I’ve always wanted a pet koala, if only so I could name it “Lumpur”. 🙂
Wow, i really did disappear. I didn’t mean to, honest. And for once, I can’t say that the reason I haven’t been writing is because things have been boring and nothings going on. Rather the opposite, in fact. So, rather than try to write six weeks worth of LJ in a couple of hours, which would probably bore us both to tears, let me explain.
No, there is no time. Let me sum up…
- OVFF was all kinds of fun. By this point, most of my enduring memories are going to be rather dull to the majority of you (and tend to fall mostly in the category of “Mmmm, she’s snuggly”), but I did have a marvelous time surrounding myself with the music, and even played a little more during the weekend than I usually find myself. The pirate hallway circle alymid, joecoustic and I started was an especial highlight.
There were some people I had wanted to spend a little more time with, and didn’t get to for a variety of reasons, but on the whole I had a marvelous time and miss everyone terribly already.
- kitanzi and I attended the first meeting of a proposed monthly Atlanta poly discussion/support group, which was both entertaining and interesting. We’ve really enjoyed getting to know some of the people in the local poly community ever since we discovered there actually was such a thing. New friends are always a blessing, and and many of these folks are just plain fun to be around. I’m glad we’ve met them, and look forward to getting to know them even better as time goes by.
- khaosworks came over to spend the weekend with us over Thanksgiving. kitanzi prepared a rather impressive spread of food, including a delightful Chicken Roulade stuffed with apricots and cranberries, ginger sweet potatoes, broccoli and cheese, chestnut stuffing with gravy, and yeast rolls. There was easily enough for 6-8 people, so we had leftovers for a few days. It was all kinds of yummy. We played a lot of City of Heroes, watched a lot of Sex and the City and Dead Like Me on DVD (we’re only just watching both series, the former thanks to Netflix, the latter because I bought it after many recommendations).
khaosworks also brought along several of his Dr. Who DVDs, giving me the chance to see “Tomb of the Cyberman” for the very first time. I always was a big fan of Troughton’s Doctor, and this is one of his finer stories, only recently restored after being recovered in 1992. Great fun.
- Went to a party at the home of baiku and celticmoni, which was a lot of fun. The invitation asked us to bring Christmas music, so I burned my entire Christmas music folder of mp3s to a DVD-R — slightly over 2 gb of songs. I hope they get some use of it, since we never did get around to playing any of it at the time, but there was good food and company, so it was well worthwhile.
- We made it to the first Atlanta housefilk since before Worldcon in December. (Not that there haven’t BEEN any…we just hadn’t made it to any. Well, we tried to attend in November, but no one else showed up. But I digress….) Had a lot of fun swapping songs with mrpsyklops and hilfy and everyone else who managed to show up for a wonderful evening of food and music at Dave and Signe’s.
- JediMUD’s coder retired on us in November, leading us to search for a new one. In the course of trying to work my own friends network to find possibly interested people, I asked a good buddy of mine if he knew anyone who might be interested in a coder position on a mud. Turns out, he was. So bardiclug is now in charge of the 1s and 0s at Jedi.
We’ve been having some very interesting talks about the future, and what we want out of the game. The next 2 years should be quite an interesting time for us all, but I’m very excited about some of the things we’re thinking of doing.
- Work has variably stressy through this entire period. We finally got in some new equipment to alleviate some performance issues in one of our systems, which has resulted in my working 3rd shift for the last week and a half, as we transfer data to the new equipment in stages after hours when customers are busy sleeping and dreaming.
It’s funny, because I enjoy this sort of thing in small doses. It’s quiet, I get to work from home, and I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. But nearly 2 solid weeks of it gets tiring, and I feel disconnected from everyone. I’m hoping that tomorrow will be the last batch of this project, so that I can go back to normal hours on Monday. Especially since…
- eloren had her baby on Saturday, and we all welcomed Rachel Shea into the world. When I talked to her on Sunday, both mom and daughter were doing well, and I got to have the fun of telling everyone at work on Monday when I went in for our department meeting, but it DOES means I’m going to miss her for the next few weeks while she is on leave and doing the whole new mom thing.
And that catches us up on the really big stuff, I guess, up to last week, and I think I’ll break off here and try to start some more regular entries from this point forward. 🙂
Sorry to vanish for so long. I’ll try not to do that again.
What it is: Shatneroke is a party game in which participants give a Dramatic (as opposed to merely dramatic) reading of the song lyrics of their choice. The winning player is selected by all players in a vote.
No matter how terrible current events get, they cannot take away my sense of humour.
(Requires QuickTime. Funny stuff. 🙂
Seen in officialgaiman:
If pressed to pick a political system, I think that some country or other ought to try jury duty as a way of picking its politicians: if your name gets picked, and you can’t come up with a good enough excuse, you’ll have to give up four or five years of your life to helping run the country, which avoids the main problem of politics as I see it, which is that the kind of people you have to vote for are the kind of people who actually think that they ought to be running things. If you have a country and want to try this as a political system, let me know how it works out.
–Neil Gaiman
Real content coming soon, meanshile, a content generator stolen from kitanzi, who got it from tigerbright:
I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about.
Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you.
Also, if you’d like me to interview you (3 questions), let me know as part of the comment.
cadhla and I were meant for each other. I am convinced of this.
autographedcat: *snugglecuddle*
cadhla: Yay, snuggles!
autographedcat: lots more where that came from 🙂
cadhla: Snuggles rock.
autographedcat: hrm. Snuggles Rock. I’m now picturing a sex-ed series of Schoolhouse Rock videos 🙂
cadhla: I’m Only A Pill?
autographedcat: ROFL.
folkmew asked, in a reply to smallship1:
If Bush is elected again how will I be able to say I’m an American to any of my friends overseas?
Because Bush isn’t America.
Good, hardworking, decent folk all over the country are America. Honest, plain-spoken, determined people, both Democrats and Republicans, dedicated to the principles of freedom and justice are America. Helpful, compassionate, community-oriented people, in cities and on farms, are America.
When a neighbor reaches out to a neighbor, there you find us. When people pitch in together for the good of their families, their neighborhoods, and their communities, there you find us. When people do the right thing for no reason other than its the right thing to do, there you find us. When the law protects the individual from the mob, there you find us.
Bush and his crowd are just a passing thing, in the great wash of history. There are many ways, too many to list, where they are bad for us, and bad for the world, but they too shall pass, and the ideal that is America shall remain.
Because America isn’t a man. It isn’t a political party. It isn’t an ideology.
America is a belief in a better future, in a rule of law, and in the idea that no matter how divided we become over matters of religion, race, or political ideology, we have the right and responsibility to peacefully work toward change.
Right now, the American Dream may be a bit tarnished. Sometimes its hard to see. Sometimes you can be so frustrated that you don’t know how to go on.
But we will go on. We will go on working to ensure that the principles that made America an ideal do not vanish, do not falter, do not perish from the earth.
There’s work to be done. And we will do it, no matter who sits in the halls of government. Because we are Americans. Even now. Even today.
I woke up at 5am to the call of nature, and wandered out to check the news before going back to bed.
Erg. This is precisely what I didn’t want this year.
Don’t get me wrong. I wanted Kerry to win, and there’s still that chance. But most of all, I wanted it to be decided, and decidedd decisively, so that we didn’t have the protracted bitter infighting of four years ago. And that’s precisely what we didn’t get.
So now, we wait, and watch, and hope.
Meanwhile, John Scalzi links us to the this absolutely gorgeous mp3 of the Yale Spizzwinks, a Yale University a capella group, performing the song Shenandoah. John called it “herbal tea for the soul”, and I agree. Having listened to it, I feel better already.
Total time at the polls, about 25 minutes. Of course, I took a late lunch to go at 2:30pm when I figured the line would be light.
I’ve been really encouraged by the reports of long lines at the polls. This is a participatory government, so its nice to see people participate.
If you haven’t voted yet, please take the time to do so. Even if you’ll vote for someone I don’t like. It’s important. It matters.
(Thanks to alymid for the icon, which i shamelessly stole. 🙂
Later: Some sort of OVFF report. 🙂