Schreiber

Yesterday I worked from home all morning, then hauled butt into town for the AGM, where I

- Adjusted the AC
- Brought the Visitors' Book down from the tower, on the (accurate) assumption that the tower was gonna be a mob scene later
- Helped unload a ringing simulator built out of 2x4s and weighted wheels
- Let in two German tourists to look at the church
- Helped E.H. put All The Food into various fridges and other spaces
- Helped unload, and then later set up, a miniring
- Bought beer for the picnic
- Met/Hung out with various awesome people*
- Directed various attendees as to where they were supposed to go
- Served as doorguard for a bit
- Said evening prayer with [Church Regular]--not AGM-related, though going on at the same time...
- Rang on the miniring--though unfortunately nothing exciting.
- Dealt with various crises. (Or in one case, attempted to deal with it but was too braindead to actually deal with it effectively, so our wonderful co-Conchair figured out a solution.)
- Had late-night Thai food, per usual, exc. with about five times the usual number of people...
- Had the person who'd nearly been my houseguest drive me and my ACTUAL houseguest home. Yay, almosthouseguest! I hope that the Berkshires are good to you.

Today everybody is on the Cape, at a tower which is lovely in every way but where I have been many times before; so I am at work.
Also, I have just realized that if this is a con, I should just accept that con-things apply, namely that
I am going to spend this time: Eating too much snack food, skipping meals, eating meals twice, possible drinking more booze than is wise, definitely drinking too much coffee, trying to use coffee as a substitute for sleep, taking a "You can sleep during Lent" attitude, not exercising properly, trying to lift too much weight, and spending more money than would perhaps be ideal.

* Somebody who I didn't recognize, from some tower I'd never been within a thousand miles of (Vancouver?), swore she knew me from somewhere; which might be, or might be the same sort of memory-playing-tricks-on-you that caused me to think that I knew a former Boston ringer from Arisia, when in fact she'd never been...

Building on what I said in my last two posts, this weekend in Boston likely featured:

- skipping meals, but also possibly
- eating too much/eating too much junk food
- meals at weird hours
- staying up half the night
- keeping going on caffeine and adrenaline (or stubbornness)
- watching people in crazy costumes
- rituals and/or catch-phrases in foreign languages that baffle first-timers/outsiders

...at least if you were doing either Triduum or Anime Boston.

Back from Arisia. Actually, I've been back for like 24 hours now, but most of the intervening time has been asleep or at work. (Or digging my car out of a couple of inches of ice and snow.)

Uh... It was the con. of the malfunctioning elevators. I'm still in post-con hangover mode. I should sleep.

I am back from Readercon.

It was a generally good con, although (aside from some back-to-back panels on Friday) I think I actually spent more time hanging out with people than I did attending programming (and the talks I did go to were more likely to be on food science, economics, or exoplanets than actual literature). I also volunteered a bunch, organized a few people who didn't know each other to go out to dinner one night, ate a lot of junk food, and didn't get enough sleep - all par for the course.

(As, sadly, is spending way to much money on a hotel room. eek.)

Unfortunately, this afternoon I checked email and discovered that the apartment I'd been hoping to move into has DEFINITELY fallen through. This after hauling butt back to Somerville early on Wednesday to meet with a potential roommate, so $%^&* that. (It also turned out in the course of that interview that the apartment has some issues, notably the fact that the kitchen and bathroom are about the same vintage as the ones in my current one--which in turn were among the primary reasons why I wanted to move out of it in the first place.) But that meant that I was back to square one on the apartment search, only with only six weeks to go and my current room DEFINITELY going to someone else. So I spent a lot of this afternoon being quietly panicked.

A couple of things happened toward the end of the afternoon to relieve my gloom somewhat: first, it turns out that my backup plan - moving in with friends in Waltham - HADN'T fallen through (I'd thought it had), although since they're moving out themselves this fall, I'd need to find new roommates at that point. And one of Readercon's higher-ups said she'd see if anyone SHE knows around Greater Cambridge is looking for a roommate, which was really awesome of her.* (Though it's still a bit of a Hail Mary.)

So, yeah. Either way, or should look at some more advertisements. (Grumble.)

* I got to ask senior Readercon people to act as impromptu agony aunts because, well, it's a pretty small con, and I do a LOT of volunteer work for it, and have for the past...what, seven cons? Something like that. You can frequently find me in the con suite at 8am, making the coffee or laying out pastries, at an hour when any sane person is still in bed. And then stay after everything's over but post-con hanging out in the lounge to take down the signs or pack UP the con suite or help the book dealers repack all the books. That kind of stuff.

This was the weekend of failing at productivity. I stayed up til midnight on Saturday, and I can't even use the excuse that I was shoveling: I was reading Dark Lord of Derkholme.

Oh well, at least I got some decent ringing in on Sunday?

[All of the above replaces a much longer and more eloquent post that the computer ate yesterday, grr. ]

Meantime, I've been doing physical therapy, and my knee continues to improve. Still swollen, but it feels like I *could* run on it--though it's doubtful whether that would be a good idea. My PT people say they're going to try modifying my running stride.
If I ever see them again, that is. That, I think, is going to depend on whether my insurance is gonna pay for any of this. [Right, I need to call them...at some point.]
I'm taking the next two sessions off, anyway, because I'm going to be at Arisia. Yay!

Posting from Readercon. I've mostly been doing a bunch of volunteering, which I always find weirdly enjoyable. (I have the sort of Wanting To Be Told He's A Good Dog complex, I think.)
The fact that there are free memberships and stuff helps, of course...

Highlights so far have included the (apparently notable) Max Gladstone in pleather pants at the 80s dance, Brimstone Rhine in concert, and going to lots of panels by friends. And a lot of fun hanging out with my fellow geeks.

But we've still got a lot of Con to go...

In the end, there wasn't much goin' on on the job front yesterday, so I went to Boston after all for the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours concert. (I used the excuse that I could network with people to search for jobs. Remarkably, this actually did happen.)
Technically, it was still a bad idea, since not only did I lose my hat, but some combination of factors (picking up Amal's stomach bug, lack of sleep, throwing my meal schedule off-kilter, too much soda, and/or dehydration) knocked me out once I got home, making me feel like poop on toast and forcing me to cancel an appointment. (A nap, and some soup, seem to be making at least some headway toward fixing this.) Oh, and of course I didn't get any job applicating done.

I am still glad I went.

The concert: teenybuffalo and a friend opened, with songs about dead people. They were followed up by the "celtic Elvis", with songs about sex, dangerous women, spells, and combinations thereof. The (breathe) Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours did songs and poems and stories about all of these, plus some from their latest project: the folk songs of miners descended from people abducted by aliens in the 19th c.
(Unfortunately, the one about the Catholic with the, uh, itch wound up not making the program; but I'd gotten to hear it in advance.)

The real fun, though, was seeing friends (lj user=teenybuffalo> and nineweaving chief among them, and of course to meet the band, and hang out discussing Weird $#!7 We Have Experienced, webcomics, and...geeze, we must have discussed something more substantial than that.
Anyway, fun.

OK. Kalamazoo's over. Uh, some highlights:

Squigamunk, I think you might appreciate this:

It was even cooler in person.

Straussmonster, I saw Scott H. He's now come over to the dark side, and also become a Communist. really. He also reports that having a job is actually forcing him to be semi-respectable: "It's terrifying!" So is the thought that my colleagues now have their own graduate students.
Oh, and of course there was lots o' free wine. (Although the guy who used to do mead tastings has retired from same, alas.)

I went to some panels. The ones that stick in my head were the ones on medieval textiles, and the demonstration of longsword fighting (slowed down so one could follow what was happening, and with discussion of the two 15th-c. manuals). Very cool. EVen cooler: Mini knife-fighting tutorial at the end of the session! [Yes, in my heart I'm really a SCA geek in some respects...]
Oh, and I think I gave a talk in there somewhere. To only about six people, but one of them said it was at least exciting.

And I hung out with some cool people. Unfortunately, none of them was both going in the right direction and had space in their car,* so I'm going to be getting on a bus again in a couple of hours...

* not surprising, inasmuch as most people are having to cram vast numbers of newly-purchased books into their cars, as well.

Warning: do not read the following if you are easily offended...

( Wednesday )