The Weekend, Let Me Tell You It

Although Friday was quiet, the rest of the weekend wasn't.

Saturday was Foolscap, the annual reader/writer SF convention held up in Redmond. We headed out early, after a quick breakfast of donuts, although I wasn't feeling so great so I had oatmeal instead of sugary pastries. We got there around 10:30am, checked in, and I dispatech Yamaraashi-chan to the shopping mall attached to the convention hotel. She had a birthday party to attend that afternoon and had to go buy a gift. She knows the rules for mall shopping and her phone was fully charged, so I wasn't too worried.

After she had come back, I ran her down to her birthday party, which took much longer than anticipated. I figured it was a 25 minute drive down to the skating rink from the hotel. Hah, foolish Elf. Some car lost a radiator line and overheated, and I was stuck on the flamin' I-405 S-curves for almost an hour, one way.

With Yamaraashi-chan effectively occupied until the following morning, I was free to hang out with my writer friends and acquaintances. I bought a book in the dealer's room (and the author, Jay Lake, said, "Here, let me sign for you," to which I couldn't say no), went to a panel, hung out with a very cool artist whose very failure to ship the tarot deck I fell in love with last year finally kicked my ass into gear and I started designing the home page and handlers for the Yowlers series. Got a hell of a lot of progress done in the spare hour I had between panels, too. In fact, I've set a deadline: Victor and Sezi is going out the door next Friday. Why? Because Steve freakin' Jobs says: "Real Artists Ship."

Omaha and I went to dinner with another writing couple, he's published, and he paid me the compliment of saying "You know how to up the ante," which is actually quite a compliment, and said that I should more seriously consider long form for sale. The problem is that every time I try long-form, I get bored. I should rethink that; after all, the Yowler series has now hit 70,000 words, I've been at it for over a year, and I'm not entirely bored with it yet.

Kouryou-chan had a great time with the other kids there, and Omaha and I spent most of our time with her policing her from trying to get her hands on some publisher's samples of Love and Rockets and the furry series The Futher Adventures of Captain Jack.

Anyway, we had a great time, I scored some excellent books (inculding free copies of the first four books in the second Battle Angel Alita saga, and an atrocious "SF Romance" duology that was also free), met some great people (and one of those typical, rather depressing, "We can't save the Earth until we kill off half the population" types), and got home by 11:00pm or so. Good 'con.

The Weekend, Let Me Show You Sunday

The Garage. Sorta Clean.

Sunday is chore day around here. The neverending garage saga went on today: with one batch of recyclables dispatched, it was time to break down more boxes, an ancient table, and move a dead bag of dried-out asphalt patch.

The big job of the day was defrosting the deep freezer, which involved cleaning the old, nearly dead cooler first, since the bright shiny new cooler wasn't going to hold everything. After that, we moved all the food out, and I went to scraping the ice off with a nylon scraper and my mad scientist gloves, drying the interior completely, and putting all the food back. Cold, messy, and difficult.

I also fixed my bicycle's front brake, checked everyone's tires, and used a hand-blower (hey, no one told me that thing had a 'high' setting. Cool!) to clean off the front area of the driveway, which had become a mess with all the coming and going of junk in and out of the garage. It was just a ton of manual labor, all morning long, and I was glad when it was time for our bi-weekly Dungeon & Dragons game.

My character nearly died. She confidently waded into the mass of goblins and got critted to sub-zero hit points, but she's a monk and made a will roll and did the "Iron Body" thing that brought her back up above ded.

Omaha made an incredibly yummy stew with leftover roast beef, and I whipped togther iced tea in record time.

I read chapter two of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother with Yamaraashi-chan before sending her off to bed. I know I should put more time into the final typesetting tasks for the "Bastetpedia" home page, but I'm feeling lazy today.