kat_feed
Friday, February 15
The last week or so has looked something like this:
Thursday: Have great inner debate with myself on whether it's OK to go up to Blacksburg, given that my brother is still covered in hives from learning he's allergic to penicillin (thank you, modern medicine) as well as not entirely recovered from the disease he was taking penicillin for in the first place and my parents are still in Belize. Allow Dan and the bro to convince me. About two hours later, get a call. One of the first-calf heifers is miscarrying her calf. I've had more experience with this than the bro but I'm an hour and a half away, so I have to walk him through the nasty, messy business of a mispresentation and disposing of a dead calf over the phone. Note to self: listen to the inner debate next time.
What a day from hell. Sorry, bro.
(On the other hand, I assumed on the phone that his girlfriend -- who used to work on the dairy -- would be there to support him. Turns out she wasn't. *sigh*)
Friday: Oh, hey, nothing much actually happened this day, except fallout from the dead calf. Jude -- the cow -- has milk, which means we won't have to sell her, but we do have to milk her.
Saturday: Deathmarch our way through work so we can get down to Greensboro in time to catch the end of What the Hell?! Con. Small, free, and mostly webcomic artists. It was a hoot. I spent entirely too long hanging out and talking to ursulav and Otter, who probably thought I was being clingy. But I was mostly just being introverted ("Argh! Crowds of people! Cannot relate to crowds! Fine one person! Maybe two people! Relate to THEM!") I was pretty tired.
But we had fun, and will probably try to bounce through it next year.
Sunday: Go down to the Biltmore House with my roleplaying buddies. Despite living in Asheville for three years, I'd never been to the Biltmore -- largely because tickets run, like, fifty bucks, and I was a starving student and cheap besides. But one of the buddies had free passes so we made it a road trip.
I will say this for the Biltmore: it's HUGE. With an order of huge on the side. Seriously, 175,000 square feet? 99 bedrooms? Indoor pool and gymnasium? What were these people thinking?
It's also a bizarre intersection of the old and the new which is well worth seeing. To show off his wealth, the guy who built the place had full electricity put in -- this is in 1895, by the way -- and there are toilets in all the bathrooms (all 40 of 'em). But no sinks. Why? Well, they didn't see a reason for sinks; there were servants to bring you your water in the mornings. And many of the rooms still had chamberpots, as some guests were hazy on the toilet concept.
Well worth seeing. Even if the 45-mile an hour winds made it all a bit more exciting -- and chillier -- than I would have liked, especially the driving.
Monday: Prepare madly for the return of The Parents on Tuesday. Discover that the girlfriend hasn't been helping my bro milk the cow either -- a really tedious chore, since one cow isn't enough to fire up the machines for, and Jude, like most first-calf heifers, has a serious case of IBTs (Itty Bitty Titties). There is a muscle between the thumb and forefinger that apparently never gets used for anything but handmilking; if you only milk by hand, say, once a year, it hurts like bloody blazes. Especially if you're trying to get a grip on IBTs. And bro's been doing it by himself for three days.
*headdesk* Me and my choices of time off.
(In defense of the girlfriend, she had a lot on her plate, and she didn't grow up with this shit. I know better and really should have canned my weekend plans. Bad Kat, no cookie).
So milking. Jude at least does not have IBSTs (Itty Bitty Sensitive Titties); in fact, aside from occasional lunges to get the chickens out of her feed, she's perfectly well-behaved and never picks up a foot.
But all seems well aside from that, so I go home with the reasonable expectation I can face my parents in the morning without needing the hara-kiri knives.
Tuesday-Thursday: Be SICK AS A FUCKING DOG.
....yeah. Best laid plans, and all. Dan was coughing when we went to bed, I assumed as a hangover from last week's cold. I was not expecting him to wake me up at five am due to the sheer amount of heat his body was putting out. I wasn't expecting to feel the beginnings of coughing and general illness myself by the next morning. I certainly wasn't expecting to get to work, sans Dan, so exhausted that there was basically nothing to do but help Jim milk, check in with the parents, and huddle miserably over the heater until I could gather my strength for the drive home.
Being laid up for three friggin' days wasn't in the game plan, either.
And to add insult to injury, the fever had me so addled that for the first day and a half I couldn't even read. I kept passing out. What a waste of perfectly good guilt-free lie-in-bed time, I tell you!
*sulks*
I'm better now. We'll go in to work tomorrow, if nothing else to keep me from going stir-crazy. But seriously. The interesting times, I can has less of them now?
Thursday: Have great inner debate with myself on whether it's OK to go up to Blacksburg, given that my brother is still covered in hives from learning he's allergic to penicillin (thank you, modern medicine) as well as not entirely recovered from the disease he was taking penicillin for in the first place and my parents are still in Belize. Allow Dan and the bro to convince me. About two hours later, get a call. One of the first-calf heifers is miscarrying her calf. I've had more experience with this than the bro but I'm an hour and a half away, so I have to walk him through the nasty, messy business of a mispresentation and disposing of a dead calf over the phone. Note to self: listen to the inner debate next time.
What a day from hell. Sorry, bro.
(On the other hand, I assumed on the phone that his girlfriend -- who used to work on the dairy -- would be there to support him. Turns out she wasn't. *sigh*)
Friday: Oh, hey, nothing much actually happened this day, except fallout from the dead calf. Jude -- the cow -- has milk, which means we won't have to sell her, but we do have to milk her.
Saturday: Deathmarch our way through work so we can get down to Greensboro in time to catch the end of What the Hell?! Con. Small, free, and mostly webcomic artists. It was a hoot. I spent entirely too long hanging out and talking to ursulav and Otter, who probably thought I was being clingy. But I was mostly just being introverted ("Argh! Crowds of people! Cannot relate to crowds! Fine one person! Maybe two people! Relate to THEM!") I was pretty tired.
But we had fun, and will probably try to bounce through it next year.
Sunday: Go down to the Biltmore House with my roleplaying buddies. Despite living in Asheville for three years, I'd never been to the Biltmore -- largely because tickets run, like, fifty bucks, and I was a starving student and cheap besides. But one of the buddies had free passes so we made it a road trip.
I will say this for the Biltmore: it's HUGE. With an order of huge on the side. Seriously, 175,000 square feet? 99 bedrooms? Indoor pool and gymnasium? What were these people thinking?
It's also a bizarre intersection of the old and the new which is well worth seeing. To show off his wealth, the guy who built the place had full electricity put in -- this is in 1895, by the way -- and there are toilets in all the bathrooms (all 40 of 'em). But no sinks. Why? Well, they didn't see a reason for sinks; there were servants to bring you your water in the mornings. And many of the rooms still had chamberpots, as some guests were hazy on the toilet concept.
Well worth seeing. Even if the 45-mile an hour winds made it all a bit more exciting -- and chillier -- than I would have liked, especially the driving.
Monday: Prepare madly for the return of The Parents on Tuesday. Discover that the girlfriend hasn't been helping my bro milk the cow either -- a really tedious chore, since one cow isn't enough to fire up the machines for, and Jude, like most first-calf heifers, has a serious case of IBTs (Itty Bitty Titties). There is a muscle between the thumb and forefinger that apparently never gets used for anything but handmilking; if you only milk by hand, say, once a year, it hurts like bloody blazes. Especially if you're trying to get a grip on IBTs. And bro's been doing it by himself for three days.
*headdesk* Me and my choices of time off.
(In defense of the girlfriend, she had a lot on her plate, and she didn't grow up with this shit. I know better and really should have canned my weekend plans. Bad Kat, no cookie).
So milking. Jude at least does not have IBSTs (Itty Bitty Sensitive Titties); in fact, aside from occasional lunges to get the chickens out of her feed, she's perfectly well-behaved and never picks up a foot.
But all seems well aside from that, so I go home with the reasonable expectation I can face my parents in the morning without needing the hara-kiri knives.
Tuesday-Thursday: Be SICK AS A FUCKING DOG.
....yeah. Best laid plans, and all. Dan was coughing when we went to bed, I assumed as a hangover from last week's cold. I was not expecting him to wake me up at five am due to the sheer amount of heat his body was putting out. I wasn't expecting to feel the beginnings of coughing and general illness myself by the next morning. I certainly wasn't expecting to get to work, sans Dan, so exhausted that there was basically nothing to do but help Jim milk, check in with the parents, and huddle miserably over the heater until I could gather my strength for the drive home.
Being laid up for three friggin' days wasn't in the game plan, either.
And to add insult to injury, the fever had me so addled that for the first day and a half I couldn't even read. I kept passing out. What a waste of perfectly good guilt-free lie-in-bed time, I tell you!
*sulks*
I'm better now. We'll go in to work tomorrow, if nothing else to keep me from going stir-crazy. But seriously. The interesting times, I can has less of them now?
Thursday, January 24
Signs you may be falling behind in your housework, #442: you have to evict a spider from your dishwasher.
Of course, the whole "can't see the counter for the dirty dishes" thing might have been a clue too. I'm such a slacker.
In other news, my book is kicking my ass. I had to give up on Novel in 90 because focusing on word count was just bringing me down: too many days when I could only get 250 good ones, too many other days -- like today -- when I had to use up precious writing time untangling a plot snarl. A few hundred words of brainstorming later, and I have a tentative plan. It's a scary plan, because it takes the book in a very different direction than I was expecting and I'm not sure I can fit everything I want into it and it basically has the potential of collapsing on me like a bad cake. A very fragile plan. But once I'd thought of it, it was pretty much either back away knowing I was chickening out on something that would make this a better story, or suck it up and ride the tiger.
Nice Mr. Tiger.... *sigh*
You know, this writing thing used to be easy. I was writing crap, of course. But I might still be writing crap, and I really, really miss the easy.
Of course, the whole "can't see the counter for the dirty dishes" thing might have been a clue too. I'm such a slacker.
In other news, my book is kicking my ass. I had to give up on Novel in 90 because focusing on word count was just bringing me down: too many days when I could only get 250 good ones, too many other days -- like today -- when I had to use up precious writing time untangling a plot snarl. A few hundred words of brainstorming later, and I have a tentative plan. It's a scary plan, because it takes the book in a very different direction than I was expecting and I'm not sure I can fit everything I want into it and it basically has the potential of collapsing on me like a bad cake. A very fragile plan. But once I'd thought of it, it was pretty much either back away knowing I was chickening out on something that would make this a better story, or suck it up and ride the tiger.
Nice Mr. Tiger.... *sigh*
You know, this writing thing used to be easy. I was writing crap, of course. But I might still be writing crap, and I really, really miss the easy.
Saturday, January 12
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
Agnes Shanklin has always lived her life for others: her overbearing mother, her beautiful sister, the children she teaches in her small Cleveland school. Then, in 1919, the influenza robs her of mother, sister, and job all in one stroke. Cut adrift, Agnes decides to take a cruise to Egypt with her dog Rosie. There she will be a witness to the Cairo Conference that changed the face of the Middle East and a friend to some of the most famous and infuential people of the time; she will meet a man who changes her spinster life forever; she will begin, at forty, to discover who she is.
In Dreamers Russell has taken on the ambitious project of telling a small story -- that of Agnes -- against the backdrop of giant ones. She does this largely by making the giants equally small; World War I, the influenza epidemic, the Cairo Conference, all are explained mostly as they affect the tiny and diffident figure of Agnes. The giant personalities that threaten to overshadow her -- Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, Lawrence of Arabia -- are likewise rendered in miniature: not Churchill's leadership, but his love of painting; not Lawrence's deeds but his nervous giggle. Greatness lurks behind in the shadows, coloring the edges of events and words, but is never allowed to take centre stage. The result is a book of heartbreaking poignancy and beauty.
There are flaws. Agnes, particularly in some early passages, shares with Dickens's Esther Summerson an unfortunate tendency to be too good while at the same time characterizing herself as a bad person, giving her an air of unbelievable martyrdom. And I found the final passage of the book less than satisfying. These flaws, however, speak less to the quality of the work than the immense challenge Russell takes on in portraying a small woman among greatness -- a balancing act that I have never before seen performed with such finesse and power. A brief glimpse of an oft-overlooked period of history, this is a book I will be chewing over for a long time to come.
Sunday, January 06
I suppose one of the downsides of having a pet is watching them make great strides in rather different directions than you would wish. Alphie the parrot came to us able to say "step up" (his command for getting on a finger): now, six months later, he can also say "What's up?", "What's that?", "Stop it," "Alphie, no!" "dammit," "brat", and (today's accomplishment, still a bit wobbly around the r) "You're a twit". As well as doing an imitation of water gurgling and an imitation of my laugh that makes him sound like a mad science-bird.
Other people get their birds to say stuff like "Polly wanna cracker" and "pretty bird". I am a bad bird-momma, I am.
In other news, I'm doing Novel in 90 again, so progress reports are hereby removed from here to there. But there is progress again, for now.
And if it's neither too hot nor too cold tomorrow we may kill hogs. So that's all right.
Other people get their birds to say stuff like "Polly wanna cracker" and "pretty bird". I am a bad bird-momma, I am.
In other news, I'm doing Novel in 90 again, so progress reports are hereby removed from here to there. But there is progress again, for now.
And if it's neither too hot nor too cold tomorrow we may kill hogs. So that's all right.
Tuesday, January 01
Well, I at least managed to keep track of what books I read this year, even if I didn't review them all. Here's the list, with occasional commentary.
[Read More!]
Sunday, November 25
So I was checking my site stats the other day, as one does, and discovered an incoming link to my Mary Sue test. From Wikipedia.
The Wiki entry on Mary Sues, to be precise.
Well, that explains the odd pinging noise I heard a few days back. That was me gaining a level in Geek.
The actual Thanksgiving part of my Thanksgiving was great, as usual. Thanksgiving is really the only holiday my family believes in. We're anti-consumerist, anti-authoritarian heathens, which puts a damper on, uh, well, pretty much all American holidays, except the ones we can't be bothered to care about. But we all love to cook. A holiday for eating? Is a holiday we can really get behind. Some non-Thanksgiving things intruded to make this a rather stressful holiday -- mostly involving a specific employee/family member's poor sense of timing -- but the food, oh heaven. The food made up for it all.
In other news, Kith and Kin (the novel I prod with a sharp stick from time to time, to see if it's decided to live or die yet) has informed me that it thinks it would be better off with a first-person narrator.
...
...
...
*headdesk*
Okay, yes, I admit that would address some of the distance-from-narrator issues, and probably stick a patch over the slow start and the timing problems. However, comma, I am not rewriting eighty thousand words on a nine p.m. fit of inspiration. You thought Harmony needed a dead body, and look where that got us.
We will sleep on this. And in the morning, if writing an entire book from inside the head of a saturnine 600-year-old male still sounds like a good idea... we'll plot it out, dammit. Properly. No writing until we're sure this isn't the proverbial paintbrush waiting to back us into the proverbial corner.
God. My friggin' brain.
The Wiki entry on Mary Sues, to be precise.
Well, that explains the odd pinging noise I heard a few days back. That was me gaining a level in Geek.
The actual Thanksgiving part of my Thanksgiving was great, as usual. Thanksgiving is really the only holiday my family believes in. We're anti-consumerist, anti-authoritarian heathens, which puts a damper on, uh, well, pretty much all American holidays, except the ones we can't be bothered to care about. But we all love to cook. A holiday for eating? Is a holiday we can really get behind. Some non-Thanksgiving things intruded to make this a rather stressful holiday -- mostly involving a specific employee/family member's poor sense of timing -- but the food, oh heaven. The food made up for it all.
In other news, Kith and Kin (the novel I prod with a sharp stick from time to time, to see if it's decided to live or die yet) has informed me that it thinks it would be better off with a first-person narrator.
...
...
...
*headdesk*
Okay, yes, I admit that would address some of the distance-from-narrator issues, and probably stick a patch over the slow start and the timing problems. However, comma, I am not rewriting eighty thousand words on a nine p.m. fit of inspiration. You thought Harmony needed a dead body, and look where that got us.
We will sleep on this. And in the morning, if writing an entire book from inside the head of a saturnine 600-year-old male still sounds like a good idea... we'll plot it out, dammit. Properly. No writing until we're sure this isn't the proverbial paintbrush waiting to back us into the proverbial corner.
God. My friggin' brain.
Saturday, November 17
Round about eight this morning, our youngest group of heifers had a conversation that went something like this:
FEARLESS LEADER: Hey! Some nice deer has knocked down the fence for us! Let us stage AN ESCAPE!
MOB: Yay! Escape!
FEARLESS LEADER: We have escaped to the road!
MOB: Yay! Road! Which way?
FEARLESS LEADER: We go... that way!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay! Another road! Which way now!
FEARLESS LEADER: Up the hill!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: This hill is boring and steep.
FEARLESS LEADER: Then we will go into the woods!
MOB: Yay woods!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay woods!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay... hey, there sure are a heck of a lot of woods out here, aren't there?
*mob mob*
MOB: Trees are boring.
FEARLESS LEADER: Um....
MOB: Hey, isn't it about time for breakfast?
FEARLESS LEADER: Okay, does anyone remember which way we came from?
MOB: No! We are not woodscows! But we are very hungry!
FEARLESS LEADER: Well, let's see what's in that direction....
MOB: Trees!
FEARLESS LEADER: Ah, but in that direction --
MOB: More trees!
FEARLESS LEADER: Oh. Well --
MOB: We are hungry! And bored! And surrounded by trees! This isn't fun!
FEARLESS LEADER: ...I don't wanna be leader any more.
LEADERLESS MOB: HALP!
Which was probably about the time that the deer hunter came around and asked if that group of cows was supposed to be rampaging through the woods, and our Mennonite employee and I groaned, hopped on the bike, and went looking.
It is surprisingly hard to find a formerly rampaging mob of cows in the woods. I ended up leaving the bike to the Mennonite girl and trekking around on foot, and even then I pretty much stumbled across them, as they had gone into a huddle and were sulking quietly about the unfairness of it all. Got them out of the woods by a mixture of coaxing and bullying, put them back in their field, fixed the fence, and fed them so they could sulk on a full stomach.
Idiot cows.
In the meantime, one of our three sausage hogs was having the following conversation with herself:
HOG: Hmm. Feels like I'm in heat again. Shall I escape?
HOG: .... sure, why the hell not.
We had noticed this development, but as the hog always does this when she's in heat, and as she never goes far, and as we had our hands full with the juvenile delinquents, we were ignoring it. We (and the hog) had neglected to remember that the hog would be escaping into the field where the milking herd was currently grazing. About the time we got the ex-woodscows dealt with I heard a particular type of bellow from the vicinity of the herd. It was a bellow particular to the Jersey breed of cows, a bellow which translates roughly to "OMG NEW TOY! I loves it! Let's all play with it until it falls apart!"
"Whoops," I said.
So then we had to rescue the hog from the cows, which wasn't easy, since the whole lot of them had surrounded the hog by that point and were dancing, bellowing, head-butting, frothing at the mouth, et cetera. The hog, at first inclined to take this calmly, soon began to panic (as one does when surrounded by eighty frolicking beasties weighing half a ton each and equipped with numerous hooves). The cows loved this. Panic was cool! More panic!
In the meantime the Mennonite girl and I are trying to seperate one increasingly frantic hog from a throng of dancing cattle. I thought we were going to have piggy pancake for a bit, but in the end we got her back in her pen with nothing more than a bruised ego.
Idiot hog.
Idiot cows.
... why am I in farming again?
FEARLESS LEADER: Hey! Some nice deer has knocked down the fence for us! Let us stage AN ESCAPE!
MOB: Yay! Escape!
FEARLESS LEADER: We have escaped to the road!
MOB: Yay! Road! Which way?
FEARLESS LEADER: We go... that way!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay! Another road! Which way now!
FEARLESS LEADER: Up the hill!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: This hill is boring and steep.
FEARLESS LEADER: Then we will go into the woods!
MOB: Yay woods!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay woods!
*mob mob mob*
MOB: Yay... hey, there sure are a heck of a lot of woods out here, aren't there?
*mob mob*
MOB: Trees are boring.
FEARLESS LEADER: Um....
MOB: Hey, isn't it about time for breakfast?
FEARLESS LEADER: Okay, does anyone remember which way we came from?
MOB: No! We are not woodscows! But we are very hungry!
FEARLESS LEADER: Well, let's see what's in that direction....
MOB: Trees!
FEARLESS LEADER: Ah, but in that direction --
MOB: More trees!
FEARLESS LEADER: Oh. Well --
MOB: We are hungry! And bored! And surrounded by trees! This isn't fun!
FEARLESS LEADER: ...I don't wanna be leader any more.
LEADERLESS MOB: HALP!
Which was probably about the time that the deer hunter came around and asked if that group of cows was supposed to be rampaging through the woods, and our Mennonite employee and I groaned, hopped on the bike, and went looking.
It is surprisingly hard to find a formerly rampaging mob of cows in the woods. I ended up leaving the bike to the Mennonite girl and trekking around on foot, and even then I pretty much stumbled across them, as they had gone into a huddle and were sulking quietly about the unfairness of it all. Got them out of the woods by a mixture of coaxing and bullying, put them back in their field, fixed the fence, and fed them so they could sulk on a full stomach.
Idiot cows.
In the meantime, one of our three sausage hogs was having the following conversation with herself:
HOG: Hmm. Feels like I'm in heat again. Shall I escape?
HOG: .... sure, why the hell not.
We had noticed this development, but as the hog always does this when she's in heat, and as she never goes far, and as we had our hands full with the juvenile delinquents, we were ignoring it. We (and the hog) had neglected to remember that the hog would be escaping into the field where the milking herd was currently grazing. About the time we got the ex-woodscows dealt with I heard a particular type of bellow from the vicinity of the herd. It was a bellow particular to the Jersey breed of cows, a bellow which translates roughly to "OMG NEW TOY! I loves it! Let's all play with it until it falls apart!"
"Whoops," I said.
So then we had to rescue the hog from the cows, which wasn't easy, since the whole lot of them had surrounded the hog by that point and were dancing, bellowing, head-butting, frothing at the mouth, et cetera. The hog, at first inclined to take this calmly, soon began to panic (as one does when surrounded by eighty frolicking beasties weighing half a ton each and equipped with numerous hooves). The cows loved this. Panic was cool! More panic!
In the meantime the Mennonite girl and I are trying to seperate one increasingly frantic hog from a throng of dancing cattle. I thought we were going to have piggy pancake for a bit, but in the end we got her back in her pen with nothing more than a bruised ego.
Idiot hog.
Idiot cows.
... why am I in farming again?
Monday, November 05
Hi! I'm not dead! No thanks to all you people at the World Fantasy Convention, though. I think I have mizkit's cold now.
Dan thinks I should do a con report, probably so he doesn't have to. So here it is:
WFC Day One: This is Kat's Brain on Travel
The day went something like this: get up at 3 am. Drive to airport. Get on plane. Get off plane. Get on plane. Get off plane. Wait 3 hours for hotel shuttle (boo. Though we did meet some nifty people that way....) Arrive at one pm, approach a very closed-looking Registration to be told, "We're running a bit late." Respond with, "Actually, my husband and I are here to volunteer."
"Oh, thank god, down the hall and left and left again thank you thank you thank you...."
Stuff books in bags for three hours. Con is understaffed and overstressed -- pretty much the norm, really -- but fellow volunteers are still fun and we get our pick of the free books. Finally defeat Mt. Boxmore and check into our actual hotel room for a shower (Dan) and and unscheduled nap (me) before returning to Con Madness.
The rest of the night is a bit blurry, actually. I know we went to dinner with a bunch of cool people, and it was good dinner, and then we went to parties -- I distinctly remember propping up a wall and chatting with tambo for quite a while. And we committed Book, where by "we" I mean "Dan", and they would appear to be mizkit's books, so it must have been the Zombie party. Okay then. Kudos to the Zombies for providing Woodchuck cider, though in retrospect I probably shouldn't have been drinking it.
I woke up in my own bed, so I must have gone back to my hotel at some point. That is good to know.
WFC Day Two: Kat Is An Amusing Drunk
Had breakfast with the erstwhile roomies, who I had never met before and who were very cool. If I'd known it was the last real sit-down meal I was going to have for thirty-odd hours I might have sprung for something besides the fruit cup.
Then, volunteering: I spent five hours handing out the bags I had packed the day before to con attendees, many of whom were charmingly shocked to get a free bag of books and a box of cookies. The surprise! pre-shaken! bottles of mineral water we handed out were less charming. I dispensed warnings and napkins very freely.
Brief stop at the hotel room for my introvert fetal-curl time, and then jaylake's cheese tasting, which was lovely (and, thanks to Dan, supplied with a non-plastic knife), and then off for another three hours volunteering at the Cattle Call, also known as the mass autographing. It was a bit of a mess, but only the volunteers and staff knew that, so thus it still counts as a success. The high point of the evening was having Shana Cohen come to the table we were manning and dispense bourbon from her hip flask. Why? Who cares? It was bourbon.
Given that -- and given that I felt obligated to use up my free drink ticket shortly afterwards -- it was probably unwise to go directly to matociquala's chartreuse-and-bad-fanfic party directly after. But I did. Chartreuse is evil. It tastes of green, and there wasn't any food except cheese and chocolate, and the bad fanfic was, indeed, bad. Each person read aloud until they laughed. As I felt obligated to drink each time I passed the book, and as someone (actually, that may have been me) began livening things up by shouting "DRINK!" whenever we encountered a historical anachronism (Silk sheets! In sixteenth-century Scotland! Coffee! In sixteenth-century Scotland! Valhalla! In sixteenth-century incredibly Catholic Scotland!) or an unannounced point-of-view shift, and as I was kind of drinking in between anyway and have the alcohol tolerance of a flea, I got... is there a word for that? Oh, yes. Wasted. Completely and utterly shitfaced.
As a direct result of which, when the book came back around to me at something past one am, I managed to make it through something like three pages of bad, no good, truly diabolically awful sex scene without cracking up and with a certain degree of style. Persons who were in the room at the time may never look five o'clock shadow in the face again. So, yes, Kat is an amusing drunk.
elisem making me snort chartreuse up my nose, though -- that was just mean.
WFC Day Three: Kat Is An Amusing Drunk. Again.
There was no chartreuse hangover per se, but I crawled out of bed at the crack of noon feeling like aliens had borrowed my brain, performed esoteric experiments on it, and returned it to my head still wrapped in cotton wool. If you found the solution to my plot issue in there, guys, please send a postcard.
A few hours working the info desk cleared enough cotton for me to realize that living on ConSuite food for the entirety of the previous day wasn't helping. With this in mind we gathered up a motley crew of persons and dragged them out to eat. This was a good idea, and also grand fun. It was essentially my first meeting with suricattus, who is most funny and wise, and my first real chance to talk to mizkit, who is funny and fun. Dan and I put up a valiant fight to keep stillnotbored from paying for our dinner, but alas, we were overcome.
After that I went back to my hotel room and -- with some persuasion -- squoze into my brand-new leather bodice. As hoped, it went with the leather jeans and the tall boots. Dan made very appreciative noises. We returned to the con and toured a few parties, where other people made appreciative noises, before settling in the bar.
And here I once again must admit to an alcohol-related error in judgement. Cross my heart, people: I am not a lush. I am just a lightweight who doesn't get to drink in trustworthy company much. And doesn't think enough about what she drinks. Had I done so, I would have realized that the three whiskey sours were more than enough drink for me without my sampling freely from the various glasses and flasks of single malt circling the table. I mean, yes, they were all different varieties, educational purposes, et cetera, but. By the end of the night I was -- for only the second time in my life -- having severe difficulty walking. I was also startled by my own boobs. Have we had enough to drink, Kat? Why, yes. We may have.
(In my defense, the bodice did do interesting things to my chest region. It probably didn't merit the startled comment, but hey. As long as I have entertainment value.)
WFC Day Four: Kat Go Crash
Once again, no hangover. Instead I woke up feeling cheerful, alert, and extremely hungry. My metabolism, it is on the crack, yes?
After breakfast, we made the mistake of drifting into the dealer's room, where we committed Book. Multiple Book. Expensive Book. I think I got Dan out before we got into the triple digits, but I haven't had the courage to check our statement yet. Ran into swan-tower in the lobby, where we proceeded to hold a rambling socio-literary discussion that really should have reached critical mass and imploded into a black hole of sucking geekdom right about the time we started talking about Kit Marlowe, but luckily, we were at a con. So it didn't. I expect the hotel staff was relieved.
Then we waited. Some wanker pulled the fire alarm around 4 pm, so we all went and stood around outside for a bit and went back in, but it was generally agreed that this signaled the end of the con. People wandered off. Eventually, our cab came, and we wandered too.
All else was largely airport.
*****
Memo to self: next year, bring hollow leg. And better shoes.
Dan thinks I should do a con report, probably so he doesn't have to. So here it is:
WFC Day One: This is Kat's Brain on Travel
The day went something like this: get up at 3 am. Drive to airport. Get on plane. Get off plane. Get on plane. Get off plane. Wait 3 hours for hotel shuttle (boo. Though we did meet some nifty people that way....) Arrive at one pm, approach a very closed-looking Registration to be told, "We're running a bit late." Respond with, "Actually, my husband and I are here to volunteer."
"Oh, thank god, down the hall and left and left again thank you thank you thank you...."
Stuff books in bags for three hours. Con is understaffed and overstressed -- pretty much the norm, really -- but fellow volunteers are still fun and we get our pick of the free books. Finally defeat Mt. Boxmore and check into our actual hotel room for a shower (Dan) and and unscheduled nap (me) before returning to Con Madness.
The rest of the night is a bit blurry, actually. I know we went to dinner with a bunch of cool people, and it was good dinner, and then we went to parties -- I distinctly remember propping up a wall and chatting with tambo for quite a while. And we committed Book, where by "we" I mean "Dan", and they would appear to be mizkit's books, so it must have been the Zombie party. Okay then. Kudos to the Zombies for providing Woodchuck cider, though in retrospect I probably shouldn't have been drinking it.
I woke up in my own bed, so I must have gone back to my hotel at some point. That is good to know.
WFC Day Two: Kat Is An Amusing Drunk
Had breakfast with the erstwhile roomies, who I had never met before and who were very cool. If I'd known it was the last real sit-down meal I was going to have for thirty-odd hours I might have sprung for something besides the fruit cup.
Then, volunteering: I spent five hours handing out the bags I had packed the day before to con attendees, many of whom were charmingly shocked to get a free bag of books and a box of cookies. The surprise! pre-shaken! bottles of mineral water we handed out were less charming. I dispensed warnings and napkins very freely.
Brief stop at the hotel room for my introvert fetal-curl time, and then jaylake's cheese tasting, which was lovely (and, thanks to Dan, supplied with a non-plastic knife), and then off for another three hours volunteering at the Cattle Call, also known as the mass autographing. It was a bit of a mess, but only the volunteers and staff knew that, so thus it still counts as a success. The high point of the evening was having Shana Cohen come to the table we were manning and dispense bourbon from her hip flask. Why? Who cares? It was bourbon.
Given that -- and given that I felt obligated to use up my free drink ticket shortly afterwards -- it was probably unwise to go directly to matociquala's chartreuse-and-bad-fanfic party directly after. But I did. Chartreuse is evil. It tastes of green, and there wasn't any food except cheese and chocolate, and the bad fanfic was, indeed, bad. Each person read aloud until they laughed. As I felt obligated to drink each time I passed the book, and as someone (actually, that may have been me) began livening things up by shouting "DRINK!" whenever we encountered a historical anachronism (Silk sheets! In sixteenth-century Scotland! Coffee! In sixteenth-century Scotland! Valhalla! In sixteenth-century incredibly Catholic Scotland!) or an unannounced point-of-view shift, and as I was kind of drinking in between anyway and have the alcohol tolerance of a flea, I got... is there a word for that? Oh, yes. Wasted. Completely and utterly shitfaced.
As a direct result of which, when the book came back around to me at something past one am, I managed to make it through something like three pages of bad, no good, truly diabolically awful sex scene without cracking up and with a certain degree of style. Persons who were in the room at the time may never look five o'clock shadow in the face again. So, yes, Kat is an amusing drunk.
elisem making me snort chartreuse up my nose, though -- that was just mean.
WFC Day Three: Kat Is An Amusing Drunk. Again.
There was no chartreuse hangover per se, but I crawled out of bed at the crack of noon feeling like aliens had borrowed my brain, performed esoteric experiments on it, and returned it to my head still wrapped in cotton wool. If you found the solution to my plot issue in there, guys, please send a postcard.
A few hours working the info desk cleared enough cotton for me to realize that living on ConSuite food for the entirety of the previous day wasn't helping. With this in mind we gathered up a motley crew of persons and dragged them out to eat. This was a good idea, and also grand fun. It was essentially my first meeting with suricattus, who is most funny and wise, and my first real chance to talk to mizkit, who is funny and fun. Dan and I put up a valiant fight to keep stillnotbored from paying for our dinner, but alas, we were overcome.
After that I went back to my hotel room and -- with some persuasion -- squoze into my brand-new leather bodice. As hoped, it went with the leather jeans and the tall boots. Dan made very appreciative noises. We returned to the con and toured a few parties, where other people made appreciative noises, before settling in the bar.
And here I once again must admit to an alcohol-related error in judgement. Cross my heart, people: I am not a lush. I am just a lightweight who doesn't get to drink in trustworthy company much. And doesn't think enough about what she drinks. Had I done so, I would have realized that the three whiskey sours were more than enough drink for me without my sampling freely from the various glasses and flasks of single malt circling the table. I mean, yes, they were all different varieties, educational purposes, et cetera, but. By the end of the night I was -- for only the second time in my life -- having severe difficulty walking. I was also startled by my own boobs. Have we had enough to drink, Kat? Why, yes. We may have.
(In my defense, the bodice did do interesting things to my chest region. It probably didn't merit the startled comment, but hey. As long as I have entertainment value.)
WFC Day Four: Kat Go Crash
Once again, no hangover. Instead I woke up feeling cheerful, alert, and extremely hungry. My metabolism, it is on the crack, yes?
After breakfast, we made the mistake of drifting into the dealer's room, where we committed Book. Multiple Book. Expensive Book. I think I got Dan out before we got into the triple digits, but I haven't had the courage to check our statement yet. Ran into swan-tower in the lobby, where we proceeded to hold a rambling socio-literary discussion that really should have reached critical mass and imploded into a black hole of sucking geekdom right about the time we started talking about Kit Marlowe, but luckily, we were at a con. So it didn't. I expect the hotel staff was relieved.
Then we waited. Some wanker pulled the fire alarm around 4 pm, so we all went and stood around outside for a bit and went back in, but it was generally agreed that this signaled the end of the con. People wandered off. Eventually, our cab came, and we wandered too.
All else was largely airport.
*****
Memo to self: next year, bring hollow leg. And better shoes.
Monday, October 01
On a slightly lighter note than last week, I present Ten Things I Wish I Could Make My Parrot Understand.
1) Ears do not come off.
2) This new toy you have discovered is my keyboard. It works better with the keys on.
3) It's cute how you climb using your beak. And it's cute how you crawl down inside my shirt to cuddle. However, no matter what they look like from underneath, some things are not to be used as climbing holds. If I want my nipples pierced, I will go to a professional.
4) Were the broom, mop, and spray bottle The Enemy, I'm sure they would be most impressed by the protective screams of a five-ounce parrot. However, they are not, and I am now deaf in one ear. Please stop helping.
5) Seriously. The ears? Do not come off. No, not even when you hang upside down from them by both feet and yank. My screams and ineffectual flailings were not intended as encouragement.
6) I am not sharing my cereal with you because dairy products are bad for you. Crawling down my arms is just going to make me juggle the bowl like it's a hot plate, and attacking my lips while I'm chewing is going to get you bitten. Sitting quietly until I get distracted and then doing a kamikaze jack-in-the-box dive into the bowl is effective but annoying, especially when I have to clean milk spatters off my screen. And dairy products are still bad for you.
7) This other new toy you have discovered is my computer. It works better without a bird chewing on the reset button.
8) Sticking your head in my mouth every time I yawn is not a survival tactic. Especially when your head is covered in tickly feathers.
9) You know, there are any number of things on people that Do Not Come Off. Moles, for example. Freckles. Fingernails. Noses. Lips. And EARS. Just because birds don't have these things does not mean I will look better after my emergency parrot-beak surgery.
10) Stop eating my story notes. I write slow enough as it is.
Speaking of writing, I'm back on the wagon, for however long that will last.
Rewrite Progress
Salvaged Words: Today? None. For the project as a whole? About 10, 700. Yes, I really am anal enough to track that, though as I'm typically chopping a quarter to a half of what I salvage I'm not exactly sure what I'm tracking.
New Words: 379.
Comments: Threw out the scene I was previously working on, because it was getting in my way. If it's important it'll wriggle back in somewhere. The important thing is that I get back to work on this damned thing, because I really, truly would like a functional draft before the end of the year.
1) Ears do not come off.
2) This new toy you have discovered is my keyboard. It works better with the keys on.
3) It's cute how you climb using your beak. And it's cute how you crawl down inside my shirt to cuddle. However, no matter what they look like from underneath, some things are not to be used as climbing holds. If I want my nipples pierced, I will go to a professional.
4) Were the broom, mop, and spray bottle The Enemy, I'm sure they would be most impressed by the protective screams of a five-ounce parrot. However, they are not, and I am now deaf in one ear. Please stop helping.
5) Seriously. The ears? Do not come off. No, not even when you hang upside down from them by both feet and yank. My screams and ineffectual flailings were not intended as encouragement.
6) I am not sharing my cereal with you because dairy products are bad for you. Crawling down my arms is just going to make me juggle the bowl like it's a hot plate, and attacking my lips while I'm chewing is going to get you bitten. Sitting quietly until I get distracted and then doing a kamikaze jack-in-the-box dive into the bowl is effective but annoying, especially when I have to clean milk spatters off my screen. And dairy products are still bad for you.
7) This other new toy you have discovered is my computer. It works better without a bird chewing on the reset button.
8) Sticking your head in my mouth every time I yawn is not a survival tactic. Especially when your head is covered in tickly feathers.
9) You know, there are any number of things on people that Do Not Come Off. Moles, for example. Freckles. Fingernails. Noses. Lips. And EARS. Just because birds don't have these things does not mean I will look better after my emergency parrot-beak surgery.
10) Stop eating my story notes. I write slow enough as it is.
Speaking of writing, I'm back on the wagon, for however long that will last.
Rewrite Progress
| |
18,497 / 100,000 (18.5%) |
Salvaged Words: Today? None. For the project as a whole? About 10, 700. Yes, I really am anal enough to track that, though as I'm typically chopping a quarter to a half of what I salvage I'm not exactly sure what I'm tracking.
New Words: 379.
Comments: Threw out the scene I was previously working on, because it was getting in my way. If it's important it'll wriggle back in somewhere. The important thing is that I get back to work on this damned thing, because I really, truly would like a functional draft before the end of the year.
Sunday, September 23
Haven't been posting lately, for several reasons -- mostly relating to overwork, laziness, and a general lack of energy, but also having something to do with my father's dog, as I mentioned in my last post, being on his last legs. He died a few days later. Shep was smarter than most people I knew and, at thirteen, had been around for literally half my life. It hit me hard. He was my dad's dog. It hit my dad harder. There are some things you don't see your invulnerable ex-biker dad going through without it shaking up your world, and this was one of them.
So I've been quiet, and down, and let an obligation to crit someone's work and a lot of housework and all the novel-writing go to the dogs, which had the effect of making me more down, et cetera, ad infinitum, hello depressive rut. You'd think I'd catch on to the whole "reading too much, wasting too much time on the Internet, irritated by stupid friends-and-relations interrupting fantasy life, never voluntarily leaving house, tired all the time" cycle after the first umpteen times, but no. Blindsides me every damn time.
Anyhow.
I cleaned the living room. I did at least some of the dishes. I printed out those bits of the novel I had gotten rewritten. I'm getting back on track with this whole life thing, because really, detailed as my imaginative life is, it just ain't the same.
And I'm saying a bit of my goodbye to Shep. Y'all didn't know him, and I can't describe him. This is the dog that learned to recognize us spelling his favorite words. The dog we bought goldfish for to keep him amused, fish he would remind us to feed. The dog who caught butterflies and let them go, and was so gentle that they flew away afterwards. The dog who drove us all half-crazy with his Rules, which were to be Obeyed, who no one but my dad could really use to work cattle 'cause he thought the rest of us were dumb as dirt, who we all cussed and tripped over and loved, because he was people.
After the vet drove out (after hours) to put him down, the clinic sent a card 'round, signed by all the vets and vet techs who'd known him, with little things they remembered about Shep in it. When I went through that week to pick up some meds one of the techs nearly broke down talking to me. He was her favorite dog in the world, she said. Even more than her own dogs. Shep was something else. Shep was special.
To us, and to everyone who ever knew him.
Rest in peace, old man.
So I've been quiet, and down, and let an obligation to crit someone's work and a lot of housework and all the novel-writing go to the dogs, which had the effect of making me more down, et cetera, ad infinitum, hello depressive rut. You'd think I'd catch on to the whole "reading too much, wasting too much time on the Internet, irritated by stupid friends-and-relations interrupting fantasy life, never voluntarily leaving house, tired all the time" cycle after the first umpteen times, but no. Blindsides me every damn time.
Anyhow.
I cleaned the living room. I did at least some of the dishes. I printed out those bits of the novel I had gotten rewritten. I'm getting back on track with this whole life thing, because really, detailed as my imaginative life is, it just ain't the same.
And I'm saying a bit of my goodbye to Shep. Y'all didn't know him, and I can't describe him. This is the dog that learned to recognize us spelling his favorite words. The dog we bought goldfish for to keep him amused, fish he would remind us to feed. The dog who caught butterflies and let them go, and was so gentle that they flew away afterwards. The dog who drove us all half-crazy with his Rules, which were to be Obeyed, who no one but my dad could really use to work cattle 'cause he thought the rest of us were dumb as dirt, who we all cussed and tripped over and loved, because he was people.
After the vet drove out (after hours) to put him down, the clinic sent a card 'round, signed by all the vets and vet techs who'd known him, with little things they remembered about Shep in it. When I went through that week to pick up some meds one of the techs nearly broke down talking to me. He was her favorite dog in the world, she said. Even more than her own dogs. Shep was something else. Shep was special.
To us, and to everyone who ever knew him.
Rest in peace, old man.
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