Right around the time of my last post I had signed up to volunteer for CoNZealand, and a solid chunk of the hours between then and now were filled by helping out with Exhibits. There’s been a lot to do, but its also been fun playing around with some tools that I otherwise wouldn’t have access to, specifically building WordPress pages in Divi. Also learning quite a bit about the New Zealand fandom and genre scene. I also spent most of last week in the pre-Hugo deadline crunch, absorbing a lot of written material in a short time. It’s funny …
Category: Conventions
Con reports
ID2020
I mean, it’s a weird year for Independence Day on every level, even if it was something I was invested in. Last year we had a barbecue, I made a playlist with songs about places in the US (it’s much harder to find good songs for some states than for others), and it we enjoyed the sun. I added to the playlist it over the past year; I Am America by Shea Diamond is a current favourite, but lockdown plus greys skies mean no barbecue even if the mood lent itself. On the other hand, Hamilton is on Disney, and …
Life in the UK
Yesterday we went to Southsea so I could take my Life in the UK test. This was our first train trip since the before-times, I don’t know how busy that route used to be, but it was pretty empty around 2pm when we went down and a bit busier but still chill on the way back around 5pm. Masks are mandatory on public transit and everyone was in compliance, outside I only saw two or three others. Even though I know all these things have been outsourced, I sort of expected the testing centre to be a large government-type facility. …
Who watches the shadows
The weather is gorgeous and the garden happy, I harvested my first (and maybe only?) courgette. The plant is self-fertilising but there are almost never male and female flowers at the same time, but then again the internet claims the plant should continue producing for a while so fingers crossed. In any case it was a little round thing, rather than long, but tasted good and it’s always satisfying to eat produce from your own garden. Keeping an eye on those tomato plants now. In other news, we watched all of Watchmen during the HBO free streaming. It was pretty …
Looking forward
Bathroom is halfway done, so everything is still a bit of a mess but we can take baths again thank goodness. It should be finished by the middle of the week and you can see how much better it’s going to look. Plus also not being broken, so hooray to that. The garden has been a bit neglected while I haven’t had proper access to it, so I may have to spent some time today and tomorrow making sure everything is happy out there. I might even get to harvest one single courgette! It’s round for some reason, but the …
Home
Tearing down, building up
Work has started on the bathroom, which involves a fair bit of awkwardly trying to maintain social distancing while conversing about the work done/needed. It’s just one guy doing the work for obvious reasons (it’s a small bathroom) and we have exiled ourselves to the upstairs except when he needs to tell us something. He assures us he’s been mostly isolating anyway, as have we, so in spite of not being able to maintain strict distancing due to the limits of the architecture I’m reasonably comfortable so far. The main disadvantages so far are that the poor cats have spent …
Books and bathrooms
It’s the middle of the month, I have two weeks of furlough left probably. I’ve gotten quite a few overdue personal projects done, but I have a bad habit of having so many projects on the go that even if I complete several I don’t maintain much of a sense of accomplishment. It’s tricky. Still, one of them is tidying up the website a bit, cleaning up the menus and links, and updating the art pages. It needed doing anyway, but if I’m planning on entering any virtual art shows, an up to date website seems critical. It’s also nice …
Revolution?
It’s a weird time to post anything personal without feeling navel gazing at best, and honestly there isn’t that much to share in practical terms. I’ve been watching the news and feeling the rollercoaster of emotions that accompanies doing that, but in this moment at least it feels hopeful. I’ve often felt very cynical about American’s relationship with protest and civil disobedience compared to other nations. This feels different, at least from way over here, and there are real radical changes being seriously discussed like defunding the police, along with smaller but long overdue concrete actions like removing monuments honouring …
Virtual congoing
Last weekend was a bank holiday in the UK and Memorial Day in the States. Once upon a time would have that meant Baycon, Fanime, Clockwork Alchemy, and more would all be running at the same time, and I’d be popping between at least two of them and hearing rumours and news from the rest. Obviously that ended once I moved to the UK, but the muscle memory is still there, and I still had the vicarious enjoyment from social media and the occasional text. This year, all of the above have been postponed anyway. But a few cons elsewhere …