Day in the Life of an Idiot

If I’m writing about my adventures a day behind, I should probably make a short list of the things I’ve read to start with. I finished listening to Blood Ink Sister Scribe last night. I will admit that I got a little bogged down in the middle of the book, re-read Trouble and Her Friends (for an up-coming podcast,) and then listened to the second half of it. While I’ve been up here, Martha Well’s Network Effect came up for grabs as an audiobook, so I downloaded that during one of my daily treks to the lodge for internet.

Yesterday started with a nice canoe trip around part of the lake. Shawn and I like to get up early, around 6:30 or 7 am, and do a near-silent drift along the lake. It often pays off in terms of animal sightings. Yesterday we had our first truly sunny morning, and we saw (we counted) ten turtles in various spots sunning themselves on logs. On our return trip, we got the piece d’resistance: a river otter! The river otter was actually in the lake with us and bobbed up a couple of times (almost like trying to stand in the water) to try to decide if we were a danger or not and then disappeared under the water.

Super cool!

It was pretty darned magical, even though at that point in the trip around the lake we were fighting a chilly headwind so strong that if we stopped paddling the canoe would start to go sideways.

Almost immediately after making landfall, Mason and I hopped in the car and headed off to nearby Judge C. R. Magney State Park to revisit Devil’s Kettle.

Shawn elected to stay behind. Her knee, which has been performing like an absolute champ this trip, has been getting stiff and sore after canoe rides. She bends very well for someone who is really only about six months out of knee surgery but getting in and out of the canoe from the dock is more of a challenge. The idea of doing all those stairs down—and then back up again—to see the first set of falls felt like a bad idea to her. I don’t blame her, but we still felt sad leaving her behind even though she said it was okay.

Mason and I have been to this state park before, four years ago, but I was not yet a member of either the Passport or the Minnesota State Parks and Trails Hiking Club. I brought my state park passport along and got my stamp!


Image: passport stamp


I was glad Shawn did not come once we started the hike. I’m here to tell you that being fat and asthmatic is no real barrier (so long as you have your inhaler, are generally mobile, and are willing to take it slowly,) but I do not think Shawn’s knee would have survived the uneven, sloped parts of the trail, NEVERMIND the stairs.

Speaking of being fat, I did have at least one stranger feel free to tell me that I was “doing great, honey!” But you know what? I was! So, I decided to ignore the fairly pointed assumption about my general health based on my size, and said, “Thanks! You, too!”

The effort is always worth it, however:



Image: famous Devil's Kettle.

If you have never heard of Devil's Kettle before and why it's so fascinating, feel free to read this article about the mysterious kettle that takes water in but maybe sends it straight to hell... https://www.treehugger.com/the-mystery-of-devils-kettle-falls-4863996



Mason and I had a lovely hike back down. I’d swear, actually, that I took the stairs back up much faster this year than I did four years ago. This is not to say that we didn’t pause on any of the landings that are on offer, but I made very steady progress and never felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest or any of that. I honestly think it helped that the weather has been quite cool up here, so while I worked up a sweat, it never felt overwhelming. TMI? But I’m kind of proud of myself, I guess? Especially after that lady’s “encouragement.”

On our way back to Gunflint Trail and the Lodge, Mason and I stopped in Grand Marais for lunch. This trip is a gift to Mason for graduating from university and so I let him pick the place. We stopped at Angry Trout to have fish sandwiches and an incredible view of the marina, if you can call it such, on Lake Superior.


Image: Mason contemplating the menu at Angry Trout.

The drive back was uneventful and we spent much of the rest of the evening sitting on the dock staring out at the lake (or reading.) We have new “neighbors” in cabin two. They are two old duffers who are here for a guy’s weekend of fishing and catching up. Shawn, who was here all day, talked to them a bit. One of them is from the Twin Cities (Oakdale or somewhere like that) and the other is previously from the area, but has since moved to Arizona. He told us he left nearly 100 F / C temps. We made the classic joke about having brought the sun with him, since this was one of the first non-rainy days.

Normally, we don’t interact much with the other cabins, but the forestry service has done a lot of fire maintenance around the lodge and so all of the underbrush is gone, chopped down. It looks little denuded, and apocalypse-y and it also means you see more people coming in out of cabins from further away and have to make the tough Minnesota decision: “Do I wave? Do I have to wave? Oh crap, we made eye contact, I will lift my hand and wave. Oh, god, this is awkward, how long do I wave?” And, yes, I’m actually the family’s extrovert. But I’m also very aware that most people in Minnesota do not actually want to have to talk to strangers, especially when they are “up nort” on a fishing trip with their old college buddy.

More wildflowers!


Wild sasperilla?


Image: blue flower of some variety??

The weather here has been overcast and rainy. As Shawn told a somewhat uncertain staff person, “It’s gorgeous!” (The staff was concerned that she was being sarcastic. Shawn assured her that she was not.) Our family is very happily indoorsy. So, we spent much of the day inside, by a roaring fire, reading.

However, the weather cleared up on and off, and during one of the ‘on’s, Shawn and I headed out for an early morning canoe. We tend to canoe much like we hike, which is to say, we don’t go all that far, and we glide along at a snail’s pace.


Image: Shawn in a canoe at Bearskin

I’ve also resumed my quest to walk as many of Bearskin’s ski trails as I feel is reasonable. I tend to enjoy a hike to a destination like Sunday’s accidental trip to Rudy Lake, but not all of the ski trails are set up for vistas. In fact, most of them aren’t. A person can tell, even as hiker, how excellent they are for skiers. So many up and down slopes! We are technically in the Pincushion Mountains here, (though people from the Coasts are allowed to scoff at what we call mountains around here.) However, the elevation changes are real! In fact, it usually takes me a few days to get used to the steep slopes. This time, having just come from Middletown, CT, which I feel like was built entirely at a 45-degree angle (all of it uphill!), I didn’t seem to need as much time.

At any rate, this year, I decided to try and find Ox Cart. FYI, an Ox Cart would not make it around this loop. I mean, I guess oxen are strong? But pulling a cart would be tough! Skiing however? It would be glorious.

Bob, the owner of Bearskin, did want to point out that if I walked Ox Cart, I would see the new boardwalk that they installed.

The boardwalk goes over a very marshy, swampy area. A place that my family would call “very moosey,” as this seems to be the sort of areas that we imagine moose tend to enjoy. This is a highly unscientific “hot take,” however. The one time that we saw moose in the wild, while hiking (at, of all places, “Moose Viewing Trail”) there was a place a little like this, though much more lake-y and slightly less boggy/swampy.


Moosey view.

I did not see moose here.

I will note, however, that I did see moose tracks and what was very obviously moose scat on my way back out of this trail. So, perhaps our family is not entirely wrong as to what constitutes a moosey place.

Much of my hike was just woods.


Image: wooded path

However, I have been trying to stop and take pictures of wildflowers that I’ve been seeing on my hikes. Here are a few:


Image: pussy feet? Something like that (looking for id, pameladean !)


Image: star flower

 Somehow our house looks more chaotic and full of half-filled bags and boxes as we prepare for a week long vacation to the northwoods. ONE WEEK! You'd think we were packing to move out!

The thing about the place we're headed is that the closest town with a grocery store is twenty minutes down the Gunflint Trail. I mean, I will drive twenty minutes to a store around here. Maybe because we're surrounded by TREES, twenty minutes away feels so much further when we're up north. Half of what we're bringing is food. Almost none of which will be returning with us. 

Despite all this, I'm really looking forwrard to the vacation. There is limited wireless, but I usually get up early and make the hike to the Lodge with my computer and spend an hour or so making sure I'm not missing out on any earth-shattering news. So, I'm still reachable, just... only once a day. I'm going to try to post pictures and such--you know, actually keep up with this blog for once!  

 
Recent college graduate Mason, peering through the Gov Docs stacks at Wesleyan University

We have actually been home for a while, but, for some reason, this time I feel like I've been struggling to catch up with everything. Our house is currently a warren of boxes--all of them somehow containing everything Mason had brought with him, bought, or otherwise accumulated, over the past four years as a student. As I noted while we were still on the road, we shipped most of his stuff back via the United States Postal Service. A fine service, I might add. Still, by far, the cheapest and most efficient way to send things. I hate seeing it in crisis. (And it clearly is. I spend a lot of time at post offices and all of them are chronically understaffed right now--from Middletown, CT to Minnesota.)

On the road, however, I managed to listen to a lot of audio books. I finished up the last of the Singing Hills Cycle novellas. Then, because I had to wait to get to the hotel to download the book I actually wanted next, I ended listening to David Levine's Arabella of Mars, which I wanted to be more queer than it was, but oh well. The book I'd wanted was Martha Well's Exit Strategy, which I had apparently forgotten to read when I was reading through the Murderbot Dairies some time ago (or maybe it wasn't out yet, but somehow I missed it.) Then, to fill in a short gap I listened to  another novella: A Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer. Apparently I needed to have read the Borne Series, which I had not. I mean, I would say that it stood on its own, honestly? Though I could tell in the second half that there was a bigger story in the City that I didn't fully grasp.  It was weird in the way of Vandermeer's stories, though. A bit depressing, too. I have since started, but have been slow to get into. Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs. But, as you will see below. I've been a bit scattered and distracted.





Mason (right) and his partner Jas (left) in their robes on the steps of the Chapel at Wesleyan

I am probably feeling so very rushed an unsettled for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are actually headed off to Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail (for my non-Minnesotan friends: Think Cabin in the Woods. Only with 99.9% fewer demonic sacrifices.) We'll be up there for a week--from Saturday to Saturday--and it is, in essence, Mason's graduation gift to him from us, but it does mean another day on the road!  I was just talking to Shawn and it's kind of amazing that (if we drove with no stops) it will take us about as long to get to the Lodge as it did to drive from Youngstown, OH to Valparaiso, IN. Minnesota is a BIG state. Saint Paul is kind of in the middle of the state, and it will take us that long to drive the same distance we drove through all of Ohio and most of Indiana. INSANE. I mean, when you look on a map all of Minnesota is North and South Dakota length and then some.

Anyway, I don't mind the driving. Our family usually finds fun places to stop and hunt for agates or just take in the view of Lake Superior. This time, however, we may be going past some active fires, which I can't say I'm excited to see. 

The air quality has been bad here, y'all.

But, I'm stressing out because the idea of packing my clothes again just seems like a LOT. 

The other thing that has me generally unsettled is that we just found out that Shawn's brother Keven has a lump on his kidney. The doctors are fairly certain it's cancer and they're already talking about chemo and all the works. Keven didn't used to be my favorite brother (Shawn has two), but in the past several years Keven has gotten some diagonises and meds and therapy. He's not anything like a changed man, but now he's tolerable and curmudgeonly in a more charming and amusing way.

And, now, it seems, the gods have kicked him in the teeth.

Keven only just got his first tests, so it's not necessarily any kind of immediate death sentence. But, fuck. You know?

 
Image: whaling ship in the grey, cold rain

Shawn and I have made this trip to Connecticut (and back again) five times. Once to move Mason in, and then four times now to move him out. We have never, ever been able to see anything more off the coast of Connecticut than mist. I was pretty sure that the whole fog-of-nothingness/evil was supposed to be a Stephen King thing for Maine, not Connecticut, but here we are, our fifth trip, and there is clearly NO OCEAN OFF THE COAST. It is all greyness and LIES.  

But, we managed a fun sight seeing trip anyway. 

We went to Mystic, CT, bringing along with us both Mason and his partner Jas. 


Mason, our grad, (left) and Jas (right) at the Black Sheep in Nantic, CT. 

The Seaport Museum was probably an interesting choice given the foul weather, and, honestly, I would have hoped that pouring rain would mean that we'd have the place to ourselves. No, every school group in the history of school groups were all there, making trying to get into the litttle faux village shops somewhat of a crapshoot. It was a lovely little space, though. Mason and I explored the whaling ship and I got inspired to do a better job explaining how cramped berths on sailing ships (in my case space ships) can be.  

I'm going to say, however, that my favorite thing was seeing a family of geese and their three little goslings. 

And getting to see Mason hanging out with the person he calls "love."

We did not get any packing done today, but the four of us got very moist and a little cross, so it's back to the AirBnB for us. Clothes are in the dryer and my wet toeies are tucked under the covers. We are giving up for the day, with only dinner out for plans. I wish we'd had better weather, but we had excellent company and that's what it's all about.

Image: white lilac

I'm at least always reminded on a Wednesday that maybe I should go on over to DW and at least drop a line about what I've been reading. As has become typical of me, I will also attempt to catch you up on the rest of my life. But first, since it's probably the least interesting, I'll start with my reading.

This has been a banger week for me.

I finished Nghi Vo's The Chosen & The Beautiful, which I probably would have appreciated more if I were a fan of The Great Gatsby, which I am not. I didn't hate Vo's book, however? I liked the magic far better than any of the people, but I'm pretty sure, given what I know about The Great Gatsby, that was likely by design. Then, I have been absolutely CRANKING through The Singing Hills Cycle, which is Nghi Vo's loosely connected series of novellas about the wandering scholar-priest Chih, whom I adore. This week I listened to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and Into the Riverlands. I have Mammoths at the Gates queued up and ready to listen to! I don't even know how to explain how awesome these novellas are, but if you are at all a fan of C-Dramas I guarantee you will *love* these. I could not be happier to see that another in this series is up for a Hugo this year. Thank all the gods my friend naomikritzer is up in a different catagory or I'd have a real connundrum on my hands.

Also, because there was a day when I could not get the next Singing Hills novella, I listened to Remote Control. another novella, this one by Nnedi Okorafor. I have to say? These two hour audio versions of stories are amazing--like popcorn for the brain! 

The rest of my week has been a lot. Much of it fun stuff, but a goodly chunk of it being preparation for heading East to watch Mason graduate from college. (I know! It doesn't seem possible to me, either!) To be fair, Shawn is doing most of the actual planning. But my job is often to do much of the fetching, as it were. Plus, with this crazy heat (it's been all the way up to 90 F / 32 C), I've been trying to keep the ground moist for my baby seedlings that are coming up in the boulevard garden. My bouelvard, like anywhere that I attempt to "grow" grass, is an absolute nightmare. I would be summarily kicked out of any gated community for my inability to keep grass of any sort alive. However, I am attempting to make up for that this year by having a stunning boulevard garden. So in amongst the perrenials, I dumped a literal ton of "butterfly garden" seeds. Things seem to be emerging? Of course, we are also poised to be out of town for a week and a half. So, I may come back to a lot of dead things. 

Which I guess also goes with the grass aesthetic, I guess. 

Sigh.

At any rate, the fun thing I did this week was spontaneously go on a "Midwestern hanami" with the above-mentioned Naomi. I have long told her how jealous I am that the Japanese actually make a holiday out of flower viewing (which is what hanami translates to--actually technically it's just "flower" and "to see.") In Japan, of course, what people go out to look at are cherry blossoms. We could do that here, but cherry blossoms bloom when it's still a bit "nippy," as we say here in Minnesota, plus there just aren't a ton of cherry trees to be had. Lilacs--even though lots of other things are in bloom--are really to the Midwest what cherry blossoms are to Japan. Like in Japan, lilacs are not native... but you wouldn't know it. Also, people plant them EVERYWHERE and when they bloom, you can smell them on the air. Just like in Japan, you can, if you know where to find them (and I do,) walk through a kind of tunnel of lilacs in bloom.



Image: On Summit Avenue, there exists a secret tunnel of lilacs two blocks long....

Naomi and I have long talked about doing a lilac hanami, so we finally did. On Tuesday, we set off to Summit Avenue just east of Lexington where exists a lovely, two-block long tunnel of lilacs. It was a perfect spot, actually. Public, but still a little private. 


Image: A silly otaku (me) enjoying a picnic under the lilacs.

We spent the time snacking on sushi and fantasing about a Minnesota where everyone has the week off when the lilacs come into bloom. We imagined all sorts of lilac "flavored" treats people could sell, including some "Minnesota State Fair"-inspired things like a corndog with lavender/lilac-colored mustard artistically droozled to look like a lilac. It could be a thing!

Minnesotas could all wander around with phones and camera out, trying to get the perfect quintessential lilac shot.

 Last night I started a new solo RPG. It's called ALONE in the Wasteland: a Journaling Adventure to Find Your Character in a Post Apocalyptic World. So far, I'm enjoying it. To be fair, I'm only two rolls in and I had a bit of a false start, but, all the same, it inspired some really crazy science fictional dreams last night. 

I'm thinking about a way to suggest a panel on Solo RPGs at Gaylaxicon this year. One of the guests is an editor at Modiphius (Jim Johnson) who did a lot of work on Captain's Log, which is the Star Trek: Adventures solo RPG. I'd love to talk to other people who actually play these. I've played a number of them at this point. 

• The Last Tea Shop (my favorite so far)
• Flying Courier
• A Faerie Court Visitation (which I tried to complete twice, and failed both times.)
• Axe-Weilding Cleric

Most of them have been met with mixed success. I am, I'm discovering, picky. Part of my problem is that, as a writer, i want something that's more restrictive than a simple story or journalling prompt. Flying Courier was a disaster for me because it basically just asked you a bunch of questions and said, "Go." And, while I imagine that's absolutely perfect for most people, coming up with stories from full cloth is, in point of fact, my day job. So, I want something a little more structured. Otherwise it starts to feel less like play and more like work (for me!)

Meanwhile, I really wanted to love A Faerie Court Visitiation. The concept is very cool. Basically your hand has been pledged in marriage as a result of one of your ancestor's foolish deal with a fae creature. So here it is, however many generations into the future, and the promise has come due. The problem I ran into with this one is that some of the prompts were actually too specific.  At any rate, I like to be able to do the unexpected in my games, go where my heart wants to go.  Too scripted feels wrong, too. As an example, during my second attempt at this game, I pulled a Eight of Spades on what was supposed to be day 2 of this adventure. That card gave me the prompt, "After sitting through a long meeting in town at the faerie royal's side, you slump against a wall to catch your breath. Your eyes linger on the paintings and tapestries: perhaps there could be a passage behind one."  It was clear that the prompt wanted me to check behind the tapestries, but I didn't want to sneak behind the wall right now. As I wrote in my meta game colored pen: "It feels too soon in the relationship to be sneaking around."  Plus, it was a bit heteronormative? The author is careful to say "spouse" and "royal" and not be gendered, but was trying to play a young man, Finn, who got promised to wed a Faerie Prince. And Finn swooned/caught his breath a lot more than I would have thought he might as a dude.

Axe-Weilding Cleric also suffered from a sudden esclation that felt too early in the game. To be fair to that game, the point is to go crazy and chop people up, but I rolled the youth group and I was like.... mmm, yeah, I'll just end it here and not write up this particular carnage. I'd been having fun, previous to that at least, writing each journal entry as though I was in the confessional. 

The nice thing about Alone in the Wasteland is that the world has some boundaries, but they're not too prescriptive. So far, anyway. The prompts are a little "woo," being devided into Head, Heart, Hand, and Hope. But, whatever. 

I'm not sure how to distill all this experience into a programming item exactly, however. I'll put my mind to it. I mean, "What makes a Solo RPG Successful?" isn't terrible, though it lacks pizzazz. 

Turns out, in a surprise to only the richest man in the world, if you cut funding for the National Weather Service, storm predictions suffer.

We have a neighbor in one of our closed neighborhood groups who is a meterologist. When everyone (including me!) was complaining about the storm prediction that had "everyone overreacting," she explained some things to us.

Firstly: Garbage in, garbage out.

When budget hatchets come down, fewer things like weather balloons go up. Atmospheric conditions are largely tracked by weather balloons and some states have gone from releasing the usual two a day to ONE a day. Our weather here in Minnesota largely comes from the west. So, that means, on the day leading up to the potential big storm, the weather predictors were depending on data that was last current IN WYOMING, approximately 900 miles (1,448 km) away.

There was no new data between here and there that included upper atmospheric pressures, etc. All that data normally goes into the models they use to run their weather prediction maps. When they don't have data, their predictions are... SURPRISE!!... crap. Garbage in (or nothing at all in); garbage out.

So, if you feel "ripped off" because we got no storm on Monday, then BLAME TRUMP.

I mean, this is where it feels dumb... rather than evil. Like, I expect this current administration to be vindictive against what they call "wokeness," but what the f*ck is "woke" about weather reporting? Did people really feel there was a Big Weather problem, lots of bloat and misuse of funds? (Don't feel the need to answer this, these questions are rhetorical. I know that all government agencies got hit.)

/rant

But, so here it is Wedensay already, and I'd been meaning to write up some notes about what I've been reading. I am currently eighty-some percent of the way through the audiobook of The Mechanics of Memory by Audrey Lee. I will say that I think this book is a little longer than it needed to be, but I'm enjoying the general premise of it. It's about a woman who is basicaly wrongfully sent to a psychatric "spa" in order to have false memories implanted in her--though it turns out she's resistant (or maybe was prepped to withstand the "treatment"), so she's trying to figure out the mystery of why everyone has been sent here and what it has to do with a bunch of hackers known as the Mad Hatters (which, I mean, the name alone gives us a clue that perhaps this psych ward is, in fact, somehow involved.) It's one of those mysteries where you're pretty sure you're guessing ahead, but then another twist is introduced. It feels like it should be closer to the climax than it is right now. I'm at that phase where I would LIKE THEM TO GET AWAY WITH IT, but another complication just dropped. But, despite that, I would recommend it. The audiobook has at least two narrators and, unfortunately, one of them reads like he has never experienced an emotion in his life. But, luckily the majority of the chapters have someone else reading.

Previous to this I had someone read The Sculpted Ship (by K. M. O'Brien) to me, and that was another one where I started out more keen than I finished. The Sculpted Ship was to science fiction what Legends & Lattes is to high fantasy. The place where I ended up growing disintersted in The Sculpted Ship was where it left the formula of low stakes problem solving. There's a whole heist at the end that solves one of the main plot issues of the story, specifically how our heroine will get the parts to finish making her ship space worthy, but it goes deep into characters we only just met and I could have done without it, even though it puts a bow on the whole thing. I was there for the "how will our heroine make enough money to buy this part?" and "Will the heroine pass her etiquette lessons in time for the safari booking?" non-tension conflicts.

We all need a book like this from time to time.

If you pick it up, my only caveat is that K. M. O'Brien is a dude writing about women and I knew that the moment that his point-of-view heroine described another woman as "well-endowed." This wasn't a cardinal sin? I do know some women who might say something like this, but there is later an aborted sexual assault that just didn't quite ring true for me. Mileage may vary, however.

So, with The Memory Mechanic nearly done, I have another list of possiblities.

HOWEVER, if I can figure out how to get the audio files to my phone, the following list may be moot, as the Hugo Award reading packet included audio files for almost all of the books nominated this year. Audiobooks included are: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, and Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wisewell  (the last of which I listened to some time ago and really enjoyed.)  So, it's missing a couple? But, that's pretty impressive!

The list of things that I have queued up in Libby are:

Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control (this appears to be a novella, as it's only 4 hours long)
Annalee Newitz's The Future of Another Timeline
Mike Chen's Light Years From Home
Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky
Vic James's Gilded Cage
Jenn Lyons's The Sky on Fire
Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

If anyone has recommendations among those (or which Hugo nominee I should start with), I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I THINK I have a plan to get the Hugo nominees over to my phone, but if not, I'll end up listening to those piecemeal on my computer while doing things in the house (which is fine, it's just less convenient than my phone. And now is the weather for yardwork, so! I may actually become one of those people who has two different books going at once!) 

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well. Reading anything fun or different? 

Image: A very unstable LEGO gummie tractor made from a packet picked up at Minicon (GPS room)

My second (and last, as it happens,) day at MInicon was a real mixed bag and I am, in fact, still sorting out a lot of how I feel about it. As I noted in the previous post, most of my panels (4 out of 5) felt no better than 'meh,' with at least two of them sinking to 'is this an unmitigated diaster??? I think this might be a disaster!!' in my book.

But, it's possible that my standards out of whack. And, at least one person in the audience of one of the panels I thought was possibly The BIGGEST trainwreck, actually said that most of what I told her about privately was not at all visible to the audience (which is good!) She had a great time and thought the panel was fun. The problem may just be me.

So, take everything below with a very large heaping of salt.

 
Saturday

My first panel on Saturday wasn't until 11:30 am and so Shawn and I did our usual alliterative errands. We went to the cardborad recycling place, the coffee shop and stopped for cardamom spinners at Brake Bread (yes, spelled like that. They are a drive-up and bicycle delivering--as in, home deliveries by bicycle--bakery, so it's the screeeeeeeech of braking suddenly that they are evoking, along with the pun on breaking bread, of course, I believe.)  But, so I got to have fancy coffee and fancy food before heading off to Bloomington and the convention.

My first panel of the day yesterday was the one I was most concerned about, "The Monkey King Travels West." While I was willing to name names in the previous post, I am going to be a little more circumspect in this post, since the person I had the most issues with will very likely be the one to decide if I'm on paneling again next year. 

I can't even say that the pre-panel chatter started well.

I was, at least, delighted to have Delia I. to my left and Anna W. to my right. ( CW: transphobia )

Because, once we got underway, I was still upset on Phoenix's behalf and on behalf of all the queer folks in the room (including myself) and so I was not really in the mood to try to follow the moderator's questions, some of which seemed a bit rambling and all over the place. Like, was this about the legendary figure of the Monkey King or was it about the cross-pollenation between Eastern media and Western and vice versa? The answer seemed to be [cue: meme] "Both! Why not both?"Which might have worked if the moderator had a better hypothesis, you know? Instead it was, as I said, disjointed at best and, of course, I was struggling to engage.  This moderator, too, has a tendency to hog the microphone, which is generally not considered best practices.

Let's just say I was happy when it was over and I fled.

Delia I. was hot on my heels. Delia had heard that there was a potato/taco bar in the GPS room happing RIGHT NOW, and so, having connected up with naomikritzer who was waiting for me outside the programming area, we all headed for much needed food and debriefing. We spent a huge amount of time in the GPS room, actually, talking to the various folks there and trying to build gummy LEGO vehicles from the packets they had available. Despite the picture above, mine was not successful in the room. We had all postulated that the gummies might work better if they were colder/stiffer, and that proved to be true of the leftover pack I took away with me--my fingers had been all over it, trying to build something (so, OF COURSE, I  had to take it home!) 

I ran off around 1 pm to meet up with one of my new pen pals, Roger P., who is actually in a gaming group with caffeine , who is someone else I had a tremendous amount of fun with spending time with at con (and getting to see pictures of the newest grandbaby!) Roger was not at con, so we met at a nearby (walkable) Caribou. Roger turned out to be just my sort, so we probably chatted for an hour or more? He brought a book that he wanted me to sign and so I did that. It was a nice break to get OUT of the con, too.

Surprisingly, Naomi was just where I left her so we continued to hang out there for much of the afternoon. We'd been thinking about going out to get Szechuan at a place Naomi loves and, in retrospect, I wish we had. We ended up having a great time in the hotel restraunt continuing our conversation with Aaron V G, but the service and the food were... iffy. Naomi and I both ordered the butternut squash ravioli, and this is what we got:



Image: Mediocre food masquerading as froo-froo.

The dark droozle of stuff was, I think, supposed to be balsamic something or other, but, insted, tasted like something WAY too sweet. It was edible, but, honestly, only barely. We also lost our server for a long time (I did not even see her flitting about taking care of other people in the restaurant) and I had to flag down another server (who actually turned out to be the manager) and see if we could order more food, etc., etc. I mean, at least this I understand. The hotel probably had a lot of trouble getting people who wanted to work on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. And, I mean, no harm, really. Thank goodness I had HOURS before I needed to be at my 7 pm panel.

Even though I would have missed the company, I do think the two of us would have been better off at Szechuan. 

At some point in here, I also wandered the Dealer's Room and happened to stumble across the author of O Human Star, Blue Delliquanti. jiawen recommended this web comic to me and it is AMAZING (and made me cry the good tears.) I had an absolute fucking fan squee freak out to actually meet Blue in-person. I may have said something stupid like, "Wait, wait, YOU wrote THIS??" which, I mean, why else would someone be sitting behind a display of the graphic novel set? Anyway, I gushed pretty incoherently at Blue about their art and stories and then I absolutely blew the budget I was set by buying all three volumes of O Human Star and had them sign them. 

I was wearing my ConFABulous t-shirt and so Blue mentioned that they thought they might like to attend that con sometime, and so I gave them my pitch for Gaylaxicon which is what ConFABulous will be THIS year. I need to remember to follow-up today and make sure to have John T. or Don K. reach out to them.

I am sure I am missing a bunch of other stuff that happened in here, but now we move on to Disaster #2, "The Pitfalls and Benefits of Writing Humor."

We were down a moderator because the person who was supposed to take that role was, I believe, sick or otherwise unable to come to con. I was a little thrown at the beginning of the panel when Wesley suggested that the audience boo the missing panelist, but okay. We all joked that we should take turns moderating and so Wesley assigned himself the role of "the one who reads the panel description," and I assigned myself the role of "the person who suggests we all introduce ourselves and picks who we start with." This was mostly all fine (booing aside,) and then... somehow the Monkey King came to haunt me again.

Again I am going to be a little more circumspect about the panelist I am about to discuss because she is actually a very good friend of mine, who I think just misstepped BADLY. 

But, y'all, it was bad.

( CW: micro-agressions and racism )

I have NO IDEA what my friend says to Wesley or how he takes it, because I am intercepting Wesley's liason to let him know that Wesley might need a STIFF DRINK after this panel and this would be why.

I had two more panels to go before I could go home

Again, however, I asked a friend of mine who was in the audience how this whole scene played out to her, and I think we were really lucky that the microphones in that room were kind of crap and I'm not sure how sure how much of it was heard by anyone but the panelists and the first few rows. My friend was seated in the middle and said she tuned out the whole Monkey King thing because she had no interest in any of that and so had no idea anything had really happened. 

After the debacle that was the Humor panel, I flagged down one of my fellow panelists, Ozgur, for the next one ("The Restaurant at the End of the Book," for which I am the moderator) and asked him if he would be willing to be a stealth co-moderator, There is one panelist that could be a problem, and I had seen that person at the bar, so 50/50 they were sober. So, I said to Ozgur that if I seem to be floundering to please jump in and help me wrestle the topic back to plumb. He agreed.

Thus armed, I went into the next one.

Turns out? This was the best panel I was on all weekend. The panelist I was worried about? A perfect addtion to the panel, extremely lively in all the right ways. We stayed on topic with only a few, very natural diversions into related topics, like the history of certain foods, etc. I think panelists were happy because I asked those that created recipes for their books to share them, and at the end, I made sure that anyone who had things they wanted to plug had the opportunity to do so. Ozgur never had to rescue me, and, more importantly, IT WAS FUN.

My last panel was "Who is Voting for Team Rocket?" and our moderator decided to take that literally and had a fun little part at the end where we voted on various villains in various catagories and whoever suggested them won a small figurine that she had picked up at the dollar store. This panel did not pop, but it also did not fail, so it slotted in nicely to the 'it was okay' set of panels. 

What a wild damn ride.

This is not my usual experience at Minicon at all. I am blaming the Monkey King, because clearly I have displeased him with my lack of knowledge. Hopefully a penance of several chapters of A Journey to the West will put my life's vibe back in order.

 I'm hoping to do an old-fashioned, LJ-era type con report for Minicon, which starts today.

I'm obviously not there yet. My first panel is tonight at 5:30 pm, which is an awkward time for me. I was shown my schedule several months ago, of course, but I didn't really fully consider the time slots. You maybe know how it is? I was more focused, at the time, on the subject matters and whether or not I thought I would be a good fit. I don't remember being asked if there were times and dates I couldn't do, but I also missed the first email that went out--it ended up in my spam box somehow. So, that's probably also on me.

At any rate, I could not have predicted that Shawn would be in the middle of performance review crunch time at work. She really wanted to be able to stay late and finish things up as today is her deadline for the last of them. And, since we are a one car family, I need to get her home and be on the road at LEAST by 5:00 pm and even that feels a little risky. (Highway 494 is under construction and 5:00 is rush hour.)  So, I am already anxious about everything and wondering when the heck I'm going to get a chance to even eat. Again, Shawn and I are old ladies and so we eat at 4:30-5:00 pm most days. There's just not going to be time for that.

Currently, the plan for food involves stopping at Breadsmiths on the way to pick her up and eating a sandwich in the car on the way to the con. Shawn, at least, has leftover homemade pasties in the fridge. Maybe those would be okay cold? I think there is enough for both of us to have one. Maybe I'm saved. We'll see.

Anyway, tonight will be kind of a stressful mess (at least partly of my own making) even before I actually sit down to try to moderate the panel. At least we were able to shift our date night to Thursday (last night) thanks to my writers' group Pendragons canceling. So, this was fun. We always do dinner and a movie or if you prefer, Netflix and chill (wink, wink.) Last night, Shawn and I ended up watching The Electric State. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one. Did anyone else see it? It's brand new, a 2025 release, and has that annoying dude, Star Lord, in it--one of the Marvel Chris-es. (I think this is the one that's actually Minnesotan, originally from Virginia. Yes, Chris Pratt.) Shawn and I talked about it afterwards, like you do, and for us the problem was that it was absolutely 100% NOT a "feel good" movie. A lot of people that you get very invested in die. And, ( SPOILER ) So, I mean.... it's kind of hard to cheer at the end? There were a lot of other things we both liked about it, but you get to the end feeling very "..." which is not the stuff blockbuster movies are made of, you know? Not ones starring Chris Pratt and which have a lot of jocular humor in them. The tone just wasn't right at the beginning for that downer of an ending. At last not for us. I'd love to hear what you thought of it, if you've seen it.

But, back to tonight, I really can't be late to the con tonight because not only am I the moderator, but also one of the guests of honor, Wesley Chu, is going to be on the panel. I absolutely do not want to start out with my foot in it, you know? Especially since I have a panel later, on Saturday, with him as well. 

The subject matter of tonight's panel should be easy to moderate, I hope. It's "On Learning How to Write." The panel description itself gives a basic set of questions to start with and I have found that it's often not difficult to get writers to talk about their process and/or writing, in general. Of couse, now that I've said this, the panelists will all be taciturn and closed-mouthed and I'll have to break out a song and dance routine just to get through the hour or however long we have.

I think that's everything I'm pre-thinking about. I had a chance to look through the programming book, which is online as a .pdf at Minicon's main site: https://mnstf.org/minicon58/ There is a movie showing tonight in the Film Obscura room that actually interests me: "The New Mutants." I've long been a Marvel fan and I never made it to the theater to see this one, so I am vaguely tempted to hang around long enough tonight to catch it.

Oh, that's the other thing I failed to pay attention to in terms of my schedule, I am the OPPOSITE of a night owl (a morning lark!) and all my panels tomorrow go WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY past my bedtime. Like, I have one that starts at 10 pm. With my CoCoRaHS volunteering, too, I am actually required to be up before 7 am every single day of the week. I'm usually up by 5:30-6:00 am so that's not a huge problem, but it is more difficult when I don't get to bed until after 11 pm. And, I will be honest with you, my friends, I am in bed, sound asleep many nights by 8:30 pm. So, even having a panel that starts at 7 pm feels really LATE to me. 

I'm also likely going to one of very few people masking the entire time so that ought to be... interesting, as we say here in Minnesota. I know this makes me a Dolly Downer. But, y'all, no offense. It's not about your health status. I'm not judging you. My wife is immunocompromised. I'm sure you're bummed not to see my smiling face, but your momentary pleasure is not worth her life. Full stop. Sorry/not sorry. I had a very telling back and forth with someone in MNstF via text not that long ago, wherein it was patently clear that if I wanted to show up to the business meeting/party with a mask on, I wasn't welcome. So... that's extra fun.

I'm not really made for conventions any more, I am realizing. I used to be? But I was also thirty years younger back then.

Oh well. Bonus, just in time for people to be pulling back on all their virtual programming, too. Alack, alas, what do you do. I'm still expecting to have a great deal of fun this weekend. Maybe I'll see some of you all there!