Ian Anderson -- aka Jethro Tull Acoustic. We'd purchased the tickets long ago and hadn't gotten event insurance with them. I'd have cheerfully given them to good friends who've been so helpy while L was in hospital, but they had *other plans* (would not do to miss daughter's birthday).

L pretty much insisted I go, considering the week we've had but I really wasn't up to driving, certainly. On short notice my friend T came and collected me and away we went. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but knowing Ian A as a consummate musician and quite a showman I was ready for most anything. The show did NOT disappoint. There were a couple of numbers that I like better in recorded versions, and some previously unheard songs written by his lovely guest artist, a Persian-American violist whose name I promptly forgot.

Yes, the show closed with "Aqualung". I didn't check the clock but easily in the 20+ minute range. I mentioned all acoustic, right? Really pretty spiffy, indeed!

(and yes, I checked in on L during intermission and he assured me he was quite fine and insisted I enjoy myself)

( (Yesterday's) Daily thoughts in under 140 characters...GO! )


Post reflects the previous day's tweets, here more for completeness than anything else.

( Recent Tweets )

Tweets by Tonya Winter of http://fetishwear.net under the cut. ( Read more... )

So, apparently, I'm the Emergency Backup Hologrammatic Filk Track Lead for Norwescon this year. ELF NEEDS CLUES BADLY. I have no idea what I'm doing. Srsly liek woah etc.

I'm expecting a big data dump tomorrow, which will be helpful. I'm going to be talking to a few people tomorrow. IF I HAVE SOME IDEA THAT YOU ARE A FILKER I WILL BE HITTING YOU UP FOR DATA. Maybe more than once when I forget I already asked you. Please deal with it. I've been asked to step in and get this fixed up, and I want to do it as correctly as I can.

Things I need to know include but are not limited to:

• Wait, what?
• No, seriously, what?
• What do you expect to happen in filk programming?
• Who do you expect to see get concerts and how do you determine this sort of thing anyway?
• What has Norwescon done right and should do it again?
• What has Norwescon done wrong and should not do again?
• What do you not see in music/filk programming at conventions but want to?
• What other questions should I be asking?
• What things do I need to look out for in general?
• What do filkers need?
• Who are good filk panelists who might come?

Things I already know:

• Oh Hopping Christ On A Pogo Stick, Not Next To The Drum Circle/Dance/Fannish Fetish Fashion Show Again
• Don't schedule big concerts against the masquerade
• Don't schedule big concerts Thursday or 16:00 on Friday. (I'll do what I can. See below.)
• No tiny-squishy Cascade rooms for open filk (ibid)
• Jam panels are always good
• So are "mechanics of harmony" panels
• We sure did like that Joss Whedon Sing-Along Panel Last Year

I'm coming in late and a bunch of decisions I already know I'm not real thrilled about have already been made without anybody representing this track in programming, so I'm working from behind here and need to get up to speed now. So if you are interested in any of this, please provide data. Lots and lots of data. Thanks!

"In sharp contrast to the Fukuda criteria, this new clinical case definition makes it compulsory that in order to be diagnosed with ME/CFS, a patient must become symptomatically ill after exercise and must also have neurological, neurocognitive, neuroendocrine, dysautonomic, and immune manifestations. "

Hm. Don't think that applies to me. Shall have to exersperimentate and see.

Hee hee: Australians say "Sleep Apnoea"

I just got back from the Royal Winter Fair. The vendor floor is exactly the sort of huge morass that makes me not want to spend money even if I see something I like, but I didn't have to spend long in it, so that was okay. I took the family to dinner at Marche at their request -- my Mom and Sister remembered it and thought it seemed like a good choice for the group we had and it's an easy streetcar ride from Exhibition Place. Everyone loved it. Went back and attended a four-hour horse show.

Four-hour horse shows, it turns out, are gruelling.

The seats were ridiculously tiny, it was 20 billion degrees, I had to keep my legs crimped into this shape that made my knees feel like they were being laid on by white-hot fire pokers toward the end.

Also, *most* horse events, it turns out, are intensely boring if you're not that into horses. (The people who were there who *were* into horses were having a grand time, so remember that this is mostly about perspective.) They had lots of horses riding in ovals around an empty oval ring. LOTS of it. Like, three hours of it. Horses were judged by various criteria that I mostly didn't understand, but which included things like how much they could make themselves look like they were doing things extremely unnatural for a horse. By the end I was aching to just see a horse galloping flat-out. (This makes it seem like I'm talking about them doing amazing tricks. I'm actually mostly just talking about them doing things like walking while picking their feet up extremely high between each step. There were no tricks.)

The very last part, though, which was clearly the focus of the show, was competetive jumping, which was more exciting than I would have expected. You really do feel this edge-of-your-seat tension when the horses go up over the jump and you're waiting to see if they knock the poles down. Unfortunately, once someone makes a perfect ride, anyone else's ride becomes thoroughly uninteresting as soon as a pole is down. Also, you get progressively less amazed by the horse's jumping after you've seen fifteen or twenty horses do the exact same jump in the exact same way. So it started out *very* exciting, but then got progressively duller until you're trying to surreptitiously check your watch by the end. But still, it was fun. There was a "jump off" at the end, where they competed for time instead of errors, and that even more interesting in that the first guy did a really good run, so thereafter you could compare everyone's time at each jump to where that guy had been.

Also, horses have ridiculous names. I already knew this, but still. I think the most ridiculous horse name of the show was, "Eurocommerce New Orleans". There was also a horse with "234" in their name, but I can't remember the beginning. It was something like, "William 234" or something, though. The horse that won the jumping had a stupendously long name, the first part of which is the name of the company who owns him, who have one of those ridiculous biotech-company-sounding names. If I have a kid someday, I'm going to put a strong name for calling them Eurocommerce.

In the end, it was a reasonably okay evening, but loooong, and I was utterly exhausted by the time I got home, so I should probably trundle off to bed.

I visited the hospital where jessica_de_milo is at.  I was unable to see her in intensive care because of the work the doctors are doing, but spent time with her mother, friends and sister.  They are understandably worried and we talked about how it all happened and also told stories about Jessica.  I hope to visit with them again in a day or so and hope to hear good news.

Jessica's mom requested that I send folks over to Caring Bridge for updates on Jessica.  Keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

UNDOCUMENTED Step 1:

Change your view to PRINT LAYOUT.

Brand new Jacket style!!! Tentacle design is on both front and back of jacket!
High quality Alternative Apparel fit fleece l/s zip up motorcycle jacket.
Features double-sided gunmetal zipper on front and 6” zipper at end of both sleeves.
Two inset pockets on front near bottom hem and one inset chest pocket on wearer’s left.
Single gunmetal snap tab closure at neck.
Now you can be a member of the Awesome club!

Available in Unisex sizes Small - XLarge. See em here in my Etsy Shop

I'm pretty sure no one reads what I write on here anymore. Probably because I post so infrequently. Damn, I was hoping that would make my posts rare, exotic, and anticipated! Ok, well, not really. Though, that would have been cool. I just need to realize this is no longer a mode of communication for me, just a place where I can write shit down to look at years from now.

So, state of Kate; Working at Barnes and Nobles. Blech.
Maybe about to get into grad school. Scary, cool, hope financial aid works out right...
Have gained back about 15lbs from my low point. Have no officially achieved momentum *THE WRONG DIRECTION*. Damnit. Need to work work work on that! *sigh*
Three relationships sometimes feels like not enough, but often feels like three too many. I feel like some kind of relationship Goldilocks.
Feeling disgusting leads to acting like its true which leads to it being true. Which sucks. Nicely circular though...

I should probably go shower and get ready for my 6 hour closing shift. Blah.

I just watched an AMAZING movie called Ben X. It got 5/5 stars from me, which is difficult to do. If you know (or are) a person with Aspergers or who has ever had to deal with epic bullying - watch this movie. It hurt *so* bad to watch it - but the ending was absolutely amazing, worth every single tear I shed for the kid cause of the movie's all too accurate depiction of how hard life can be sometimes.

In Bloor Station just now, the subway car pulled up and stopped, but the doors didn't open. Everyone waited. No doors, no announcements. Then we all noticed that each car had just *one* door that had opened. So everyone rushed over to that door.

The problem was that the door started closing after only the normal delay. The subway doors are not like elevator doors -- they don't have safeties to make them re-open and their motors are pretty powerful, to prevent people from rushing them or holding them open for friends. A caretaker for a group of mentally handicapped people had managed to get off with one or two of them, but the rest were suddenly trapped on the car and started freaking out. (There were a huge number of other people stuck on the car who needed to get off there who were also pretty upset.)

The caregiver managed to wedge herself in the doors and with the help of another couple of people force them open just long enough to get her people off, but the doors fought her the whole time and it kept looking like a disaster waiting to happen.

The drivers *are* capable of holding the doors open longewr from their switchboard, and many do look and re-open doors if there is a problem, but I guess this driver didn't notice, didn't care or just felt like being an asshole.

For me, it just meant that I had to wait for the next train, but that was almost a major disaster in some people's day. Who knows what would have happened had they not gotten off?

Email on the go, sent by TELUS

I think I've finally figured out how to maintain the pleasantly warm, but not drunk feeling. And I did last night. Hazelnut rum and Mexican Coke for the win! Also Grappa, with which I am not enamoured, but it was warm going down.

It was fucking freezing last night.

Today's agenda is drop by at Emerald City Game Fest. Not sure about clubbing tonight, because my throat has that scratchy, pre-sick hurty going on. And if it comes down to clubbing and getting sick, or staying home and fighting it off, guess which wins.

I think the first book that I saw advertising proudly that you'd be getting over 100 characters was Thomas Pynchon's, "Against the Day," which I have to say that I never finished, finding it a bit of a mess and the bazillion (well, okay, over 100) characters so poorly differentiated that I often forgot which was which. This may have been due in part to the audiobook narration, though.

I just saw a Facebook advertisement for Stephen King's "Under the Dome." The ad called it the largest book ever and added the word, "literally". Wondering what kind of weird stunt they'd pulled (had they constructed a weird 20 story high version?), I clicked through. I can't find any reference to this "largest book ever" business on the official website, but I suppose if it made me click it did its job.

However, this is the beginning of ad copy about the book on the website:

"Celebrated storyteller Stephen King returns to his roots in this tour de force featuring more than 100 characters..."

What I'd like to know is: Why is this a selling point? I don't take it as an automatic point of failure either, but since when has number-of-characters been a metric for quality? I don't know if I've ever read a review of a book other than referring to the Pynchon book above and now this ad copy that counted the characters. "An otherwise brilliant novel, marred by its having only six characters." Um. No.

Okay, enough politics for a while...

Declassified UFO files reveal Canada feared alien arrival

Canada - Better healthcare, cheaper movie production costs and now a better outlook on UFOs! I can see the first contact now..."Soooo...welcome to Earth, I guess you hosers are from oot and aboot, eh?"

Alien life is possible: Vatican

A few weeks ago I got to rewatch the John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, which (long story short) is about about Satan and Jesus having extraterrestrial origins (it's not that convincing a plot or idea, but it does have some creepy moments). Having read this article, I almost wanted to see a quote from a Cardinal saying "Yup, Jesus's body was gone after the third day because he beamed back up to his ship" (it's just a joke God, please don't smite me for this one).




Huge $10 billion collider resumes hunt for 'God particle'

The science lover in me is super excited about the LHC coming back to life, on the other hand, not everyone shares my zeal:

Another fringe theory holds that the LHC will never function properly because it is under "influence from the future," according to physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya. They suggest in recent papers that no supercolliders that could produce the Higgs boson, an as-yet-unseen particle that would help answer fundamental questions about matter in the universe, will work because something in the future stops them.

All right! Forget Star Trek: Enterprise we already have a Temporal Cold War started here and now! My inner geek is so excited I can hardly stand it!

But, all those freaks can relax, because...

World not ending in 2012, says NASA

Of course, if NASA is wrong well...actually, I guess no one will be around to say "I told you so," huh?

On a scale of one to on a train, I'm onna train! "Onna train" is about a likert scale 9, since the train ain't moving yet. Sitting around in a dark trainyard on an Amtrak train, I feel pretty convinced I'm in Chicago's Union Station, but no, still within like a mile of my house. I have put my jola on the rack, put a Delta in-flight magazine in the seatback pocket, regretfully concluded that 6:40 is not a suitable time for train-wine, and ordered some very regrettable train-food. I lurve trains.

I have discovered a sad feature of modern touch-screens: they don't recognize input from my banjo calluses, which are inconveniently present on all my most dextrous fingers. I find myself using weird grips so I can mouse with the edge of my thumb. (Wait, well, not mouse. Is there a generic verb for navigating in a graphical interface?) It's like I've been handicapped by the smartphone society because I won too many tournaments. Must have been in my sleep.

Ah, sleep. I dreamed about missing a train, in epic style with a cast of thousands from filk. Judith & MEW wore sweeping train-feather-boas, Mary Bertke stole my taxi (while giggling! It was so cute I forgave her instantly, and she introduced me to her date, whose name changed every few minutes to the last name of another dentist. After four dentists, he had the name of my podiatrist. I see a tall, dark, er... health professional in your romantic future...) The Ropers were trying to lure Katie & Julie on to the train with a batch of "Ain't it good, Baby?" cake (Gretchen's secret recipe.) and vix & Tony each had trench coats that got longer and longer, until they filled an entire taxi with just their coats. Karen McBrowncoat was the train nurse, charged with giving cholera vaccines (This involves a fizzy raspberry drink in real life, but we had a giant picnic basket of syringes) and I followed her around on the theory that the train wouldn't leave without her. But it did! After touring the whole Expo Line trying to catch it, we ended up on a rollercoaster in a stadium and jumped over a lagoon full of sea creatures, landing on the roof of the train. I climbed down a ladder in to a nice compartment where Seanan was nibbling on Amy's head and vixy and Kate were making a list of places Seanan wasn't allowed to burn down. (I saw "Our houses" and "Asia" on the list.)

I caught my /real/ train without incident, of course. But I'm amused that my dreams have, in fact, jumped the shark.

FIRST: If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.

SECOND: Tag eight sexy people. Don't refuse to do that like a pansy. Unless you really don't want to of course. And if you're not tagged and you want to do it, then do!


Who sleeps in bed next to you?

Chicken!


What did you last eat?

a few slices of aged Gouda.


What kind of books do you read?

mysteries, sci/fi fantasy, social history, 18th/19th. century novels, historical fiction


If you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?

a hot tub


What's really creepy?

spiders *shudder*


Name one odd item within five feet of you.

a blue/black monster fur tissue box cozy


What's your current fandom / obsession / addiction?

Lord Peter Whimsey


What did you really want to do today that you didn't?

blow off my CSPC volunteer shift to say home and chillax with Chicken


What are you most excited for?

visiting my beloved sister for Thanksgiving


What websites do you always visit when you go on line?
hotmail, lj, twitter, facebook, fetlife


What do you do for fun?
read, fuck around on the internets, get beaten up by people


If you could have any pet, what would it be?

bun-bun!


What are you wearing right now?

gray yoga pants, maroon sweater


What do you want right this minute, off the top of your head?

a burger


Where is the place you like to return to in order to calm down / relax / etc.?

my couch


How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll centre of a Tootsie Pop?

a-one, a-two, a-three!


What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?

I don't know if I'll ever trust you again but I love and miss you too.


Are there any bits of childhood that you miss?

heading home from the beach in summer, salt-crusted, tired, anticipating a shower and dinner


Say something to the person who tagged you.

it will get better. it really, really will.

Anna and I went out on dinner-and-movie-date and we saw Paranormal Activities, which is actually pretty nice and very creepy, and more than a bit like taking the 1950s Haunting of Hill House (which I love, btw), adding a little Forbidden Planet, stripping it down and setting it in present-day Southern California.

And now I've started a song that I think wants to be called "Something's Coming" and feels like it might have some legs to it. It's not actually related to the movie in any particular way except maybe at the outer fringes of the horror theme, but I don't want to impose that on it yet, it's too new. (It's not from any notes.)

I've also realised that I have a bunch of notes on my old voice recorder (from before the iPhone) that I've never transcribed or copied over or anything. I need to do that f'srs.

No minutes counted today because it's not performable yet, but I think it's a solid start. Sleepy now tho'. G'night! ^_^

This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

( (Yesterday's) Daily thoughts in under 140 characters...GO! )


Post reflects the previous day's tweets, here more for completeness than anything else.

from cindygerb

If you choose to take part in this, leave me a comment.

• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

Cindy's questions for me:

1. So tell me 3 wonderful things about Matt that make you love him
2. Who took that sexy picture of you in this icon?

A fan and friend of mine, jessica_de_milo was recently in an auto accident. She's currently hanging onto life and needs your good thoughts and prayers. Right now, I am thinking of ways to help the family.

I feel really bad about this because I had been meaning to go to an event she invited me to, but like most things in my life, I was too tired, too unmotivated, or too whatever. In other words, I really didn't have a good reason to not go. So, I'm feeling pretty sad and crappy and feel sorry for her and her family because if she does survive, she'll be recovering from a brain injury.

She's a bright kid and if the worst does happen, the world will be a much sadder place.

Tweets by Tonya Winter of http://fetishwear.net under the cut. ( Read more... )

Woke up on my pallet in the workroom where I've been staying for a couple of weeks. Got a sour stomach like I were a little baby, and a headache against which I just fetched a couple aspirin. Cash the dog comes in, noses round my makeshift bed inquiringly. He's not used to finding me in this room at night, usually I'm in the bed with the woman and the other dog. In a couple of days I'll be gone from here. I take the tough, old, little dog and rub his old hips. Old hips, I tell him, old hips. Like I'm assuring him his hips are old yet attached to him even so. In case he did not know. We have this habit. He lets me rub his old hips. I with the illusion this rubbing mitigates his arthritis, and the old scar where the Rottweiler chomped him. You're a good dog I tell the dog. We been through a lot together, huh, buddy? Old man. Old man. I'm touching the new livid scars down his side where he chewed on himself a few weeks ago and we had to wrap him in a sweater to stop him chewing there, till he healed. Alopecia, white muzzle, a couple of benign lipidomas, cloudy eyes. I'm talking the dog, not me. We been through a lot buddy I tell the dog. He leans against me on my pallet in the dim room bursting with textiles and devices and tasks in progress. A hidden cavity in the great wall of the city. His tail wags a little and he nuzzles my hand for me to continue petting him. How dare I desist even for a moment. You're a good dog I tell the old dog again, in case he forgot.

I liked it very much.

I will warn that it is a very misogynistic film, and really does portray women as objects and playthings in several scenes. I think I managed to enjoy the film anyway because it seemed true to both the time and the culture of the film -- being in some ways a documentary about outlaw rock stars in the sixties.

It also is somewhat implausible quite often.

But it's fantastically entertaining and well-performed, and I laughed out loud more times than I'd care to count.

Plus, I don't mind getting to see Nick Frost more or less naked in a film from time to time.

And there is some wonderful music in it. (I know that svala_lj and kristnaskelfir will disagree.)

Overall, a very enjoyable film. I recommend it.

(Note that this film was released a while back in other countries as The Boat That Rocked.)

He made it safe and sound. Many thanks to treeskin for taking care of him and for making all this work on the other end, to byronsart for transporting him to Kansas City Airport at way too early in the morning, to noveldevice for introducing us and helping with logistics and everything, and to sonatine and Cody for transporting him from Seattle to here today.

He spent about half an hour hiding in various spots, then fifteen minutes wandering around sniffing things, then came over and banged his head on my hands until I started petting him. Even let me pick him up. So I think we're going to be okay. :D

Right now he's still lying on the step. I think it's a cozy, somewhat-hidden space where he can still see everything.

I promise this journal won't be all cat all the time, but it is totally Cyril Day. :D

I regularly get requests to repair latex items. I am happy to do so, however it is simple to do yourself. I thought I would post some instructions for repairing your own latex garments. i hope you find them useful.

First off you want to obtain the right glue and thinner to use. Here is a photo of the type I use most frequently. You can find these in art supply stores. Notice that there are two different cans of glue here, they are the same, just choose the one you wish to purchase. For a repair the smaller one is all you should need.





Now you'll want to get yourself an old credit or debit type card. (I use hotel room cards that were given to me by someone who took my latex repair class a while back.) You will also need some latex to patch with if you have a hole or tare and a piece of soft cloth that won't leave behind little bits of itself. I use scrap spandex that is never in short supply around the http://www.fetishwear.net workshop. :) Finally you'll need something to cut your scrap latex to size for patching. I like to use a rotary cutter and mat. Cutting latex with scissors is challenging, but possible if they are sharp.

First soak your little scrap of soft cloth with thinner and clean off the back side of your latex item where it needs repair and one side of the latex scrap you plan to use as a patch. This will likely cause your items to curl, they will curl more if they are a thin gauge of latex, don't worry. Allow them time to relax and get your card and glue ready.

Place a bit of the glue at the edge of your card and use it to smooth on a thin layer of glue where you cleaned your latex item and patch. Try to keep the glue in the areas you need it in. You will want the glue on your item to be slightly larger than the patch. Again your latex pieces will curl. Just wait for a bit and then the will uncurl. Don't try to keep your little patch piece from curling in and touching itself, this is nearly impossible. If it touches itself a little it will pull apart easily later. (If you have a lot of trouble with this it works to glue a larger piece and then cut it down. Just be careful not to let the glue stick to anything and pull off.)

Give it a few minutes and then carefully lay your patch from one edge to another to avoid trapping bubbles of air in between. Once you are sure the patch is on correctly be sure to press it down firmly and allow it some time to set.

Finally take a clean piece of your soft cloth and soak it in thinner. Carefully clean off excess glue you may have on the garment, making sure NOT to clean it off too completely near the edges of your patch. Make sure your little cloth doesn't become dry during this process and if you need to use several to get the glue off that is better than smearing excess glue around.

If you are going to store this garment right away be sure to talc this area well before doing so to make sure the glue doesn't stick to another part of the garment and cause another problem later.




These instructions can also be used to make your own new latex garments. Essentially you simply need to clean and glue both sides of the seams and carefully stick them together.

love each other very much they make snail steaks.

Just have to shut everything down.

Boozes, here I come!!!!

We are home. The treatment plan would be the same here or in the hospital so they let him out!!. Meds... lots of meds, and rest. If it gets acute again (heaven forfend!!!) we head back to ER ASAP. Still weak and fragile -- and no joy on getting the O2 there. Need to get back to VA pulmonology ASAP. Otherwise, repeat CT scan in two weeks to see if there's any change in free air or gastric mucosa. It's finally really catching up with me... I'm tired enough to be mushy-headed. My spatial perception, which is normally awesome is a bit off. It will be nice to sleep in my own bed, although I have to totally RAVE about my Relax the Back chair. I slept in it every night at the hospital. I didn't start having pain until loading and unloading the car - and at this point it's not too bad.

The Canadian trade deficit fell by more than half in September, substantially on automotive-related exports to the US. I had been looking for this.

Just got word from sonatine: Cyril's alive and well (if rather frazzled, poor thing; four-hour flights are not fun) and on his way north. If he's feeling obliging, there will be pictures tonight. (The delay is because it takes a few hours to unload and process everything from the plane. Also, he only did the MCI-SEA wing, but even still, a four-hour flight is a lot.)

(I've been resisting the urge to make, like, seven posts today about cat cat ^ω^ cat.)

Fun question stolen from theferret: What do your RPG characters say about you? What is the common thread?

For me, my characters are almost always about seeing the world through an unorthodox technological filter. My high school Masquerade character was a scientist convinced vampirism had a viral cause. In the D&D game corivax used to run, I was an elf who had been banished for his tendency to use his nature magic to create Frankensteinian chimeras out of cute fuzzy animals to solve random problems. My 4th ed D&D character last year was a neolithic ranger and master flintknapper sent into the wider world to discover if this new "metal" menacing his tribe was a force for good or evil. Less well developed characters tend to be techies, weak in combat but always looking for clever hacks to get around it.

I'm always a sucker for technological metaphors. They're how I primarily tend to understand the world -- and therefore learning new technologies means learning new ways to understand the world. Being able to take that to a radical extreme is absolutely a form of wish fulfillment.

So, what's your story?