So… packing going slowly. And I broke one of my fabulous nails. The whole thing is very discouraging. I’d rather read. And so I did! 🙂
Did I tell you about Anglicon? I don’t think I did. A couple of months ago, Louise came across this con. She thought she was particularly qualified to go, despite the fact it’s not called Scotticon. There was a steam punk panel she wanted to attend. And there were actually a couple other panels that looked amusing. Something about bodice rippers I felt needed my attention. But that panel was cancelled. When it came time for the actual con, the only thing I wanted to see or do, was the panel from Studio Foglio, about their comic Girl Genius. And I wanted to get issue two. That panel was at 5pm on Saturday. But my uncle’s memorial was Saturday at 2, down in Olympia. About 35 minutes away from the con. So I took Louise to her first trip to Denny’s, can you believe it, and dropped her off on my way to the memorial. I was hoping to be back by about 5:30, but in reality it was 6:30 and I missed the only thing I really wanted to attend. And I had no new comic, to boot.
Which leaves me only Friday night and the Steam Punk panel to tell you about. The panel was interesting, there are all kinds of “punk.” Cyber punk, splatter punk, steam punk… I think I am going to start jodipunk. It probably would have been even more interesting, had it not been for the older gentleman in the front row, left hand side. I’d say he was in his mid to late 50’s, in a t-shirt that was too small – stretched tight over his gut, sweat pants that were too small and too short… and a fox tail, ears and nose. Oh, and some kind of flashing red collar. He had a bit of an under-bite, and it took me a while to realize that he sounded vaguely like Bill Murray in Caddyshack when he talked. Which he did. Frequently. If you asked a question, he would interrupt to answer, and his answers usually took about five minutes. Every new book, comic, game etc the panelist brought up, the wee little furry had an opinion on. He did that thing… you know… that thing where the answer or fact the panelist gave was never good enough. He was pedantic with his use of RPG, computer games, and all sorts of arcane info. The panelist, was far far far more patient than I would have been. Louise had her Perfectly Pleasant face on. She wanted to go up and talk to the panelist after, but she refused to do it while foxy was still around. And that, right there, a man in clothes too small for him, and a sad bit of furry costume, is pretty much my soul experience with anglicon. Which, now that I think about it, was pretty much enough for me. It wasn’t even worth writing about right away. Although the panelist did let us look through his books and comics…. and there was a pretty cool Steam Punk Wonder Woman comic.

it was the kindergarten guinea pig, and we each got a turn in taking it home for the weekend. And making it our baby doll.
More later.
not about the guinea pig… but other stuff.
PS: Romy, let’s you and me travel the country in our hello kitty trailer! we are going to need a big old fuck off pick truck to haul it with.

Hello Kitty Airstream Trailer.
I want to make it my home!!!
PS. this is post 493, so we are getting dangerously close to the fabulous 500th Blog Post. Whoooo.

I don’t trust suave people. The slick and smarmy put me on guard instantly. I doubt I will ever go into sales. It’s so not me. Yesterday, I was coming up from the parking garage, and the elevator stopped on the first floor. A gaggle of sales type people I did not recognize got on. On edge, and claustrophobic, I squished myself into the corner of the car. The Alpha Sales guy was telling a story about a recent customer visit, about how fabulously he was treated. Or something like that, I’m not sure exactly. Suddenly, the sales guy that wants to be the Alpha Sales guy, the one who both worship and despises the alpha, piped up and used a term I did not think real people used. He called him Big Guy.
Little Sales Guy: Hey, Big Guy, did you forget your award?
Alpha Sales Guy: No, it’s in my pocket.
Little Sales Guy: Whoa… and I thought you were just glad to see me!!
Unctuous Sales Laughter enjoyed by all.
And then I vomited on their Dockers.

Hey potirons d’Internet, do you remember that one time, I told you about my rad wonder woman wrist bands? Well, finally I have a picture to show you.

So go ahead and admire their awesomeness and wish that you worked at the same place I do. So people would suddenly knit presents for you. I’ll take a picture of me wearing them soon.

Moons That Orbit Distant Planets or Female Birth Control Brand Names?

My cousin Brian, and his wife Melissa, just had their second baby boy two days ago. I was searching some of the scans I’ve made, for fun pictures to send in my congratulations email, and of course had more fun with pictures of ME than anyone else in the family.
Exhibit A of the Cuteness I Used to Posess:

Check out those flowered pants. Even pouting I was cute. My brother had to wear a shirt with his name printed in on it, in case he forgot it. True story.
Ok, I’m lying about Brad forgetting his own name. I actually think my mom was the one who had trouble with our names.

One final picture, my first, and only, ballet recital. I was enrolled in ballet at the suggestion of our family doctor. Who thought that maybe, with some work, I might be able to learn to walk through a doorway without smacking into the frame. Sadly, no amount of ballet, or tumbling, helped.

Above title is one of your better search strings that lead someone to my blog. Who doesn’t need a prehensile tail?
In the “when it rains it pours” category, my uncle passed away this morning. This is my stepdad’s brother. He was diagnosed with skin cancer a couple of months ago. And it had spread to his lymph nodes. He was put on interferon a few weeks ago, but it was killing him, and they took him off. About two weeks ago. The chances of it prolonging his life span were slim. They thought it would be better for him to have the next couple of years feeling somewhat healthy. Rather than going through that hell. But he never recovered. So I am going into work tomorrow morning for a 9 am meeting and then leaving from there to be with my family, down Shelton. Which is south Washington.
The movers have been postponed until Oct. 29th.

Hi. Time for some blog catch up. Some things I’ve been meaning to post.
First, it’s important to mention that there are only ten more days until my sabbatical. Already, I have more planned for the three weeks off than I could ever accomplish. Which means I will probably accomplish nothing. That’s usually how I work when things become overwhelming. I’ll have some moving to finish, unpacking, organizing and storing to do. I want to redo the design on my blog page, and work on Satan’s Bookclub. I have many books I want to read before NaNoWriMo begins. Since I am planning on writing a mystery, I wanted to do a bit of planning ahead of time. Structure, researching crime, stuff like that. Then, of course, there is the first week of NaNo itself. Plus, I have got a laundry list of things to do… things that fall under the category of “oooo… I’ll get that done while I’m on sabbatical.” I’m already preparing myself at work. I have to do my two Big Reports again. Early. Arrange the people who are going to back me up in certain meetings. Make sure everyone knows what needs covered and who to contact. So, to make sure that happens, someone has scheduled me to for two full days of training this week, and is sending EvilDeb off to Chicago next week. She’s going to some dumb trade show. S’ok… everything will get done.
As I just mentioned, I am going to write a mystery this year, for NaNoWriMo. The working title is “Comfortably Dead.” I got that from a laundry list of titles in the forums, a thread started by someone who made a random title generator. He posts a list every day. Of course, this is the second working title I’ve had, every day there is something better. Or funnier. One of my favorites from today was “The Gods In the Moon of Gay Women.” But that doesn’t really work for me. Anyway, it’s just something to call the story for now. Last year I called it “Entropy.” Like last year, I spend most of my time in the How to Procrastinate Effectively forum. It was mentioned yesterday, in some thread, that what we are currently doing is really Precrastination. Since the contest has not yet begun. I like that word.
Last week, Louise and I went to the “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” reading/signing. It was delightful. Susanna Clarke talked a lot about her research. How political history ends up being very boring, because it lacks all the things that a novelist would want for a story. The juicy and weird bits. You find out what Lord So and So thought about potato crops in Ireland … or something dry like that. But you don’t know if he was afraid of the color purple, or was allergic to carrots, or talked in his sleep, or hand six toes on his left foot. However, military history turned out to be very interesting. Because so much of it was written by the individuals involved in the battles. Who came home and wrote their memoirs. She explained why Northern England is probably more magical than Southern England; and why she didn’t bother researching any known magicians before the medieval ages. And how she tried to use write in the same type of language and voice that Jane Austen, and authors of her time period, used. [which really is one of the most appealing parts of the book, in my opinion] I meant to ask her about the Note on Type, at the end of the book. It’s one of those books that notes, at the end, what font was used in typesetting, even includes a bit of font history. But I chickened out. The question period was pretty short. So I meant to ask her when I got up to the table to have my book signed. But then I didn’t want to hold up the line. In the end, I asked a woman who was responsible for event. She is an independent bookseller and book even planner. How fun is that? She said that the author was very particular about the font used for the book, because she wanted it to match the voice of the book. So we, Louise and I, told the bookseller where we worked, that fonts were our life… we lived for typography, and to please pass on to the author how much we liked books that had a Note on the Type. I guess most authors do not get much say in the font used. I imagine most authors shouldn’t get much say, as they might not know beans about typography. However, Louise and I have decided that we do know beans, and when we write our books, we should get to a say in the font used**. Based on our Professional Experiences in the matter.
Speaking of books, I’ve been working on cleaning up my Things I’ve Read page. I’ve finished Spring and Summer of 2004. I still need to repost “Nov 03 – April 04” and “The Literary Commute” and Autumn 2004 is, of course, currently a work in progress. I’ve not posted any of the books I’ve been reading to this page. Bad Jodi. Louise would tell you that’s because I’ve been reading Cat Mysteries and am ashamed. But Louise would be a rotten liar. Not about reading the Cat Mysteries. That’s true. About being ashamed. At sometime in her past, Louise has read a Cat Mystery and did not like it. At some time in my past, I have read a Cat Mystery and thought it was awful. It had the substance, and sticky sweetness, of cotton candy. To be honest, I don’t even know what “line” of Cat Mystery I read, at the time. What I have been reading lately, is different. I’ve enjoyed them very much. But Louise is making fun of me. That’s because she sucks. I would never make fun of anything she read. I make fun of her accent, but that’s different.
Additionally, I wanted to mention this web comic I’ve begun reading, Something Positive. It’s all Ann Rice’s fault. She decided to respond to the poor reviews her latest book is receiving at amazon.com. The author of Something Positive did a strip about it, or her. And this was mentioned on bookslut, which I read. So I read the comic, and I enjoyed it very much. Which meant I had to go back to the very beginning of the strip, read them in order. I think the strip started in, what… like 2001 or 2002? It took many hours. But I enjoyed them all, because if not for SP, I would have been packing. And that would have been boring and productive. I will probably add the link to the comic off in that side menu somewhere, off to your right. Eventually. It does have an XML feed, which is quite handy. I’m a big fan of those XML/RSS feed thingies.
Ummm… so I think that’s enough for today. I would like to mention that Baby Moon celebrated her first birthday on Sunday. Happy Birthday Baby Moon!! [I was going to post a link to her photo gallery, but it seems to be down.]]
*one of my favorite randomly generated titles.
** don’t ask me what font I would use, because I can’t tell you… yet.

A spamologue by ze frank.
I got that from Dr. Frank’s site. You should go watch it, it’s brilliant. And then watch the rest of the stuff on the site. As EvilDeb says “… each and every one is a gem of untold value.”