September is mere days away and I haven’t posted since June, whoops. Well, it wasn’t for lack of things to write about in August, my most social month in a very long time. A short summary; We saw humans and stayed in a hotel! It was our first overnight outing since the pandemic, and consequently a bit weird but still pretty great. Saturday morning we packed our bags, did our tests, then caught the train to Reading, grumbling the entire way about all the unmasked people. The Novotel had a mask policy but low customer compliance. The lifts had signs …
The tea cookies that men don’t see.
For Punctuation 2 we are repeating our Show and Tell: SFnal Cookbook panel. If you recall, last time I picked what looked like an quick and easy cookie recipe from the Doctor Who cookbook and then spent three plus hours sweating over the piping. This time around I have a new cookbook in the form of The Bakery Men Don’t See, a Xmas gift from John, who knows what side his bread is buttered on. And if you like butter, ho boy, does this book have a recipe for you! Now as the title suggests, The Bakery Men Don’t See …
P2, V2, ILR
Quite a bit of things in the past month. John got his first shot, by September we should both be all set. I received my Indefinite Leave to Remain, which is a big deal and a huge relief. We got an Oculust Quest, which is pretty cool, I’ve been playing a lot of Beat Saber. I’ve gotten the garden to a stage I can think of as basically “done” aside from puttering… there are little projects and improvements I would like but equally if it stayed as is from here on out that would also be fine. Coming up this …
Journaling
I’ve started to keep a paper diary again, after quite a few years. The good news is I’ve been pretty good at keeping up at it, the bad news is that it’s made me even more sporadic at blogging or even updating those socials. Still, it’s not like there’s been any really big news or adventures. The usual gardening, little projects, sporadic art, and so on. I’m still furloughed, John is still waiting on his vaccine, the weather continues to flip between miserable and actually quite nice. I have finally started on a project for the Gally 2022 art show, …
Milestones
Yesterday was our sixth wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a little too much beer at Unity Brewing. We started with a pint of their Grayson, which has sold out in cans already, and hadn’t had dinner yet. We’d gambled there might be a food truck, but I think those are only on Saturdays. Instead, we decided to go home via 7Bone and pick up burgers and milkshakes. We staggered home and ate while watching the first hour of Aquaman. The burgers were great, the milkshakes were great, the movie was pretty bad. After an hour we were still drunk …
Team AstraZeneca
Got my vaccination on Tuesday! Had to take the train to Southsea, so I took advantage and picked up a loaf of sourdough from Sourdough Bakehouse and some lovely sandwiches (a reuben and a cheesesteak) from Baffled Coffee. The shot itself was very quick and efficient, to the point that I had to check my arm once outside to convince myself anything had happened at all. By mid-afternoon I was feeling a bit achy and a little after that I had chills, so I spent the evening on the sofa and went to bed early. Yesterday I felt normal, maybe …
Hugos
The Hugo shortlist came out a few days ago, and John is on it again for his work on Journey Planet! There are some other great entries across the categories, a few not great ones imo, several I feel are miscategorized, plus some categories I don’t really bother with. In short, its your usual ballot. I managed to read or see an higher percentage than usual of what ended up on there, ironic in a year that is likely to have a longer than normal voting period. Currently rooting for Piranesi in Novel and Palm Springs in BDP, and was …
Easter weekend
Maundy Thursday coincided with the First Thursday London Fandom Zoom meetup, so it was bustling. What should have been excited anticipation for Eastercon was mostly annoyed grumbling, which is what what happens when pre-con communications are sparse/terrible. Still, having made my decision to attend Norwescon instead I tried my best not to get too worked up. John and I had gotten Vibrant Forest delivered earlier in the day, so we were drinking a nice porter, and later we had Unikebab for dinner, a nice drunken start to the weekend. Norwescon had opted for a platform called Airmeet, reminiscent of Accelevents, …
You can’t go home again
As if the current bout of nostalgia I mentioned in my last post wasn’t enough, my old roommate Palle just moved out of the place we shared for nearly a decade, and which was my homebase when visiting San Francisco after moving to the UK. It’s good news really, he’s upgrading and off to new adventures. But I’m having some feelings about it; first of all it means I am unlikely to see our cat Harold again. She’s already in her teens, and he’s moving to Arizona, which is someplace I don’t have much reason to visit (Palle I’ll see …
Memories
I’ve been going through the old posts to clean up links, fortmatting, and even finding the odd missing report, like Silicon 2006, that’s slipped through the cracks. At the same time I’m scanning old family photos, so I’ve experienced a weird whiplash of nostalgia, bouncing between adorable toddler photos and dissolute mid-aughts Bay Area convention shenanigans. In the current timeline I’m getting ready for Norwescon by exploring Airmeet a bit… I think it looks neat? It’ll be interesting to see how it works for the actual event. Also getting some old fashioned illos done, which I want to do more …