収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

So on Wednesday we were getting pretty worried - Snowpocalypse wasn't letting up, more snow was predicted Thursday morning, and one person had already dropped out from our invitation list, and large leftovers looked likely as I was baking for Second Thanksgiving.

But to my surprise, Snowpocalypse actually boosted our attendance quite a bit, as people had to bail on other plans thanks to travel plans being disrupted. We ended up with 16 people, counting ourselves, and we have far fewer leftovers than usual. (I figured out something with my stuffing - now that I'm using a lot more dried fruit I can cut back down on the spices, and I tried that this year, and it worked really well.) But I'll still have my Turkey Tacos. ^_^

A lot less Rock Band was played than usual, but we did squeeze in some traditional Jenga. Mostly, it was large enough that we had three or four conversational groups going at once, which I like to see, since it usually means everybody's having a good time. For the first time in I don't know how long, the music circle actually happened - we had a decently large circle going for a while, made up mostly of various members of jamming groups mostly associated with Anna. I think the lineup was me, cflute, mamishka, Anna, and if I forget anybody, I apologisetechnoshaman! (Sorry for leaving you out the first time!) We hadn't done that in forever. Most people didn't even start leaving until around midnight - I finally got to bed around 2am.

Then yesterday flashfire and spazzkat and annathepiper and I went to see the Battlestar Galactica exhibit at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and the Harry Potter exhibit at the Pacific Science Centre. (I'm not quite sure how that presentation space works out, but let's leave that aside for now.) Anyway, the BSG exhibit is smallish but there are a few nice models and the full-scale vipers and raider are excellent. The Potter exhibit, particularly early on, triggered lots of nostalgia for prep school dorm life. Particularly the notice board in the Gryffindor common room, and having a common room called a common room, and all that. XD But if you have any interest in this series at all, go. It's huge, and stuffed full of set pieces, furniture, props, costumes, books, and really - it's just great. (And if you're doing both, do the BSG exhibit first, or you'll be disappointed just because it's so much smaller.)

I have a lot of good photos from the BSG exhibit - my quarter-second-to-full-second-handheld photo ability came in handy again - but my Flickr account is full, so NO PHOTOSTREAM FOR ME. Maybe I should pony up for the "pro" level, but I'm so not a pro photographer. XD

I made it! So did Kohaku and Summer and Popcorn and Scar, and all of the stickers! except a corner of one. We're all in Boston! Specifically, in Somerville, hosted by the most excellent Andor, and lyonesse in particular. Now I need to try to make myself go to bed at what for me is stupidly early and in the presence of a giant inflatable scary monkey. But! It is at least dark out, freakish tho' I assure you that is to me at this time of day. ^_^ G'night!

Folklife is really difficult to play - it's so busy that as a street performer at this particular event you more or less need to be either a clown, a loud drummer, or in a large band just to get attention. The noise level is quite high - from all fronts - so even I'm hard to hear.

So I went and found a low-traffic but semi-isolated side path and played there for a while. Money wasn't very good (and I was told by another musician that this was generally true that day but it would improve over the weekend) but I did get people listening, and I even had some sing-along on the chorus of Outbirds, and it was pretty neat when that started happening. And on Popcorn - one of my flutes, not usually the star of this show - and to a lesser degree on Scar (another flute), I was able keep my space when Drum Kit Guy started performing across the way. I handed out a few cards, including one to this guy who was fascinated by Splinter, and who also buys flutes from Romy Benton, who is a much better flutemaker than me.

No performance today. Anna and Paul and I are going to head down there just to attend - I really want to see some of the AYP stuff in particular - and tomorrow I'll play again.

Okay so two weeks ago (almost), I went to see the first concert by Bone Poets Orchestra, held at stealthcello's house cum event space. They're a new band formed by a bunch of the people formerly in Gaia Consort. I had my camera with me, so I took videos of the first performances of the new material.

I uploaded them to YouTube a couple of days later, but one of them literally took over a week to process, and in fact inexplicably disappeared for a little while, and I couldn't re-upload it because my original was on the drive that fell over and died. (I may not even have the videos anymore at all, which would make me sad.) But it finally reappeared, sat for four more days (!) processing, and they're all online now.

Anyway, please have enjoyment from the first-ever Bone Poets Orchestra performances^* of the new songs "Gathering Light," "Spin," and "Belladonna." (Clickie on titles to go to youtube and play.) And also wave to Betsy, who is the awesomely talented cellist on the far left. ^_^

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^*: Yes, I know Gaia Consort performed "Gathering Light" at their last show, but that wasn't Bone Poets Orchestra, that was Gaia Consort.

I ask every year, but: is anyone else interested in going to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show? Dates are February 20-24. Anyone?

I got this bit of zomg from waywind. Click through, it's cool. Also worksafe.

Thanksgiving is over, I'm very, very sleepy. Mostly I think I'm glad fall is over. No, okay, mostly I'm glad annathepiper is out of cancer, even if there's still recurrence-preventing radiation therapy rounds ahead. But other than that, I'm mostly glad this fall is over. It's been a difficult one. There are other things too but I'm too tired for now.

Also, I have more pictures of kittens. But those are for later. G'night and I hope yours was good.

( Memetime )

Pinwheel
This weekend? Ruled. Friday: OLOTEAS (local nondenominational neopagan group) three-day camping event kickoff day, with Tricky Pixie playing; lots of fun, both the event and the concert. Concert picoreview: I like the Tricky Pixie material, Alec's voice is rounding out nicely on the low end, I look forward to seeing the whole band at some point. (They were down one for this show.) Saturday: annathepiper Got A Raise Sushi, then the new Potter flick, which was pleasantly better than expected, which wasn't really difficult given my very low expectations, but regardless, I enjoyed it. Today: Picnic lunch, zoo trip afternoon, Great Big Sea concert in the Woodland Park Zoo's North Meadow stage with various friends and a good Canadian contingent in the audience and eventually a lot of locals blowing off the "no standing please" rule, which I hereby will claim I triggered by high-visibility bolting at the start of Mari-Mac over to the off-to-the-side improvised Vertical Motion pit. Picoreview: Real good crowd for a south-of-the-border show but I should have bolted for the pit sooner, band in good form, the new song off the forthcoming CD rawked. I sang and screamed for two hours and man my voice is tired, but much less so than it would have been before Music 137 last quarter. W00t! Also, I have bruises on my hands from all the clapping.

And finally, this Real Age Calculator says I'm 12, and that I'll live to be 104. (12.2 and 103.8. But rounding.) Yay!

Sunday's miles: 2.2
Monday's miles: 2.5
Tuesday's miles: 3.2
Thursday's miles: 3.4
Friday's miles: 1.0
Saturday's miles: 0.6
Sunday's miles: 4.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1874.7
Miles out of Rivendell: 1417.7
Miles out of Lothlórien: 962.7
Miles past Rauros Falls: 545.8
Miles past Isengard: 78.1
Miles to Minas Tirith (Aragorn's Path): 689.9

Yay, gardening time! February is the beginning of soil prep time for veggie gardening. You can actually plant some stuff now, if you want; in fact, there are a small assortment of things you can go ahead and plant now, particularly if you have a cold frame. But even then, it's better to spend this time prepping your soil, waiting a week or two, doing some more prep, waiting a week or two, then planting in March and April and May. What I did this time was pull off some of the leaves, hoe the partially-decomposed leaves left behind into the soil, and add fish oil and dolomite lime for Ph balance. That'll take a couple of weeks.

If you don't have or don't want to use a cold frame, you're better off waiting until next month for soil prep, unless you want to plant snow peas or another very-early cold-weather crop.

I also did a lot of cleanup in back, giving the new giant loppers a little bit of a workout. They worked great; I've cleared most of the volunteer shoots away from up against the retaining wall, and our apple and pear trees should get a bit more light this year. Plus, I peeled back all the #*@&$(!!! english ivy again. So that's all for the good.

Meanwhile, it's almost time for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, downtown at the convention centre! I always go. Anybody wanna meet up down there and/or go with?

[Poll #924990]

Oh, and since I'm posting: we went out tonight with a few people and saw Pan's Labyrinth, which, while dark, was actually less dark than I expected. It's a well made movie, to be sure, but the mythological half of the movie rather disappointed, leaving me feeling rather too much like I'd been handed a paint-by-numbers kit. There were places it could have gone which would have been more interesting - to me, anyway - but it didn't happen, so I was sad. And the portion set in Spain pulled a punch or two that I wouldn't have pulled at the end. Still, I enjoyed the interplay between the two sets of structures and rather liked how those parallel parts played against each other, so that was nice, and I liked the sets and the performances, so that's all for the good.

Mmm, sleepy now. Vote in my poll!

In what the fuck? news, police tazered (and, unfortunately, killed despite best efforts not to) a bear two blocks north of my old house in the U. District. On Boulevard, which is not, despite the PI's idiocy, part of Fraternity Row. What. The. Fuck. ETA: CNN.com's front page has a link to video. That hill that Officer Friendly is running down is NE 55th street, headed towards 20th Avenue NE. And yes, I recognised a few of those cops.

In other news, annathepiper and I went to the U. District Streetfair today and I did a three-hour stint collecting signatures for Initiative 937. The goal is 60 signatures per volunteer today; I got 110-112, depending upon whether ditto marks are valid - I was telling people not to do it, that they had to write it out, but not everyone listened and two people got away before I could check, the bastards. Regardless, that was pretty good, and they said I might end up volunteer leader today, which would roxx0r. Anyway, now they're trying to get me to sign up for a stint at Folklife, and I might do that one day. I also saw mamishka briefly, who seemed in a really good mood, and I told her were Anna was hanging out waiting for me to get done with signatures, but they didn't meet up.

Monday-Wednesday's tokens: 0.3 miles
Thursday's miles: 2.8
Friday's token: 0.2 miles
Saturday's miles: 9.7
Sunday's miles: 25.7
Miles out of Hobbiton: 860.1
Miles out of Rivendell: 400.3
Miles to Lothlórien: 66.1

(We biked down and biked back and also did a lot of fair wandering.)

Anyway, after the signature thing, we met up with Danny (who has no LJ) and ate lunch, then wandered around looking at stuff and talking. I bought our annual supply of soap, and I also got a lab coat and goggles for chemistry, and I ordered a hat, so I'll have one that doesn't belong to Anna. It's not actually like the ones I usually wear but the one that didn't fit (because it was too small) but was the same type looked pretty good. Anna looked at some necklaces but didn't buy any - she just took the name for later reference. She did buy a cell phone, tho', which should make looking for work easier between contracts. We looked at this one booth selling home-made violins and mandolins. (They weren't very good. But it did make a tone, and for a $100 violin, that's about all you can expect. We joked about buying one so you could smash it on stage after a performance, like in Guitar Hero.)

So yeah, we had a good time. It's the first Streetfair in a while where I've really wanted to do more of it than I did, despite being there all day. So that's neat. spazzkat says I'm pretty red from all the standing in the sun. My throat is a mess from going "Hello! Sign to support renewable energy in Washington State?" for three+ hours. And I'm very, very tired. But in a good way. It was fun.


Cherry Blossoms

First 10 minutes:

Slow-mo count: 8
Screenwipes: 5
Flashbacks: 1
Screams of NOOOOOOO!: 2
Level camera shots: 0

It's gonna be a loooooooong movie.