Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

Hi!

I'm back from WorldCon! I blogged about it yesterday on my blogspot blog. I have 2 more posts to make on the experience, and I'll link all 3 later.

So, my taijiquan school hosted a pair of masters from China (one is Chinese, the other is English, but she lives in Shanghai and translates for him). One of my kung fu brothers studied with them while he was in China, so he organized the thing. (Master Wang and Master Rose were traveling in the UK, then Canada, then here.)

It was cool. There was a lot of lecture and some practice, but I learned a couple new ways of looking at things for push hands.

They had a little flyer for a camp they're doing the end of next November in Shanghai. Tuition is $2400 (for 9 days of training and some sightseeing, including room and board). Airfare will probably be around $1200, then there's the matter of a visa (fees, idk, $150?) So, like, close to $4000 all told. I don't have that sort of money.

Of course, I also have health issues, and I don't know how much sleep I'd be able to get. Breakfast is at 7, and there's classes until 9:30 (with multiple rest periods, so I could nap then maybe). Then there's the thing where I don't eat meat and I can't have caffeine. In Japan, I got by with telling people "Buddhist vegetarian," since to them no meat means there may be fish or pork or chicken in it :/ (The term is shokudou ryouri.) I don't know if they can accommodate that.

I do have contact information, and I can ask Master Rose these questions. The low sleep triggers migraines thing kind of sucks. I also like being able to eat.

So anyway. If they can accommodate my food restrictions and health issues, I'd probably try to find a way to get four grand. A friend of mine had success with indiegogo for tuition for a prestigious Shakespeare school; I don't know if I know enough people who'd do that to help (or what goodies I could award). I could probably ask Dr Jay if he could spread the word throughout the school or help me fundraise somehow.

But Ben was like "I wanna go too," not that he'd train; there's an option for going as a partner for $1600 (plus airfare). :P So then it's more like $7000. Gah.

I dunno, what do y'all think?

Wednesday morning, I drove up to Maryland for Thanksgiving. I stayed with my grandparents for multiple reasons: 1) my mom's guest bed is dreadfully uncomfortable, 2) her house is smoky and gives me migraines, 3) Grandpa's 87 and Grandma's 82.

They live in a retirement/assisted living apartment complex. They're in one of the retirement buildings. If they need to, they can move into the more assisted sections of the facility. They've been there 13 years, and they love it. Their apartment is cute, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, living/dining room, tiny kitchen (there's a cafeteria on site).

Anyway, the drive up Wednesday was fine, if windy and periodically cloudy. I discovered that popping my sunroof decreases the sideways motion when the wind comes up hard. I didn't hit any traffic until Fredericksburg, though it persisted the whole way to 270. 495 wasn't as bad as 95. I got to NoVa around 2:30 or 3, then I made it to my grandparents' around 4:30. So a tad over 7 hours including 3 stops.

We went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner, then I showed them all my travel photos. We started with last summer's European vacation, then I paged quickly through the Berlin Xmas trip and Japan. Grandma said I travel a lot. As often as possible!

She gave me a bunch of stuff from Bath & Body Works, which always has a perfumey smell to it. Ah well. I also got socks. Grandma likes putting together little bags for us, and they've usually got shower stuff, socks, jewelry, etc in them. So I said, "yay, socks!" and she asked if I wanted more. She apparently just buys socks at the store when she sees them, and she sticks them in a drawer to either give to people or replace her socks when they wear out. So, anyway, I ended up with a dozen new pairs of cute socks. She also gave me a fleece vest, a sweater, and a velvety hoodie. And a copy of The Kite Runner. And a brooch that was her aunt's.

I also ended up with 2 bags of Nestle chips (1 milk, 1 semi-sweet) and a slice each of cranberry and chocolate pecan pie. (Let me tell you, chocolate pecan pie is fucking AMAZING. I bet it would be awesome with hazelnuts instead. Nutella pie? Hell yes.) Every year at Thanksgiving, Grandpa makes three pies: one either pumpkin or pecan, and two cranberry pies. He takes the pumpkin/pecan and one cranberry to mom's for dinner, and the other cranberry he eats for breakfast for the next week. Mom will eat the leftover cranberry pie for breakfast, too.

Thursday morning before we drove out to mom's, I sat with my laptop and wrote some more of my spy story. It's up to 2000 words, and I just finished the second entry (the one that was partway through in the last locked post). I'll see about doing more on that tomorrow. Today I've been catching up on teh intarwebs and doing laundry. Tomorrow I need to clean the bathroom, but that won't take all day.

I took mom most of a jar of sauerkraut from the farmers market. It's really nice, fairly mild stuff. Ben & I can always buy another jar, and I want to try it with caraway. Because I bet that would make it more awesome. Mom enjoyed it, and so did the grandparents. For years, I thought I was a bad German because I hated sauerkraut. As it turns out, I just hate the kind of sauerkraut that comes from bags in the supermarket.

My grandfather grew up in a German immigrant community in Pennsylvania. His father, who was born in Silesia (now Poland), had a friend whose house they'd go to that always smelled funky. They made their own sauerkraut in their basement.

So mom, G&G, my sister, and I all hung out at mom's for a while. Bin brought a quiche and some veggies for roasting (squash, beets, potatoes, carrots), I brought stuff for the sweet potato casserole which went over so well with Ben's folks last year (and equally well with mine this year; I xeroxed the recipe for Gram), and mom had everything else (except Gramps' pies). "Everything else" was a turkey, corn, green beans, rolls, cornbread stuffing, appetizers, and gravy. The only things I couldn't eat were the turkey and gravy (made with beef fat). Mom actually read the labels on the stuffing packages and determined that the Pepperidge Farms one was OK, but the Stove Top one had chicken something in it. Go mom? She just didn't read the gravy closely enough. (Which is fine; I'm not big on gravy as it is.)

We ate a bunch of food; everyone loved the potatoes. We sat around and talked while waiting for there to be room for dessert. All of us but mom talked politics and world news; thankfully no one there is knee-jerk Republican. Let me assure you that discussing things with my family is less stressful than with Ben's dad, because they don't treat living room conversations like they're Socratic inquisitions.

The grandparents are registered independent, which in MD (and NC) means you can vote in either primary. They think the current crop of GOP presidential candidates are really out there. I have no idea how I got to be the way I am--engaged with politics, interested in knowing about the world and seeing the world--growing up with my mother. She's completely uninterested in current events, news, politics, or traveling. I can't imagine being so completely isolated and insulated.

After dinner, grandma brought out this envelope from the Maryland Anatomy Board and asked if we had any objections to them donating their bodies to science. I think that's pretty awesome, even if it's a somewhat morbid Thanksgiving dinner topic.

Grandpa drove us back to their place, which was a little scary. (I mentioned that he's 87, right?) We talked a bit more before getting more sleep.

Friday morning, Grandpa made scrambled eggs, and I put mine on toast because I like them that way, dammit. We talked a bit more before I had to leave. I only hit a little traffic on 495 in Virginia, near the Woodbridge/Manassas exit. I left a little after 9 and pulled into my garage at 2:30, including 2 or 3 stops. Not hitting NoVa traffic makes a big difference. (Well, on the way up, there was more traffic on 27, and more cars at the stop lights, and I hit very little traffic on 27 on the way back.)

It was a lot of driving for a short trip, but, like going up for the 4th of July party, it was worth it. I'm not really close to my family as a whole, but Gram and Grampa have always been there. They're the reason I had clothes in high school.

If we had functional mass transit in this country, I'd go up more often.

- call grandparents about what we're doing for dinner tomorrow
- email mom about more planning stuff
- pack [clothes picked out, toiletries not ready yet; don't forget phone charger]
- email vet re Isis' blood sugar
- bake sweet potatoes & get 2 cups mashed to take up [start at 4:30 so only have to heat oven once]
- make gingersnap crumb topping
- make next/final attempt at alternate history spy story
- writers group @ 7
- get directions to grandparents' house

I think that's everything I need to do today... I've got all the refrigerated stuff I need to take up sorted in the fridge, and I'll put it in a cooler in the morning.

I'm not really looking forward to a 6-hour drive by myself tomorrow (and another on Friday), but my grandparents aren't getting any younger.

I actually got back Tuesday night, but the prospect of wading through a week's worth of RSS feeds and flist was daunting, so I played Gundam instead. Then yesterday I caught up on the reading part and played Gundam. Today I'm actually updating this thing then playing Gundam.
( this is long )
The Amtrak adventure, like the road trip adventure, is not one I'm looking to repeat. As much as I resent security theater and distrust the calibration of the pornoscanners (and their safety), flying takes a mere 2-3 hours (plus travel to & from the airport), and can be done on the same day. 16 hours each way is inefficient. If we had modern train service, real high-speed service like in Europe, the Durham-DC route would be 2 hours (per the Economist article I linked months ago), and DC-Boston 3, with the price to match, no doubt. (So flying would still probably be less expensive and shorter, but not by a significant amount once you factor in travel to & from the airport.) It was nice to see my sister, since I don't get to very often, but even so.

Next year should be fun!

I survived both sleeping at my mom's house (barely) and the, uh, first cousins once removed? Second cousins? idk, how does that work?

I never sleep well at my mom's. Her guest mattress is old and saggy, and the pillows are full of residual cigarette smoke, like all of her furniture. It's filthy and disgusting. And, of course, one of my migraine triggers! Isn't that great! So I'm trying to sleep in an uncomfortable bed with my face pressed into cigarette smoke, which makes my sinuses swell, makes me cough, and makes me produce so much phlegm that I almost choke myself on it.

Add into that the fact that her alarm system is broken and beeps LOUDLY every 4 hours, which means it went off at 1 am and 5 am. And I've suffered from insomnia since I was about 4. If I wake up, I can't get back to sleep. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes I don't get back to sleep at all.

So I got maybe 5 hours of sleep Saturday night, and they weren't restful at all. Sunday I was fairly OK, and I slept pretty well at my aunt & uncle's (despite my cousin randomly shouting overnight; she's profoundly mentally retarded, and that's something she does.) Yesterday, though, I was really tired much of the day, and my neck started getting stiff like it does when I haven't gotten enough sleep. (Apparently that's unusual? Low sleep is another migraine trigger for me, yay.)

At the picnic, no one asked me to hold the baby, yay. My mom held him for a really long time. She wants grandbabies. Tough shit. My sister doesn't want kids, either (last I talked to her, anyway), and beside that, she doesn't have a boyfriend, and she's in theater, which means she's out at rehearsal, auditions, her friends' shows, her own shows, whatever most nights a week. (She wasn't at the picnic because she had a show, apparently.) On top of that, she barely remembers to feed herself and doesn't really eat properly if she does. So, no, no babies from my sister. Considering that we're both in our mid-30s, I don't see that happening, like, ever.

The toddler was kind of cute (she'll be 2 the end of this month). She's not very good at going down stairs by herself, and as the closest big person, I held her hand down the stairs a few times, and I tried playing catch, but she hasn't figured that out yet, apparently. My cousin's pretty good at the dad thing. (And, god, I remember when he was smaller than me. He's like 6'3" or something, and so's his brother the former Marine. Their baby brother (who's 15, god) is pushing 6'. The men in my family are TALL.)

It's weird how strong the genes are on that side. The three guys above look so much alike, it's shocking. The middle brother looks just like his dad, and the other two look a lot like each other. I'd seen the oldest, Nick, with his girlfriend and daughter & said hi, then a little bit later the rest of his family showed up. I saw Max (the youngest), and was like "Wait, I just saw Nick a second ago over there...damn, Max looks like his brother." Max apparently plays goalie on his HS soccer team and likes Barcelona (before they were cool, he says). I said, "Man, I don't know if I can like you anymore," and he asked if I was a Madrid fan. (I'm not, but Madrid has one of my favorite German players.)

And this is my uncle's backyard. On the right edge, you might be able to make out his hops trellis. He's growing 6 different kinds to make his homebrew. He let us sniff them, and they do have subtle differences in smell. One was fruity, another smelled like juniper (the Willamette variety, popular among the American craft brewers who think MORE HOPS!!! is how to make beer better; they're wrong).

I'm going to be in Boston for ReaderCon (July 14-17), and I will probably need a place to stay Sunday evening before catching Amtrak back to DC. (And likely a ride from scenic Burlington, because it's only vaguely accessible via public transit, but I might be able to bum one.)

The trains that leave Boston that don't mean I have to miss part of the con get me to DC very late, and my sister (whose couch I'm crashing on) would probably object to picking me up around midnight when she has to be at work at 8. So I'm looking at the 9:30 am Monday train to DC (5:30) then back home Tuesday.

My clothes and things will be covered in residual cat hair, since I have cats, if that poses a problem for you.

I have not yet bought tickets, because Amtrak runs specials on certain days of the week up to 5 weeks in advance of travel, and I'm waiting to see if any of these legs go on special. (Not holding my breath though.)

Please let me know if you have a couch I can sleep on and a shower I can use :)

This will be much abridged from my earlier plans due to a complete lack of funds, thanks to marginal employment.

Almost/definitely going:
- StellarCon, High Point NC. Probably commuting, since it's just over in High Point.

- ReaderCon, Boston MA. Room (and roommates) needed. Should also email registration and ask if my free membership from volunteering last year has been processed. Will probably take Amtrak from DC or B'more.

- DragonCon, Atlanta GA. Room purchased, one roommate (hi Don), another potential. (And thanks to a lack of communication earlier, I told a dude on LJ that we had a room share, and Darling told a friend we had space in our room. So I had to tell random LJ dude that it might be off, but this friend isn't sure yet if she can go. And we really need a 4th person in the room to defray costs.)

Would still like to go:
- Gaylaxicon/Outlantacon. Would need roommates and transport share.

I need some work. Seriously.

We drove up to my mom's house in exciting Charles Town, WV, on Friday and got there around 10:30, so we talked for a few minutes then went to bed. Saturday morning, we ate some breakfast, then I subjected mom to the 600 pictures from Europe this spring. (And that's the edited version.)

After that, Ben and I went to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space annex, out by Dulles. HOLY SHIT YOU GUISE. It's awesome. There's an observation tower where you can watch planes take off and land at Dulles, and they have the SR-71 Blackbird that set a speed record (LA to DC in 1 hour 4 minutes), a Messerschmidt, a Dornier Do "Pfeil", a Concorde, and the Enola Gay, as well as the instrument ring from a Saturn rocket, the Enterprise, various missiles, Mars rovers, and satellites. It's a giant fucking hangar full of airplanes, rockets, and memorabilia. I spent some time gawking at the Cold War-era planes, and the collection of early airplane (WW1/WW2) machine guns.

Seriously, it's awesome. It's almost cooler than the Mall building, and the Mall building has a MOON ROCK you can touch. The Mall building has more WW1 planes, including a Fokker, and a display about the Red Baron.

Saturday evening we dined at the fine establishment of Applebees, which has nothing without meat on the menu, unless you order pasta without it. Delightful.

Everything I wore while at my mom's house picked up the smell of stale cigarette, and as soon as I walked in, my eyes started to water and my nose stuffed up. The sheets & blankets had smoke traces in them, and when I tried to get warm, it just made me cough and choke. This is why I don't stay at her house. But, problematically, she doesn't leave her house, so if I want to see her, I have to go there. (She goes to work, but that's it. She won't drive by herself more than an hour, and not at all after dark, and definitely never on the interstate. smh)

Sunday, we went to my dad's brother's for a family dinner. There was food and beer and a 4-ish-year-old girl (my cousin's daughter), and American football on the teevee. After that, we went to my sister's, because she's a little closer to home and not a smoker. I put on the comfy shirt & sweats I'd worn at mom's, and 2 seconds later, my eyes started watering and my nose ran. I'm going to have to work out a different plan, because, even if she stopped smoking in the house, her furniture, carpets, and drywall are so full of smoke that it quite literally makes me ill.

In 10 minutes (hopefully...) we'll be getting in the car and going to DC.

See some of y'all at the rally!

Ben and I are going up to DC for the Stewart/Colbert wossname. The current plan is to drive up Friday, stay with my sister, go to town Saturday, and do Something Familial on Sunday Mom wants to try this another time, since her family's busy, then drive home.

If you're going, drop me a comment. Maybe we can meet up! My sister is going to a party Saturday evening, so we'll be on our own.

If at all possible, I want to go to Teaism, because YUM.

Last night I was going home around 10 pm (and ran into night construction on I-40 that resulted in a detour down 15-501 because the whole fucking interstate was closed), and it was 90 degrees on the highway, and 85 degrees at my house. At 10:30 pm. Two hours after sunset, y'all.

We took Ben's car to the farmers market this morning, so I don't know how hot it was at 9 am when we left or 10:30 when we went home, but it was really fucking nasty out there. Accuweather tells me it's 96 degrees out, with 53% humidity, for a RealFeel (TM) of 108.

I think I made the right decision to stay inside today. Monday's high of 93 looks downright pleasant in comparison.

In other news, I need to be dissuaded from going to Berlin for my 35th birthday in 7ish months. Especially if I don't get any work any time soon :P I wonder what I'd have to do to write it off as research for my writing... (aside from "have a plan for a story/novel before I leave" and "write it"). I do want to work some more in Cold War-era Berlin, and where better to get the detail, eh?

(Though the weather in March will most likely be absolutely shit. Hopefully no worse than at Christmas or this past May...)

Discussion on raphaellover's FB wall led to this exchange:

RL: Fancy a trip to Brazil?

Me: World Cup 2014 with you in Brazil? I'll start a savings account. XD

RL: [ticket prices not ridiculously overpriced] Brazil 2014, here I come!

Probably a bad plan, or a mad one, and how on earth can we expect to spend a month in Brazil, but I am going to see some World Cup Football live, in person, before I die. Goddammit.

---

Ben, on Mesut Özil, after he stole the ball and ran it up the left side: He's totally that guy Tsubaki from Giant Killing.

Me: Except the part where he flips out during the match because he isn't ready. But aside from that, sure.

---

Dear Jogi:

Please fix the hole in the defense on the left side. Boateng's better than Badstuber, but you're playing Argentina in six days. Gotta stop that gap.

Whatever you do, for the love of Beckenbauer, don't put Gomez in. He tripped over the frickin ball.

Lots of love,
me

Whether to take my netbook (of the sketchy battery and hard drive with 1 GB of free space, but very small and lightweight) or the MacBook (with good battery and a hard drive with 40+ GB free, but bigger and fucking heavy).

The netbook does almost everything I need. It connects to the internet, and I can download pictures from my camera. I don't expect to be able to write much while I'm there, also I don't really want to spend a lot of time thinking in English. The only thing it can't do is handle flash. I can't play Farmville on it (or any stupid flash games), and trying to play a youtube video took me to a "download this codec pack" thing, which then crashed the browser without fully installing. [Also, I need to update the distro, but there's not enough free space on the disk to download the image. Derp. No, I don't have a multi-GB USB key to run the computer off of. If I did, I probably would.]

Now, I can live a month without videos; I don't watch them as it is. But ... FARMVILLE, Y'ALL.

The MacBook is Mac-tastic, and it works, but it weighs like 3 lbs or more, and lugging it around in my backpack is heavy.

They both have their pluses and minuses (another big minus for the netbook is its lack of a CD drive, so I couldn't rip any new CDs I bought, or play them if my flatmate doesn't have a communal stereo.)

I need to decide right quick, you know? My dear invisible friends, what do y'all think?

So, I emailed K about my pay stubs (which were ... less than they should have been in some case, by like 15 minutes, but I got mileage, which I wasn't expecting. This is where I admit I hadn't looked at them since, uh, the end of January. Money goes into my bank account, it's all good.) and asked if she had anyone to cover next week.

I had a chance to check email on my phone (I love having internet on my phone like you wouldn't believe), and she'd written back, letting me know that she had every day covered except Thursday. I said I could do it, and here we are. She was worried that I hated it and was miserable there; far from it! I told her no, I like the work and the people, but I need time to get my novel edited and get ready for Germany, and if they need RPh vacation coverage and I'm available, let me know. (She knows I write; I explained that when I was hired.) So it's all good, huzzah.

This means I don't have to spend this weekend starting on house cleaning for the party, since I'll be home during the week (except Thursday). And that means I'm going to the 2-day san shou workshop. Unfortunately the first day, the long day, is in a crappy cement-floor building. But it's by Locopops and Phydeaux, and I guess I can get lunch at Whole Foods, though I'd rather not. It's kinda expensive. But I don't have anything to take with me, either. And going to the Mexican restaurant sounds like a bad idea. I'm sure people will figure something out. Last year I went home for dinner and took a nap, but it was much closer to home.

My life! I can have it back! Now I'm not overextended! Just sort of normally overbooked, I guess. I wouldn't be me if I weren't. That's where the J aspect comes in very handy.

Speaking of handy*, the SIM card I ordered for Europe arrived today. I can try to get AT&T to unlock my Razr tomorrow, since I'll be around the corner. And I missed delivery for a box of Turkish books and media from jerakeen, but I'll send Ben to pick it up tomorrow morning (though it may be out for redelivery anyway.) AND my new Fluevogs have left LA, traveling via UPS ground. I don't think I'll have them by my birthday.

*It's the German word for cell phone.

OK, now I'm gonna play with my new SIM card. It's got some fancy US/UK stuff I need to figure out.