Website updates done for the most part, still need to go through and tidy up content and links, but I’m happy with the new theme and functionality. Next projects are probably is finally scanning the family album I meant to do literal years ago, and then garden work. As we get more sunny days, and the current lockdown nears completion, I want to be ready to get a few new plants to fill in some gaps in the garden and to pretty up the front of the house a bit. But before I do that I want to document what …
Spring cleaning
The sun is out, Hugo reading has been done, convention season is starting up, and it even looks like making vague plans for activities in the nearish term is something one might do unironically. So I figured I’d give the site a proper overhaul, paint the walls and tidy up the corners so to speak.
Birthday, etc
My birthday fell on a Sunday, so I made pancakes like I usually do but with bananas and chocolate chips. John made me a Victoria sponge birthday cake, and for dinner he made roast chicken – the original plan called for sushi but we’d had our meat delivery and realized the chicken probably shouldn’t sit in the fridge for too long. We took a walk along Riverside Park and got mr. whippy with sprinkles from the van despite the cold. We played Ticket to Ride (I lost, but with my best score yet) and watched Birds of Prey, which was …
March!
February gave us a handful of sunny days, which meant a bit of garden tidying up. The cats enjoyed it, with Quentin escaping multiple times and forcing me to chase him between fences. We had really good Korean fried chicken for date night and watched Bacurau as part of our potential Hugo nominee watchlist. It was good, but I feel like the science fictional elements were superfluous. The Hugo reading also continues apace, currently on The Space Between Worlds, which I am enjoying quite a bit. Tonight is First Thursday, which is rowdy ,and in a few days is my …
Picocon
This was my first Picocon, I figured a one day convention might suit going virtual pretty well plus several folks I know were excited for it. They kicked things off by opening up the Discord channels, and encouraging people to have fun. The fun in question taking the form of several activities; a Turing test game channel, which I mostly ignored, fish slapping, on which more later, and a scavenger hunt! There were three teams; Marvin, R2D2, and HAL9000. I joined that last one, as it only had three people at the time and it seemed best to balance things …
Boskone/Gally/Valentine’s
I ended up only using the social space at Boskone. They had a Zoom Consuite going most of the day, which I applaud. Initially I had trouble finding it, although it looks like they added a more obvious link later (or perhaps it was always there and I missed it). The link was in the programming schedule but for whatever reason it didn’t occur to check there for persistent programming. In any case, I eventually found the link by through the Facebook comments. Friday evening I had personal Zoom scheduled, so my first actual event was the Glasgow party at …
Capricon
Capricon was this past weekend, obviously CST isn’t the ideal timezone for me, but paying just $10 for a convention allows a certain casual approach to it, so I figured why not. It started Thursday, but as this was also First Thursday, I decided to Tun instead, which was a good time. On Friday, I popped back to the Discord for intermittent chatting. Staff was clearly keeping an eye on channels, being social as well as helpful. The first panel item I decided to go to was a reading, but unfortunately the reader in question could not be found, whoops. …
February
It’s been very cold, a few days of frost and even a brief bit of snow – though nothing like elsewhere in the country. It’s a bit harder to stay productive in the January doldrums, but I’ve been doing okay at exercising relatively consistently, which is probably good now that even the cats aren’t excited about going into the garden. Two virtual conventions are fast coming up, Capricorn and Boskone, so that’s been good motivation to get some fans done. On the digital side of things, I’ve been learning Procreate, mostly with YouTube tutorials for the moment, although I suspect …
American New Year
January 20th, Inauguration Day. Like a lot of folks I’m counting the first nineteen days of January as part of last year and watching some of the ceremonies and events yesterday and today, helping the reality of it sink it and the weight lift a little.
The Outside, still there apparently.
I had to go into town yesterday! It wasn’t as exciting as all that, I had to go submit my biometrics for my indefinite leave to remain. Luckily there is an office in town to do that, so I was able to walk down get everything done without much fuss. It gave me a chance to have a quick look at the pedestrianization of Bedford Place as I walked back home. It looks great, I hope they keep at least some of it once things are back open.