MarsCon 2014 Report

This is going to be long. I mean, long. With links and pictures and all kinds of stuff. You are warned.

I don't even know where to begin. I always enjoy cons, but I don't think I've ever had such a great time at one before.

And I'm an introvert, but I think last night I was feeling just a tingle of the phenomenon that KT (an extrovert's extrovert) has told me about so often, where a big event like this ends and instead of being tired and ready to recover, she's aching for more, more, more.

I think it has to do with the kind of introvert that I am. I do not make friends easily. I'm not shy, per se. I don't have a problem talking to people, usually. But I am really bad at starting conversations. It's much easier for me to be in a social situation if there's someone else present that I know who can help me break the ice. Get the ball rolling, so to speak.

And this year, aside from about an hour early on Friday evening before people really started to arrive, I don't think I went anywhere that I didn't encounter someone I knew. Seriously. Half the time I got on the damn elevator, there was someone in there I knew, let alone any of the panels or performances or activities.

And not just the usual suspects, either. Of course there was what I think of as my "usual" crew of friends that grew out of school friendships -- KT and Kevin, DJ and Ora, Greg, and T. Elizabeth, Jenn and Brian all came to MarsCon for the first time this year, and I'm pretty sure they're hooked -- Brian, at least, is already planning a costume for next year. And I had family there as well -- John and Sam, and my kids, and Matt (who I suppose is no longer technically family, but I still think of him that way by way of his being, y'know, the father of my children). And there was also the usual collection of the friends I used to see more often but now run into mainly at cons and the like -- Elliot and Marcy and John D. and John H.

And this year, thanks in large part to KT's obsession with music and filk, I had "music friends" like Jonah and Mikey and Chuck and Bert. And thanks partly to my participation as a guest last year, I had "author friends" like Amy and Kat and Michael. Also, I made new friends of both sorts, like Danny and Nobilis.

There were also random other folks -- people who I've worked with, for instance, and with whom I am Facebook friends, some of whom I didn't even know were geeks, like John T. and Caren and Erika.

There was even an occasion where a bunch of us were sitting around a table and I was the only one who knew everyone.

So pretty much the only times I felt like I was on my own were times that I was actually alone. Which weren't many, because I was insanely busy!

It. Was. Wonderful.

So. Ready for the blow-by-blow? (Click on pictures to embiggen.)

Friday

I took a half-day from work. Came home, ate a good lunch, finished packing, fed the cat, and drove the whopping four miles to the hotel. I got checked in, picked up my badge, and spent most of the rest of the afternoon kind of lounging in my room, until I started to see Facebook posts indicating that people were beginning to arrive. So I changed into my Femme Fatale Red Riding Hood outfit and headed down to the lobby.

This was my one slow period; I did a tour of the public areas and said hi to a few people, then sat in the "pit" (a slightly sunken lounge area in the hotel lobby) for maybe forty-five minutes or so until I spotted some friends arriving.

Around 6 or so, I got a text from Matt that he and the kids had arrived, so I wandered up to the kids' meet-and-greet party. The kids' activities this year were mostly Harry Potter/Hogwarts themed -- the meet-and-greet started with a decorate-your-own wand activity. Then the kids got to choose their Patronuses and draw them on wooden pendants. They had a game that involved using their new wands to keep balloons in the air, and then they had ice cream sundaes.

I left that to go catch the already-in-progress Friday night show (a medley of entertainers), where I joined a whole bunch of friends and we had enormous fun until I had to slip out a bit early to make my way to my first two events.

The first was a re-imagining of the old game show Match Guest. The MC would read out a sentence or two with a blank in it, and everyone in the room would write down our answers to fill in the blanks. Audience members whose answers more-or-less matched what panelists answered got points; at the end, the member with the most points won, essentially, a MarsCon gift certificate. (There were actually two winners who split the prize, because even after three tie-breaker rounds, they were still tied.) This was the "adult" version, in which we did not even think about using any answers that were not at least R-rated. It was hilarious and fun, and I very much hope I can do it again next year!

Immediately following that, there was "Erotic Fairy Tale Rewrites". Each panelist selected a fairy tale to rewrite, and the audience supplied us with: an extra character, a sexy situation, a location, and an object that had to be included. While we wrote, the audience played MadLibs, and then we each read our resulting stories. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, and I'll post it over on the writing blog on Wednesday, so if you're interested, be on the lookout.

That wrapped up earlier than expected, so I gleefully skipped down the hall to jump into Filk and Cookies. I arrived just in time to catch Sam singing her parody of "My Favorite Things" (sideways video posted by my brother), and a bit later, she also sang her parody of "The Impossible Dream" (video posted by me).

Filk and Cookies was supposed to end at 1am, but Mikey and Jonah kept goading each other (and the other guests who brought instruments along) and then there was the whole Corn Palace incident (you had to be there) and they didn't kick us out of the room until well after 2. Still giggling, I stumbled back to my room and went to bed.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention dinner in there anywhere. Which would be because I didn't have any. I had some ice cream at the kids' meet-and-greet, and KT brought me a clementine to the fairy tale rewrite panel, and I had a cookie and some soda at Filk and Cookies, though, so I guess that counts. Right?

Saturday

You'd think that after all that, I'd sleep in, but no; I woke up at about 7:15. I did lounge around in bed for a bit, and then I took a shower and made myself some coffee and got dressed. I left the room around 8:45 or so and headed downstairs to see the kids get sorted into their Hogwarts houses for the day's kids' activities.

I ran into some friends in the hallway, so I missed seeing Penny draw Slytherin, but Matt told me she handled her disappointment with aplomb. I did arrive just as Jess was also sorted into Slytherin, though (which Matt "helped" happen, because after all the Sorting Hat does take your preferences into consideration), and Penny seemed pretty pleased that she'd at least have her friend with her. And then I sidled up to her and suggested that maybe she could pretend she was actually a Gryffindor who was in Slytherin as a spy, and that notion also cheered her considerably. Alex got into Gryffindor, which I think he was pleased about mostly because Penny told him that was good.

A gajillion kudos to the volunteer team who put the "Hogwarts" kids' activity room together, because it was amazing. Not for the first time, I wished I was a kid so I could participate! (I did get sorted, along with several other adults, when all the kids were done and they had a ton of leftover badges.)

They had a "library" in the center, at which each kid was given a small, hardcover blank book. They made their own bookplates for the front, and there were crayons and markers for them to use to decorate it with. Each corner of the room had a "class" stationed there, and they rotated the kids around the stations in their houses, to keep any one station from being swamped, which was a great idea. They had Runes, History, Magical Creatures, and Potions.

Later in the day, they had a Triwizard Tournament, which I gather was sort of a scavenger hunt thing. I missed that because I was sitting on a panel at the same time. It sounded like fun, though.

Right around noon, I wandered back up to my room to collect my publicity handouts and stuff, and also to call my mom (my dad had been admitted to the hospital on Thursday night with several small blood clots in one lung and in his leg, and while he had improved enough for me to feel okay about going to the con, I still wanted to check in). I was in the room for maybe fifteen minutes, and then I went back down and joined a few friends to listen to some music -- the Blibbering Humdingers, Danny Birt, and Jonah Knight.

Then I set up in with a bunch of other authors for signings, though mostly no one even came over to my end of the room -- the people who came in for signings were pretty much there just for the guests of honor. But it was still an enjoyable hour that I spent talking with Nobilis Reed, and toward the end, Caren came in and pity-bought a book from me and we talked for a while, too, so it was still fun.

After that, I sat on a panel to talk about the Hunger Games series -- both the movies and the books -- and that turned out to be tons of fun, too, with a very smart and thoughtful panel and a lively-but-polite audience.

Then I went upstairs to the Con Suite, because aside from that cup of coffee I'd had in my room that morning and a cupcake during Jonah's concert, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and it was now 4 in the afternoon. Unfortunately, because it was 4 in the afternoon, the Con Suite didn't have out any "real" food, so I had some chips and some Chex mix and a cookie. And I sat down with Amy Moler and KT and eventually a whole bunch of other folks as well, including Jenn and Brian and Kevin and Nobilis and I'm absolutely certain that I'm forgetting someone (Greg, maybe?) but the point is: a bunch of us. And we talked about writing and other things for an hour, until it was time for Amy to go collect her family and get some dinner, and the rest of us headed off to other assorted entertainments. Primarily, the big Saturday night entertainment, starting with Mikey Mason's concert, and then segueing into the costume contest.

Alas, technical difficulties in setting up the stage kept us standing in the hall for almost 40 minutes after the concert was supposed to start, and made the concert run well over its planned time. I had to leave as soon as Mikey finished playing in order to get to my evening panels, where I sat at the head of a table with several other romance and erotica professionals to talk about writing and publishing, and the appeal of fairy tale erotica, and sex in roleplaying, and by the time we got to the panel running from 11-midnight, we were so tired that it turned into us just taking questions from the audience and talking about whatever we all felt like talking about. (I'll probably go into a little more detail about these panels over on the writing blog post later this week. And Nobilis recorded some of it for his podcasts, so eventually he will post that, and I will probably put a link over on the writing blog as well, if you're interested.)

I was so tired when that ended that I went back to my room and went straight to bed, without looking around for other activities or parties.

Yes, I missed dinner again. After also missing breakfast and lunch. But I'd had a cupcake, some snacks around four, and I had a drink -- the hotel bar named a delicious fruity concoction after Mikey Mason, and he spent the whole weekend reminding everyone to "put Mikey Mason in your mouth" and that "I'm delicious!" -- during Mikey's concert.

Sunday

Once again with the not sleeping in. I woke up even earlier, not long after six, though I stayed in bed for a good while again.

Sunday is usually a lot slower, programming-wise, than the other days, so I took my time getting dressed and packing up, and I reminded myself to go to the Con Suite for breakfast (whoo, an actual meal for the first time in nearly 48 hours!) where I ran into KT, so I sat down and chatted with her while I ate my eggs and ham. (MarsCon has the best Con Suite ever; I was just too busy to visit it at mealtimes.)

Eventually, I took all my stuff down to the car and plopped down in the lobby to wait for the panel I was interested in actually being an audience member of, but Nobilis came over and talked to me for a while, and just as he was leaving, Matt and the kids came in, and the kids piled on me, so I sat and played with them for a while instead. Eventually, I walked them back down to where Matt was volunteering in the family-oriented games room, and schlepped back across the hotel (it's a huge, sprawling building) to be on the panel of writers for the PG version of Fairy Tale Rewrites. (That one wasn't quite as good -- possibly because I was sleep-deprived -- but I'll include at the end of this post because I thought it was still fairly clever. Though if there had been judging of any sort, I'm pretty certain that Danny Birt would've taken the prize for his extremely dark and grim version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears -- or more precisely, Goldilocks Gets Her Revenge.)

Then I wandered on over to the main programming hall for the closing concert, featuring the Blibbering Humdingers, Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, and Danny Birt (yeah, the same Danny who'd just kicked my ass at flashfic; he's a talented guy). Everyone was punchy and tired (except Jonah, who had more energy at this show than he'd exhibited all the rest of the con) but that just added to the fun; they were teasing each other and playing around and being silly and it was brilliant.

I took a video of Mikey's trademark 80s Cartoon Theme Songs that, I think, really captures the essence of the whole concert. (That little "ho" contest? Was sort of instigated by me, because I'd been talking to Mikey about it earlier in the day. And that's Sam -- my sister-in-law -- who won it.)

When the con was over, Elizabeth, Jenn, Brian, and Jenn's cousin Chris (who came in just for the one day) and I all went out for a late lunch/early dinner, and that felt pretty con-like, too, even though we weren't in the hotel anymore.

(And after that, I went down to the hospital to visit my dad, who was doing oodles better, and bored enough to be happy to listen to me babble about the con for an hour.)

I'm already looking forward to next year, and I really feel rejuvenated and re-inspired as a writer.

It was the Best Con Ever.

MarsCon 2014 fairy tale rewrite

Original story (chosen by me): Aladdin
Additional elements (chosen by the audience):
A character: Ninja
A setting: Titanic on a good day
A problem: No light
An object: Picture of Mary Todd Lincoln (a callback joke to the erotic rewrites on Friday night)

The story (written in about 20 minutes -- typos are fixed here, but nothing else):

The ninja lurked in a shadowy corner of the Titanic's empty ballroom, and concentrated on his mission -- the theft of a valuable portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln. The gentleman who owned the portrait kept it with him all the time, except during his nightly promenade of the deck. During that time, the ninja would crawl from the ballroom's vents into the gentleman's stateroom, take the portrait, and stash it in the hiding place he had prepared in the second dining room.

The hour was at hand. The ninja crept from his corner and toward the vent... When suddenly, the lights extinguished, all at once.

The ninja was well-acquainted with darkness, being a ninja, but this sudden loss was a bit surprising. Before he could react, though, a brilliant light appeared in the center of the room, brighter than any electric, billowing smoke began the fill the room, and a booming voice declared, "I claim this room for the palace of my master, Aladdin!"

"Wait!" the ninja cried. "At least let me leave first!"

From the smoke, a face emerged, cruel and cold and as tall as the ninja's entire body. "Why should I grant YOUR wish?" the djinn demanded. "You are not my master." The djinn's eyes narrowed. "In fact, my master will require servants for his palace. You will do nicely."

"But I am not a servant," the ninja protested. "I am a thief, a spy, and a sometime assassin!"

"Who am I to question my master's needs?" the djinn said. "My master commanded me to build him a palace, and to that end I have claimed this ballroom and everything in it, and that includes you."

"But why can you not simply create the palace from the ether?" the ninja asked.

The djinn snorted. "Have YOU ever created something from the ether? It's a LOT easier to just steal what's needed."

Well, that was something the ninja could understand, anyway. This Aladdin who commanded the djinn seemed to be someone the ninja could get along with, and to tell the truth, he was tired of running all over the world to steal boring antiquities. "Maybe I could help you with the rest of the palace," he admitted. "What else do we need to steal?"

"A hundred concubines."

The ninja smiled and stepped into the djinn's smoke, and together, they disappeared, along with the Titanic's beautiful ballroom.

End.

Scattered Reports

Ack, have I really not posted here at all this month?

It's been an insanely busy month, so let's see if we can sum it all up...

I took the kids to a children's play. And to the dentist. I threw an adults-only Valentisn't party (which is just like Missmas, only in February instead of January) that was a lot of fun. Both kids came down with the flu, weekend before last, so I spent all week last week working from home in an effort to keep germs isolated. It totally didn't work, though, because over this past weekend I caught a cold and am back in the office with it today. (I'm keeping my office door closed, though.)

I went down to Chesapeake to have dinner with KT and Kevin just before Valentine's Day. Then the next week I went down to VA Beach with KT to meet up with a fellow local erotica writer for coffee. That was fantastic, and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

I went to the theater with Elizabeth to see her dad in "Faith Healer," which was simultaneously hysterical and heartbreaking.

I went with Jenn and Brian to a bowling social for letting hopeful adoptive parents meet prospective adoptive kids. That was mildly awkward, but still fun. We had great plans for the afternoon and evening, too, but Jenn got sick before we could put them into play, so we just sat around their place and watched movies and got takeout Chinese. Which was also still good.

Long-time reader Ami told me on Facebook that she wanted to hear more about dating... Which is a little tricky, since the guys I've dated haven't really given me permission to talk about them (I'm not even sure they know about my blog). Let's see, what can I say...? Ah! I'll re-share a few observations I've made to some girlfriends:

• God, but I've missed kissing.
• I can understand why, when I was a young, it was so easy to confuse this heady exhilaration with actual love.
• Necking on the couch like teenagers is even more fun when you're not worried about your parents coming home.
• There are things that I sort of knew when I was younger, but hadn't really absorbed yet, that seem to have finally sunk in, over the years. Like: Confidence is incredibly sexy. It's okay to make mistakes and admit to ignorance. And it's okay to say no -- and equally okay to say yes.

I did stop seeing one guy, for a variety of reasons that boiled down to -- I just wasn't feeling it. There's another that I'm pretty happy with, but neither of us is quite ready to try to make it into anything official or exclusive. I'm still logging into my online dating account from time to time and seeing what looks good.

So that's the state of my dating life. I hope that's sufficient to keep your prurient interests satisfied.

I need to get back to work and throw down another dose of cold medicine so I can recover in time for my date this week...

Con Report

You guys. You guys. MarsCon was fantastic. I don't even know where to begin.

I got to dress in costumes and wear snarky t-shirts, and I got lots of compliments on both. On Friday, I was Doctor Who. On Saturday, I wore a shirt that read, "Huge tracts of land," and that night, I put my corset on over that shirt, to emphasize, y'know... my tracts of land. Sunday, I wore my favorite writing shirt, which reads, "You're just jealous that the voices talk to me." And I got to see a lot (a lot) of other really amazing costumes and funny t-shirts and a couple of scarves that were basically works of art.

I got to listen to some great filk and otherwise geek-related music. I may need to start growing my geek-rock library, because despite not having actually heard the song played, I've had Mikey Mason's "Best Game Ever" stuck in my head for three days, and Danny Birt played a song called "Silent Letter Blues" that very nearly made me fall out of my chair entirely from laughing so hard.

I got to sit on three panels about writing and editing and talk with it as if I was a professional or something, and I participated in a writing contest against the amazing Kathryn Lively and did not win but felt pretty good about it anyway. All of which I will write more about on Wednesday, at my writing blog. I handed out a lot of business cards and post cards and bookmarks, and even sold one of my paperbacks that I'd brought with me. And I went to an Allen Wold writing workshop about plot building which spawned a new plot idea and gave me some really excellent tools for helping my plots to gel, which is always a win.

I got to watch my children blooming into nerds and geeks -- especially Penny. She sat in on a Blibbering Humdingers concert and afterwards begged me to buy one of their CDs for her. (I did. She doesn't know that yet, though.) And both of them got their faces painted, and they went with me to a pirate show and sang along and got up to participate.

Alex and Penny learning to be pirates during the
Hysterically Correct Pirate Show.

After that, Alex went with Matt to a birthday party and I got to hang with Penny. We did a craft, making people out of clothespins, and then I took her to an activity called "Playing With Your Food" in which everyone was given a big takeout box full of gummy candy and a plastic knife and encouraged to build monsters out of the candy, and when they had to clear the room we took it back to my hotel room where she continued pretending to be a mad scientist for the better part of an hour, and we had this conversation where I asked her if she wanted some chips and she said, "Not right now, Mom. I'm not done making my robot/clone army."

My girl, the mad scientist.

I got to look at some really amazing art, and I put a bid on one of my brother's ribbon trees and won it in the art auction. (I bid on a few more pieces, but didn't get them.) And I got to rejoice with him that he sold not just the piece I bought, but five of the things he'd brought with him, and we talked about how he should re-do one of the other pieces for next year. (It was a ribbon dragon he'd made like ten years ago, and he's learned a lot since then.)

I flirted a lot, mostly just in fun (but sometimes seriously), and was amused by KT's efforts on my behalf in that direction. I stopped into the gaming room a couple of times to say hi to a guy I've been on a couple of dates with, and significantly boosted his rep with the other gamers by giving him my phone number so we could meet up after the con. (He re-enacted for me later: "Dude. You've been sitting here gaming all weekend and you managed to score digits?") It's possible that I was totally aware of the effect that would have, especially since I was wearing my corset at the time, and deliberately waited until I was in there to write my number on my card for him.

But as always, the best part of the con was the people. I got to visit with old friends and acquaintances, like Elliot and Marcy and John. I got to visit with other friends I don't get to see often enough, like Greg and DJ and Ora. And also my brother and his wife, and some of their friends that I like a lot, like Melissa. I got to hang out with KT for hours and talk about writing and sex and writing about sex in a way that we almost never get to do any more. I got to hear about an engagement. I got to make new friends and chat with several of the writers and editors who were on panels with me (especially the multi-talented and snarky and totally amazing Cynical Woman, aka Helen Madden, who has the most gorgeous business cards ever). I even enjoyed striking up random conversations with strangers in the hallway or on the elevator.

I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do. Hell, I didn't even get to do half of what I'd wanted to do. My back and legs and knee were already killing me by Friday night (and I'd been dumb enough not to bring any painkillers). I went to bed around 2am both nights (and last night was still so keyed up that I couldn't get to sleep until nearly 1) and thanks to my stupid body clock, got up both mornings at 7:30 sharp (6:30, this morning, because my office is not closed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day). This morning, I'm exhausted and sore and not entirely mentally present, and I fully expect the Con Crud to hit me in the next couple of days... and I already can't wait for next year.

New Year's Resolutions

Here's a funny little take-away I got from, of all places, my day job: You shouldn't have too many serious goals at one time. Our annual performance review process allows for up to – but not exceeding – five major goals for each year, and my last several supervisors (I get a new one each year, thanks to the Major Corporate Machine's constant reorganizing) have stressed that you really should try to have no more than three.

So I've spent the last few weeks thinking about my New Year's resolutions, and pondering what are the priorities I have in my life right now, and what are the few things that I really care about changing. What are the things that I'm willing to put some energy into improving? At the moment, my priority list looks like this:

Effort #1: Stop watching so much freaking TV. I've lost whole days to the tube, lately. I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of shows, and they're great and fun, but in the meantime, I'm not doing anything productive. This, by the way, also includes watching DVDs and shows on YouTube. Basically, any time spent passively watching a screen. It does not, however, include watching movies with friends or on a date, because those are social activities.

Effort #2: Be more productive. There are a gajillion projects I want or need to do. Writing and editing. Promotion of my writing, which is a whole job unto itself. I have an embarrasingly high stack of books I've been meaning to read. Scrapbooking, a little, at least to finish out the year in which I last left off. Re-organize and redecorate the house (or at least parts of it). Some of these are open-ended tasks, some of them are huge, and some just require me to get off my ass and do them.

Effort #3: Be more social. This falls into three sub-categories:
Effort #3a: Family: I'd like to spend more time with my brother and sister-in-law, who are actually fantastic people and who only live half an hour away, which makes it completely stupid that I only see them a few times a year. I'd also like to make a point of talking to my parents (who likewise live only half an hour away) at least once a week.
Effort #3b: Friends: I'd like to spend more time with various friends. It's come to my attention lately that, due to my proper Southern upbringing, I am intensely uncomfortable with inviting myself along on events or over to friends' houses, while the truth is that most of my friends are not only open but enthusiastic about this sort of thing.
Effort #3c: Dating: I've been separated for the best part of half a year now, and I think I'm ready to look around out there again. It's been entirely too long since I've dated, so it's hard to make resolutions about this, but I want to remember not to simply settle, and not to neglect my friends in the event that someone wonderful does come along.

Effort #4: Be a better parent. I waste far too much of my time with my kids. Penny was unequivocally enthusiastic about the time I had lunch with her at school; I'd like to do that more often. I'd also like to get them excited about things and do things with them that get us all out of the house once in a while.

Note #1: I'm okay with having four goals instead of just three, because accomplishing the less-TV goal will actually make it easier to work on the others: by watching less TV, I will have more time to spend on the projects and people on which my other three goals are focused.

Note #2: I feel like working on my weight should be somewhere on that list – exercising more and/or eating better – it falls pretty low on my list of priorities. It shouldn't, but it just does. It's not like I'm going to completely forget about my health or anything, but I'm going to give myself permission not to stress over it this year. Maybe, as I get wrapped up in projects and people and spend more time doing things instead of staring at a screen and chewing my cud, some health improvement will happen organically. And if not, then that's okay, too, and I can worry about diet and exercise again next year, when all this stuff has gotten wrapped into my personal patterns and habits.

It's a lot of stuff to wrap my head around, and it's all but impossible to make rules covering everything here and expect to actually follow them all. I've been turning the whole mess around in my head for a while, as I said, and here's the ideas I've come up with to (hopefully) make it work, along with their explanations and notes:

The List: Because my schedules and deadlines are so ephemeral, there's no way to just assign myself a day-by-day task list. So each day, I will evaluate my situation, and assign myself a reasonable productivity list. That list will include not only big project stuff (e.g., edit 2 stories, spend 2 hours writing, scrapbook 2 months' worth of pictures, etc.) but also the little, routine stuff (e.g., take out the trash, write a blog entry, make lunches, etc.) that has to fit into my schedule. The list will take into account whether I happen to have the kids that day, planned activities, and my general well-being. (As I write this, for example, I've got a sinus infection or a cold or something similar, and so I give myself permission to be a little slack on the productivity front – not to skip it entirely, because I'm not that sick, but to choose tasks that suit my current mental and physical state. I can do some editing right now, for example, but I feel way too mentally blah to want to do anything creative, like writing.) They may include large tasks (e.g., clean out and re-organize the pantry) or small ones (e.g., make an appointment with the eye doctor). There will be no time limit, either minimum or maximum. The goal here is a list of things that I can look at an think, “Yes, that seems like a day that was not wasted.”

TV: Until the day's productivity goals are done, I get no more than 1 hour of TV. (Yes, I'm letting myself have some TV before I do my work. I sometimes want to watch YouTube videos in the morning while the kids are eating breakfast, or unwind with a show while I have dinner by myself.) Once the day's goals are all met, I can watch all the TV I want. (Nyah.)

Parenting: One day in the next week, one of my goals will be to make up a schedule for things to do with the kids. That schedule will include: 1 day each month that I will have lunch with each kid (2 lunches/month, not including summer break), and 1 day each month that we will do an out-of-house activity, along with a list of activity options. Once that schedule is made up, I'll load those dates and activities into my calendars so that I remember to do them. That's not saying I won't need to change some of them, but it takes less inertia to move a date than to create it.

Social Stuff: This one is trickier, because it necessarily involves other people. And unlike my children, I don't have significant control over my friends' and families' schedules. I do want to take at least two solo long-weekend type vacations this year, at least one of which will be to an author's convention (GayRomLit or somesuch, depending on how the schedules fall out) where I can meet some of the Torquere staff in person; the other will either be to visit a friend or see a new place; I'm not sure yet. I want to make a date with KT and Kevin to come down to their house every so often (once a month? Every six weeks? Eight?) during the week, on a night I'm child-free, just to hang out. And ditto for hanging out with Jenn and Brian. And my friends who live in town, too, but those are easier to arrange and don't so much need to be scheduled to remind me to do it. But I need to remind myself that it's okay to say, “Hey, what's going on; can I come over and hang out?” and that if the answer is that they're too busy, it doesn't mean I'm being rude and needy; it means THEY'RE TOO BUSY, and I should try again another time.

So there are my New Year's resolutions. I don't know if I'll stick to it. Sometimes, YouTube is just too compelling, sometimes I go through mental downs where I don't want to be social, and sometimes, my kids are infuriating and don't deserve to be taken out anywhere. Such is life.

But here's the thing about a resolution. It's not an unbreakable vow. It's resolve. You plunge into the fight and sometimes you take a hit, but resolve is squaring your shoulders and going right back in. If these annual goals and targets were easy, they wouldn't be so significant.

I grew up in a house surrounded by art inspired by Don Quixote and Man of La Mancha, after all. It would be a little crazy if I didn't want to reach for unreachable stars once in a while.

Creepy and Cold (But In a Good Way)

I spent Thursday and Friday working from home in the hopes that Saint Nicholas-- wait, wrong hope. In the hopes that I'd get my heater/furnace replaced. But the company doing the repair had to reschedule me -- one repair scheduled before mine was running longer than expected, and they bumped up another one for a house that had no heating at all, not even emergency heat.

I suppose I can accept that. They're scheduled this time to come out tomorrow, so I probably will not be blogging.

Aside from that, I had a pretty busy weekend. I took a long lunch on Friday and went shopping, and knocked out almost all the rest of my Christmas shopping (I just have to order cards and my dad's annual calendar, and then take Penny shopping for a couple of her friends). I got some editing done, and made some Christmas gifts for the kids' teachers (except I need the kids to sign them before they're officially done, but I'll get them to do that tonight, and then I can wrap them and that's all done). I spent most of Saturday morning and a couple of hours Sunday night working on a book trailer for He Loves Me For My Brainsss, which is coming out in about a month.

Saturday afternoon, I went to KT and Kevin's for their Creepy Christmas Party. KT, being the music freak that she is, hired Jonah Knight to come and perform for her (I think it was part of a kickstarter, or some similar crowdfunded effort). I was expecting the kids present to be a problem, but aside from some in-and-out at the beginning, they were remarkably well-behaved. And the music was great, of course. I have a new favorite novelty Christmas song ("Bacon and Beer", which, alas, is not actually available for sale) and I didn't bring any cash with me to KT's party, but I will be sure to have some on hand at MarsCon. (And during the break between his two sets, Jonah agreed to let me use his zombie song as background music for my book trailer, whoo!) After Jonah finished singing, we had a Geeky Gift Exchange, in which the ring I brought was well-liked, and Greg kindly rescued me from the wacky wig I first opened so that I could go home with a fairly impressive Nerf gun. After that, all the ladies posed on the bed with Jonah (there was apparently a joke with his wife about groupies), and then we all went out to a Chinese buffet for dinner. Mm, Chinese buffet.

Pictures, you say? Why, yes, I do have pictures!

Sunday morning, I ran a bunch of errands, and then after lunch, I drove up to W&M campus to meet Elizabeth for a craft show. I'd forgotten about it being Grand Illumination night -- all of CW and campus were already swarming. It was insane. But I found a parking space over at Zable Stadium and walked from there (more or less in the break between the Old and New campuses) up to the Campus Center, where the craft show was being held. (Holy CRAP, am I out of shape... It's hard to believe that I once did that walk, and longer ones, several times a day, at top speed.)

The craft show was nice, though; I picked up a new necklace, and also stumbled across the most amazing handmade chocolate ever. It's made with, they swear, absolutely no sweeteners. At all. No sugar, no honey, no agave, no artificial sweeteners. Nothing. Just cocoa and salt. So the resulting chocolate is low in both calories and carbs. And unlike artificially sweetened chocolate, which tastes kind of like chocolate-scented wax, this stuff. Is. Amazing. And best of all: they have a physical store right here in Williamsburg. I bought some coffee spoons at the show -- I figure I'll split them between the kids' stockings (only instead of coffee, I'll give them warm milk to make chocolate milk with). Each coffee spoon is only about a third of a gram of carbs, which means Penny can pig out on all six of hers in one day if she wants!

I ended the day with some editing and some slouching about watching television, though I ended up staying up a good hour and a half later than I'd intended trying to finish the book trailer and get it uploaded.

All in all: an excellent weekend!

This coming weekend promises to be excessively busy, but it should all be loads of fun, so I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks Given

What a very weird Thanksgiving holiday that was. Some parts were fantastic, some incredibly frustrating, and some just plain weird.

There wasn't anything much happening at work on Wednesday, so I took my day off and headed down to Jenn and Brian's around mid-morning. The plan... the plan was that Jenn was going to ride with me, and we'd follow Brian to Blacksburg.

All was ready. The dogs were loaded in the car with Brian to drop off at the kennel, Jenn and I were in my car, and I turned it on...

...and the dashboard lit up with all kinds of lights and warnings. Most notably, the "Check Engine" light, which can occasionally be merely ignored, and the "Engine Hazard" light, which... probably should not be.

Well.

After some discussion, we decided we'd just all ride up together, and Jenn and Brian would head back home a day early so I could keep my schedule. Brian, who is a Car Guy, promised to check out a diagnostic computer from their local auto repair shop when we got back on Friday so that he could read the error codes and decide whether the car was safe to drive home or if we'd need to call AAA to tow it to the local shop and try to find a rental for the weekend.

Despite being a little fretful about the car, we had a good couple of days. Jenn's Aunt Jeanne and Uncle David are great people, and I got to meet her oft-mentioned cousin, Chris. We went for a hike on Thanksgiving morning (apparently a family tradition) that was quite nice, and then came back and had a really great dinner. We broke for a nap and then came back for dessert, and then wrapped up the day with a game of Cards Against Humanity, and inaugurated a homemade question card: "Thanksgiving is incomplete without _____." It would've been perfect if we could've played "Smallpox blankets" as the answer card. I forget, now, what actually won that one, but the game itself was quite fun.

As re-planned, we came home Friday. I have to admit, the drive was much more pleasant with friends in the car to talk to.

When we pulled into Jenn and Brian's again, I figured I should check my car again before Brian headed out to get the diagnostic computer. I started the car up and... the hazard light was gone. Just the check engine light remained. Which rather underscored my suspicion that the car had been pitching a hissy about an electrical hiccup having to do with plugging my phone into the DC power adapter before turning the car on, and made me decide I could risk driving home before taking it to the shop, at least.

So I turned the car back off and went inside to use the bathroom and let them know about my decision. I promised I'd call if I had any more problems, and then went back out... and this time, when I turned the car on, not even the check engine light came on. Nothing. The dashboard stayed dark, innocent as puppy eyes.

Apparently, the gods had just REALLY wanted us to all drive up to Blacksburg together.

So I came home and picked up the kids and life continued apace.

Saturday morning I started putting up our Christmas decorations, exciting the kids to a fever pitch. And that afternoon, we went down to my parents' for my family Thanksgiving, and that was great. Not really anything to report -- it was a pretty standard family gathering. Penny and Alex were pretty fantastic, playing together most of the time so I actually got to talk to my family a bit. Alex hit Maximum Fun Quotient a few times, but being Alex, cheered up again pretty quickly afterward.

Sunday morning at breakfast, a... noise came from the heater vent. A weird, rattle-y, shuddery noise. You know in Doctor Horrible, when the Freeze Ray fails and Dr. Horrible looks around at it and says, "That's... not a good noise"? It was kind of like that. The kids looked at the vent as if it might explode, and then the heater fan stopped working. I poked at things a bit, but eventually had to turn the whole thing off because a sort of burned-plastic smell was leaking from the vents in other parts of the house.

The rest of the day was better -- we got the Christmas tree up, and Penny befriended a couple of cats wandering the neighborhood who had decided to camp on our deck. (They were obviously not actually homeless, as they were well-fed and in excellent health, but she tried to convince me to keep them anyway, as they were very friendly and happy for her to pet them.) We generally had a nice, low-key kind of day, despite the slowly dropping temperature.

I didn't post yesterday because I was at home in the morning, waiting for the repair guy to come and fix the heater. Fortunately, the problem with the fan took him all of about ten minutes to find and fix. Unfortunately, while he was at it, he noticed a pretty nasty leak in the heater's innards that suggested some ugly things, culminating in the news that I need to have an entirely new unit installed. Shouldn't have surprised me too much, really, because this unit is 14 years old, and these things typically have a life span of 10-15 years, so... yeah. He called around and got some estimates, and the price he eventually quoted me is a lot less than I was afraid it would be... but still a pretty big chunk of cash.

So that's scheduled for Thursday. In the meantime, I've only got the emergency heat setting, which works, but draws a lot more power than the usual setting, so I'm trying to keep it set as low as I can tolerate (around 65), and remembering to turn it down to about 60 when I leave for work in the morning, and being grateful that the house's insulation is actually fairly decent, and hoping that the new unit will be more efficient.

Argh. All my stuff is elderly and starting to fail.

Happy Birthday, Me!

Hey, it's my birthday! I'm now officially 40-ish.

Things actually kicked off yesterday, as Jenn took me to lunch and Caren gave me a present, which was sweet of them both.

I confess it was a little weird to wake up this morning and not have gleeful kids or presents waiting, but I had Facebook greetings from the book club and a couple of cards to open from my aunt and uncle (addressed simply to "Liz" -- I should mention in my thank-you note that I'm not planning on changing my name back). And I made myself some chocolate-and-peanut butter oatmeal for breakfast, so I'm not entirely treat-less.

I have a metric buttload of work to do today, but it should move relatively quickly, I think. I'm hoping so, at least, because I want to skip out of work an hour or so early, so I can stop by the bank and cash an editing check and then do a smidge of shopping before I go pick up the kids. Then I'll take them out to eat, because I don't want to cook or eat leftovers on my birthday. (If anyone wants to join us tonight, shoot me a text or an email!)

Tomorrow evening I have a couple of friends coming over for dinner, and then on Sunday, we're having dinner with my family. So, yay, birthday weekend!

I'd say, let the festivities begin, but first... buttload of work. Stupid work.

Holy Crap

Has it really been over a week since I last posted here?

Bad blogger! Bad, bad, bad!

So, um, short summary of the last ten days, then...

Let's see, that weekend, I went to Busch Gardens with the kids to see Howl-o-scream and celebrate Jess' birthday; that was mostly pretty fun, though by the time we wrapped up, I was really wishing I'd brought a sweatshirt along.

Then last week, I got to celebrate another book release -- Seductress: Erotic Tales of Immortal Desire, which contains my short story "Succubus, Inc." (Also available in print!)

I had a very busy weekend -- on Friday, Elizabeth came over and we had pizza and watched the first couple episodes of the new Doctor Who. Yes, I've finally taken that plunge. I'm not hooked enough (yet?) to watch an entire season's worth of episodes in a sitting or anything, but it's definitely on my list of things to do when I have a quiet evening.

Saturday, I drove up to Jenn and Brian's for the afternoon and evening. They showed me the first episode of Sherlock (apparently my theme for the weekend was BBC shows) and I returned the favor by introducing Jenn to Vlogbrothers and Crash Course and all other things Nerdfighter. (And yes, I quite liked Sherlock, too, and I will be getting caught up on it ASAP.)

And then I was up early Sunday morning to meet Vicki in Colonial Williamsburg to take some photos of her for her burgeoning photography business. I have to say, I was quite pleased with how some of them turned out. (In exchange, she's going to do my family Christmas portraits for me so I don't have to do a lot of running back and forth with the timer on the camera.)

And then yesterday, I had the best writing/editing day EVAR. (Seriously. I'm going to be a guest at a con!)

In the meantime, I'm planning a small, all-ages Hallowe'en party for this Saturday, and an equally small, but adult-ladies-only Pure Romance party for next Saturday. (Interested? Drop me a line!) I'm going to a painting-and-social thing tomorrow night (yay, Groupon). I'm working on editing an anthology that will be coming out in January, and doing some other editing work as well, and I'm trying to squeeze in some time for actual writing from time to time, too.

Mentally/emotionally, I've been doing okay. There are ups and downs, but lately there are more ups. It helps that I've been doing and planning fun things with people I enjoy, and finding constructive ways to occupy myself when I'm alone. (Yes, like watching Crash Course videos. It is not possible to be depressed when there are cute, smart, funny guys teach me about science and history!)

So that pretty well catches us up, I think. Sorry to have flaked out on you all -- I promise to try to do better!

Rainy and Grey

I didn't get to the Fall Festival on Sunday, mostly because the weather turned cold and rainy, and between that and my cough still not being completely gone yet and the mood I was in, I decided to just stay home.

Mood... yeah.

By all accounts, the weekend went pretty well. I went to the thirty-one party with Elizabeth and KT on Friday, and afterward we went out to dinner at Corner Pocket. Small hiccup when we got there and realized I'd left my purse at the party, so Elizabeth and I had to leave KT sitting there by herself for fifteen or twenty minutes while we ran back to get it, but after that, we had a lovely time, and then KT and I went back to the house and sat and talked for a while longer.

Saturday, I did some more decorating in the dining room, then discovered that the Blu-Ray player would, in fact, play the MP4s of Big Bang Theory that Elizabeth had burned for me after she'd heard I hadn't seen the first couple of seasons, so I started watching those.

Then my date came over -- he made dinner for me while we watched Avengers, and after we ate, we went over to Braz's to play Cards Against Humanity with him and his new girlfriend, Megan. That went really great -- we played down the entire deck of black cards, and laughed ourselves silly.

I got up Sunday morning, went to the store, then came home and decided the weather really wasn't going to make the Fall Festival anything like enjoyable, so I put the BBT disc back in and started up a marathon.

Somewhere around lunchtime, I fell into a funk, and by mid-afternoon, it had progressed to the point where every time I wasn't actively watching something funny, I'd start crying. Immediately. Like, if I paused it to go to the bathroom.

I don't have PMS to blame it on this time, even. The funk is still with me today, and I'm only really staving off tears because work is going to be insanely busy this week, plus I just got ten stories of various lengths (from 5,000 words to over 30,000) to evaluate for inclusion in the anthology I'm editing, so I've got plenty to keep myself occupied. And even all that is only barely holding tears at bay. So... I guess the denial phase is about up, and it's time for the much less attractive (but possibly less creepy) bargaining/depression phases.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm not as ready to move on as I thought I was. So I've shut down my profile on the dating site, and sent an email breaking things off with the guy I'd dated a couple of times. I feel bad for hurting him, but I can't think of anything less fair than subjecting someone else -- especially a potential romantic interest -- to my current mercurial state of mind.

I may be scarce here on the blog for a while again, because there's only so many times I can whinge about being scared and lonely and scared of being lonely before it gets tedious for even me.

And also, as I mentioned, I'm insanely busy with boring, un-bloggable work stuff and less boring, but still mostly un-bloggable, editing stuff.

But I'll try to pop in now and then with some kid anecdotes to keep things light.

Halloweenies

Bit better today. Still a little sleepy, but Alex didn't have any troubles during the night, and both kids had a good morning, so that helps.

I quizzed Penny last night off a worksheet in preparation for a class quiz today, and she did so well that I let her postpone taking her shower for a little while so she could help me get out the Hallowe'en decorations. The kids greeted the decorations like old friends -- especially their giant squishy bat pillows that I'd bought them last year. And Alex dove immediately into the books.

This morning, they just about flipped out altogether when they learned that I'd bought a box of Count Chocula cereal. (I'd run to Target on a quick errand, and the Chocula, Booberry, and Frankenberry cereals were all right there by the register. Out of curiosity, I checked the carbs, and they're actually not much worse than Fruit Loops, and significantly less carby than the raisin nut bran cereal Penny's been favoring lately. So I grabbed a box as a treat for them.)

Then, when it was time to go, Alex, who'd apparently missed me taking decorations outside yesterday, burst out with a "Holy cow!" when he saw the yard. (...It's not much. One door hanger and five little pumpkins on stakes.)

And to make it even better, it was one of those chilly, misty fall mornings, so every time we passed a field or grassy lot with mist rising off it, Penny and Alex leaned forward in their seats and "Oooooh"ed and "Aaaaah"ed over the perfect spooky effect.

Matt has the kids this weekend, so naturally, I'm filling up my time with all kinds of things. Lots of which I couldn't do with the kids around.

Tonight, I'm going to a Thirty-One party with E and KT, and then we'll probably hang out afterward.

Tomorrow's plan is to finish the redecoration of the dining room (I finally got hangers and shelves for all the assorted items), and then I have a date in the evening. (A low-key one -- dinner and a movie and then hanging out with a couple of friends to play Cards Against Humanity. Because really, if you can't hold your own in a game of CAH, then I'm probably not the right person to be dating.)

Sunday, I'm going to the Fall Festival at Newport News Park. I need my annual fix of fresh-made kettlecorn, and they usually have some really fun and pretty handcrafted jewelry for sale, too.

And all of that will be interspersed with some extra sleep, I hope. It should be a good weekend.

Checkout

I don't know if it's the weather, or the cough meds, or a weekend of interrupted and/or restless sleep... but all I want to do is put my head down and take a nap.

So briefly, from the foggy haze of exhaustion: good weekend. Decent drive, pretty wedding, fantastic food.

Sat up way too late with KT and Kevin and Karen, playing Cards Against Humanity, then got up way too early and had breakfast with them before coming home. Got the kids, and had a great time with them, too.

This week has no big plans. The Newport News Park Fall Festival is this weekend; I might hit that. I might be going on a date Saturday. Hallowe'en decorations will probably go up, as the kids have been pestering me about them since last week. But other than that? As little as possible.

And hopefully, some naps.

Up and Up and Down

Friday was great. I met Elizabeth to go see ParaNorman -- it was really cute and fun, though probably too scary for my kids, so I'm glad I saw it without them -- and then we went to Ichiban for sushi. Mmm, sushi.

As I was leaving -- literally, as I was opening the car door to head home -- my phone rang, and it was Braz, wanting to know what I was doing and if I wanted to hang out and see what he's doing with his place. So I did, and got to meet his new girlfriend in the bargain.

Saturday morning, I put up a border in the dining room for my soon-to-be Mexican theme:

(The lovely thing about a Mexico theme is that, not only do all your colors not have to match, it's actually better if they don't.) I was going to start hanging the art pieces as well, but my stupid cough was getting in the way, and all the dust I was stirring up wasn't making things any easier, so I decided that was enough for one day.

As previously mentioned, I had a date Saturday evening. He turned out to be neither a serial killer nor a creep, and he agreed that contrary to what certain older co-workers of his had feared, I didn't seem to be a psychotic black widow murderess. either. Though, of course, I could just be biding my time. We had a nice dinner, then sat at the Barnes and Noble cafe and talked until the store closed, and then we walked over to Sweet Frog and got yogurt and sat outside and talked some more until it started raining very hard, so we waited for a lull and then called it a night.

Sunday should have been a marvelously lazy day, but instead I woke up in a bit of a funk that I couldn't seem to shake off. I decided to distract myself with a movie, but like an idiot, I put in my waiting Netflix, which was a romantic comedy, exactly the wrong thing for my mood. It's a good thing I have a strict rule against drinking when I'm alone, or the maudlin Twitter posts I made would've been oh dear lord so much worse, or even more horrific, turned into drunken maudlin emails I would have regretted immediately upon hitting Send.

I did manage to mostly pull myself together enough to go out to meet up with the GM of a local RPG I might join. He explained some of the rules of the system to me; it sounds pretty similar to most of the other games I've played, so I don't anticipate a lot of problems getting the hang of it. So I'm going to come up with a few character concepts and shoot them his way, and he's going to juggle schedules to try to get most of the players together for a character creation session sometime in the next few weeks. It sounds like getting the schedules lined up is going to be a real trick, though, so I'm not really holding my breath on this.

So, all in all, I want to say it was a pretty good weekend, but it's hard to do when it ended on a down note. For no apparent reason. Stupid brain.

Queer And Folk

I did some stuff!

I had the kids for the weekend, and on Saturday I took Penny and Alex out shopping. If you didn't see my post about how fantastic Penny was this weekend, check it out, 'cause she is one amazing kid.

Matt picked the kids up on Sunday, and I loaded up my car and headed up to Jenn and Brian's, where I picked up Jenn and we headed off into the sunset, looking for rainbows.

Well, sort of. We drove off into the mountains to attend the Roanoke GLBT Pride festival. (Actually, Jenn drove the whole way, because I spent the whole weekend doped up on Good Cough Syrup. It's kind of a miracle that I made it to her place and then back home on my own.)

We got to the festival around 3:00, and hit the food vendors pretty quickly, because we'd skipped lunch in favor of snacks on the road. I took my hamburger to the condiments table and said something like, "Ooh, I can have onions -- it's not like I'll be kissing anyone today!"

"Don't be too sure of that," said a voice behind me. I looked up, and the guy running the stand grinned at me, leaned across the counter, and puckered up.

Well, what else was I going to do? I kissed him. Laughing, Jenn asked for one, too, and got it.

We wandered around looking at stuff for a bit, but unfortunately, there were about half the vendors I remember from last year, and not nearly as much fun stuff. Jenn bought some hand-spun alpaca wool yarn, and I bought a couple of chainmail bracelets for the kids (really, that was the best I could find for them; it was sad). I looked for Jesse, but didn't spot him.

Even more unfortunately, the sheer number of smokers made the air unbreathable; Jenn's asthma roared into life, so we had to leave after only about an hour, and I did not get any really fabulous pictures of drag queens or outrageous outfits.

From there, we headed further west, to Blacksburg, where we were going to stay with Jenn's Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Dave for the night.

I'm always a little uncertain about meeting people's relatives, especially older ones. The moreso because we were descending on their house. But it turned out to be fine. Better than fine. Fantastic. Aunt Jeanne was gracious and charming and oh my lord funny. She didn't censor herself at all; immediately upon our arrival, she pulled out a bottle of wine and said, "I want to get sloshed and sit up late talking!" And we did (though I only had one glass of wine; I didn't want to have a bad reaction by mixing alcohol with the Good Cough Syrup).

Uncle Dave was quieter, but just as cool. After we'd had dinner, they brought out a Cards Against Humanity deck, and we sat up until eleven or so playing, and they were just as Wrong as anyone else I know, and a good time was had by all. Aunt Jeanne decided that I should be her second-favorite niece, and there was banter about meeting her sons.

We drove home yesterday, and I spent the evening doing the chores I'd neglected over the weekend -- the grocery shopping and the laundry and paying the bills -- and catching up on YouTube.

So all in all, it was a really great couple of days.

Weekender

So endeth the lesson. I mean, week.

I wound up making a comment on Facebook yesterday that led to me having dinner at Plaza Azteca last night with Vicki, which was great. We swapped stories about this and that and the other, and gossiped about some friends, and did our best to live up to the picture she'd linked on Facebook that led to the whole thing (over there on the right), and generally had a great time. Yay, being social!

This weekend, let's see. I have the kids; I'll pick them up after work. The planned menu for tonight is quesadillas, by Alex's request ("with nothing in them but cheese!").

Tomorrow's plan is to take Penny to use her Charming Charlie gift card, and while she's doing that, I'll take Alex across the street to Bath and Body Works, which he's been clamoring to go to. (...I don't know. I'm just the driver.)

Sunday, Matt will take the kids home with him after he comes over to mow the lawn, because then I'm heading up to Jenn's, and then together we're heading up to Roanoke for the Roanoke Pride festival. I went as a vendor last year, but organization of that fell through this year, so we're just going to go and have fun. (Seriously, I need to get myself a "fruit fly" or "fag hag" t-shirt to wear to these things.) I'm kind of hoping (but not really expecting) to run into the kid I met last year, the one who inspired one of the main characters in Assumption of Desire. And I'll take some bookmarks and business cards with me to hand out.

Sunday night, we're staying with Jenn's aunt, who lives up in Blacksburg, which is another hour further away than Roanoke, but it saves us the cost of a hotel room, and obviously Jenn will be along to help keep the drive home on Monday from being insanely boring, so I'm on board.

So, obviously, I won't be around on Monday, because I'll be spending half the day (or more, if we make random stops) driving home, and then recovering from the trip.

But I'm hoping that on Tuesday, I'll have some fun pictures to share from the festival!

Long Weekend, Good Weekend

Yay for long weekends! Boo for being back at work! But yay for a short work week with nothing much pressing going on!

I guess that's a net win, right?

So, long weekend. The daycare was closed Friday, so I worked the morning and then picked the kids up from Matt around noon. (But between Friday noon and this morning when I logged in, I'd received only two emails, neither of which required any action on my part, so I feel entirely okay with having missed half a day of work. If I hadn't had a delivery to complete, I probably could've taken the whole day off.)

Friday evening, we met my family at the family favorite restaurant (a hibachi place more or less midpoint between my parents' and brother's houses) to celebrate my mom's and brother's birthdays.

Saturday morning, my dad came over with his pickup truck to help me take the kids shopping for back-to-school clothes and also to get a dresser for Penny's room. She's been using a large-ish nightstand as a dresser since she was four. When she was four, her non-hangable clothes all fit easily in the nightstand. For about the last year, though, it's become a bit of a problem to squeeze everything in. I'd found a dresser I liked the look of, but didn't think I could fit it into my car (and also, it's too heavy for me to lift by myself) -- thus, Dad and the truck. The clothes shopping alone would've been a minor headache without another adult along, but doable.

Dad stuck around to help me assemble the dresser -- which is good, because he figured out one doohickey I was using incorrectly, and also because there were a couple of points of construction that needed a minimum of three hands to get everything lined up correctly. It took us a good two hours to assemble; I shudder to think how long I would've been at it without his help.

(Also, I think it was good for Dad. He and Mom have been sort of flailing since Matt and I separated; I get the impression that they feel like they should be helping, but don't want to intrude on my privacy or insult my independence, and this let Dad feel like he could do something to help me and the kids out without stepping on any toes.)

Saturday afternoon, as a sort of treat for being so good at the store and (mostly) patient while Dad and I put the dresser together, I took the kids out for ice cream. (Also, I had a coupon. Save money by buying things!) And then, it being Saturday and therefore eat-out night, we went to La Tolteca for dinner.

We didn't go anywhere on Sunday, aside from the grocery store, but Jenn came down so I could help her assemble a scrapbook (part of her homework for the adoption process; since they're looking to adopt an older child, they're supposed to make an album to give the prospective adoptee to introduce them to the family and the friends they'll encounter most). I had a lot of fun helping her with the project, and it may have rekindled my desire to start up scrapbooking again, myself. We'll see if it sticks, though. I last left off in the middle of 2010, so there's a long way to go to get caught up.

After dinner on Sunday, Kris brought Emma and Sarah over to have a sleepover with Penny. All three girls were incredibly excited and happy to see each other, and immediately launched into some game that seemed to combine Harry Potter and spies and I don't even know what else. Around 9:30, they rolled out their sleeping bags on the living room floor and picked out a movie (Lady and the Tramp, as a good choice for a not-too-long, not-scary bedtime movie), and I went upstairs to read. When the movie ended (it's not even 80 minutes long) I turned the table lamp down to low and told them they could talk quietly, but that if I could hear them from up in my room, I'd put an end to it. But I never heard a thing (Sarah had already been half-asleep when I turned off the TV). Unfortunately, Penny had a persistent low blood sugar that kept me up until nearly 1am with rechecks and dragging her awake to eat something, so I still didn't get much sleep, but the girls themselves were incredibly well-behaved. They even cleaned up Monday morning when I told them to, with only minimal token whining that I simply ignored.

Alex was really fantastic all weekend -- he played by himself with his toys, or watched Batman videos on YouTube with Penny, or played Sesame Street games by himself. He was good when we went to the stores, and helped me sort through his clothes so I could pack up the ones that don't fit any more (he even put a couple of toys in the box that he doesn't want anymore -- though I waited until he wasn't looking and rescued Hippo for my "baby box"). Through it all, he was generally sunny and easy-going, mostly falling apart only when I cruelly insisted on him cleaning up his messes.

Sunday night, since we were out of his pullups, I asked him if he wanted to go with the transition pullups we'd bought a few months back (but which had turned out to be a bit too big) or if he wanted to try just underwear, since he's woken up dry every morning for the last three weeks. He tried to talk me into nothing at all under his PJ bottoms, but I don't think he's quite ready for that, so he went with underwear, and did great! I think we've finally turned that corner! (Leaving me with two boxes of pullups -- one of which hasn't even been opened -- but I can live with that!)

He did, however, NOT NAP. All four days, I put him down for his nap as usual a little while after lunch. All four days, he popped up within forty-five minutes and told me he wasn't tired. All four days, I made him go back to bed for at least another half-hour, but he never did succumb and go to sleep. Better yet, despite my misgivings, he maintained mostly excellent temper into the evening right up to bedtime. Looks like whatever mental growth spurt made him finally ready to turn the corner on night-time bladder control also made him ready to give up his nap. Unfortunately, the daycare continues to have daily naptime for preschoolers, so I can't just let him give it up entirely without screwing up his sense of routine. I may, however, turn it into "quiet time" instead, and if a nap would make my plans awkward, then it looks like I can skip it with impunity.

After Matt picked the kids up Monday afternoon, I had an hour or two to clean up the lingering clutter and mess, and then Elizabeth and Vicki came over and we all went down to Newport News for a dinner of sushi and then a second-run showing of The Avengers. (I've lost track; was that my fourth viewing, or my fifth?) Doesn't matter; I continued to love it. Can't wait to get my Blu-Ray version later this month and check out all the deleted scenes and special features! (Yup, I'm a dork.)

The kids start back to school today (well, Penny starts back to school; Alex just graduates officially to the pre-K class where he spent about half his time this summer). Matt and I are still working out the delicate details for that, but I expect we'll get it straight eventually.

Good, but OW.

What a weekend! I'm still sore.

Friday night, I went out with my friends Elizabeth and Vicki and some of their other friends to PBR, a cowboy themed bar/club down in Hampton. That turned out to be lots of fun; I haven't gone dancing in way too long. I could've done without all the line dancing (I'm so uncoordinated I can't even do the Electric Slide) but I shrugged and stood on the sidelines (or in our roped-off VIP/party area!) and danced the way I wanted to.

Watching the bullriders was even more fun, though. WHEW. If the waitresses in hot pants and chaps were there for the guys to look at, then the two guys operating the mechanical bull ring were definitely there to appeal to the ladies present. (I'm not ashamed to admit that I was shipping them, a bit, in my head.) I posted one of several videos I took with my iPhone to YouTube on Saturday morning; if you missed me Twittering about it, it's here. (I think I've embedded it below, but as YouTube is blocked at the Day Job, I can't test it to be sure. If it doesn't work, leave a comment and I'll try to fix it when I get home.)

Saturday, once I'd woken up and taken a hot shower to loosen muscles that had forgotten they existed, I went out to run a couple of errands, including a stop at Bed Bath & Beyond to find some curtains for the living room windows. It was a little frustrating -- I'm not too keen on the current color selections (god, I thought we'd left avocado and orange in the seventies!) and I'm not a fan of curtains that look like hanging rugs, and since I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with that room, decor-wise, I wanted something that would fit a wide variety of styles... and everything I liked turned out to be unlined (for a west-facing window, I really need lined curtains), or only in stock in the wrong length.

Finally, I found something and got a rod to match, and took them home, and after lunch I gathered my tools and started to put the rod up. That ran into a series of errors (including apparently trying to drill through nails or a metal plate, the size drill bit suggested by the instructions being too small for the wall anchor but too big for a naked screw, and my failing to take the hanger length into account when measuring where to put the brackets) so that project took me a solid two and a half hours to complete. And by the time I was done, I'd stepped onto and off of the kitchen chair I was using so much that I spent Sunday barely able to walk. Going up and down stairs was so unbearable that by mid-afternoon, I started scooting up and down on my butt, relying mostly on my (non-existent) arm muscles to do the work. (Today, after another hot shower and some extensive stretching, it's down to merely "very sore".)

But I got the curtains up and the broken blinds down and took all the brackets for the blinds out of the wall, and they look good, and now I can see out again! Hooray! Now I just need to go buy some spackle to take care of all the holes in the wall from the blinds brackets and my curtain-rod goofs. (Next project: curtains for Penny's room so she can get dressed without the boy across the street watching. Luckily, there are curtain rod brackets already in that room, left over from when it was our guest room, so I won't have to install those -- just buy the curtains and a new rod of the correct diameter.)

I spent most of Sunday loafing around, nursing my aching leg (just the one; apparently if I'm not paying attention, I always step up with my right leg first). I did run a couple of errands, and then ducked into Pier 1 to wait out a rain shower. Man, that would be a dangerous store for me if 1) the combination of scents going on in there doesn't immediately bring on a blinding headache, and 2) their prices weren't so ludicrous. I did buy a pair of martini glasses on clearance, though, that I walked past three times trying not to buy, but they were too gorgeously tacky to resist. (I don't even drink martinis, but especially with those colors and designs, they'd make fantastic margarita glasses.)

Sunday night, I gave some thought to an idle half-plot I'd considered for an upcoming Torquere anthology and decided I'd see if I could get some of it out before the deadline hits. I'd tried writing it a couple of months ago, but it got bogged down in its own details, so I backed up and started over... and wow. I blew out nearly 900 words in less than an hour and a half, and then I took a break to watch Leverage, and then I took my iPad upstairs to bed with me and wrote another 400 words before I finally decided I needed to turn out the light and get some sleep at midnight. God, that felt great. I haven't really written anything of substance (barring a couple of exercises for my therapist) since June.

Hope I can keep it up... When I hit Torquere's site to double-check the due date, I noticed that the minimum word limit is 5000 words, not the 3000 I'd originally assumed. Which means I need to write almost 1000 words a night for the rest of this week so I can turn this in by Saturday. Talk about shaving it close!

Weekend Blather

That bit where I said, "hey, maybe I'll hit the Target on my lunch break rather than brave the insane crowds sure to be clogging the place during tax-free weekend"? Heh. Hehehe. Heeheeheehee!

Yeah, the place was mobbed. But I'm glad I went, because they were already almost out of some things on Penny's list, like black 2-pocket pronged folders. (Back to school lists are weirdly specific. I was also directed to buy a 1/2" 3-ring binder, preferably red. But the only 1/2" 3-ring binders they had were white, so I'm going to take that "preferably" as literal and they'll just have to cope with white.) Two boxes of kleenex out of the house store, and Penny assures me that she still has her earbuds from last year, so that's the school shopping done. Whoohoo!

After work on Friday, I drove down to Newport News to hit Sam's Club, mostly for pullups for Alex, but I got a few other things while I was there, of course. (Stupid Friday traffic. Forty-five minutes to get down there, for shopping that took about fifteen minutes.) While I was down there, though, I also stopped at Michael's Crafts and got a thing or two for Penny's Harry Potter party.

And then, shopping completed ahead of schedule, I decided to treat myself to the Batman movie. I enjoyed it, though it desperately needed better editing. There was no reason at all for that movie to be three hours long; there were at least three scenes that could've been cut wholesale without affecting the storyline at all -- and I wasn't even really concentrating on it. Most jarring moment in the movie for me: "Hey, who's in this picture?" "My dead girlfriend, the love of my life whose death drove me into loony seclusion for the past several years." "Oh. Wanna make out right here in front of her picture?" "Yeah, sure, let's get naked." (Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but it really was about that quick... and completely pointless, as there's no indication beyond this point that Bruce has any feeling for this woman beyond her role in the plot's political machinations. Both the writing and the film were in desperate need of some editors who were willing to be just a little more ruthless.

I did really, really like their use of, for lack of a better term, audio whitespace. As an audience, we've been conditioned to key our feelings toward a scene off the movie score. If it's any good, the music subconsciously tells us everything we need to know about how the characters are feeling and about how we're supposed to be feeling. So when they get to that first fight scene between Batman and Bane and the music just stops, not so much as a percussion line to echo and underscore the fight, not so much as a sustained violin or oboe note to lead us down to the pit of despair... it's like an extra punch in the gut. It did it again another time or two in the movie, and I loved it. For a movie that relied heavily on internal, psychological issues for its conflict and crisis, using our own subconscious against us was a brilliant and brave stroke.

Anyway, that was Friday. Saturday around lunchtime, Matt brought Alex over so he could get his nap in while Matt took Penny to a birthday party at the Y. I had some kind of loose plan where Alex would nap for an hour and a half or two hours and then I'd take him with me to the post office to pick up stamps and then we could swing by Sweet Frog for a snack... but no, the kid slept a solid three and a half hours, waking up less than fifteen minutes before Matt and Penny got back from the party. So that didn't happen, but it made for a nice, quiet afternoon.

Then Jenn came down from Richmond and we piled in my car and went down to KT's house for a Pure Romance party. The party ran long enough that we didn't make it to see Magic Mike, but that was okay, because the party was a serious blast. I even signed up to have one of my own, in a couple of months. (Possibly near my birthday. I should get some fun toys for my birthday, right?!)

Sunday morning, Matt and the kids came over again so that Matt could mow the lawn and do a load of laundry. The kids were looking for a TV fix, so I put in a DVD of an old Adam West Batman movie that Jenn had loaned me... That was awesome. The kids loved it, and I nearly laughed myself sick with the campy nostalgia.

After they left, I did my grocery shopping, decided to put off the dollar store for later this week, and had a quiet afternoon. Then I went to Vicki's birthday celebration at the Green Leafe. I'm not usually good in crowds of people I don't know well, so I really only planned to stay an hour or so, but besides Vicki, Elizabeth was there, and I actually made myself talk to people, and wound up having quite a good time, even if I wasn't a social butterfly. I gave one girl the link to my writing blog, and she seemed like she might consider checking some of it out, and admired a cute baby (and the baby's mom's absolutely stunning hair), and -- I admit it -- even checked out a couple of the guys. So I was there for a good two and a half hours, and if it had been a Saturday, I'd have stayed even later.

It was an awesome weekend. This week is going to be all about getting ready for Penny's birthday this weekend -- party on Saturday, family celebration on Sunday -- and then getting ready to head out to Cancun next week! It's crazy how fast everything is sneaking up on me. I'm almost (almost) looking forward to getting back home afterward and getting everything to slow the heck down for a few weeks.

Busy Weekend

Well, I have a busy weekend lined up!

Matt has the kids this weekend, but I'll be seeing them anyway. Penny's got a birthday party to go to on Saturday that conflicts directly with Alex's nap, so I told Matt he could drop Alex off at the house after lunch -- I'll put Alex down for his nap while Matt takes Penny shopping for a present for her friend and goes to the party.

Then, shortly after Matt picks Alex back up, I'll be heading down to Chesapeake for a girls-only party with KT -- a Pure Romance party, and then (possibly, hopefully, if the friend I'm riding with can stay up late) a run to the theater for a showing of Magic Mike (which I only want to see if I can see it with at least one girlfriend).

Sunday morning, Matt will bring the kids back over so they can get their TV fix  (Matt doesn't have one yet) while he mows the lawn and does a load or so of laundry. (That's part of the deal we made when he moved out, because I really, really do not want to mow the lawn.) Then I have Sunday afternoon to finish my own chores, after which I'll be heading out for one of Vicki's many birthday celebrations.

Woven in with all that, I also need to do a whole lot of shopping. On my list is:

• school supplies for Penny (this is Virginia's tax-free weekend for school stuff and clothes!)
• a run to Sam's Club for assorted bulk items (most critically, pull-ups for Alex, as I don't quite have enough to get all the way through the Cancun trip)
• the regular grocery shopping
• a stop at the dollar store for stuff I need for Penny's birthday party next weekend -- streamers and craft stuff and cheapie toys for the goodie bags.

The dollar store can maybe wait until Wednesday or so, but everything else is running up against deadlines. I might try to get the bulk of it done today, if my bad knee will maintain its calm. (Actually, if work is going smoothly, I might do the school supply run on my lunch break. The stores supporting that stuff are going to be a madhouse all weekend, I expect.)

And all that's not even considering that I still want to see the Batman movie, and I've been told I should see the Spider-Man movie as well. Those movies I'm willing to see solo, but I might have to wait anyway. The weekend is already crazy busy, and I'm spending a lot of the coming week preparing for Penny's birthday party next Saturday. And then we're going to Cancun for a week and a half. So... Well. We'll see how much I can get done on my lunch hour today and whether my knee feels up to shopping tonight, and maybe I can do my own laundry on Saturday while Alex is napping. Stack the things that can be stacked, you know?

As I said: busy. But most of it should be fun! Yay, fun!