The Mandelbear's Musings

I don't think this was a good week. Right now I'm severely depressed and hopeless (mostly over politics, but also about how little I've been getting done for the last few {weeks, months, years}*, so that may be coloring my judgememt).

I have done some music, including setting up the RainbowCouch virtual filksing (although I only ran the first, frustrating part on Jitsi; it went went a lot better once it moved to Zoom). It's too bad, because I really wanted to like Jitsi. But it's not ready for prime time. It would probably work well for a small group, after everybody was already set up. Probably. Muting, in particular, works badly. (It's pretty confusing on Zoom too, only not quite as much.)

I did sing more than I have in a while, including "The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of" in the FK-No Dead Penguin circle.

The 10th anniversary of my DW account (first post here) passed without notice on Monday. I'd looked it up and intended to make a post, but... DW postedUpdates on the security changes (how to keep your client working!) on Monday. The fix was pretty trivial -- if you're using a client (as opposed to posting on a web page) and it isn't working, see that post on how to fix it.

That sent me off down a bit of a rabbit hole learning about the new REST API under development, and both of the old ones (XML-RPC and "flat"). I still mean to replace my current kludge with a real command-line client. I may wait until the REST API is ready, although the only difference at this point between it and flat appears to be punctuation. Annoyingly, none of the APIs allow you to post raw HTML: In XML you have to escape HTML markup, in the other two you use C-type escapes, including "\n" for all the newlines.

I got the jbackup utility going the week before last; it proved to be an excellent tutorial for the XML API, and some of the code could be ripped out and used as the basis for a client. It would be in Perl, though, if I did that. Not necessarily a bad thing -- I like Perl, though maybe not as much as I did a few years ago.

* those are set braces

( Notes & links, as usual )

So, last weekend was Westercon. It was the first we'd been to for a while -- Portland is close enough to drive to in less than 3 hours, so we were able to do it without my having to take any time off.

My concert Saturday evening went ok: Bigger on the Inside, The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of, Millennium's Dawn, Riverheart, The Toolmakers, The Bears (A Talk With the Middle-Sized Bear, A Tribute to the Middle-Aged Bear), The Travelers (Where the Heart Is, Windward), Rambling Silver Rose, QV, Ship of Stone.

There were a couple of flubs, but nothing serious -- not bad for next to no prep, but I'll have to get more serious about practicing. I had taken Plink, the little Vagabond travel guitar; that was almost certainly the right choice. Though I think the battery was dead; we ended up micing it for the concert, which got me off to a bit of a late start. Putting my phone, in clock mode, on the music stand turned out to work very well.

I didn't go to any panels -- just hung out in the filk room or the lobby with my laptop. (I'd also brought my work laptop, but never used it.) As usual, I enjoyed it more than I expected to beforehand: I've learned the hard way that it's better -- and I'm less likely -- to regret having done something than to regret not having done it. (Does that construction make sense? Probably, though it's less clear than I'd like.)

Great conversations over dinner with alatefeline on Saturday (or was that Sunday lunch?), and Roy and Joan Sunday. On the whole a good, fairly relaxed con.

It's been a * l o n g * week, bracketed by cons. Last Saturday we day-tripped Rustycon (and decided that we probably won't bother next year -- it's small. This weekend was Conflikt. Which we will *definitely* be attending next year, but probably without the YD. She went this time because she was writing a term paper on it, but it didn't really seem to be her thing.

Last Sunday we put an offer down on the West Seattle house. It was down to the wire -- when we got there after having seen two places that were obviously unsuitable, we found that they were having an open house and had already received two offers. We offered $10K over the asking price. Monday was a nail-biter, but we got it! It's gorgeous. A full 2-bedroom apartment downstairs in the daylight basement, plus a 4-car garage on that level. Three bedrooms upstairs. And a great hall on top of the garage. I forsee parties, house filks, and house concerts in our future.

Needless to say, my work productivity suffered, as I spent far too much of my time on the phone or tracking down paperwork. The loan paperwork finally all came together at 4:45 on Friday, about the same time I got my functional tests running and marked "ready for QA".

Did I mention the lack of sleep? Mostly due to waking up at unreasonable hours with house worries. So we went into Conflikt already sleep-deprived.

I may have to leave most of Conflikt until later, but the music was fantastic and the Interfilk auction was one of the must entertaining in years. Even if I did end up winning a $100 bid to give the horrid wall-hangings, Harry and Henrietta Hemp, to Seanan. Who said she'd burn them in the parking lot. (The deal with the Hemps is that the winning bidder gets to say who they go to, and somebody had fingered us as people who hadn't had it yet.)

Health. We both had follow-up appointments with our PCP, Dr. Chopra, Saturday morning. Colleen had a dentist appointment Wednesday morning, I had an appointment with the sports medicine department Thursday morning. I got my SSRI dosage raised, and was told that my assorted joint, etc. problems would be solved if I lost (rather a lot of) weight. Thanks; I knew that.

I'd probably better go splat now (10:51 pm). Before I fall asleep at the keyboard. Again.

A pretty good day, but occasionally painful without even the compensation of a walk or bike ride. It started with the standing, bending and lifting involved in doing the dishes and putting away the groceries, and ended with overusing some arm muscles manhandling a gig bag made way too heavy with songbooks and a music stand.

In between I mostly hung out at the Ugglas' house, which they're moving out of next week, hanging out and helping pack, mostly by handing things to people. It was followed by one of their Rise Up Singing "songfests". A good day with friends, and worth the comparatively small price.

I came home to aspirin and a hot bath in the walk-in tub, which I can soak in up to my neck if I scrunch down into the footwell. The hot water triggered the same trembling that I get from a good backscratch or nestling down into Colleen's arms. So that's one more data point to triangulate from: simple physical pleasure. I'll figure it out one of these days.

The 2010 Pegasus Ballot is up online. I'm not on it, so I'll just be pushing for Ship of Stone in the classics category. That will make it even easier to trade my trip to OVFF for one or two trips to Seattle to rehearse for the Tempered Glass gig at Orycon. I'd like to do both, but there are these time and money things... (ETA: not to mention a friend's wedding that I really need to go to. So it will be good not to feel torn about it.)

A couple more links under the cut.

Didn't spend much time at all at the drama llama petting zoo Silicon this year. A panel on Saturday, dinner with the Cat, and Peter Beagle's concert in the evening. A quick turn around the dealer's room, which didn't take long. The kids gofered, and Colleen spent a couple of hours there today.

Very small con, and the hotel, once the local SF con hotel, sucks. We won't bother going next year, I don't think.

Didn't get much else done, though, beyond running errands, taking care of Colleen, and some writing, mostly working on a big river post on love and friendship. Music? Not nearly as much work as I intended.

Current plan is to fly to SeaTac for Conflikt on Thursday January 24th; I'll probably get in late afternoon. I'll look around for a rental car on Monday so I'll be relatively mobile. Probably head home on Wednesday the 30th unless somebody gives me a good reason to stay through Thursday. I'll be making my plane reservation sometime this week.

Besides the departure date, about the only other things that need deciding are what gear to take. First category is instruments: I need to decide whether to take Plink, my travel guitar, or Ruby, my usually gig guitar. I'm leaning toward Plink, since I'm flying, and she sounds really good plugged in through a direct box.

The other question is computer hardware. I'm leaning toward taking the Macbook Pro and (assuming it arrives when it's supposed to) the OLPC. I don't think I'm quite crazy enough to attempt the trip with nothing but the OLPC or even the OLPC, an external keyboard, and a massive USB hard drive. I might, however, take the OLPC instead of my songbook.

Added: Comments on this post would be a convenient place to discuss trip logistics.

The flower_cat and super_star_girl are already at the con, and cflute, jenkitty and technoshaman are about ready to load out. I'm packed, with altogether too much stuff half of which I probably won't need. Including both travel-worthy guitars, Ruby and Plink. Business cards, pre-order receipts, and mini-fliers are printed, all on business card stock. Pre-order forms and party fliers have been printed. The Interfilk auction package has been assembled. I need to hit the bank, pick up the chaoswolf, and go to the con!

Went to Silicon this afternoon after my walk and lunch; spent most of my time there in the dealers' room, and almost all of that at Peter Beagle's table. The fact that I was waiting for him to get back from a reading so he could sign the two books I bought there was only a minor part of a very enjoyable sequence of conversations and eavesdropped conversations.

Was persuaded by the cute proprietress of Queen of Caps to buy a raffle ticket, and amazingly enough it won (I think it was a very small field). I picked a purple cap with long, floppy ears that will go very well with my purple shirt. So now I have something to wear to Furcon, if I decide to go. She was doing a land-office business in caps.

Spent about another hour and a half (after the dealers' room closed at 3:00) talking to people in the hall by the coffeeshop. The flower_cat and I decided that we probably don't need to go next year, though we may relent if someone we particularly want to see is on the schedule.