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.

Comfy

It's a chilly, rainy day, the latest in pretty near on a week of chilly, rainy days. The sort of day that people who dislike autumn point to, to illustrate their point.

Nasty weather or not, the kids were in need of some new clothes and other essentials, so we all went out to the store.

When we came back, I divided up the purchases and asked each of them to take their new clothes up to their room and put them away.

When Penny came back downstairs, she was wearing her fuzzy blue bathrobe, her fuzzy purple PJ bottoms (with cupcakes on them!), and her fuzzy, fleece-lined, cheetah-print slippers. She promptly curled up into a chair and started playing on her phone.

Damned if that doesn't look like just about the best way ever to spend a rainy autumn afternoon. I may join her.

Busy Day

So... it looks like either Blogger changed something or my Day Job network folks did, but now when I try to start a new Blogger post from work, it gets to the loading screen and just sits there. So no more posting from work.

You can see what this has done to my ability to post (it's had a similar effect on my writing blog as well). My evenings tend to be anything but conducive to blogging, even over here.

But I figured I should make an effort to get something down for today, because today was pretty danged awesome. And busy.

1) This was not actually today, but yesterday, but... last week, I (finally, after having decided to do so a couple of months ago) bought a new cell phone. Which means that Penny inherited my old phone. I'd even bought her a case for it. When I picked her up Friday afternoon and showed her my new phone, it took a few seconds for her to realize what that meant, and then she LOST. HER. SHIT. It was adorable. (Note: It's not a phone any more. All cell functions have been turned off. It's basically just an iPod Touch with a laughably small capacity, now.)

2) We got up at pretty near the usual weekday time so that we could eat breakfast and get dressed and head out to watch Alex play soccer.

(A few weeks ago, Matt told me that Alex had been mentioning soccer a lot as something he enjoyed -- he'd never said a word to me -- and that he was going to sign him up for a kids' league. Matt also, naturally, got roped into coaching.)

I do not like sports much, and I especially don't care much for soccer, but watching teams of 4-5-year-olds play was almost but not entirely unlike soccer anyway. None of them could figure out which direction they were supposed to run. They'd kick at the ball and miss, multiple times in a row. Run up to it to kick and come to a dead halt just before doing so, so precisely it looked like something from a cartoon. Run in a little circle around the ball without ever touching it. Politely stop and wait for an opposing team member to line up his (or her) kick instead of jumping in to steal the ball. It was, in a word, hysterical.

I saw three (minor) injuries during the two games, and not one of them was inflicted by another child (even accidentally!) which I thought was really saying something. Anyway, it was a fun way to spend an hour, much to my surprise.

Then we came home and Alex changed out of his soccer gear and into street clothes so that we could eat an early lunch in preparation for...

3) Ripley's birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese! Okay, the kids' enthusiasm for this entirely outstripped my own, but I actually like CEC's pizza, the kids were mostly pretty well-behaved, and the birthday girl went ga-ga for the stuffed penguin I'd crocheted for her. (So did some of the adults. It was very gratifying.)

4) After that, we went to the mall (breaking my two-year run of successful avoidance of its parking lot) so that Penny could get her ears pierced. I'd told her that she could have it done when she turned 10 (which is when I got mine done the first time), but she'd been waffling over the possible pain until just recently, when a couple of friends from school talked her into it.

I got a bit of sticker shock -- apparently, earrings for piercing cost more than twice what they did back in the early 1990s, when I had my last piercing done. What's up with that?! But once I got over that, Penny gleefully picked out some little studs with her birthstone (peridot) in them. She decided it would be best if she distracted herself with a game on her phone, so she did that while the attendant popped her ears. She did really great, actually. She let out one moderately-loud "Ow!" with each pop, and a series of small "Ow, ow, ow, oh ow"s afterward, as the nerves ricocheted, and then it was done. When we were in the car, she told me they didn't hurt any more, and about an hour or so later, she told me she could touch her ears without them hurting. (She's spent the whole rest of the evening dancing around singing, "I got my ears piereced, I finally got my ears pierced!" in delight.)

5) From the mall, we headed over to my parents' house. This morning, while planning the day, Alex had protested the earring trip with, "What are we going to do for me?" I asked what he wanted to do, and he said, "I miss Grandma and Grandpa." So I called my folks and they enthusiastically agreed that we should come over. So we did, and the kids played happily for a while, and then my parents took us out to dinner. Mmm, Mexican.

It all made for kind of a long day, but both kids were pretty awesome, I have to say. There was some whining here and there, but by and large, they were about as patient and cheerful as anyone could have been expected to be.

'Cause my kids are awesome, that's why.

First Day of School

What kind of mom would I be if I didn't post some pictures of the kids on the first day of school? (The non-embarrassing kind, probably. And where's the fun in that?)

(Note: I took most of these with my nice camera, but I haven't had a chance yet to do any post-processing like color balancing, contrast adjustment, or cropping. When I've done that, I'll post those pics to Flickr.)

First, a nice standing pose:

Then, one that probably captures their relative feelings about the day a little more accurately:

An anecdote worth saving: At orientation last week, as Alex and I were walking down the hall together, I said, "Are you excited to meet your teacher and see your kindergarten class?" and he said, "Mommy, I've been waiting for this my whole life!"

And then one with the pseudo-stepsiblings, which I think of the six bajillion pictures the three adults were taking, may be the only one that got all four kids a) looking generally in the direction of the camera, b) not blinking, and c) not making a goofy face:

And, of course, the obligatory bus stop picture (this one via my cell phone, because the nice camera's battery died on me):

I did, in fact, get just a little choked up as the bus pulled away -- that's my youngest off to kindergarten, and my eldest starting her very last year in elementary school. It's the end of an era.

But more than nostalgic, I'm excited and happy for them. And, also, relieved to not be paying daycare tuition for a while...

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.

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.

Political

Yesterday was writing blog day, so I didn't come over here to weigh in on the election. Everyone is sick to death of it now, but I do want to throw out a few notes, for my future self, if nothing else.

Voting: I heard of some lines -- only half an hour from me, even -- that were hours and hours long. There were polls that didn't close until two in the morning, for pity's sake.

I, on the other hand, picked exactly the right time to go, apparently, around 8:30 in the morning. The before-work voters had all either done their thing or decided they didn't have time and left, and the people who weren't working that day were mostly all still in bed, I guess. Penny and I stood in line for all of about ten minutes, and I expect the longest part of the whole process was the time it took me to read through the two proposed state referendums, which took longer than even their thick legalese would warrant because Penny kept interrupting me with questions.

When it was done, I wanted a picture of Penny and I for DFTVA, and a fellow voter, overhearing me explaining this to Penny, volunteered, with the caveat that I would then take a picture of her with her two sons, the elder of whom had just cast his very first vote ever. (I am enough of a patriot and dork that even now, two days later, typing that gives me chills and chokes me up just a little.)

Rest of the Day: I'd promised Penny that she and I could spend the rest of the day together, just the two of us, so that's what we did. We went and got pedicures, then went to the used bookstore and used up some of my massive pile of credit there. After lunch, we went to see Hotel Transylvania, which I thought was cute, if a bit twee, but Penny guffawed all the way through it, so it was totally worth the price of admission. (Also, note for the future: kid's combo snack was perfect, just about 35 carbs with a diet soda, which is a big snack but not unreasonably so, and Penny didn't have to share.) After that, we wandered New Town for a little window shopping, and I bought some gourmet mini-cupcakes to save for dessert.

Election Watching: After I got the kids to bed, I settled in to watch the results roll in. That's a slow process, though. I thought at first I'd be on a YouTube hangout with the Green brothers, but that didn't pan out. So instead, I loaded up CNN's auto-updating results page and watched a couple of Doctor Who episodes while I watched results pop up.

It was insane how close the results were. Even in states which weren't hotly contested, quite a few states came in with less than 5% difference. I intended to stay up until Virginia was called, but I didn't make it; I went to bed around 11:30, not long after the race had been declared for Obama. (The other VA races had been projected by this point, so there was nothing left to bite my nails over.)

Results: So if you know me at all, you know I'm a fiscal moderate and a social extreme liberal, so I'm ridiculously happy with the results this year. Obama's return, an increase in the numbers of women in Congress (though the ratio is still pretty horrible), multiple strides forward for gay rights. I don't have a personal stake in the recreational marijuana thing (and how crazy is it that I didn't even hear about those issues until election night?!) but I'm glad they passed, too. Puerto Rico as a state isn't going to happen any time soon, but it's kind of exciting to watch that water swirl anyway.
 

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.

Pictures!

As promised, I got my pictures sorted and prettied and cropped and uploaded to Flickr yesterday. The set is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizbrooks/sets/72157631152281266/.

It takes us from our departing airport...

...to the return flight...

...and everything in between!

I'm Back!

I'm back, whoohoo!

Nope, I didn't post at all while I was gone. I tried to do a post over on the writing blog the day after we arrived (this incredibly hot guy flirted with me at the airport on our way down -- yay, cleavage shirt! -- and I thought it would make a good anecdote for that blog) but by the time I got it all written up, the resort's flaky wifi had dumped me and I lost the whole thing. After that, I lost my taste for longer writing and stuck to occasional tweets. If you missed them, you can pick them up (and the pictures I posted) at this link.

We mostly stayed at the resort -- we went to the pool every day, and down to the beach a few times, and Penny spent a lot of time doing crafts, mostly while Alex was napping. We did go to the "swim with dolphins" place, though they've changed their photo prices to be even more horrible this year. But one of the shots was nearly perfect -- the dolphin's jump out of the water perfectly framed me and the kids. It would only have been better if Alex had actually been looking at the dolphin, and if the dolphin's tail hadn't completely obscured my dad. But it's a spectacular shot, nonetheless, so I was pretty pleased to get it.

We went out for dinner every night (and a few lunches), but stuck to eateries either at the resort or available via resort shuttle, so I didn't get to eat at La Habichuela this year (sigh), and we skipped El Conquistator, too, because it doesn't have a kids' menu at all and we didn't think we'd be able to find something for Alex to eat.

The kids bickered more and more as the week wore on and they got used to the novelty and tired of sharing spaces so closely, but I got to spend plenty of time sitting beside the pool drinking margaritas and other frozen concoctions, so it worked out pretty well for me anyway.

The view from my poolside lounge chair.
(This might have to be my new desktop picture.)

(Next time, though -- next year, if I can afford it -- I'm going to find a way to go by myself or with a friend. I love my kids, but taking them on vacation is not as relaxing as the hits to my budget and vacation time at work imply. Maybe I can talk Matt into coordinating his visit to Chicago with me.)

We didn't get back to the house until nearly 10pm last night, so I haven't even started downloading pictures yet, but rest assured that they're coming, and I'll add them to this Flickr set and let you know when it's done.

I took more pictures with my iPhone than with my nice camera, this trip. I don't know if it's because I didn't want to deal with the weight of the camera in addition to dealing with the kids, or because we didn't really go anywhere aside from the resort, but I did find myself wishing I'd just left it at home. Whether I'll take it on my next trip remains to be seen -- I'll probably do more touristy stuff if I'm going on my own or with a friend, and the camera might be worth the effort if I'm going to see Mayan ruins or wildlife exhibits. But for lounging around the resort, the lower (but still perfectly adequate) quality of the iPhone's pictures was more than sufficient. And heck, I have an app on the iPhone for taking panoramic shots, to which the beach lends itself.

Anyway, it was (aside from bickering/sullen/tired kids) a good trip. The only real fly in the ointment was that Matt emailed me earlier this week to say that he'd noticed, on one of his trips over to the house to feed the cat, that my car door hadn't closed entirely and the interior light had drained the battery. He'd jumped it for me and it had started okay the next morning, and the following night, but then he didn't turn it over for a few days, and the alternator won't recharge the battery unless you get it up to highway speeds, so it had died again. But after we got in last night, he jumped it for me again and took over getting the kids to bed while I drove around a bit (I took the long way around to the grocery store so we could have milk and bread this morning), and he promised to be on call to pick up the kids if it was dead this morning. But it started up okay, and taking the kids up to daycare was probably enough highway-speed driving to give it some juice, so as long as I manage to get it started and drive around some every day through the weekend, it should be okay. Though I'll be watching it, as it's several years old and may not hold its charge as well as it used to.

I'm working a half-day today, just to clear out my inbox a bit and flag the critical items to tackle, and then I'm off home to do laundry, start figuring out where I want to display my souvenirs (I might need to pick a room to have a Cancun theme), go grocery shopping, and run a few other errands. And, just possibly, take a nap.

Potterized / Into the Blue

The Harry Potter Party! It went so very well, even though I was utterly exhausted by the end!

My friend Elizabeth came over Friday evening with a huge box full of craft supplies, and we ordered sushi delivered to the house and crafted for hours so that the house would be a sort of faux Hogwarts. Here are some of the things we did:

 I decorated the door to Penny's room to make it the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. (I also put lesser decorations on the other bedrooms to make them entrances to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff rooms.)

We turned the playroom into a Quidditch field. The hoops are flat against the wall (well, laundry closet doors) to discourage the guests from actually throwing things -- but later, when I was blowing up balloons, I found a long skinny one that I bent into a hoop, and a tiny one that would fit through it, so they did, in fact, play a sort of semi-Quidditch with balloons, which I felt were reasonable to throw around the house. Do note that there's an actual Snitch hanging from the ceiling fan (in the upper right corner of the picture).

We made "broomstick" treat bags. These were surprisingly simple to do, though I was immensely glad there were two of us when it was time to tie the tops; that would have been near-impossible without an extra set of hands.

We put a base coat of paint on some craft dowels to make them look more "wand-y" -- the kids got to further decorate the wands with pipe cleaners and glitter glue and stickers at the party.

And my favorite decoration: a set of "potion" bottles made out of... mostly random stuff and some labels I found online and printed. If you click through to the Flickr set for the party, the individual potion pictures explain where the bottles came from and what's really in them.

The day of the party, I hung streamers and balloons (in Hogwarts house colors, of course) and a felt banner outside on the porch, and I also loaded up both my laptops with different Harry Potter movies and muted them (to mimic the moving pictures in the HP universe).

Penny was thrilled with all the decorations, and her friends also seemed suitably impressed. They made their wands, they played balloon Quidditch, they went up to the "common room" and played Harry Potter. I think I can safely say it was pretty much exactly the birthday party Penny wanted; it could only have been better if the broomstick she got had actually been able to fly.

***

I probably won't be posting regularly for the next couple of weeks, but at least this time there's a happy reason: I'll be on vacation in Cancun, with the kids and my parents!

I'll admit to a little nervousness to start -- the flight schedule down is a smidge on the tight side, so I expect to be a mild wreck until we're actually on the plane that's meant to land in Cancun. And then I'll be in a two-bedroom apartment for eight days with four other people, two of whom are possessed of nearly limitless energy and a complete lack of comprehension of the enjoyment of "doing nothing", and there's a pretty firm limit on the amount of time we can spend at the pool in any given day without turning into crispy critters. But I'll have cards, balloons, a whole iPad's worth of movies, and their grandparents to help keep them entertained. Not to mention activities organized by the resort, and one or two planned activities.

The resort has free wifi, so it's possible that I'll post once or twice, but you probably shouldn't hold your breath. I'm more likely to do quicker, easier posts, like shooting anecdotes and camera pics to my Twitter account.

But just to hold you until I'm back, here's a few photos from last year's trip:

Still Not Dead

Nearly two weeks since I touched base.

Work insanity continues. (I've taken to calling it The Proposal That Will Not Die, since its due-date has been extended several times, each time at the last minute, just when I thought we were finally going to be done with the damn thing.)

Personal stuff continues. That will get at least a brief explanation relatively soon. I'm sorry to be still keeping you all in the dark.

And, y'know. The laziness continues. That, too.

But I'm not dead! By way of proof, I offer pictures!

Item the first: Penny with her new glasses. She picked them out herself, and I must say, they suit her perfectly.

And second, a picture that Alex brought home from daycare yesterday:

In case you don't know how to parse Four-Year-Old: it reads "HELP" (because Alex is very determined to get all the correct letters, but totally unconcerned about whether they're in any kind of order) and the orange mark is a fire, and the blue lines are water putting the fire out. I'm not sure what the black marks are supposed to be.

Sparks Fly

I know, it's been forever last Tuesday since I wrote here. I'm sorry about that.

Part of it is insanity at work eating up lots of both work time and (supposedly) personal time.

Some of it has been dealing with personal things that have absolutely no place in a public forum. (Though I will say thank you to those of you who have offered support, even without knowing what's going on. I'm sorry to be keeping you all in the dark.)

And some of it (let us be honest) is sheer, unadulterated laziness. (Ah, there's the Liz you all know and love.)

This is not a return to the regular schedule (work insanity continues into next week, at minimum), but I'm kind of stuck waiting for someone this morning, so I figured I'd at least touch base and let you all know I'm not dead yet.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July! Do I even have any non-American readers? If so, I hope you all had a nice Wednesday, but we-all had us a national holiday yesterday. A holiday traditionally celebrated by eating grilled, potentially carcinogenic meat, tons of unhealthy food, and then drinking alcohol while watching large, loud explosions. I think the idea is to recreate the general sensory experience of the Revolutionary War, when we... Okay, I was going to fill that in with an patently incorrect history summary filled with modern references (e.g., bombs created by cheap Chinese fireworks factories) and in my head, it's hysterically funny, but I'm so reliably bad at history that I worried some of you might think I was actually that ignorant. And also, I'm so freaking exhausted this morning that I can't figure out how to put the words together.

And why am I so freaking exhausted this morning? Because yesterday, to celebrate Independence Day, we all drove up to Jenn and Brian's to eat steaks the size of my head (I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but I'm not even joking about that) and drink beer and hard cider and watch Brian and his buddy Travis set off a gajillion fireworks. (Okay, that bit was hyperbolic. But only a little. The man was using a propane blowtorch to light fuses!) They were loud and fun and pretty, everything a fireworks display should be.

Also, the kids got to blow through a stack of sparklers. I mean a stack. 'Cause when Brian went to buy fireworks, everything was buy-one-get-one, and the sparklers were cheapest in packs of twenty. That's not twenty sparklers, mind you. That's twenty boxes of sparklers. So we had around forty boxes of sparklers. They didn't go through all of them, thank goodness, but they still went through a lot.

Anyway, fireworks and sparklers until well past 10pm, and then we had an hour and a half drive home, so I didn't get to bed until around midnight. And that's why I'm so freaking exhausted this morning.

There will be pictures on Flickr, eventually, but all I had time for this morning was downloading a few of my favorites so I could post them here.

Photo'd

I have Penny with me at work this morning, because our school district, in their infinite wisdom, ended school on a Thursday, and the daycare summer camp doesn't start up until Monday.

She's already created a little hidey-hole for herself by wedging into a corner by the bookshelf and propping her blanket up as a doorway.

It's gonna be a long morning.

***

On the plus side, we all went up to Busch Gardens yesterday and met up with KT and Kevin and Jess and Jeff and Leslie (who I hadn't realized were in town, much less at Busch Gardens) for a couple of hours, and that turned out to be lots of fun. I haven't seen Jeff or Leslie since last year's Summer Bash, I don't think.

Alex pouted a bit when we went to the Land of Dragons instead of Sesame Street, but it didn't take him long to get into the swing of it.

(That's Alex in the front, and Penny and Jess as twin dragonettes inside the egg.)

First of May

Happy May Day! And Happy Birthday to KT! And, um. Everything else that fits here.

***

When I got home from work yesterday, my next-door neighbors -- Melissa and her son Ray, who's just a smidge younger than Penny -- were outside, planting things in their front yard.

So I ambled over and said hello, and asked what they were planting this year. (Most of us keep bushes in our front yard beds; Melissa actually puts veggies in hers during the summer.) They showed me a flat of strawberries, and several enthusiastic-looking zucchini plants.

"We got three zucchinis this year," Ray told me, "because last year we only had one, and something ate it."

"Rabbits, probably," I said. "There's a lot of rabbits that live around here." I see them all the time, especially in the spring.

"Or groundhogs," Ray said.

"I guess it could be groundhogs, but I haven't really seen any of those."

"That's because they live under the ground. It's even in their name!" His tone was carefully informative rather than snarky.

Melissa shot him a sharp look, but despite the implied duh, he'd been very careful not to actually be rude, so all she could do was sigh and say, "One of us is not going to survive his teenage years."

How swiftly they grow.

Six years ago.