Thanksgiving Message

I am thankful that Kathe and I are still together. People went out of my life this year, and for much of it I thought Kathe was going to be one of them. I am grateful to Kathe for offering me another chance.

I was in a great deal of pain over the past year, of which the hole the doctors cut in my head last Thanksgiving was only the most obvious, and far from being the most painful. Some of that pain I took out on Kathe in ways that now make me cringe with shame. Very little of what I put her through was deserved.

Mainly, though, I look back thankfully on the good times Kathe and I have had. There were a lot more good times than bad, after all. And I look forward to good times yet to come, and give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way

Con Report, Day Three

The soak turned out to be less "blessed" than it was "marginally adequate". The hotel had disabled the bathtub drains, and only had one stopper to offer to guests who actually wanted a bath (as we had specifically requested). The desk clerk managed to find us a coffee can lid which more or less held the water back, provided we didn't move around too much in the water. But hey, we managed.

The next day we passed up "A Mission to Mars" and "Women Role Models in Science Fiction" in favor of "Guilty Pleasures", thereby showing where our priorities lay. We also experienced "Magical Realism" and pondered "At What Point does Society Stop Being Civilized?"

We walked the halls, and I observed that goggles are the new propellor beanie.

We went into the dealers' room and as I looked casually over a table full of books, the dealer laid a book down as though especially for me to see. It proved to be A Houseboat on the River Styx by John Kendrick Bangs, a book I had been looking for for some time, and which is noted for being associated with a surprising number of synchronicities (for instance, Alan Moore named his character Promethea, whose stories are all involved in the interplay between reality and fiction, "Sophie Bangs" long before he'd heard of John Kendrick Bangs) and cultural curiosities (for instance, its cast of famous dead people included Sherlock Holmes, who at the time of the book's writing had been killed off and had not yet been resurrected).

Finding the Houseboat was good luck for me, and I hope that it will prove to be an omen of good fortune for both Kathe and me, also.

Since we weren't staying at the con hotel and were pretty tired also, we left in the middle of the afternoon rather than dead-dogging it. Maybe next year.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Regarding next year, ask again later."\\

Con Report, Day Two

We spent the night at a less than ideal motel (no bathtub to soak our respective sore bones, for one major thing), went further down Barbur to find a better one, then went down to the Marriott for more conventiongoing.

We attended workshops and panels on "Mermaids, Sirens and Other Attractive Nuisances"; "Portraying Workplaces in Science Fiction and Fantasy" and "Have Comics Shaped Our Society?" We went over to visit my cousin Jean and her husband Lukas, then back to the hotel for "What Would Happen if the Oil Stopped?"; "Magic or Technology: Why Must We Choose?" (where I was scolded for saying "magic realism" rather than "magical realism") and the "99 Cent Costume Workshop" (which was fun, but we declined to enter the costume competition in our outfits) and "Non-Eurpoean Mythology: an Untapped Resource".

We also attended the costume contest, voted for our favorites and then left without dancing, opting instead to go get food, go to our new hotel (the Aladdin), take a blessed soak and go to bed.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Remember that fortune cookie? It said you would profit by spending time with family."\\

Con Report, Day One

Kathe and I are attending OryCon 30 in Portland this weekend. We arrived late on Friday (before the opening ceremonies, which we skipped, but after a lot of the programming for the day).

Programming we did attend included "Absurd Robots and the People Who Want to Own One" and "A History of Planetary Probes".

We brought our new matching sweaters, and our even newer matching tights, which we were to wear on Day Two.

More to this post later.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Have a good weekend."

Time Change

Yesterday, my phone's alarm woke me at 0630, so I could get to my parents' place by 0800. But by the time I'd gotten there my phone was on Standard Time, and it said it was 0700.

I know the alarm was still on Daylight Savings Time on Monday morning, because then it was full dark as I made my way to the shower, and this morning it was light at 0630.

So apparently the phone's clock did automatically shift back to Standard Time, but not until sometime between 0630 and 0700, when the official time change was at 0200. Weird.