Amelia

Five Things:

1. I had a wonderful time at my 10-year college reunion this weekend!!! It was fantastic to see everyone and spend time together on campus.

2. Celebrated Father's Day by calling my dad (he and my mom were in the kayak), and playing "father's day olympics" with B.'s family. We played mini-rounds of ten different lawn games (croquet, lawn darts, horseshoes, etc.). It was fun!

3. B. and I had our anniversary Sunday night. We were going to go out but I was so exhausted from the weekend that we stayed in, ordered takeout, and watched The Hangover. It was nice and low-key. He got me lovely gifts: socks (relates to an anecdote the weekend we met), a dvd, and a guidebook for Las Vegas (I do love guidebooks, the planning!, the maps!).

4. I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep because I had such bad heartburn? Weird.

5. A poem for Monday.


since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e. e. cummings

I had dinner with the lovely and talented bayleaf, misspamela, giddygeek, and janet_carter! It was very happy-making (nice-but-way-overly-chatty waitress excepted) although a bit too short.

Here's a poem for you, Verisimilitude by Stanley Plumly.
(Isn't Plumly a great name! He's currently the poet laureate of Maryland.)

( like the split sweet heart of an apple? )

Back from my first Vividcon!

The weekend was really good, although a little overwhelming. I'm not sure if I'm going to write a full con report. In short: I saw lots of awesome vids, met some cool people, and had a good time. I approached the con as someone who was pretty new to vid analysis. I was pretty quiet overall, but I was less overwhelmed than I thought I might be? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my professional training overlapped quite a bit (I am used to looking at things, analyzing, and talking about them). It turns out I can do that even if the pictures are moving and there's music. Plus there were lots of new people there. Still there was *a lot* of visual information (vids, and Friday I played hooky and went to the Art Institute, because I was in Chicago and hadn't been since high school). So a very looking heavy weekend, but a good one! (And Club Vivid was super fun as advertised!)

Hearts and hugs to everyone!

In short:

-afrikate and her awesome kitty S. are staying with us. It's really fun. I am a little bummed that they are leaving, but very happy afrikate is getting her new place!

-I now have 8 students in my class and we're past add/drop. This means I get my full salary. Awesome!

-We're doing Renaissance art this week. It's fun.

-Good thing I'm getting paid because I went to this woman's basement in Severna Park MD last week and bought two very expensive bellydance costumes.

-And then brought them to class and were told how much they did not fit properly.

-So I went back today with backup (afrikate and L. from bellydance class) and have 2 different, more expensive, costumes that I hope will be better.

-I am still undecided/ambivalent about performing in the class recital next week at Mem Sahib.

-Two weeks ago I did a 2-day Ravenchase in rural VA. It was pretty awesome. Especially visiting yogaville. That big lotus shrine out in rural Virginia. (We had to run around it looking for information to break our codes, not very yoga-like, still awesome.)

-We also spent way too much time in Farmville, VA. Yeah.

-Last weekend we went to Brooklyn to Come Out and Play.

-There were many awesome games. My favorite was one put on by the Disney imagineers called Unwritten Storybook. We were the elves (complete with ears) and had to join with other groups (royals, outlaws, etc.) to complete tasks (testing out the castle's defenses with a big ball and water balloons, "jousting" with balloons, archery with nerf weapons, etc.). After each battle or event we went back to these tables and filled in storybook pages with our own narrative (eg the elves went to the thief's forest and battled the fairies in an archery contest...) and decorated the pages with stickers and glitter! Games with art and crafts. We have a book. It was awesomely fun and they fed us a tasty lunch feast afterwards. Did I mention the entire event was free. Fantastic.

-We also played:
Shabbat-put! Olympic games, Sabbath rules. (Fun, funner if I had been the fastest, lightest, or strongest of my team.)
Cross My Heart + Hope to Die A game inspired by the labyrinth of Daedalus, set in a life-size maze. (Interesting. Lots of running and confusion, would have been better if the room hadn't been so hot. The maze "walls" were hanging strips of fabric.)
It Lurks in Gowanas. Solve the canals mystery before you're whacked. (A fun mix of using microsoft tag reader, walking to different locations, and a story told through youtube videos, with a little "chose your own adventure" thrown in.)

-Sunday we played The Time Traveler's Knife Brave time travelers take man's first tentative steps into the future, but before they can see the future, they will have to iron out the knots of the past. (Incredible concept, game play could have been streamlined. I had more fun than most of my team because aside from our main mission I was a secret cyborg. I had to meet other cyborgs, and together we brought about the cyborg revolution in 1965).

-The best part of Sunday was being in Green-Wood cemetery. If you're in the area you should totally check it out. Beautiful with lots of famous people buried there as well.

-This weekend I'm going to a family reunion in West Virgina.

-The next weekend it's con.txt (yay!)

-The next weekend is Adam Lambert, although I am only going to 2 of the 3 of the east coast shows that many of my friends are attending.

-The next weekend in July 4th.

-The next weekend is the end of my summer class and mid-July. WTF.

For You: The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted By Cats in 1 Minute

We've been spending a lot of time at Home Depot/Lowe's recently. We've acquired a grill, grill accessories, pick axe, wheelbarrow (FYI an assembled wheelbarrow does not fit in our camry), axe, rosemary plant, hose sprayer, and a bunch of other stuff.

Sunday treewishes, Raoul, gnomad, and durdge came over. D. made yummy burgers on the new grill. R. used his impressive arborist skills to cut down the huge dead tree limb that was hanging over our yard. Yay!

We figured out why the tree is dying: the limb was filled with big black ants. Now have lots of firewood and I think need to call a bug guy? The yard is really close to our wooden shed, deck, and house.

That night durdge and I cleaned out the hot tub to prepare for the spa guy. He came this morning. Our hot tub is really old (20+ years) and has frost damage. We could spend a couple of thousand dollars to jury rig a fix, but it might be better to just scrap it and save for a new one. So we have to think about disposal, and what we should do with this dropped down section of the deck which will have a big hole in it. We'll never find a new spa to fit the hole so we could deck it over and put a raised spa there, but there might be better places in the yard to put one. (I think a new spa is not a project for anytime soon, but D. now has his heart set on one, so I guess we'll see.) What else could we do with that weird deck section? Maybe this means we can just rip out the big overgrown bushes that I don't know how to prune?

Suggestions welcome. ( picture here )

D.'s ankle is better than it was, but it's still uncomfortable for him to walk. My spots are almost better. They're mostly confined to my legs now and slowly healing. I'm still itchy, but I think it's mostly from dry skin. I'm using a lot of lotion, but I'm using a lot less allergy medicine.

Dance!
Depending on who you are I think these DC area Flash Mobs sound like the best thing or the most horrifying thing ever. I'm in the first camp. We might try to do one or two of them. I'm playing with the idea of dropping by Busboys and Poets tomorrow night to check them out. (I think I could easily fake the Jump choreography, it's pretty easy, and I do have a soft spot for Beetlejuice. Help is more intricate and would take more advance practice.) If anyone wants to come by (to dance or just watch) show is 6:30, call is 5:45.

We lost the B-event semifinal game. :( It was ours to loose, we were up 2 in the 6th, then didn't see a potential danger and gave them 4. We got 2 to tie going into the 8th and then couldn't steal. Blech. We had a great time though.

The advantage was that C. and M. made their 4pm flight and I had more time to visit in MA. It was nice to drop by and see everyone!

My drive home was uneventful. Blue skies all the way and I made decent time. Happy to be back home with D. after a fun weekend. :)

24 hours in NYC:

-Ethiopian food with old friends
-briefly seeing some (relatively new) girlfriends
-sleep
-brunch at Popovers with lovely women
-another adorable baby (they seem to be a theme during my winter holidays)
-conversation and job advice
-a walk through Central Park
-the Met
-dinner at Mole with fangirls
-drive home
-sleepy email checking with kitty on lap

:)

Happy Thanksgiving! Love (and muppets!) to you and yours.

Had a great time at the Renaissance Festival with denis77, axiom_of_stripe, ellen_fremedon, and uschickens.

I had never been to one before, even though we've lived here for five years. It was really lovely. Three of us got there around noon? We shopped, threw some axes, and ate some fried things. ellen_fremedon spent some time choosing a fantastic new hat that is very her. Then uschickens joined us. We listened to the Rogues perform (awesome). There was more shopping (earrings! necklaces! herby things!), and three of us spent a lot of time trying on costumes (guess which three). After waiting patiently for a while D. and C. went off to listen to some more music. There were more food breaks. We tried on tiaras (again mostly three of us did this although we all admired the dragon items). We saw a jousting tournament (awesome! one guy was unhorsed), and three of us took an elephant ride! It was a fantastic day. Great friends, incredible people-watching (codpiece with sparkly man-thong?), fun activities, a good Sunday afternoon.

Pictures here

I had a fantastic time at MJ this weekend. Drove up Thursday night with road-trippers and roommates extraordinaire wordplay, sanj, and ellen_fremedon. We had excellent luck with traffic both ways and there was music-pimpage and good conversation and chocolate.

( random, partial list of awesome people from this weekend, not in any particular order, not including previously mentioned awesome roommates, I'm sure there's people I've forgotten (or who's lj name I don't know)  )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

( Panels I attended throughout the weekend: )

In short I had a great time at my 2nd con ever. It was well run, I really enjoyed the squee-filled atmosphere, and definitely felt the love. Can't wait until 2011!