 |

 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
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.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |


 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
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.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |









 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
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.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |






 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
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.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |