Saturday was very pleasantly spent with sazabhadri and edm, both giving me cups of tea so that I didn’t have to go back to my icy house for a bit longer. Sunday, I stayed at home, mostly, curled up by the wood stove beside my cat. We jockeyed for the best, right-in-front-of-the-fire spot. Pleasant, but I’ve been doing that for the past two months. I am ready for the willows and kowhai to turn yellow, for the songbirds to come back, to leave the house and not be shocked by the damp, penetrating cold.

Work is having a moment. I’m trying hard to master more of the theory behind the microwave radios that make your mobile phone and your wireless work. As far as the information superhighway goes, it’s about laying down the asphalt and arranging for drainage, not designing the sexy sports cars. Not sexy geek stuff, but it is geek stuff. It’s all math, physics, and acronyms, and I’ve never been stellar at any of that, so I am feeling stupid the week before my performance review.

The potter for Lord of the Rings, Mirek Smisek, is having an exhibition of his work at Mahara Gallery in Waikanae. It's on until August 16th. It's free and there's an exhibit catalog for sale.

On studio visits, I've bought items from him as gifts for some of my fandom friends. Here's a cute page with some Mirek photos, though not his delightful pottery - and yes, Mirek is quite the ladies' man. Isn't that right, ithilwen?

Yesterday was such a sweet day. In mid-afternoon one of my co-workers asked me if I wanted to join her on her break for some hooping! She's very, very good and able to do all sorts of smooth hooping moves, while I klutzed around with her hoop a bit. She's going to help me get a hoop of my own.

After this, my boss asked me if there were any new projects I wanted to do or take on. This was hugely refreshing, after several months of projects that made me feel like a square peg in a round hole. I'm going to be working on some scripts and planning for some installation videos.

Then, in the evening, I was giving a friend a ride downtown, and we stopped at her house. As she went to get changed, she thrust a book in my hands. It was Burlesque and The Art of the Teese, a delightful sugary birthday cake of a book. Huge, full of unique ravishing photos, and...no ghostwriter is credited, but either a ghostwriter or a heavy-handed editor was at work. I would have thought Dita's writing, her own voice, would be sharper. Anyway, it was a treat to be able to take an extended look at this.

Plus I got to chill for a bit with mundens, I get to see edm tomorrow, and I get to have more Mexican food at the new place on Friday. Life is good.

I have discovered via the Aethernet that Melbourne is trying to become the Steampunk Capital of the World. An alluring concept, a worthy goal, and a strong contender.
In its favor, Melbourne has appealing quantities of way cool people and makers. It also features extensive, character-bestowing Victorian/Edwardian residential/business architecture. Then there are the undeniable advantages that it is closer to me than any other potential location, and that it has Worldcon coming up in 2010. Perhaps this overcomes its lack of 18th/19th/early 20th industrial/scientific infrastructure.

It can be argued that London, or some Rust Belt places, properly deserve the crown. Cambridge, after my visit there last January, is also a strong contender, based on the delicious Whipple Museum paired with its outlying technology parks.

Incidentally, the week before Worldcon, New Zealand's main science fiction convention is taking place in Wellington. So if you are thinking of coming to NZ in 2010 - and I know at least two readers of this LJ who are - think about these cons when you make your plans.

Went to see Starlight Express, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, with some people from work last night. The first act appalled me with its sexism, bullying, and homophobia (the Red Caboose was fawningly fey). The second act managed to be even worse, adding more homophobia and evangelical overtones to the mix. And this was a musical??? I had no idea Andrew Lloyd Webber was so conservative.

I gained much more pleasure from the sound and light spectacle that is the transformed makeup area at our local department store, Kirkcaldie and Stains'. ( Cut for those uninterested in global vs. local shopping, makeup or marketing. )

Today I went to a new Mexican restaurant in Lower Hutt. On Daly Street. Called Las Margaritas. And it's...well, I liked it, they make their own tortilla chips, the owners are Central American, and they have huevos rancheros under $10, so I think I'm going to become a regular. No web site yet - and I had a chat to them about that, believe you me.

Frank Pepe's pizzeria is opening an outlet in the Mohegan Sun casino! I haven't lived in New Haven for 20 years and I'm still vaguely outraged. It's statements like "Special places like Frank Pepe's and Mohegan Sun were made for each other" that make me simmer. OTOH, if they can open there, they can open anywhere, and the rents on Daly Street are really cheap.

Been busy, but somehow I'm not feeling very chatty about it. Go figure. A mental hibernation, almost: it's a flat dull rainy winter week here. Tonight I'll stay home, make soup, and get The Novel ready to go out again tomorrow.

An article about non-drinkers in NZ. It takes until page 2 to talk about the non-drinking part!

I’m staring down the barrel of redoing Ansereg, which is currently a big flat messy heavy-text site, in Drupal. I've got a reasonable grasp of CSS. Anyone have any pros or cons?

My naughty uncle in the UK just sent me 15 Michael Jackson jokes of great impropriety. I think this the universe trying to balance itself for the quote I just saw on the NY Times web site describing him as the "Mozart of our century."

Someone on my Friends list just posted asking about Facebook: yea or nay. I posted back an enthusiastic "Yea!", but then I remembered my peroidic cringing at my uncle's choice of Facebook use. He takes all the naughtiest tests, posts when he's intoxicated (which isn't very often), and in general acts like he should be on MySpace instead. My uncle is 57. So...if you have a naughty uncle...and are prone to rolling your eyes...perhaps wait on Facebook.

My mother has declared that she will never join Facebook, or any other social network, and that she finds it sinister to have information about yourself on the Internet. To emphasize her point, she then described my real-name Google results to me.

My bedroom repaint is complete! The walls are no longer a strange mushroom grey; now they are a warm-toast taupe. I did a damn fine job. Next up: the rest of the house.

Last night was the first night that I slept in the room. After painting and cleaning, it's so immaculate that it was disconcerting, more like a hotel room than "my" room. Where were the dustbunnies? I lay in bed (freshly made, adding to the hotel feeling) with a book loaned to me by seraphs_folly, alternating between reading and admiring the warm play of light and shadow on the walls.

I'm a lucky girl!

After a pleasantly busy weekend, the project of the week is: repainting my bedroom. I genuinely love painting - it's fun to make such a difference to something so immediately. It's a great renewing thing for this time of year, the Kiwi winter Solstice and its follow-on New Year's period of Matariki.

At the same time, my house is a yawning pit of chaos, and I can't wait until the job is done and everything is back in its place. Yesterday afternoon a neighbor knocked on my door and I talked to her through a window - a good thing, too. I went out into the hallway and realized that every book about sex I own is stacked up by the front door, by the open drawers of my bedside tables, and their (ahem) contents.

Doing a test run with some makeup for a night of Motown music tomorrow night - the cover charge is reduced if you show up looking like a "soul kitten", and I have an early-60s wiggle dress in my vintage collection, but it cries out for maquillage. Five pounds of it.

Having applied liquid eyeliner for the first time in my life, put my hair up with a spot of back-combing, and donned some boots with the dress, I stared in the mirror and jumped. I LOOK LIKE MY MOM. So, so like my mom.

Mom raised hell in London in the '60s.

Corporate week still in progress – the only real news I've got is that I've been enjoying some dinners in excellent company, in between international phone meetings. Some of them start at 8 AM, some of them start at 8:30 PM, and this is going on tomorrow and Friday too. I'm missing the Guillermo de Toro appearance at Weta tonight because I'm getting a free massage. Can't wait...have some links!

The Choconomicon - H.P. Lovecraft chocolates.

Modernist ship camoflauge.

Sheets of great fabulosity, made in New Zealand.

Hey, fellow Silmarillion fans - there's an Akallabêth in August challenge going.

I'm home and cramming half a weekend's worth of housework into one evening. Because I had been unexpectedly trapped in Auckland 24 hours longer than I expected, the first thing was giving poor frog Gwen her burial. I toyed with a Viking funeral, or a "burial at sea" in a nearby stream, but went with the calla lily root interment option.

One of my colleagues, trapped in Auckland with me, had some very old and good friends there. "Basically I can show up on their doorstep in a chicken suit and it would be fine!" he said, so bringing me along to be billeted in a spare room was no problem. After living in Auckland for 7 years, it was very odd to be there again for an evening, catapulted into the kind of life I used to look at from the outside. I was inside one of those huge grand Arts and Crafts villas, slightly underfurnished like many NZ houses, but tastefully so, quarter-sawn oak antiques accented by modern 70s art. There was a small, refined party going on - three matched couples, all the women model-tall and model-slim into their late fifties, wearing thin expensive merino knits, perfectly done short hair, magnificent manners brought over by their grandmothers from the Old Country. If they weren't really interested in me, they did a great job of faking it over the vintage teacups.

I felt more at ease the next morning with the gentleman of the house, whose specialty is helping food-producing businesses grow and expand. His latest passion and success is his work with a Georgian cheesemaker, Colchis Cheese. Proudly, he took a wheel of sulguni from his fridge. It was almost my ideal cheese. I like a fresh cheese, slightly stringy, light and feathery on the palate - my favorites are fresh mozzarellas, the fior di latte type, pulled just that morning, and delicate new goat cheeses. This had the same appeal.

Now, my stove is full of food roasting to become lunches this week, and my ironing board glares at me impatiently beneath its burden of clothes. Back to the grindstone.

Current state of travel odyssey; spent night in colleague's friends' Arts and Crafts villa in Auckland, was given shrimp-lemon pasta for dinner and flannel jammies to sleep in, provided hosts with Auckland's best bagels for breakfast, am at airport about to get on very crowded flight home.

At least I have Wild Wheat bagels. This is some consolation.

Oh my God I am stranded in Auckland tonight due to fog. I don't know where I'm staying - am at the airport. All I want is a quesadilla and a place to sleep!

Am handling this well under the circumstances. Returning to beloved Wellington tomorrow around 1 PM. Cat has food in her bowl.

Also, my cellphone has just run out of battery power. edm if I can't contact you otherwise this is me cancelling for tomorrow afternoon. sorry!!!

I am gazing down the barrel of a pretty solid week of Corporate Stuff. This includes Saturday. If I get through it successfully, I will be able to work with cutting-edge tools for the next five years and put Nice Things on a future CV. By next Friday I'll know if this was successful. I'm not so sure about today's efforts, which included a beta-version videoconference. I looked like a smug bulldog on camera and my presentation slides became invisible halfway through.

Then I came home and found that poor Gwen, the frog I am taking care of, had died. In my care! There will be a ceremonial burial beneath a calla lily tomorrow.

I have acquired new place mats for my dining room. Their vivid green, pink, and purple stripes go much better with the new dinosaur art.

Saturday night there was a delightful impromptu party. Faced with the dismal prospect of trying to find something treat-like from my local grocery store, I braved the kitchen and baked for the first time in eons. And the cake turned out really well! I feel like I have some mojo back.

On Sunday, edm and I saw the transman documentary film Boy I Am. I'd gone to this intending to Support My Trans Friends and encourage the film festival to continue such programming, and to see what had happened to the FTM scene since the time in the mid-90s when I was involved with several FTM friends and related debates. The answer is: not much. The film out and out said that the mid-90s was the revolutionary period for that subculture. They were still quoting Hanne Blank and Jack Halberstam. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's a bit sobering thinking that I was there for such a seminal (testosteronal?) moment in history.

The honeymoon is over with my professional group volunteering, and the next meeting is going to be a political lulu. Needs to be done, though.

Today my thoughts are with the super-busy raqs, hoping that Saturday is the FABULOUS day she and SK deserve. And with a friend of mine, Christiana. On Tuesday night she was stung by a bristle worm in her saltwater fish tank. By Wednesday the tiny sting was an open suppurating wound, and on Thursday she went to the emergency room. She's got stitches now and is on antibiotics, and her immune system isn't happy overall.

1) Leave warm cozy firelit living room. Utter three expletives about bitter cold in rest of house.
2) Check out Metlink weather and laugh at their optimistic view of Wellington's night temperature.
3) Wrap self up in fake leopard print throw like Ty of the Jungle.
4) Dash into bedroom, bathroom, turn on space heaters in advance of shifting night-time center of operations.
5) Return to living room and its caressing warmth.
6) Flee living room for tolerably warm bathroom.
7) Take a hot bath.
8) Don flannel PJs.
9) Shut down bathroom heater, open LR door to allow heat to spread.
10) Fling self into bed while still toasty from bath.
11) Rise from bed and shut bedroom door after cat joins me in bed.
12) Gauge overall temperature by cat's snuggle closeness. Tonight, she will try to burrow above my pancreas, it's that cold.

My novel is now on Rejection #3. However, it's the kind of rejection that people who aren't in publishing seem to expect novel submitters to get - full of specific feedback and encouragement. I thought rejections like this were out of style. It comes at about the same time that I'm finishing the "Obama rewrite", and just after I got scads of enthusiasm about the rewrite from a new beta reader, a well-traveled friend in the States.

So it's off to the post office again next Monday for submissions #4 and #5...