Mercurial Circus

flowers

2008-09-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

I threw out four bouquets of flowers today. Two of them were larger than my torso, and they made a huge mess on the floor. Dry petals fluttering all over the piano, and brittle leaves on the ground. The one the John Howard Society sent included a strange plant that resembled the tail of a fluffy animal—it shed fuzzy bits of itself all over my clothes. They filled two garbage bags.

It feels final, somehow, to both acknowledge and dispose of the evidence of tragedy. However, they took up a lot of space in the living room, and I never was a girl who cared for flowers. I didn't like the aesthetic of them decomposing there on the piano, next to a pile of mail and the box that holds my mother's ashes.

Massive flower bouquets may make a lovely gesture, but they're hell to clean up.

I don't think I'm the same person I was three weeks ago.

toxic

2007-05-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

Food poisoning is quite possibly the only thing in life I've found less pleasant than a full blown migraine, though the only reason it ranks so highly is because it goes on... and on... and on...

Point of interest: it might just have been the particular staff on duty, or that I went in at 7am (instead of my traditional evening "oh god kill me" time for migraines) but emergency seemed a lot kinder this time. I wonder if people with "real" problems like serious dehydration and vomiting get more sympathy than those with something as trivial as mere pain?

Nah, it was probably the 7am thing. Emergency was relatively quiet--I guess people with the less critical problems are sleeping, or waiting for a clinic. I ended up so thoroughly stoned on medication that I couldn't really panic about all the needles, but I was still dimly unimpressed with the guy who kept pushing back the curtain to stare at me. (Had I been fully coherent, I'd have verbally murdered him.)

Sorry for the woefully personal entry. I'm still intending to update, but I've just been too busy to keep up on the news.

conservapedia

2007-05-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting article about activists trying to get a chimp legal status as a "person". The really hilarious part? I found the link on the Conservapedia, titled, "Liberals oppose a legal right to life for unborn children, but demand legal rights for chimps."

The Conservapedia bills itself as "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia." Because as we all know, the Wikipedia is a den of liars, abortionists, and bleeding heart liberals. Why does an encyclopedia have to be political?

feisty fawns in your backyard

2007-05-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

Dell computers now come pre-loaded with Ubuntu (Linux). Even if you're not on the bleeding edge of the tech industry, there are indications that Linux is creeping farther into the mainstream. It isn't just weirdos like my brother who run Linux systems these days.

Corey is a strong promoter for Ubuntu, so he's happy about it. In fact, Canonical is sending him to Spain for a conference next week. (Yes, I'm jealous.) But it's interesting to be close to someone so passionate about open source technology. I'm learning things—and finding interests—that I never knew were accessible to non-techs like myself. I'm not going to be playing around with source code any time ~~soon~~ ever, but that doesn't mean it isn't something I can support. I've chipped in on a couple of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletters, editing and smoothing out bumpy grammar. It isn't much, but I find that the sheer passion behind open-source is a hard thing to ignore. People put forth professional-quality work… for free. It boggles my inner cynic, but they do it out of love for the concept.

Think that Linux is nerdy stuff that has absolutely no bearing on your existence? Try using the multiple desktops that come with something like Ubuntu, then go back to using Windows. It feels kind of cramped. Switching to Ubuntu after years of Windows is a bit like putting on a running shoe when you're used to wearing hiking boots; it feels really weird for a few days, but once you're adjusted, you can appreciate its virtues. Running shoes and hiking boots are both comfortable, but they have different strengths. Linux systems aren't much for video games, but they're pretty spiffy for usability.

Linux also opens new subcultures. Before I started dating Corey, I put a passing reference to using Linux systems at work on a dating site profile. The queries came pouring in, titled things like, "linux?" or asking about my workplace. I'd tapped a new vein of nerd-subculture in the mining expedition of my geekiness.

More importantly, Linux opens up work experience and career opportunities. Corey could probably turn his high-level volunteer work into a real job in the industry, if he were willing to live in another country. All I seem to be able to get out of it is a broader dating pool. But maybe, someday, using my editing skills to contribute (albeit in a tiny way) to the Ubuntu community might make a difference in my career.

Alas, no trip to Spain for me. And I worry about being "just a girlfriend" almost as much as I worry about crashing in too much on Corey's hobbies. It seems to be the catch-22 of being the rare female in male-dominated fields; you get so used to people questioning your reasons for being there that you end up questioning yourself just as much.

can't stop the signal

2007-05-02T22:26:00.001-07:00

09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

"On 1 May 2007, technology news site Digg began removing posts containing the number, and in some cases, closing accounts which created those posts. The Digg community responded by creating a high volume of posts containing the key, many using creative ways of semi-directly or indirectly inserting the number, such as in song, in images (either representing the digits pictorially or directly representing bytes from the key as colors), and on merchandise. At one point, Digg.com's "entire homepage was covered with links to the HD-DVD code or anti-Digg references." Eventually the Digg administrators gave up and stopped removing such submissions, stating, "You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.""

The first hacked HD DVD was Serenity. How poetic is that? I am not a hacker, and I am not a programmer. To me, it's just a symbol. A very powerful symbol.

gods of media

2007-04-30T00:42:00.000-07:00

Heard about the God of War Promotion yet? If you belong to PETA, you might want to skip this one.

More than half of me is thinking, "that marketing strategy is brilliant. Risky, inspired, and creative." A mere 40% or so is thinking, "what a crappy reason for an animal to die." Does this mean I've gone to the dark side?

Lately I've been fascinated by marketing, advertising, and PR. In fact, I've been slowly chewing my way through the library's selection of books on the subject, having wandered into them after tackling the subject of business writing.

So far, my thoughts go something like this:

Advertising is not the creature it used to be. While not entirely obsolete, its power is diluted to such a degree that it's more of a reminder of the product than anything else. If what you're advertising isn't already famous, no one cares. They'll remember your punch-line, not your product. Example: Remember OutPost.com? Yeah, no one else does either.

*PR is the new advertising. Rather than going directly after the consumer, PR aims at getting a product covered in third party media, which are automatically more legitimate to jaded consumers than ads. Example: Sony sacrificing a goat to get the attention of the gods of media.

The mystery is how to go about getting PR. By committing an act of barbarism and indulging in such a hedonistic display of irreverence, Sony did something that I can't help but view as artistic: it's meant to piss people off. It could backfire, but man, you have to admire the guts (ha!) that the promoter behind that project must have.

I mean, how do you pitch that? "I'd like to sell this product by parading half-naked women around and slaughtering a goat. Then we'll get testosterone hyped fan-boys to eat warm offal. By combining indecency, the degradation of women, and cruelty to animals, we will create the perfect trinity; women's groups, conservatives, and PETA will do all the PR for us!"

Which is why I think it's brilliant. Further evidence of this brilliance is that now I'd really like to try God of War. None of the advertisements elicited so much as a twinge of curiosity, but a goat died for it, and I want to know what the big deal is.

When really, the only "big deal" is probably that Sony's PS3 got roundly spanked by the explosive sales of Nintendo's Wii, and they're willing to do anything to yank the spotlight back. A few months ago, buying a Wii meant that you were the coolest kid on the block and everyone wanted to try it. I know one guy who bought a PS3. We made fun of him. And that is the opposite of good PR.

pearls before breakfast

2007-04-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

I tripped over this interesting bit of news and was absolutely fascinated. What happens when one of the world's finest musicians takes his $3.5 million Stradivari violin and plays in a subway station for the better part of an hour? He got $32.17. Over a thousand people walked past him, a handful stopped, and one person realized who he was. You can read the entire thing here.

"A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."

live inside the book

2007-04-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

I like Tanith Lee. She knows that things can be beautiful because of their mystery, and does not patronize her readers with all the answers. She skates along the edge of mystery and darkness; sometimes her work falls over the line and I can't quite follow. But when she hits that balance of mystery and beauty and humanity (Silver Metal Lover, When the Lights Go Out, The Claidi Collection) she gets it.

I think this quote is beautiful. It makes me want to spend more time writing--and not just the grinding-away-for-money kind of writing.

"When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I'm writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, fee its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what's already there in front of me. That said, it won't be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one.

Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all those other places than here."

-Tanith Lee

time again

2007-03-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how easy it is to lose sight of perspective and work yourself sick under the right combination of factors. You get so focused on taking the next step, and the next step, and the next step that you don't realize how frayed you're getting. It's possible to work more than forty hours a week and stay sane, but only if you love what you do. I didn't love what I did.

So I quit. It took a lot of encouragement to finally submit that resignation letter. It felt a lot like a break up. As soon as the deed was done, thoughts like, "oh god, what have I done?" started to surface. Was it really that bad? Was I really so unhappy? Was it reasonable of me to be so unhappy? What if it got better? It didn't really mean to make me sad...

This is, of course, sheer madness. If you're going to spend so much of your life in a place, it had better be a place that doesn't make you crazy. At the same time as I backed out of my corporate niche, contract work was reduced, and I'm now on the fine edge of unemployment.

Which is kind of scary, but not was much as it would have been two years ago. I'm older, I have more marketable skills, and there are jobs to be had in Victoria. I can find something that lets me feel competent, useful, and appreciated. I can find something that doesn't involve working the same office as my boyfriend, though he was pretty dang handy when it came to tag-teaming snarly problems into submission.

I intended this post to have a point, but it really doesn't. I've got some time to write again, which is glorious, because it also means that I have time to appreciate fresh air and sunlight. Change is good.

recovery

2006-08-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

What happens at PAX, stays at PAX.

At least that's what someone in the table-top game room said. Unfortunately, I picked up some kind of virulent case of ebola, which is rendering me half senseless at the moment. Obviously some things don't stay at PAX.

I also came home with a huge bag (literally huge--it's bigger than my torso, and made an oversize battering ram to get through the crowds on Saturday) of swag. As if I didn't own enough black t-shirts, now I have ones for Pirates of the Burning Sea, NVidia, and Vangaurd, as well as the PAX 06 shirt I bought.

I packed two novels to read during the downtime, and as testament to how busy things were, I didn't even get half-way through one of them. However, there's some kind of creepy synergy about reading Microserfs while sitting in a Bellevue Starbucks. It really is Bill's town. However, King B-B-B-Bill probably wouldn't be too thrilled with some of the things Alex St. John said in his keynote speech about the pre-history of the X-Box.

Alex gave away a desktop computer that almost made me weep to gaze upon, but of course, I didn't win it. I did get a handful of shiny tokens that his daughters flung into the avid crowd, however. When I'm less apathetic, I'll figure out what those are for. There were a lot of give-aways, but most of them were too crowded or tricky for me to take a serious interest in. Being 5'7" made me a little too short to compete during the "toss free crap into the crowd" distributions. (NVidia, I hate you. The bruises haven't faded yet, though the sweat from the guy who landed on me did wash off in about two hours of scrubbing.)

The rewards of PAX were more subtle, but pretty dang cool nonetheless. The group of guys I hooked up with from #GWP placed first and second in the Guild Wars tournament, which was both unsurprising and satisfying. I later had dinner with people who I only know by internet handles, and it didn't even occur to me to ask their real names. I was called Samyel more often than Audrey, and that suits me just fine. I got to game with complete strangers, try several yet-to-be released games, and enjoy a complete immersion of being surrounded by some 19,000 of "my people."

When the final round of Omegathon turned out to be old-school Tetris, I felt completely at peace to be surrounded by people screaming their approval and joy. We clapped along with digital Russian music, and "oooooohed!" at every misplaced block. Later, I stood alone on the balcony of my hotel room and was so happy that despite exhaustion, I felt light enough to fly.

Dimlight posted some stuff about PAX on his blog, and so did one of the other guys I met at the Guild Wars booth. You can check you his Games. Tech. Musings. blog for more on the tournament.

I'm not even bothering to spell check or edit this, so tough. I'm running a fever and I keep nodding off at the computer, or curled up in front of the TV. Every time I lie down, I start to cough, and my throat feels like I gargled razors.

And y'know what? It was soooo damn worth it.

I'll post more on PAX later. Meanwhile, if you have no idea what PAX is, or what the hell I'm talking about, go check out the Penny Arcade Expo site. If there was any doubt as to whether Tycho and Gabe had ascended to digital godhood or not, I think it's been settled. I hope that e-celebrity treats them well.

hiatus

2006-01-22T00:57:00.000-08:00

I'm putting this blog on hold, maybe forever. I've got other things on the go, and updating it doesn't interest me right now.

If you're remotely interested in online computer gaming, go have a look at Guild Wars at TenTonHammer. I'm managing the site and writing content under the name "Samyel," which helps keep the "omg, ur a rl grrl? cn I c ur pix?" crap to a minimum.

"no friends, all enemies."

2005-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

More on the William Freund thing, focusing on his Aspergers autism, and some of his internet activity. SA, thankfully, hasn't been mentioned. Nor have the other less-than-mainstream communities he visited prior to the murders, except for an autism site. Apparently, he asked them for help. When he came to SA, all he asked for was information about ammunition.

It's been a few days since the incident now, and although internet communities are still talking about it, mainstream media seems to have let it go. Hallelujah.

Or course, it never occurs to anyone that the reason things like this and Columbine happen is because of the marginalization and torment of kids who are different. School is hell if you're ugly/disabled/socially awkward/poor. By the time some of these kids finish, the only world they see is a hostile one where even the teachers dislike them.

It's hard to move into the world with anything other than rage and hopelessness if you never found a niche in school. As an adult, you know that the bad things eventually blow over. As a kid, if your whole world has been a bad thing, you don't have any sense that it will end with anything other than death.

Maybe I'm reading way too much into the issue--I'll admit, it bothers me. A lot. Columbine bothered me a lot too. Maybe it's partly because I read Frankenstein recently. Regardless, it seems terribly unfair that flaws in society create these monsters, and instead of trying to help those that can be still helped, we heap them with hatred and mistrust. The result is an ever more hostile world for misfits, a few of whom may break and decide that going out in violence may be the closest thing to respect they'll ever recieve.

something truly awful

2005-11-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

I really, really want this to be a hoax.

For those of you not familiar with Something Awful, be aware that following either of these links goes to a place that is irreverant, profane, and often extremely funny. It's safe-for-work in the sense that you won't accidentally hit nudity, but it's not exactly safe-for-you if you're easily offended. Or really, if you're offended by anything at all.

As for the issue, assuming that this isn't a tasteless troll, it's ugly. People died, and that's horrible. But our sub-culture is probably going to get blamed, and that's a whole different type of ugly. Just like Columbine, where newscasts highlighted the fact that the murderers were gamers, and just like Jack Thompson, who blames everything violent since the crucifixion on us.

The people at SA who are involved, however peripherally, pretty much all feel terrible about it. Hell, I'm not even a forum goon, and I feel terrible about it. However, if SA can be considered responsible, they are less so than whoever sold that boy his gun and ammunition; a merchant who almost certainly will be attributed no blame by the media.

And though they may have done nothing to result in their son showing sociopathic/suicidal tendancies, I have to ask--where the HELL where his parents?

As a last thought, depending on the media spin of the ignorant, this may end up being blamed on his autistic characteristics. If so, the mentally disabled are going to get pissed on the same as the internet community.

Peachy fucking keen.

katrina: the politically incorrect

2005-09-17T02:23:00.000-07:00

Although I'm probably going to hell because this made me laugh, you have to give it credit for being very savvy of the issues.

Katrina: The Gathering.

Non-gamers may have a hard time understanding the format, but it'll probably be funny anyway. If you've never heard of Magic: The Gathering, check out this wiki article for an overview. It's highly spoofable.

harry and the potters

2005-09-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm slow to update and deserve to be gnawed to death by parakeets. Vampire parakeets.

And just to prove that the Harry Potter fandom can get weirder, go check out Harry and the Potters. They're very... enthusiastic.

"Are you scared to walk through the hallways?
Are you worried that the spiders run away?
Are you petrified
Of being petrified?
Are we going to have to save the school again?

We've got to save Ginny Weasley from the basilisk
We've got to save the school from that unseen horror
We've got to save Ginny Weasley from the basilisk
We've got save the school again
We've got to save the school again..."
- Harry and the Potters (Save Ginny Weasley)

new orleans

2005-08-31T23:27:00.000-07:00

The mess in New Orleans makes me sad. I wish I'd visited it before Katrina did... it'll probably never quite be the same.

I keep getting drawn into news reports, like I'm watching a car wreck in slow motion. The parallels between the tsunami and this are striking, but somehow it seems a lot closer when it's happening to places you've always wanted to go, and people who speak the same language as you.

Or maybe because America's (okay, to be fair, North America's) sense of immortality has been shaken again.

Here's an interesting article from 2001 which describes pretty much what just happened.

"During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane."

Yup, pretty much what's happening right now, although it seems like not very many died in the storm itself. The scary thing now is disease, and death from prior illnesses such as diabetes. Every time they show shots of people wading through murky, oil-slicked water in the muggy heat, I think about overflowing sewage systems and imagine diptheria.

photos

2005-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

Hey look, photos! Unfortunately, they're in reverse order, and I'm too lazy too fix it.

things I learned...

2005-08-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

Things I Learned at Pennsic

• I am not allowed to scream “yeti attack!” when someone staggers past my tent at 2am.
• It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity and the heat.
• Belly bunnies may be cute, but they harbour disease and filth. Plus they’re about as period as a golf cart.
• Tying a scrap of leather around your waste is not garb. Nor is a bra with jingly things sewn to it. However, it's hard not to be jealous when you're in a very appropriate two-layer Saxon tunic with long sleeves in the blazing sun.
• Bored seven-year-olds, far from television and gameboys, are actually useful in the kitchen.
• Never listen to the guy who says, “this dance is really easy, you just take three steps like this. I’ll show you the rest when we’re up there.” It will end poorly.
• The Blue Feathers have the best garb.
• You probably shouldn’t admit that you’re from an “A” kingdom.
• That guy really isn’t wearing anything under his loin-cloth. Don’t look.
• Chthulhu on a Stick isn’t medieval, but it’s really, really funny.
• When you don’t know SCA etiquette, being polite to everyone works very well, except when a good solid slap is necessary.
• Unless you know it’s supposed to be a toy leech, it really does look like poo with eyes.
• Rayon is not a period fabric. Nor is the shower-curtain cloak a good idea.
• The flush toilets are probably more disgusting than the port-a-johns.
• “Narwhale” virus is not the Pennsic Plague.
• If you’re shampooing your hair and you hear the fighters returning from battle, skip the conditioner and rinse quickly.
• Not everyone knows who the kings are, but absolutely everyone knows about the Tuchux.
• By Friday, you will wish disease and death upon the untalented masses of doumbek players. (It’s a kind of drum. Unless you play one, you hate them. Doumbek switch ad.)
• The Diamond Ninja is watching over Midrealm. Midrealm is unamused.
• Being dropped while riding a scutum isn’t scary. Watching a pair of burly Australians run straight into the guys carrying you is.
• It’s often assumed that if you have blue hair, you might be a Blue Feather.
• Wearing a blue feather is not a good way to discourage this notion, but blue feathers are pretty, goddamn it.
• If you wear “mundane” clothes at Pennisc, people look at you funny.
• If you wear garb to the nearest Wal-Mart, no one bats an eyelash.
• Wode is for when you’re feeling blue.
• Lavender sharbots are love.

ontario

2005-08-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

On this trip thus far, I have stood on the glass floor at the CN Tower, set foot in two provinces (the Canadian Museum of Civilization is in Quebec, while the War Museum just across the bridge is in Ontario) and fondled a variety of howitzers, tanks, cannons, and anti-aircraft guns. I also coerced a 17-year-old into eating sushi ("but it's so gross!") and took the train first-class to visit friends I hadn't seen in eleven years.

Oh, and we drove through the middle of a lightning storm, with strikes going on all around us. Yes, it scared the hell out me. More terrifying, however, is my tan. It's barely there, more like an infestation of freckles, but the sun touched me. Ick.

For the next week, however, I'll be running around in saxon tunics, which don't generally involve bare shoulders and arms. We leave for Pennsic (an eight hour drive from Ottawa) at five in the morning. Dan's uncle was vehement about the traditional four a.m. departure, but with threats of cloroform, was talked back to five.

Which means I have to wake up in less than eight hours. And then, a whole lot of road.

call for submissions (again)

2005-08-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

Once again, I'm trolling for submissions. Stories should be written in the first-person, be between 500 and 4000 words (I'll consider one story over 4k per issue) and share your opinion or perspective.

The theme of issue three is relationships. This doesn't have to mean romantic ones. It can be about the people (or pets?) who matter most to you, one way or the other. Write about the people who've hurt you or helped you. Write about your best friend, or the ultimate betrayal, or the love of your life. It can be about how you changed someone else, or how they changed you. It can be how you watched someone change while you stayed the same.

Be creative, be honest, be expressive.

The coma-line (not quite dead) is August 25th. I will be out of town until the 23rd, but if your submission is ready to be read before then, or you want feedback during the drafting process, send it along. It might take me a day or two to respond, but I will reply as soon as I can.

Ferric_feline@lycos.com is the best way to contact me. Please pass this request for submissions on to everyone you know.

If you haven't looked already, go read Peripheral Axis for previous stories.

quote

2005-08-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

Another excerpt, this time from another otherwise ordinary mystery novel called Exposed, by Laura Van Wormer. It's so damn true.

“When you hang out a lot with somebody who’s not well, after a while you start thinking like them, particularly if you think you’re in love with them. You want to understand them. Gain their trust, their innermost thoughts. So later, when you come up for air and relate to the real world, you feel like you’re not well in the head, either, and you’re not, because you’ve been trained to think like the person who’s not well, the one you might be in love with.” I smile. “Fortunately, it doesn’t take years of cognitive therapy to reverse it. You just feel like hell for a while.”

travelling

2005-08-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Toronto, and I’ll admit, it made me a bit of a snob. If a city or town wasn’t internationally renown, I wasn’t interested in it. I had no curiousity about anywhere rural unless my family was boarding horses there.

Even after living in BC for ten years, my experience consisted of Kamloops, Victoria, and the places that connect them. I was missing out.

While wandering this summer, I have crossed a swaying bridge to get within a few feet of a roaring waterfall, gotten a lecture on my poor German grammar from a shopkeeper who sold me beeswax candles, and fed a swarming pool of salmon in a forest park full of creepy fairy statues. There are roads that epitomize the words “verdant valley” and towns that drip so much charm it’s hard to remember why consider myself a city girl.

Vernon in particular has surprised me. There’s a heavenly Bed and Breakfast up there, and we've stayed there three times now. If I ever get serious about the novel I haven’t been writing, I’ll go there for a few days to work on it. There’s something about the press of green trees and the soft black sky that pulls tension out of me. Or maybe that’s just the perfect breakfast and steaming hot tub.

We found another haven near Revelstoke. Three Valley Gap is a sprawling, epic resort in the middle of nowhere. It boarders on a crystal clear and ice-cold lake, has a ghost town next door, and contains a tiny swimming pool with a tribute to the Titanic on the wall. During the day, they offer helicopter tours and boat rides. In the deep silence of night, I slipped from my room and sat on the dock. The stars looked too vivid to be real.

I’ve been neglecting this blog, I know. And that’s not likely to change until the end of August at soonest. Dan and I are traveling again, this time a wee bit farther from home.

On Thursday afternoon, we’re flying to Ontario. I can’t describe how panic-stricken I am at the idea of setting foot on an airplane again, but this ought to be worth the suffering. We’ll have a little over a week to spend in Ottawa and Toronto and then we’re going to Pennsic.

Those who know me are aware I’ve had a flirtation going on with the Society for Creative Anachronism for years. I love history—I was about three credits away from a minor in Medieval History when I finished my European History degree at UVic. I also enjoy the eccentricities, intelligence and kindness of most SCAers I’ve met.

I’ve hesitated, however, out of an inherent dislike of hierarchical structures and politics. I also suspect I’d feel desperately silly donning a medieval gown and being called “m’lady.” I’m enticed by the martial aspects, but as I’ve learned from paintball, I’m not the most gracious when it comes to getting hit.

But now I’m jumping into an SCA event with both feet, mostly because Dan wants to go, and I’m not going to let such a perfectly wrapped adventure pass me by. As such, for a week, we will be guests of the noble House de Taahe. I was impressed when I found out that my friends in Victoria knew of Dan’s relatives in House de Taahe by reputation; I was even more impressed when I found out that they build a campsite at Pennsic that includes a private, hot-and-cold running shower.

Pennsic is a yearly event in Pennsylvania that draws a crowd of over 12,000 people. More than 1,000 of them participate in the war (each one in approved armour and certified as a fighter who knows the SCA rules.) There’s dancing, carousing, shopping, and god knows else the rest of the time. I’m not quite sure what happens when you put that many history dorks in one place, but I’m kind of excited to find out, being a dork myself.

I’m not going to make the most convincing wench. My hair is now half brown and half navy with purple streaks. It’s also going to be hard to give up my jeans and t-shirts for a week. However, I’ll make an effort to document my experience, so that others can share in my inevitable bafflement and culture-shock.

Internet access from August 3rd till the 23rd is going to be sketchy. Weirdly enough, Pennsic has an internet café, but response time may be a bit slow. Also, I’ve had some trouble getting messages from my TRU account—I had nothing for weeks, then a deluge of things that just got stuck somewhere in cyberspace. My ferric_feline@lycos.com account works just fine, however, and is my primary contact address right now.

the truth

2005-07-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank.

"No wonder I'm single," she says to the mirror. "Even I don't want to get into bed with these thighs."

I say that getting married isn't like winning the Miss America Pageant; it doesn't all come down to the bathing suit competition.

"What do you think it comes down to?" she says.

I say, "Baton twirling."

harry potter

2005-07-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

Gee, I sure was surprised when Dumbledore turned out to be a robot from Mars. And when Draco died from the heroine overdose... that was just tragic. Who would have thought that a heart-broken Hermione would be left bearing his child? I wept, truly.

In other news, Blogger seems to be randomly eating comments. I have no idea how to prevent this, and it seems to be happening to other accounts as well. Hope they fix it soon.

ouch

2005-07-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was unfun. I woke up with a skull-crushing migraine, which is the worst way to start a day. Once you’re in the throes of a migraine, pills don’t work. On a scale of 1 to 10, this one was a 9.5 and getting worse. I couldn't do anything, but I couldn't sleep either. Dan took me to emergency in the afternoon.

Apparently, common procedure is now to administer an IV for migraines. I was braced for a shot (narcotics were the favoured method the last time I was hospital bound with a migraine) but the idea of having something lodged in a vein completely derailed me. I was still profoundly unhappy about the idea after the Ativan kicked in, but I was in so much pain at that point that I wanted the IV in and over with.

I managed to not lose consciousness when the nurse stabbed me. She was very kind, professional, and even used a baby-sized needle in deference to my panic attacks. However, as she tapped plastic tubing to my arm, she blithely commented, “You were very good… your vein didn’t collapse or grab onto the needle. That sometimes happens when people freak out.”

That can happen? Cue hysterical screaming inside my head.

The last time I had an IV, it went in the back of my hand hurt like hell. This wasn’t half so bad, though the medication felt icy cold. The nurse explained that the packs of painkillers are all room temperature, which feels odd when it hits your warm body. The first pack didn’t do anything, so they added a second, and then some Gravol when I started to get queasy.

The whole thing took hours. There hadn’t been very many people in the waiting area, but inside the ward, nurses were running around and the doctors were moving from bed to bed as brusquely as possible. Dan returned from a blanket run with the news that some guy had been hit in the head with a chainsaw, so I can’t really complain that I had to wait.

Today I’m still a little shaky, but not in pain, which is a huge relief. There’s also a yucky bruise on my arm where the IV was, and some red marks from the tape. While the whole event was unpleasant, it’ll help me flesh out a fiction story I’m writing that takes place in a hospital.

In totally unrelated news, the second issue of Peripheral Axis is up. Go have a read.