Long day at the polls, but relatively easy, too. It was a lovely space this time, and fabulous weather, and I got to do some writing planning, plus watched some Merlin.

This is the piece I did in the studio art class that just finished up today. She's a new incarnation of Sofia the Clockwork Engineer, and I think that this version of her is a character in the story I'm writing.


This is the 2009 Heritage Society Quilt Committee offering, called "The View from My Hammock". My mom did five, count 'em, five of the squares. Mom is awesome. I got a credit because I did some drafting and designing. I did not sew any of this quilt, though!

I still haven't finished the quilt.  Argh. Soon, though.  Soon.

Dad and I went to see Star Trek on the IMAX. It was pretty hilarious. I noticed lots of details I'd missed the last (10) time(s) I saw it.

Have now been mostly spoiled for the first episode of Series 2 of Merlin but I find I don't mind so much. Not sure if that will continue for the entire run, but what with having to wait two weeks for any opportunity to see it, a bit of spoilery speculation is fun.

Still running deadlines, and now I'm also pinch-hitting, which is fine but more deadlines. I thought I'd get to work on tiny shrines this weekend, but it's so not happening. Time to get some time-management going.

-- Jaye and I are going to hell.
-- Jaye fell asleep in the panel on Consciousness.  (I fell asleep in the Putting the World in WorldCon panel)
-- I feel like I walked several miles along the corridors at the party hotel.
-- the Polish restaurant in Old Montreal is awesome, as I remembered it, and I really must get back there for dinner.
-- We are still in search of decent coffee, but the place in the Palais serves "cafe mocha" ghetto-style, which is hot chocolate with regular coffee poured into it. OMG, it is So Damn Good.
-- became a pre-supporting member of the Texas 2013 bid. Yay.
-- random guy in the panel about Genocide in Literature spent 5 minutes of panel time summarizing the most recent Star Trek movie.
-- Charles Stross predicts human drivers will be illegal in 30 years...
-- Paul Krugman to Charles Stross: So where do you get your ideas?
-- Opening Ceremonies included a really good contortionist. Those folks always make me cringe a little, though, when they fold their spine backwards just below their diaphragm. Eep.
-- Neil Gaiman seemed shorter than I am when I ran into him (almost literally in a narrow doorway). That is so weird. Also, he did not offer Jake a blow job. (But hey, it's only Thursday.)
-- Margarita ok. Aquavit excellent. La Fin du Monde local microbrew AWESOME.
-- Now Jaye and I are going to bed.

I just finished a marathon viewing of Torchwood: Children of Earth on On Demand, and now all the reaction posts I know folks made to discuss it are way way way way down my flists because of the broadcast schedule... 

anybody got any links to discussion?  I'd like to read some commentary. It helps me process.

(I liked it, by the way, but that won't stop me from wanting to read why other folks hated it.)

Also, have now done laundry in preparation for Montreal trip. Need to remember to pack the pirate coat this time.

ETA, out of politeness (which I didn't get because I was spoiled for it in a comment thread for a totally unrelated fandom): SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS.

I think I need to make blogging a daily habit, although I'm using Twitter a lot more now that it's part of my job.

Yesterday I went to get a new glasses prescription.  I had forgotten that optometry takes three zillion more hours than my regular doctor. They did all kinds of things that I don't think I've ever had done before, like dye drops to check pressure and various scopes to peer into the depths. The guy doing the exam was very nice and willing to chat and joke about the various machines, which is always nice. I like a doctor (well, in this case a student) who is willing to explain things. He dilated my eyes, which takes about a half hour to process in itself. 

So while I was sitting around letting my pupils grow, another student came in and asked me to take part in her research project - it would be very brief, non-invasive, and I could do it while I was dilating.  So I said sure, and went and looked inside a big box at some glowy lights, telling her when they changed color. Then my student doc and the supervising doc took turns peering into my eyes again, and at the end of the exam they said, "Your astigmatism is gone."  Hey, cool.  Turns out that if I don't wear contact lenses for two years, my lenses/corneas/whatever don't warp as much. No mention was made of whether warps in the soul bounce back, too. Fun times.

I'm leaving for San Francisco on Wednesday, and starting my packing this weekend. I'm beyond worrying about costume pieces, now.  I have a hat, that will have to do. My art is printed but not yet in the frames. I need to run a final back-up of my data before traveling with the laptop.

This is the extremely busy and stressful time at the office, and with the con just past and the one coming up I am not in a good place to be worried or stressful about fandom stuff. It's just not worth it. So I'm skimming most things, concentrating on getting back into a creative mode so I can do my art, and not worrying about anything but getting to Azkatraz and meeting all the cool folks I hang out with online.

In other fandom news, by the way, I've suddenly become completely addicted to fanfic in the new Star Trek 'verse. Mostly Kirk/McCoy. This has not been exactly my cup of tea in the past, but it's entirely too much fun now. I very much like most of the fics' take on Uhura, in any pairing. She's a mad genius. Also, I've noticed that fandom seems to have taken a huge shine to Sulu/Chekov, of which I really can do nothing but approve, right? My question is, why is there no love for Scotty, in any verse? Show me the Scotty fic, folks.

Here I am at my lunch break, thinking that I have not been doing much blogging lately.
Things have been happening, thoughts have been thunk, writing has not really happened but a lot of art has gotten done...

I've been calling on my parents a lot for help with the apartment, arranging and unpacking and such. I have some stuff from IKEA that hasn't yet come out of the box - perhaps I should have that Flat Pack Party after all.
I think that this evening I shall go buy a television at last, and maybe put some books away.

Lately I've had lots of meetings and Meet-ups and a seemingly overwhelming amount of volunteer commitments, mostly online. How did I end up working on two back-to-back cons? Urgh.
I haven't got a costume for any of them, either. Although I may go shopping for something to wear to the dances, at least. 
I'm test-running some less-demanding-than-Adobe art software on my Mini, so that I won't have to lug Ginevra and all of her expensive software to San Francisco for the art demo I'm supposed to do. Does anybody out there use openCanvas regularly?  Got any good tips? Tutorials?

Other randomness:
Read The Graveyard Book, and it was excellent. Haven't yet managed to finish any of the other books I took from the library. Rereading the Enchanted Forest Chronicles omnibus instead.
Ran through the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender again. The finale chokes me up, man. Beautiful stuff. I may need to get DVDs.
Still re-watching Merlin, too. I'm easy.
Really, really wish I had Ghostbusters  on DVD.
I've made a lot of grilled cheese lately.  Also used almost every pan I own. Now I just need to make cookies (or pizza) and I think I will have used all possible kitchen tools at least once.
Have made minor progress on the current quilt, but won't really get far until the sewing table stops being the "put everything down here when you come inside" table. Working on it.
Been keeping a better food diary for the past few days, along with a general journal. I've stopped trying to separate everything and am just keeping everything in one book now. This combined with regular check-in with the Wellness Counselor at Rice should help me get a better handle on things. I hope.

And that's enough for now. Lunch break is well over, and I have things to do.

So, been doing art to try to meet deadlines, and sorting my stuff out. Have also been going to various estate sales and this weekend will hit some resale shops and possibly a Memorial Day sale at a major department store.

Also watching Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 again, because it's just that awesome, and I needed to cleanse my palate of the publicity photos released recently.  I've gotten through almost all of the first season today - how nice that I got out of work early.  This series is full of such great lines.  It's wonderful. 
OMG how much do I love Sokka?  SO MUCH. 

I love going to see movies with my parents. They are a riot.
( slightly spoilery riot within )

Also, there was a preview for G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra and I squealed in excitement in the first three seconds, which made everybody look at me funny. Sorry, but I recognized it immediately by the menacing Christopher Eccleston surrounded by evil types. Yay!

Mom did comment that so many of the movies we saw previews for were dark and violent. I was horrified by the preview for the new Tarantino film, and the ones for Transformers and Terminator both involved a bit of robot apocalypse so they were also really dark. Terminator moreso than Transformers in terms of actually being almost always dark and dreary with guts and explosions, but... can we maybe make a few good SF movies that aren't marketed solely to video gamers?

Spent today at a hotel on the SW side of town, at InstaCon 8 - a con about con-running.  Very good programming all around, and some great people. Including a presentation on some resource management database solutions for cons that sound brilliant. Tomorrow I'm a panelist on social media. This is what happens when work and play collide.

Extra bonus - Ethiopian for dinner!  And after dinner, a game of Texas SF Pictionary, which was just hilarious.
I even managed to get some coloring in on my fanart.

Hi, Mom!  Everything's ok! 

Today was the big benefits festival for campus employees - food, door prizes, give-aways, and lots and lots of wonderful information about the stuff we can get or do or attend.
I manned our department table for an hour, and spent another hour wandering around collecting information (and business cards and seeds and white boards and food, and getting my cholesterol checked).  It's usually a good time, although I missed the popcorn.

Had a really good time at art class last night, but for once I don't have a finished piece to post. I worked up a graphite values sketch first, then got the basic color under painting laid in, and now I will probably need to take it back to class if I'm to have any hope at all of actually finishing it.  Although I may surprise myself and set up a watercolor studio on the drafting table.
A trip to the art supply is definitely in order, though, because everything else being ok to move forward as is, I am running out of paper.

InstaCon 8 is this weekend- it's a Texas con for con-runners, with panels about organizing.  Various concoms around the state get together to talk about solutions and troubleshooting.  I'm a panelist and also hope to get some good stuff from a few other presentations.  It's a small con pretty much by definition, and thrown together last-minute (as the name implies) but I'm looking forward to it!

It's going to be May very soon, and that's good because Yay NYC trip! but it's also bad because OMG one month closer to July when we're launching (we hope) the new site at work. Eeek. Man, I am going to be like a total crazy person at Azkatraz if we pull this off, I will just be so happy!  Or else I'll be totally stressed but determined to still have a good time.  Whee.

Apartment still a big mess.  Haven't opened the right box to find tarot cards. Really need to figure out shelving situation soon. And maybe chair situation.
Have big plans, but right now they sure seem far away.
Still need to work on stress management. Considering a meditation class.
And good grief, I really need to go for acupuncture.

Ok, gonna go draw or something.

My book is depressing me. I was so hopeful, but it's just not working for me.
Chatter below the cut about The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson.

( my Gchat tag was  )
Alas, right?  I'm going to try to finish it anyway but good lord it's grinding.

Ok, I've never seen the show (that whole not watching much TV thing again) but I have heard so much about it both in person and over the internet, that I feel I understand the basic issue. 

And it's not as if Donna and I haven't been dissecting popular movies by their racially-telling casting decisions for years - she really made me think in ways that previously only my mom did, about what we see in mass media.
Anyway. The casting for the Avatar: The Last Airbender is an example of ridiculous white-washing the likes of which I haven't seen since the farce that was SCIFI's Earthsea. Fans are protesting in many ways, one of which is the website and petition below.

I signed the petition at racebending.com.  You can, too.
More info about the petition, including the letter to Paramount in full.


SIGN THE PETITION


(Links via glockgal)

Happy Pi Day!

Last night I went to see Jonathan Coulton with Paul & Storm, of whom I had never really heard before last summer, nor ever seen perform, whether on youtube or live.  It was a really fantastic performance with lots of humor and audience interaction. Paul and Storm's opening show had me falling over laughing. Jonathan broke a string on his guitar in the first song, then later discovered his mouth harp was in the frame backwards. It being Friday the 13th, he joked, of course things went a bit awry. But none of that really interfered with the show, or the music. I could have done without the hair-flinging, loud-singing guy sitting one row down from me, but every concert-goer has crosses to bear, and as concerts go a hair-flinging, loud-singing obnoxious dude is better than drunken groping or being fallen on.
At one point near the end the entire balcony was doing Thriller-type zombie gesturing from their seats while shouting "All we want to do is eat your brains." Yeah. Nerds in groups. I should have taken photos. (The few I did take will be posted later, mostly of House of Blues itself.)
I went out with a party of six folks from the Houston SFF community, all active con-goers or organizers. We had dinner first with a few of them, then met at House of Blues downtown, where there were a bunch of other local nerds that folks in my party knew.  We ended up with seating right near each other in the balcony, oddly enough.
After the concert, we all went to a diner/coffeehouse on Westheimer and had food and drink and conversation until after midnight.  I did not get back to my car (I'd been ridesharing to avoid the downtown/midtown parking crunch) until 1:30 am. 
I haven't had a night out like that in quite some time, so it was pretty awesome.

Today I woke up at an ungodly hour to take care of my unruly stomach (it's pretty much a clockwork alarm all on its own - 6:25 am it wakes me without fail, just before my alarm.  I nibbled on a rice cracker and some orange juice and chatted with mom for a few minutes, then crashed again. I got up for real at about 11, and looked soberly at the packing I should be doing...  and turned away.
Instead, I cut some batting and the backing fabric for the quilt in progress, pinned it all together and trimmed it, and now I'm working on attaching the border pieces to the front before getting in there with the machine quilting.
Ideally I would like to have this finished in time to take it to New York at the end of April and present it to the recipients in person. I may not finish it before I move, but I'll definitely try to get as much done as possible before then, and keep the pieces in a separate box so I can find them pronto in the new place.

I just finished giving the kitchen floor a sweep and clean and mop, so I'm taking a sit-down break in front of a fan to type this up. My only minor angst today is that I really wanted to watch Ghostbusters while I did my sewing but I couldn't find the DVD.  I am pretty sure that I actually bought my own copy, but I could be mistaken. (Sorting out my stuff from the family stuff will be such fun!)  I put on The Last Unicorn  with Real Genius in the bullpen instead. 

Ok, and Dad just told me a joke he heard on Prairie Home Companion and I didn't know enough about music to get the pun in the punchline without clarification. FAIL.  :P   He needs to tell it to Peter.

SF Signal: Interview: James Morrow on 'Shambling Towards Hiroshima'

I love James Morrow, and have been reading many interviews about his new book coming across my feed lately. I figure I'd link to one, so other folks can hear more about his latest book.
Granted, I have Godzilla on the brain a bit, but still, it's fascinating to see the real social commentary that emerges from a study of 1950s atomic horror SF and the contrasting wacko stuff that came out of the nuclear-apocalypse 80s.  (Red Dawn, anyone?)

Also, I have never seen the 1954 Gojira.  Is it hard to find? I shall have to check my libraries.

A Joyous Imbolc to all - may good things grow from here.

I fail at weekend productivity, mostly.  Although with the assistance of Fabric-Stash Enabler Mom, I did acquire some smokin' awesome additions to my stash (and the things I actually needed for my current project) during a trek through Houston's southeastern neighborhood fabric stores.  We should learn that in most cases, we will find fun novelty fabrics at the chains, but for quality color/value cottons, going directly to The Painted Pony would save some time and money.  ;)
The only thing we didn't find was the Hoffman Challenge fabric. It's on some of the online retailers, but not yet in stores around here. We'll wait a bit and check back.

We also went to the uber-awesome catfish joint and scored a party platter overflowing with hushpuppies. WIN.

I did not actually get the fabric washed, although that's probably good as now it has bonus cat hair to wash off, too. Apparently my quilting table is Zephyr's new favorite nap spot.

Suffered through the Sunday blahs and Sunday night insomnia, which really made for a grand morning today.  Ugh.  Did manage to get my iTunes playlists transferred to Sofia at last, and got rid of most of the repetitive entries in the Library. Also acquired hotel accomodations for both ApolloCon and WorldCon. w00t!

Did some art, including laying in colors for the commission portrait for llnm. Finally. It'll take several more color layers to get it done, and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the chosen palette, but the nice thing about digital is that I have a great amount of control over individual colors. Did not do any writing.  Did a lot of reading, both of the fanfic and regular variety. I finished Skulduggery Pleasant (hey! It has a sequel!) and have gotten firmly addicted to The Stepsister Scheme.

Lalala. I think that was it. I got the feeling there was some kind of nation-wide sports event going on, but it never really got onto my radar. I will probably catch up on the cool movie trailers over the course of the next few days.

Title: Clockwork Engineer
Artist: zephre
Rating: G
Characters: Sofia Aguilar y de la Vega and her sidekick, Arnold
Fandom: Original
Summary: Sofia takes a break from her work.
Notes: This is vermilionsun's fault. We were discussing the name "Sofia" as one that evoked beauty, grace, and poise, and I said that I had to draw a steampunkish greasemonkey named Sofia now. So here she is!



( full image under cut )

After yesterday's disturbing and important subject matter, we shift now to utterly frivolous science fiction and fantasy geekitude.
Yesterday I got a package in the mail - a used VHS edition of the virtually-unknown TV pilot movie called White Dwarf.  (Apparently the only available DVD edition is a very rare and expensive Region 2 edition.)
I watched it before Rachel came on last night, and it was totally awesome, in that awful way that TV pilots are. The story is short but jam-packed with bizarre and wonderful characters, on a world that is more fantasy than science fiction for all that it's on a planet light-years from Earth where young New York doctors come to intern with the local healer.  The 31st century is kind of regressive, and the planet has the ridiculous premise that one side is always dark, the other always light. The two sides are separated by a wall, and the weather is controlled by strange alien devices floating in the sky.
The light side is a sort of Wild West frontierland, while the dark is Renaissance Faire chic. 
Anyway, it's great. I was terribly excited to finally get a decent copy (we had an ancient home recording off the TV, but it's long been lost among the collected detritus of M*A*S*H episodes and other movies stored on unlabeled or mislabeled tapes.) and it wasn't nearly as awful to sit through as I thought it would be.
It makes me wonder what a comic book writer or animator might make of the story and the world, if they were to revisit it now.

Hooray!
It was a fun and wonderful and moving weekend, even though Tropical Storm Hanna got the reception just a bit wet.  Behold, more photos beneath the cut:
( Read more... )


Also, apropos of nothing but my frustration with the batch editor in Flickr and my own dorkitude, it sucks to have your camera set to the wrong year for something like this.  :P

Mom has declared that if there is no baseball involved, then the science fiction can't be spiritual, so that list we were talking about earlier? Totally wrong. Except Sisko, of course. And Babylon 5, thank goodness.

In other news, we watched the first part of the season finale of Doctor Who (because we are Luddites who wait for it to show on SciFi, and wonder of wonders I have managed to stay largely unspoiled thanks to LJ-cuts) and... wow. Want next part.

[Beware - random rambling and completely tangential ranting! Seriously, why do I blather about something so ridiculous?]

So, beliefnet has put up a "Top Ten Greatest Spiritual Figures in Science Fiction" without putting in any sort of disclaimer that they are actually only referencing filmed science fiction, as in movies or TV.

Leaving aside for the moment (with effort) the fact that they're cutting themselves off at the knees to ignore written science fiction, they also seem to have a focus on benevolence and/or destiny that I suppose is just expected over at happy beliefnet land. Too few of their choices struggle, doubt, or encounter complex or negative consequences to their devotion. Isn't it a bit annoying to see that time after time the person with the "destiny" or the person with the blind and devoted faith end up being right/redeemed/saved/lauded/saving the world?

I'm not saying that saving the world is a bad thing, or that saving the world as a spiritual character is bad. I love a world-saving spiritual figure as much as the next person, as long as I don't have to start worshiping them, too. 

Or maybe I am just bitter because of the omissions on the list in favor of choices that seem like pandering to the mainstream pop culture? (Come on, David from A.I.? Really? John Connor in the Top Ten? And whatsisname preacher man from Contact? OMG, read the book! I didn't like the way the movie spun that sub-plot at all. Although of course now I can't actually remember everything that happened. Hm. Well, when has that ever stopped me from going on a tear?)

I'm not sure I like the language that seems to indicate that faith is always a good and benevolent force in society or in science fiction, especially when it works in tandem with science. Faith is just as much a hallmark of the villain, or the ambiguous figures, and some of the most interesting antagonists in any genre are those who are not evil, simply opposed to the goal of the protagonist. Where are the characters whose spiritual growth comes from having their faith questioned or destroyed and having to rebuild themselves and their worldview from the ground up? (Keeping in mind that I don't watch Lost and haven't seen enough Battlestar Galactica to know about those two characters. Perhaps they redeem the whole list.)

Lisa suggested that I make my own Top Ten. Hmmm. That's actually really hard. I would probably have to do a very serious definition of my idea of a great spiritual character so that I myself would know whether or not to put, say, Indiana Jones or Lt. Cmdr. Data on it. I could probably do a whole list of spiritual characters from just Babylon 5. I think I'd have to decide whether, like beliefnet, a spiritual character needs to have a defined system of belief, or if it is enough for them to simply exist in a way that was spiritually fulfilling/morally consistent/involved some fundamental spiritual change or re-evaluation during the course of the character's story that brings greater fulfilment and inspiration to the audience.

I don't think Yoda would make my Top Ten.

I think too much.
 
Oh, well.