Run Around

Crazy busy weekend.

Hung with the Hedge as usual on Friday. We had Pierce's for dinner (damn, but I should eat there more often) and played some Rock Band after the kids were in bed. (I even managed to keep my drumming scores over 85%. One of these days, I will actually figure out the timing on the effing kick pedal.)

Saturday morning, Penny helped me frost/decorate some black forest cupcakes. (I used this recipe, except instead of the glaze, Penny gave each cupcake a white icing base frost, then I piped a chocolate frosting ring around the edge, and then we filled the ring with cherry pie filling. The white base made the pie filling stand out bright and pretty.) I don't usually like cooked or processed cherries (maraschino cherries make me gag), but this was Jenn's specific request for her birthday party. What the birthday girl wants, the birthday girl gets.

So Jenn took us and the Hedge out for dinner (we decided on TGI Friday's as being family friendly, and got the Best Gay Waiter Ever) and then we went back to the Hedge and had the cupcakes (everyone said they were wonderful, and we introduced Alex and Henry to the concept of shooting whipped cream straight into your mouth from the can, which was awesome and I wish I'd had my camera ready to go) and then after the kids were in bed, the rest of us gamed until somewhere around midnight.

And then Sunday, pretty shortly after lunch, we took the kids down to Chuck-E-Cheese for Henry's birthday party.

I know it's not cool to like Chuck-E-Cheese if you're an adult, but I kind of do. I even like their pizza, which you're really not supposed to admit, but it was damned good pizza. I downloaded a coupon for extra tokens, and found out that if you bring in a recent report card, you can get extra tokens for good grades, so I dug up Penny's latest report card (5 As and a B!) and stuck that in my purse, too. The kids got big ol' handfuls of tokens to play, and there were even plenty of leftovers for Matt and I.

I donated a few of my tickets to Ripley so she could get a toy she wanted, and then I gave the rest to Alex, who didn't really grasp the whole "trade tickets for prizes" concept and was -- silly kid -- picking rides for the fun of them! (Yeah, that's sarcastic, and yet I expect if we'd prepared to leave and he'd realized his sister had gotten toys and he hadn't, there would have been trouble.)

Anyway, both kids had a great time, and they were really well behaved considering they were short on sleep, and now Alex is talking about maybe having his birthday there. (His birthday is eight months away; I'm taking it with a grain of salt for the moment.)

Anyway, both Alex and I went to bed a good half-hour or so earlier than usual last night. It was a great, fun weekend... but a tiring one.

Con Report

So, MarsCon? Awesome.

Penny and Alex were not (too) whiny. I got to wear my costume with the leather corset I bought last year. I saw musical shows. I got to hang out with friends I see all too rarely, and made a couple of new friends. I bought stuff for myself and for the kids, most of it pointless and silly. (The beaded cell phone bag, though, was all but necessary. Why didn't I make that stupid skirt with pockets?) I ate junk food and stayed up late and plugged my books.

The weekend is something of a blur, but let me (try) to start at the beginning.

Friday night was Rock Band Night at the Hedge -- the usual Friday night crew, plus Elizabeth and Lorenz and Jenn and Brian. Braz put the boys to bed and told them that if we had to come up and tell them to be quiet, we would separate them. The threat worked, and though I don't think either of them went to sleep until well after 9:30, they stayed in Henry's room and were at least quiet enough we didn't hear anything over Rock Band.

After the boys were in bed, we told the girls to go upstairs to play, and I slipped in this suggestion: "You know, if you stay upstairs and don't come interrupt us, we might forget what time it is, and you'd get to stay up late." The bribe worked, and we didn't see hide nor hair nor hear a squeak from the girls until Adin realized it was time for us to do Penny's 10:00 blood sugar check.

And the adults...? Well, we rocked.

Until after Adin had to leave for work. Until after Jenn and Brian realized they had an hour and change drive home and reluctantly left. Until... until Matt realized that it was coming up on 1 in the morning and we really should get the kids home.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast and took showers and got dressed (more or less in that order) and eventually (near lunchish) found ourselves at MarsCon.

We found KT and Kevin right away, and Penny and Alex and Jess spent a while playing in the huge pile of Legos and getting their faces painted.

Then KT and I left the kids with Kevin and Matt and went off to a writer's workshop, where I joyfully also ran into my brother. I've wanted to do this workshop for years, but it's always conflicted with something -- other panels, childcare, etc -- that took precedence. It was a lot of fun; a closed panel where everyone present wrote the opening few sentences for a short story. The hook, in other words, and the panel judges offered up critique to help us hone our writing styles and do a better job of genuinely drawing in the reader. (One of the panelists said the very nicest thing about mine, which was "Every single sentence had something I wanted to ding you for, but somehow you made it all work." I all but squee'd. I may share it with Wednesday's post to the writing blog, if you're interested.)

While we were doing that, Matt and the kids went to a puppet show that sounded like oodles of fun, then had lunch up at the Con Suite. (MarsCon has the Best. Con Suite. EVAR..)

We took the kids to a workshop on drawing cute creatures. Alex was showing signs of needing a nap, though, so Matt took him over to Braz and Adin's (as we had arranged previously), and I left Kevin to keep an eye on Penny while I dashed up to the Con Suite for my own lunch, where I was fortunate enough to encounter Pickleman!

When the drawing workshop was done, we took the girls to the Hysterically Correct Pirate Show, at which Penny and Jess became apprentice pirates. Then we took the girls to another workshop to make little felt zombie dolls. (I may be getting things out of order. The whole day was a bit of a blur.)


In the meantime, we bumped into dozens of rarely-met friends and took lots of pictures of people in costumes. (Those links include a fantastic Chel from Portal, including a gorgeous portal gun, a collection for four different incarnations of Doctor Who, and the obligatory Slave Leia.)

We spent half an hour in a musical concert from Jonah Knight, who writes and performs... I don't want to say "filk" because I think of that as music about existing franchises, and this mostly wasn't. Let's call his stuff steampunky short stories set to music. Sometimes spooky, sometimes silly, but definitely fun. KT was obsessed with his fingering; I was fascinated by his awesomely well-worn guitar.

We went out to dinner with the Hickses, our old college friend DJ and his son, and Vicki, and that was awesome, too -- we put the three kids in a booth to themselves and the grown-ups had a grand time talking about all kinds of stuff.

Then Matt and I dropped by the house so I could change out of my costume (it was fun, but the lack of pockets and the continual need to, er, "adjust the girls", so to speak, was getting annoying) and then we split up again. He took Penny over to Braz and Adin's to hang out and go to bed, and I went back to the con to go to a panel on GLBT in speculative fiction. (Matt also went back to the con after he'd dropped Penny off. I think he went to the Coyote Run concert along with KT and Kevin.)

While I was waiting on the panel to start, one of the panelists came in and it turned out to be JM Snyder, whom I'd met back in September in Roanoke, so we sat and chatted for a while, which was awesome. The panel (more of a panel-moderated discussion, really) was fascinating, too. It was followed by another panel-moderated discussion about repopulating the planet in the event of an apocalypse -- elements to consider, things that might or might not happen, how best to ensure the survival of the species -- that was super fun. When that was done, there was a reading from four authors where it looked for a while like I was going to be the only person in the audience, but eventually the room filled up.

I ended up talking for a while with another one of the audience members who I've seen before but not spoken to, and she was really nice, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again next year. I gave her one of the free copies of "Of Sound Mind" I had with me for promotion purposes, and she promised to read it and pass it on to friends who might like it.

When that broke up, I thought about wandering down the hall in search of one of the dozens of ongoing room parties, but it was nearly 1 in the morning and I had to drive home, so I made my farewells and headed out. I figured Matt would have been home long since (he'd come to the door of the panel and waved at me at least an hour before) but when I got home, he had only arrived a few minutes earlier and had just finished bringing the kids in and tucking them into bed.

We went back the next day as well -- had lunch in the Con Suite and wandered around a little, chatting with KT and Kevin some more and making a last sweep through the dealer's room before we headed home. KT and Kevin followed later to hang out with us some more that afternoon before they went back home.

It was a super weekend, and I'm sad it's already over. Matt and the kids have today off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but I'm stuck at work. At least it'll be quiet, since all our government customers will be closed.

We're talking about getting a room at the hotel next year -- it's great living so close to the Con, but we were getting sick of having to lug our coats and bags around all the time, and it would've been nice to have a spot to eat and rest and regroup. We're also juggling the notion of going to another con up in Richmond in April -- the writer GoH is Glen Cook, and I'd love to get my ancient and battered copy of The Black Company signed. Alas, their website is not very helpful in determining whether they have any child-friendly programming, so we're not sure whether this is something we can all go to for the weekend, or if it may be a Mom-Only Day Trip. We'll see.

Madness

Cranked up with stress over the proposal and everything, I decided I wanted to go to Rock Band night last night, so I could hit something with sticks and not, you know, get arrested.

It was just Braz and me to start out (Vicki and Elizabeth being at the pool league tournament) and since I didn't really care what the music was as long as I got to play drums, I gave that choice up to Braz. So naturally, he put in Beatles Rock Band and decided we should do the entire Abbey Road album. Vicki showed up two songs in, so we got her a beer and a guitar and started over.

Once that was done, we broke for snacks and beer. Braz checked his RSS feed, and showed us some pictures. We talked about the totally awesome Nerf sword and battleaxe Braz had seen at Target, and we all agreed that we needed to own these things. Braz put Super Mario Brothers in, and he and Vicki played a level.

And then he decided he needed to try out Mad World, which he'd picked up on super-sale from Amazon and hadn't played yet. This is billed as an ultra-violent game. There's really no story. Just a dystopian post-apocalyptic environment, black-and-white graphics that really want to look like, say, Sin City, but kind of fall short, and lots and lots and lots of different ways to kill guys. Nothing wrong with that, mind -- sometimes, you just want to hit things with sticks.

Shamus Young did a Stolen Pixels comic about it which is, actually... kind of accurate.

Anyway, Braz was impatiently tooling through the opening dialogue and trying to get to the play portion of the tutorial while Vicki and I watched. "Look at the guy's ass," I told Vicki. I couldn't tell if they were trying for jeans or leather or what, but the guy's pants were low-riders that hugged his ass so tight you could practically count the hairs. "There's no way those pants have enough room in them for the jewels."

"That's why he's so pissed!" Braz suggested. Finally up to the action parts of the games, he started generating mayhem.

"Bitch!" accused one of the bad guys. Vicki and I busted up laughing.

"Who's your daddy?!" the game demanded. I tweeted something about how Vicki and I were watching Braz play the game and analyzing its homoerotic subtexts for the amusement value. (Only, you know, because I was laughing so hard, I wasn't nearly that erudite about it.)

Then it started getting into items, and the usable items that weren't phallic were all made of rubber, and it stopped being a subtle subtext.. Suddenly the entire thing ceased to be an ultraviolent killfest and became a poignant glimpse into the designer's deeply closeted fantasies.

We may well have ruined the game for Braz, but it's been a long time since I laughed that hard.

Valentines and Tigers

Penny's Valentine party was a great success! Though I completely forgot to take any pictures. Oh, well.

The girls made cards, and then they ate cupcakes and gummi candy and veggies and cookies, and then they went up to Penny's room and played with suspiciously little shrieking until it was time for them to go. I was slightly worried that Jess, who only Penny knew, would get pushed to the side, but the other girls seemed happy to include her, and she seemed to be having a good time. The adults were a bit withdrawn for the first little bit, but once the girls disappeared upstairs, we all sat at the table to eat the leftovers and wound up having quite an enjoyable chat. I got phone numbers for all three of Penny's school friends, so I'll be able to contact them over the summer for playdates and birthday parties.

Valentine's Day was very nice, too. Matt and I had started our exchange on Friday -- he sent me a bouquet of red tulips and purple irises, and I sent him a cookie bouquet. He warned me that my "big" present had been backordered or shipment-delayed due to snow or something and that he wouldn't get it until probably Tuesday, so I wasn't expecting anything Sunday. But there was the latest Order of the Stick book, so that was pretty awesome. (I got him the Pushing Daisies DVDs, since they are weird and quirky and romantic, very much like Matt, and a second Wii controller and nunchuck for our Wii, so we can play Lego Star Wars together.)

Our gifts to the kids were a big hit -- they both got kits for making candy necklaces and little lightstick flashlights (they're meant to be safety lights for outdoors exercise, but I have yet to meet a kid that doesn't love flashlights), and Penny also got a necklace. Matt's mom sent some Sesame Street DVDs and a decorate-it-yourself picture frame. So all in all, they made out pretty well.

Today was supposed to be a holiday for Penny, but they canceled it to make up one of the recent snow days. So Matt -- who still gets the holiday -- is getting most of the day to himself to kick back and relax. I think he's planning to hit a matinee movie before he picks Penny up from school.

I, obviously, am at work. I have some vague hope that it will be a calm week. We'll see, I guess. At least, since Matt got to go to a D&D game this weekend, and has today off from work, I laid claim to Rock Band Night tonight, so that should be fun.

Rawk.

I took Matt's place at his usual weekly Rock Band night last night. I'd been planning on doing it anyway (the plan, as I originally conceived it, was for me to swap in for Rock Band on the weeks after Matt's been to his D&D game, which has the dual benefit of giving me a chance at some social fun while letting Matt catch up on peace and quiet and even the possibility of sleep). But as it turned out, Matt had to work last night, so he wouldn't have been able to go anyway.

Elizabeth got sucked into the black hole of work along with Matt, so it was just me and Braz and Vicki, but we had a great time. We played Rock Band 2 and Beatles Rock Band. Between them, Braz and Vicki killed... well, a lot of beer. And I downed most of a 2-liter of Diet Coke -- and I haven't had caffeine on anything like a regular basis for the better part of the last three years (pretty much since Matt and I decided we were ready to have a second child) so I was pretty high, myself.

So I played drums and I sang. And I sang some more, and played drums, and sang, and sang. And ate junk food. And sang. Ate some healthy food, and drank more Diet Coke. We called each other names, and told some crazy stories, and Braz checked his work emails and we sent psychic sympathy to Matt and Elizabeth for the crap workstuff. We tried to figure out how to get Braz and Vicki and Matt and I all in the same room at the same time (because I have experienced Matt-and-Braz, and I have experienced Braz-and-Vicki, but the three of them together has some kind of exponential effect) but it was pointed out that any such gathering would most likely also have children present, which would act as a damper. (Well, maybe we can all go out for lunch sometime. It wouldn't be as awesome as playing Rock Band, though.)

I guess I got to Braz's place around 8:30, and I finally left sometime after midnight. And the only reason I was able to peel myself away was because my throat was getting sore from all the singing.

It's still a little sore today. And I'm a little tired, because it's been a long time since I was up past midnight. But at least Penny didn't wake me up at 3:45, and it was only a little harder than usual to roll out of bed this morning while Matt was still sleeping and go fire up the Wii Fit.

It is, however, possibly a good thing that it's going to be a fairly slow day at work.