The Mandelbear's Musings

I didn't ask for a concert at Westercon this year, because up until about two weeks ago I wasn't sure I'd be able to affort to go. (It's marginal, but it's important enough in terms of keeping in touch that we decided to go anyway.) I also don't read my email very closely if I'm not expecting anything in particular.

So you can imagine my surprise when I took another look at the schedule and saw that I have a one-hour concert slot tomorrow (Saturday) at 6pm.

There may be a lot of old favorites in this one.

Wow! Lots of links here. That's partly because I spent my lunch hour reading LJ and nomming on hardboiled eggs and spring rolls. The eggs came from home -- I discovered that wrapping them in a microfiber hand-towel keeps them satisfactorily cold until lunchtime. The spring rolls came from the Big Beige Building, one driveway down from our complex. They only have them on Monday and Wednesday. They have shrimp and chicken, and come with a very spicy sauce. Nom.

Also during lunchtime my Amazon order arrived: two Otterboxes of different sizes, and an AmazonBasics Electronics Travel Case. As it turns out, the latter is a little too wide to fit at the bottom of my Antler rolling backpack (Chami, for short) because of the handle tube. And it's only able to hold my USB optical drive by stretching a little. But it fits nicely beside the handle tube, with a music stand and some extra space on the other side. It also holds an external USB hard drive; the Zoom H2 recorder and its gorillapod fit in the vacated CaseLogic HD case.

It's not clear whether Chami will get her pet otter; a lot depends on which one and what goes into it. The 3250 can hold my collection of chargers as well as being the perfect height for a footrest when playing guitar, so it's going to go someplace when I travel.

And it turns out that a recently-hired coworker is the brother of someone I worked with at Zilog a quarter-century ago. Small world.

So it was a pretty decent day, in spite of not having a walk in it. On to the links!

Many of the links are from Greenhaven: A Pagan Tradition, courtesy of ysabetwordsmith. One of her articles there, Cyberspace as an Out of Body Experience, refers to The World Inside the Crystal! How cool is that?

More in the notes.

The concert was divided into two sections: a journey through time and space; and myths, legends, and current events. I think it came off reasonably well modulo a couple of major flubs where I lost my concentration. Have to work on that.

on the web: Steve Savitzky at Westercon 2011

So it was... ok, I don't know what it was. Managed to get to the con without overloading this time, so the day was relatively relaxed. On the other hand, I missed my panel because it was scheduled for after the business meeting, and for some reason I failed to see the sign on the door saying that the panel had been rescheduled.

The business meeting took three hours. This was because the hoax bid, for Granzella's, had won the site-selection vote. Whereupon Kevin and Andy decided that, if selected by the business meeting, they would actually deliver, and hastily recruited a committee of convention veterans. They won.

Be careful what you wish for.

My concert went off well. The final set list was: "Keep the Dream Alive", "Millennium's Dawn", "Where the Heart Is", "Ship of Stone", "Cicero in the 21st Century", "Daddy's World", and "Quiet Victories".

I was followed by Allison Lonsdale, who is a brilliant songwriter and a polished performer whose sets are always high-energy fun.

We had dinner at Johnny Rockets again, which probably explains my weight gain over the last two days. After that I mostly hung out in the parties and with Colleen outside the filk room, though I did go in around 10:30, getting in one song ("The Owl and the Pussycat") before we left around 11:30.

Some excitement was added by my having forgotten to plug in the scooter the night before, so Colleen started the day fairly low on charge. And whoever plugged her in in the afternoon didn't check to make sure that the battery was actually charging. Which it wasn't -- it's all too easy to plug it in wrong. So it was touch-and-go at the end, or rather touch-and-go-very-slowly.

She stalled out on the ramp going into the house, and cleverly told the YD to put it in freewheel and push. With predictable results. I yelled "stop", but it was too late; the YD freaked out as the scooter started rolling back at her, and I had to finish the job (put it back in gear and push to boost the motor, not replace it) while the YD stalked off in a huff because I had yelled at her.

There is a good reason why I can't teach the kids to drive -- I cannot come up with words in a situation that requires a fast, accurate response. I either freeze altogether, or come up with something unhelpful, or that would have been helpful a moment ago but makes matters worse now.

And I discovered this morning that she hadn't put the garbage out, despite having been reminded twice.

But a good day on the whole.

Not a good day. No. Some hugs from people I only see at Westercons -- that was very good. But...

I hate the Fairmont. Not having a room there helps, but creates problems of its own, especially for Colleen, who needs an accessible toilet and, these days, an assistant.

Let me back up a bit.

The day technically started around 2am, when I finally got to bed after our trip to the ER Thursday night.

Colleen had an appointment in the Fracture Clinic at 11:15, so I called in sick and took her in. More x-rays; the bone pieces seem to be in the right place this time. Sleeping with the sling on apparently helps a lot. She has an appointment for next week.

If you're keeping score, that's 2 ER visits, 3 clinic visits, and 4 x-rays so far since Sunday. And she's on her second bottle of percocet now, but probably won't be needing much more of it at this point.

In retrospect, I should have ended my experiment with a reduced dose of SSRI last Wednesday. The stuff seems to work mainly by increasing my supply of cope, and I could have used a lot of it this past week.

We had lunch at home, and took advantage of my sick day to go to Westercon, in the Fairmont hotel in downtown San Jose, somewhat earlier than I had originally planned. I hate the Fairmont; we stayed there during Worldcon a few years ago. Old, underwhelming, and overpriced.

We got to the con around 2:45; I got Colleen unpacked and drove off in search of a usable handicap parking spot; I eventually found several open ones about a block from the hotel.

After getting registered and spending some time greeting people, I sat in on the "What Is Filk?" panel around 4:30 just to have someplace to sit down. Unlike most convention hotels, the ballroom floor of the Fairmont has essentially no seating outside the function space. Did I mention that I hate the Fairmont?

Around 5pm we went to the bar, which is a sunken area in the middle of the lobby. We eventually found the wheelchair lift -- not a ramp -- in what appeared to be a converted closet. It took two tries to find a chair I could sit in comfortably. I had a glass of Hendrick's, which was predictably overpriced.

So was the in-hotel Chinese restaurant, where we went for dinner with the YD. The food was distinctly underspiced. In between, Colleen attempted to find an accessible lady's room, which eventually required getting someone from the hotel to go in and open the handicap stall in the one first-floor lady's room, which had been locked from the inside. Possibly because it wasn't flushing properly.

Did I mention that I hate the Fairmont?

At this point my back was hurting and I was bored silly; I left, and got home a little after 8pm. Went back for Colleen 9ish, and the YD around 10:30. By which point I was both sleepy and depressed. Oh, and getting Colleen's scooter was complicated by coughing while bent over (which reactivated my back spasm), and scraping the back of my hand on the seatpost of the scooter picking up the battery. I dealt with the latter by tying my handkerchief around it. Useful things, handkerchiefs.

No, not a particularly good day.

On the plus side, the combination of Chami (rolling backpack) and Minnie (sling shoulder bag) worked surprisingly well. Though it's pretty clear that Chami is not sufficient luggage for a weekend trip, she does a good job as a convention rolly. I ought to rig something that works as a top handle when Minnie is on board, though. (Although this, and the slight top-heaviness I noticed, is less of a problem when Minnie is slung over Chami's "shoulder" rather than attached around the handle. I'll try that today.

Only one link in the notes; I was busy with other things.

A pretty good day, with a nice st/roll with Colleen to the Rose Garden. We keep forgetting to bring books, so we can sit and read in the sun. It's a great place for people-watching, too. I like summer. ("Summer" being our code word for "women in skimpy outfits", many of which would have been considered underwear when we were young.)

We had a good, though ultimately unproductive, talk about the YD's state of mind. It's pretty clear that she's depressed, but she rejects our suggestions that she seek professional help. Not much we can do about that.

I was feeling rather unimaginative, and made a pot of black and white beans with Polish sausage for dinner. Very tasty.

Had some trouble with my right shoulder in the morning, which I dealt with by switching shoulders on Minnie and wearing the strap higher up, close to my neck. That seems to do it, at least for now. And my left ankle started hurting in the evening after I took my shoes (hiking boots) off; I put a brace on it. Both joints are mostly ok this morning, but grump.

Things have been breaking. The lumbar support on my aeron chair broke clean in half sometime yesterday. It looks as though it can be splinted; that's good, because a replacement is $60. The one at work has been broken for a while. Grump. My things and I are getting old together.

I verified by experiment that I can pack a weekend's worth of clothes into the Eagle Creek organizer, so I could theoretically go on a weekend trip with nothing but Chami (the Antler rolling backpack, for those who haven't been following closely) and Minnie (the REI shoulder bag), and maybe the CPAP case. In most cases that probably won't be necessary, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

My doctor contacted me about my labs; PSA (which doesn't show up on the web -- grump) is down a little, as are my triglycerides. So, ... good.

My mood continues to hover somewhere between ok and good.

Some links in the notes, as usual; the Solar-Powered 3D Printer that Prints Glass from Sand is pretty awesome. Especially when you remember that it's not your ordinary soda-lime glass but fused silica, which has a significantly higher melting point.

Oh. Right. WesterConChord. A good, mostly-relaxing weekend, which sort of surprised me. Taking a teenager (the YD's friend K) along who was paying for her room and board by taking care of Colleen made all the difference.

I did a fair amount of singing, in circles and a two-shot (where I did Rosie and Riverheart, but not all that well).

The high point was definitely the Interfilk auction, where I got a black leather jacket. After the bidding got up to $75 I asked to try it on, at which point the person bidding against me said something to the effect of "ok, it's yours". N. said this meant I must have looked "seriously hot" in it, but my little bear-like brain is having a great deal of trouble with that concept. And somebody took my picture with the wenches; I hope that shows up on LJ soon. Then you can judge for yourselves.

And the Kazoo award -- "Paper Wings" won in the "Dragons" category. Being the only nominee who actually showed up at the concert to sing their own song undoubtedly helped. Plus the fact that it's serious, hopeful, and has a pretty melody. I wouldn't have minded losing to "Gilda and the Dragon", though.

Art show. We got a lovely print of a dragon and teapot by Sue Dawe (in the auction), a fused-glass tile titled "Eye of Argus", and a Cthulhu-themed ceramic butter keeper and spoon jar that I had come close to buying at a previous con.

The hotel had free internet for the duration of the con, but it wasn't fast enough to make ssh to home a pleasant experience. I did my note-taking on a local copy and synchronized (via git) when I got home. Hence the multi-day post.

Not nearly as much talking with friends as I would have liked, of course, but I introduced a couple of new people to my music.

Colleen was having a pretty bad time of it, between leg cramps, a lot of difficulty walking and getting between the car and the scooter, and the narrowness and height of the bed. Grump. She still enjoyed the con, though. As did I; a lot more than I expected to.