuff into storage. It was a melancholy day, but good to spend with friends. In addition, lightgamer and twilighttremolo were there to help and lend their excellent company. Andrew S. joined us later.
After we were done with all the moving of large items, we ate an early dinner and then spent hours sitting on the floor of their basement, chatting about everything and nothing--college, books, the situation in Syria, etc.
Interestingly, one of the things I remember best from that day is Kamm's stories about finding specimens of extinct birds when he worked at Mass Audubon, and telling us more about why the passenger pigeon died out. (Apparently it was only really adaptive in huuuuuuge numbers, and once they were reduced from billions to merely millions, began a steady decline).
- I was supposed to go to laurion/asdr83's Labor Day party on Sunday, but felt wiped/socialed out, and the bad weather did not contribute to my enthusiasm. I did go out to brunch at the new Sunrise Diner in Fitchburg with Nat and Vik, and apparently utterly terrified a waitress somehow.
Instead I mostly spent the day alternating between reading my new true crime book and playing CKII.
Monday I tried to somewhat make up for the lazy weekend by doing a ton of laundry. I also played some SWTOR with Chrisco and Kamm, trying to finish off Heroic 4 portions of the Macrobinoculars questline. We (re)did the "chasing the Data Skiff" part, and then moved on to the final, absurdly puzzly final quest.
Not only did it take us forever to figure out the damn puzzles, but Chrisco's game bugged out, making him unable to click on many of the puzzles that required four people to interact with stuff at the same time. So we were unable to finish before Kamm had to leave :( Hopefully we can get back to that soon?
--
I finally got back to writing yesterday, and was up early this morning to write. I'm up to nearly 20k words on Lioness. Huzzah. Unsurprisingly, given the sketchiness of my outline, I had fallen into a plotting pitfall--a place where my outline said "now this happens!" but didn't express how. Probably because I didn't know! So I had to work out how our dear protagonist, Yfre, goes about getting information on a murder investigation, before I got back on my feet.
Surprise: the answer is not seduction. For once.
I also need to work out if there's any pattern to the pseudo-French/Latin I'm using for proper names. As I actually have some knowledge of French, the names do mean something. Lucernica, Petrochon, Yfre, Malarme, Maraisude.... these are all names I created quite conscientiously. I just don't have a complete French<-->Lucernic dictionary :)
... not that I need one, but it might be good to work out a few common correspondences.
--
I didn't pay all that much attention to the Hugos this year, as I wasn't voting. Most of the nominated works were more SF than fantasy, too, so I had read vanishingly little. (Although I have no excuse for not reading Throne of the Crescent Moon, or The Emperor's Soul, except that I am perpetually behind on my reading).
I was excited to see an email from James Macdonald to the VP list on Monday morning, congratulating Mur Lafferty for her Campbell Award win. Apparently she is a VP10 graduate! Well, that's a rousing endorsement for the workshop.
--
Speaking of VP, I started reading Crown Duel/Court Duel, by Sherwood Smith. I'm... not sure what to say about it yet. There are some parts that make me roll my eyes, but I also look at those same parts and think that 13-year-old Lise would have loved them. And I mean. This is YA, so that's appropriate.
I just have to live with the fact that in a YA novel, it's okay to just say "the battle was resolved quickly." Or to gloss over a setting which implies torture and war and death.
It's just kind of weird to me.
But it's grabbing me, at least, and I read on. That's all I ask.
--
I seem to have signed myself up for two big(ish) projects ahead. One, I have volunteered to make a wedding dress for acousticshadow2, since she was having a hard time finding what she wanted--which was basically a tea-length, full-skirted gown, with lace, not sleeveless, in a 50s style. I think I can do that in a year's time. It's basically a white evening dress. In fact, she's hoping to dye it after the wedding and use it as an evening dress.
Two, I told Alison I would develop my "Dinner with Malice" murder mystery into a mini-larp for her annual Christmas party. By "mini-larp" I mean 15 characters with very, very, very limited background, and dead simple mechanics (if any). Alison is a big GoT fan, so I suspect I will do something warring-family-ish, in a fantasy setting, around some midwinter/Yule holiday.
Can I actually write in this format? It will be an interesting challenge. Let us see :)
--
I signed up for Lace and Steel, the fall weekend-long at RPI. As it happens, it conflicts with a number of things--the DC-area run of Kings' Musketeers, and a Cottington Woods event. As it further happens, I'm not involved with any of those, so I can go! (But Matt cannot. Le sad).
I was in the moment I saw it was a fantasy setting and there would be fae involved. We know how I feel about fae. Mel, too--she joked about us making up Team Fae.
(If we're going to give it a Twilight-fandom style name, can it be Team Cluracan? Team Bast? One of those ;))
--
Matt teases me about my love for the New England Aquarium, and how he doesn't understand how one person can go so many times. First of all, I get free tickets from work (up to four at a time!), which is as compelling a reason to go as any. Secondly, I have only been twice, which does not seem excessive to me. Thirdly, and most importantly, now that they have renovated the giant ocean tank and added new exhibits (axolotls!), that seems as good a reason as any to revisit.
If anyone's ever interested, do let me know. You won't need to pull my arm very hard. The most difficult/expensive part would be getting into Boston, for those of you who don't live in close suburbs.