Look, I’m among those counting Jan 1st-20th as part of 2020 but even by those standards all I can say is Jesus fucking christ what a clusterfuck. Seems frivolous to post about anything else, especially with so many revelations and developments. What an ugly end to an ugly chapter.
2021
So far so good. Yesterday Alison Scott held an Around the World in 24 Hours Zoom party to celebrate in all the timezones! We popped in on the early shift to say hi to the antipodeans and watch the Sydney fireworks (very impressive). It was my turn to make lunch, so I logged off and made cabbage and ramen noodle soup from the last of the Xmas duck stock. It was very tasty, if I do say so myself. I took it easy for the next few hours and had my own little Twilight Zone mini-marathon, while I think John …
Xmas everywhere
Aside from a trip to get my passport replaced, which was mildly stressful but also sort of a nice change of pace, its holidays at home for us of course. So I am compensating by watching as many holiday movies as I can this year. Sticking to stuff available on streaming services we already have, but that still offers a whole lot. And lots of it is pretty bad, frankly. On the nice list; Let It Snow, Noelle, A Bad Mom’s Christmas, Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, Jingle Bell Rocks, The Holiday. I wouldn’t necessarily say any of them …
Burritos and pizza
With Lockdown 2 in place for November it seemed a bit silly to do a big turkey and trimmings just for us. So I made pumpkin pie, we ordered burritos with the reasoning that they are the American food most likely to give us that replete Thanksgiving feeling and we watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Then on the Saturday John hosted a Zoom party for his birthday, which started at 4pm for him to play boardgames for a few hours and then proceeded to regular drinking and chatting into the night, it was good fun and there were some faces …
Election and convention
I settled in on election eve with junk food and wine and braced myself for doom scrolling and stress eating. I had read all the stats and felt intellectually good but emotionally fragile, and even seeing the first day numbers do exactly what was predicted by fivethirtyeight, it still made for several very long days. But eventually the results were in and now it’s all over but the yelling (though boy is there a lot of that). Luckily, my return to work had lasted all of two hours before the furlough extension announcement came down and off I went again, …
Scariest time of year
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader whether the above refers to Halloween, Election Day, or Lockdown 2. In any case, yesterday was Halloween. John and I watched all three Evil Dead movies! Army of Darkness is way goofier than I remembered, and I remembered it being pretty damned goofy, but the first two hold up well I think. The first is a solid low budget horror movie and for me the all-around best of the three, but the second is probably more re-watchable; it’s weirder, leans into the mythology, and the characters more distinct- if a bit …
Ineffable 2
Once again two conventions occupied the same weekend, but this time I did have to choose between them, alas. New con on the block FIYAHCon which by all accounts was awesome, and Ineffable 2, a Good Omens convention in its second year. Only Ineffable had an art show, so I signed up and got to work on some new fans! Or I say got to work… I did everything but work on fans until a three days before the convention when I finally had a good idea of what I wanted to do. I only got two new fans done, …
Futuricon/C’Monfluence
Doing two virtual conventions the same weekend is easier when both have significant differences in timezones, like these two – Croatia and Pittsburgh respectively. Futuricon is the one I spent the most time at, given it was only an hour off. It followed the website-streaming-video plus Discord model, although the streaming video platform they used was buggy and had the (dis)advantage that it also provided a chat form. Obviously it’s useful for folks who can’t or don’t want to use the Discord to be able to chat, but it also can dilute things by splitting the conversation. There were three …
October starts with a bang
Two conventions this weekend; Futuricon, the Croatian Eurocon and C’Monfluence, the virtual Confluence. Neither has an art show and neither seems to be doing much with parties, but so far I’m enjoying the respective Discords and the panels seem decent. Meanwhile it’s exactly one month till the election and the news is even more 2020 than it has been so far. Just. a lot. One piece of sad news that actually happened on the 30th but I just saw was the Quino, creator of Mafalda, has died. I actually had looked him up earlier this year in a fit of …
September
I guess September happened? We left the house a few times, to Unity for beer to go, to the Bookshop for beer to go, to the Butchers for beer to go (I sense a theme). We went to Paddle and Peel for date night – sat outside and had delicious pizza and chocolate calzones for desert. John’s friend Emma, who lives nearby now, came by for a drink and chat in the garden. Oh, I took Alice to the vet! That was a small adventure which she did not enjoy at all but was luckily a minor inconvenience and nothing …