Day in the Life of an Idiot

As I think I've previously mentioned, I changed from attending Chicon 8 / 80th WorldCON in-person to virtual. I really waffled long and hard about this, but two things factored into my decision to go virtual. First, the pandemic, despite our wishful thinking, rages on. Secondly, this weekend is the same weekend that Mason heads back to Wesleyan University to start his second year of college. Even though my son is a fully grown and capable adult, I would still have been sad to not have been able to see him off to the airport.

I made the switch to virtual just as they were sending out programming. I got an AMAZING initial, draft, in-person schedule:


Image: my initial draft schedule.

I took a screen shot of it because I figured that when I switched to Virtual that late in the game, it would be beyond hope to be accommodated. I felt that was reasonable given how much WorldCON volunteers have to juggle, I should note, though I was very sad at the prospect. So, I thought, "I shall snap this picture of what could have been and be pleased that I was in the running for so MANY super-cool looking programming items." I was especially sad, at first, imagining that I'd lost the opportunity to talk about anime film director and mangaka, Kon Satoshi.

As I posted a few days ago, I actually have a very robust virtual con schedule. I was inordinately pleased to see that the Kon Retrospective had been shifted fully to virtual. That panel is first thing tomorrow morning and I am psyched. So, I should say that going into this convention I was/am in high spirits.

Yesterday was a bit up and down for me, though.

I was able to attend the "Dress Rehearsal" for programming participants a week ago. Chicon has chosen a new-to-me online conference hosting software called Airmeet. It seems to have been specifically designed to deal with a large volume of conference attendees, and it has a couple of fun features, including a private "backstage" option for panelists to hang out in, pre live panel, to talk. My only frustration is that a new software means a large learning curve for the majority of the attendees and tutorials have been hard to come by. The session I attended, I think, tried to do too much. A lot of us writers had very specific questions about their needs and the staff tried to answer to all of them, in specific, before a general sense of how Airmeet works had really been established. But, it's mostly intuitive to the moderately internet savvy, I'd say?

But, so, okay, my con experience so far...

My virtual con yesterday was a mix of soul-crushing and uplifting, in that order, at least. Thus, I actually ended the day feeling okay about it all?

My Table Talk was the soul-crushing event. I ended up popping into one of the "lounges" that Airmeet has set up for people to gather. There is a specific kind of "help desk" one, labeled: Info. Table Talks are extra confusing on Airmeet, because they are not listed on the on-line schedule. The reason is, of course, that they're not actually PUBLIC events, per se. They're sign-up only. So, anyway, I was a little uncertain how they worked, technically, so I dropped in when no one else was in the Info room/lounge and asked the woman working there if there was anything special, mechanically, that I needed to do.

It was explained to me that when the Table Talk was about to start a notification would show up under "my meetings" and then you could click to join. That seemed very reasonable and so I asked if there was any way to tell how many people had signed up from her end. The Info Woman said no, but an automatic email would have been generated if no one had signed up at all.

Okay, I thought, there's a relief. I hadn't seen one of those.

My publisher from Wizard's Tower Press, Cheryl Morgan, saw me online and popped into the room and complained a bit to Staff Lady about the fact that she had, in fact, tried to join my Table Talk, but the sign-up closed before she could get to it. Apparently, you have to sign up ahead of time by a full day, which mostly makes sense, except apparently the online con stuff wasn't fully available early morning Wednesday. Also a lot of people just coming in did not realize that they should have done so earlier if they wanted to get on Thursday Table Talks. (Cheryl implied but didn't say that this also clearly put international fans at a disadvantage, because a reasonable time to be awake and checking one's con schedule on UK time is very different than Chicago time.) Staff Lady said that they were trying to deal with this by dropping low-attendance Table Talks into the public lounge spaces so that people might be able to spontaneously join the day of, just like you can in-person.

Okay, this is all very important because: no one but Cheryl ended up at my Table Talk.

DEMORALIZING.

BUT I also did not get any kind of email saying that I'd been cancelled, so I have no idea if there were no shows or if people didn't get the joining email when they shifted me to public--because they clearly did. I waited and waited for my "join my meeting" notification to show up and it NEVER did. Eventually, in my panic, I happened to see it materialize in the public lounge spaces, so I was able to join. So, I don't know what happened there. I should have been informed if there were ZERO attendees, and the system shouldn't have counted Cheryl because she missed the official sign-in. Did the shift to public mess up some notification that everyone, including me, should have gotten? I have no idea.

But, on the other hand Cheryl Morgan and I had a lovely talk. In fact, we were able to do some business. She was wondering if I wanted paper copies available for the e-books, and I was like, "Hell yes, why didn't we do it from the start?" So, that's something we'll be doing, which is wonderful. Then, you know, we generally caught up on each other's lives, learning Welsh/Japanese via Duolingo, and all sorts of various mundane things like that. I really like Cheryl as a person? So, even though we were both staring at each other hyper-aware of the empty "room," it wasn't a total waste of time.

My reading, on the other hand, went really well. When I pressed the "go backstage" button, I discovered that my technical assistant was the Airstream Tutorial person, a person named Gail. Gail, it turns out is a HUGE fan of mine, and basically gushed at me about how awesome I am and that was EXACTLY the pick-me-up that I needed after the empty room fiasco. Also, she could tell how many people came to the reading and it was about a dozen, which is, for me, an absolute crowd. I also told Gail that she could record the reading, so if people want to check it out later, it will be available. So, if any of you reading this report are attending virtually or have access to the virtual option, feel free to check it out. 

Afterwards, it occurred to me that the short story I read at the reading should have probably come with some trigger warnings (there's sex work and implied abuse and violence), so I reached out in chat to Gail so that she could at least add those to the recording of the reading and we had another lovely back and forth and I asked her to send me her snail mail so I could send her something, like a signed copy of a favorite book, as a thank you. She was OVER THE MOON. When I got the snail mail address, it came with another lovely, long email telling me all the things she loved about my writing.

So, ultimately, this was very gratifying for my bruised ego.

I would say, in fact, that it all came out in the wash. Because the lack of a crowd at the Table Talk seems to have possibly been the result of some technical error, I don't even REALLY feel all that badly about it.  I notice right now, in fact, that hardly anyone is taking advantage of the lounge option in Airmeet. I've been occupying a table in the so called "Coffee shop" hoping that someone will notice me and drop in, but just sitting here hasn't resulted in anything. I suppose if I want to chat, I'll have to drop a DM to someone in Airmeet and see if they want to virtually hang out. That seems more intrusive than I want to be, however. 

I'm hoping other people will post con reports because I am definitely having a case of FOMO (fear of missing out) over all of this. It would actually help me to hear other people's stories of how it's going for them.

I used to be a people person, I swear. I am still an extrovert who will liven up your Zoom call, but you know what I hate? PEOPLE.

Or maybe the suburbs.

Definitely suburbs.

Shawn and I tried to go out for a "mall walk" today. Here in sunny Minnesota, it is currently 1 F / -17.2 C, previously when we were out there was a wind chill warning. Being two middle aged women, Shawn and I are trying to find good venues for walking around where we don't have to worry about our skin freezing off in the cold air. Our local newspaper, the Star Tribune, had a lovely article about mall walking and their top ten picks. We thought, "Oh, well, we have a mall just up the way from us, in Roseville." So, we decided to walk around HarMar Mall.

Apparently, EVERYONE had this same idea.

Worse, because suburbs are not under mask mandates, well over half of the people walking were not wearing masks. At all. Indoors. Walking briskly. Breathing hard. EXCERCISING. 

I will admit that I was not a good walking companion because I was as jumpy as a mouse at a snake convention. I flinched every time I saw someone without a mask. Shawn was pretty sick of me squirming  and so we decided to try to find a better place in the city, where masks are mandated by order of Mayor Carter. We tried Bandana Square, but it's not a real mall, so it's not designed in any kind of easily walkable loop. However, I think we're going to try to continue there, since it is very, very quiet and there are a number of stairs that could make it a decent cardio workout, if we figure out a good route. 

I am still coming down from the nerves of having been out and about where people clearly give no flying flaps that Minnesota's ICUs are still at capacity and that January was a record setting number of cases for our state.

All of this does make me wonder if I will ever enjoy crowds again. I was never the kind of extrovert who was like, "Woo! Stadiums! I love a crowded stadium!"  Nor was I ever the crowded mosh pit sort. So, I don't know if what I'm feeling is actually damage from the pandemic, or if what I'm feeling is just an acknowledgement that I was NEVER a big fan and always just put up with crowded spaces because "that's just how it is." 

I don't know. 

I will say that I was also not pleased yesterday evening to discover that the soccer stadium is back in operation. I live close enough to Allianz Fields that last night's game f*cked up dinner. We had a very rare craving for hamburgers and cheese curds last night and I thought that I could just pop in the car and head to the nearby Culver's (a hamburger chain, unique to the upper Midwest.) When I tried to go the, like, eight blocks to the drive-thru in my car, I had to wait through several lights while drunken sports fans made their way from the bars to the stadium, all under the direction of the St. Paul Police. I mean, I guess it kept them from shooting unarmed Black men, but it was really clear that the cops were not working for the people of my neighborhood who JUST WANTED TO GET SOME FAST FOOD ONCE, but the revealers. I was so irritated by the time I got to Culver's that the fact that the screwed up our orders and we didn't even get hamburgers barely made a dent in my already white hot rage.

So, I mean, people, am I right?

 
Image: Cats stare intently at a crazy quilt on the floor. 

I took this picture late at night (and it's a bit blurry) but I think it still shows how big my pandemic crazy quilt is getting. I recently started working on it again because I got an influx of new material from a friend (see the bin in the background.) Plus, I kind of enjoy that I am just adding things with wild abandon. I really don't care if my stitches are straight, I don't care how well corners match. I'm just having fun.  

I also only work on it when I want to. This is, in fact, the same one I showed off over a year ago.  

Pursuant to my previous post, I did try a one-on-one outdoors on Saturday. It was not exactly warm out--in fact at one point snow started to fall!--but my friends have a firepit. We sat, wrapped up in blankets, sipping coffee, and watched the fire in their beautiful backyard garden. I stayed probably an hour and a half. We had a lovely chat and good coffee. It was often cold enough that I could see my breath.  We joked a lot about the social skills we've lost, but I didn't notice if we had. I think that honestly, what we may have "lost" is some of the stuff we never needed. Our talk was frank and straight-forward. When they asked 'how are you?' I didn't just say "Fine," but answered with the awkward truth. 

I did have a mild panic attack walking through their house to their backyard, but once I was outside, I was okay. I relaxed in no time. So, there is hope for me. I will be able to do this, given enough practice. 

In similar news, Shawn got her second shot. Her first one was assembly-line like, there were people waiting with her in line. This time, she said that the clinic was deserted. Where were all those same people who got the first shot with her? Shouldn't they all have been back basically the same day?  I've been reading about people not getting the second shot, but this is the first time I've been confronted with evidence that seems to bear that out. We weren't even all that far out of the cities. She got her jabs in Burnsville, at an actual hospital clinic. 

I worry about my fellow Americans. 

Are they really not getting the second shot? What are they thinking?

I have a question for all of you: people talk a lot about feeling like they're losing social skills during the pandemic, do you feel that's true for you? If so, what social skills, in particular, are you noticing yourself (or worrying about) failing?

It seems pretty typical (at least if you go by internet meme) that a lot of us are feeling like we don't have much to talk about. But, beyond that what are you feeling awkward about?

My wife, when I asked her this, said that she is feeling like sometimes she goes straight to TMI with colleagues at work that she's not ACTUALLY that close to. Her example was that someone might ask her, "How are you?" Which, as we know as Westerners, you're not REALLY supposed to answer, but instead do the call and response answer, "I'm fine, how are you?" Shawn has been finding herself skipping the traditional "pleasantries" and going straight to, "I dunno, I've eaten cereal for the last three meals and randomly burst into tears over cat videos, you?" Personally, if we stop with the pretend greeting post-pandemic, I won't mind. I prefer a little emotional honesty in my random greetings with strangers, but I've always been weird like that. I have, in the Before Times, been known to answer "How are you?" with "Not great, honestly, my cat just died," which then actually led this stranger--my barista--into helping us get Willow, so it's NOT ALWAYS A DISASTER to be honest.

Shawn also said that she's getting mad at some of the Zoom etiquette.  She misses the spontaneity of  in-person meetings. (Yeah, take a moment and digest that. MY WIFE MISSES her corporate MEETINGS. Things are BAD, people. Things are REALLY bad!!)  But, in specific, she hates the whole 'raise hand' function, while totally understanding its necessity. She really misses being able to go "oh!" when you have an idea or thought and have people notice and ask if you want to share. As it happens, in so many of these meetings, she'll have an idea, miss her opportunity to raise her hand, write it into chat, where it will get missed in the barrage of other chat messages.

I feel this, because I think I'm the OTHER person in social and semi-social meetings. I accidentally interrupted my Japanese class last night because the instructor noticed me making googly eyes at one of my classmate's cat.  I mean, it was a CAT. Plus, the cat was on his shoulder and I LOVE shoulder cats, but that was awkward, and I suppose that would be a sign of my social skills slipping EXCEPT I am always that person who suddenly interjects with DOGGO! or, literally, SQUIRREL!

When I asked my son this same question, his answer was that he feels he's been giving in to the impulse to dominate a Zoom call if everyone else is staring at the screen like a zombie. Again, this is totally a problem I have had since the Before Times. He agreed that he has had that, too? But, for him, it's noticing that he's doing it, but awkwardly doing it anyway because he can no longer stand the stretches of awkward silences. (Which, to be fair to him, is more problematic. It's important to make space in conversations for silences.)

I guess the point of all this is that I'm starting to think that when the pandemic is over, there are going to be a lot of people with MY social skills. Like all the things that used to make me weird (talking to myself, over sharing, interrupting, and generally wanting to be noticed in a conversation) are all going to be the norm.

Thoughts?

 Interestingly I had a pandemic dream last night that my brain actively resisted.

I dreamed I was at the old Dreamhaven (one that some of you may actually remember, when they had this huge sprawling space in a basement of a building in Dinkytown,) and I was BROWSING comic books. It was a very happy dream, because in my dream I was about to drop a couple hundred dollars on comics and I knew I had the money. ​When it came time to load my prize in the car, I realized that I wasn't wearing a mask and I felt bad. But, my brain kept shifting the scene, "Oh, you're outside, it's okay!" or "Greg isn't wearing one either, maybe the pandemic is over," but I STILL INSISTED on pulling my shirt up to cover my face. I think my brain was mad at me at that point because it woke me up.

It was like, "Lyda, we are TRYING to give you a nice dream. Stop thinking about the pandemic for five minutes. Oh, you can't? FINE. WAKE UP THEN."

 It's been a while, hasn't it?  

Since we last talked, this happened:


Image: A photo that perfectly depicts what is wrong with Minnesota: a bright orange, plastic Halloween pumpkin covered in several inches of snow.

The crazy thing? The snow hasn't melted yet. We will, periodically, get snow like this, this early, in Minnesota. But, normally it just warms up the next day and it's like we dreamed a dream of the winter to come. This time? The snow has been here over a week and then it snowed more on to of that!  Temperatures have been in the 30s-20s (for my international friends: -1 C to -7 C.) This morning we woke up to a windchill of -9 F/-23 C. THAT'S NOT OKAY EVEN FOR 2020!!!

The only good news is that I've been so swamped with my coursework that I haven't much budged from my spot hunched over my laptop on in the comfy chair under a pile of fleece blankets. 

Okay, so it turns out, gentle readers, that I am still the sort of person who, despite being nearly 53 years old, thinks, "Oh, I'll fill that in later," forgetting that later comes pretty quickly when you've set up a class to be high in critique already. So, last night, a good 1 day and 20 some hours before the next lesson opens for my students, I realized I had whole sections still marked [needs to be done] or [flesh out.] So I was up until midnight last night frantically looking up fantasy subgenres and their official definitions--as well as examples of fantasy tropes that I secretly still love (along with ones I feel are overdone.) So.. that was FUN. I mean, it was kind of, but... also exhausting.

I really, really do not know how my friends who are teachers are coping with doing this, only with several courses and hundreds of students.

Then I actually got inspired to write a science fiction short story that I'm trying to finish for my writers' critique group meeting next Thursday.

AND I'm starting to plot out a novelette for a friend's new F/F publishing venture...

I mean, I was telling a friend that I think maybe all the bad news/anxiety of 2020 has finally broken through to the other side for me. Previously, I could barely read or write for worry; now I'm so overextended on panic that I'm like NOPE, checking out now, gimme all the fiction worlds!!   I mean, I am not checking out in any real, worrisome sense of that. I'm still reading the newspaper. I have already voted and am ready to join the protests, should that be needed, but yeah. The part of my brain that was creatively blocked has simply been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of bullsh*t 2020 has heaped on us.

Silver lining?

Considering what it's taken to break me, I'd say NO. 

But, that's what I've been doing for the past week and a half since I went silent. How have you been??

 ...at the library. Wish me luck.

At least I've only agreed to work at libraries that are not opening at ALL to the public. Even so? I'm not looking forward to it.

 I THOUGHT today was going okay.

Even though I heard early from the Loft that exactly ONE student had signed up for my on-line class. I was a bit bummed about that. I've been working so hard on writing articles and making video and podcasts... ah well. I fired off a quick, "Hey, still time to sign up!" promotional tweets and such, but the chances of the class filling in a week is pretty slim.

Even so, I still was like, "Ah, today can be salvaged!" I'll go do some work on the exterior of the house. (We are painting the trim black.)

That went.... fine?  But, then, I pulled myself down from the ladder, and went inside and I just couldn't face the picky dinner that I'd planned. It was pot-stickers, which I normally love, but I was like, 'Gah, I am too tired to stand here and fiddle with the wrappers for hours before eating."  So, I thought of something slightly faster and easier--a potpie. I had everything sizzling, it was smelling great. I dumped on my homemade stock on it... and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT SMELL, OH SHIT, THE STOCK HAS GONE OVER.

Now we're waiting on a pizza.

Oh, yeah, and then I went to check-in on my library emails and I discovered that I need to do training before October 1. So, I called up Roseville and signed up for a training shift on Thursday. That should work out fine. I'm not super psyched about being indoors on a work computer for four hours, BUT I need to do it to keep my job, so. Plus, Thursday is the day I have my CSA half share starting. I can pick up the share on my way home at least. 

I do worry that my job would never tell me if someone on the premises came down with COVID-19. This last Saturday, Shawn decided she really wanted to do the Friends of the Library book sale. They had a deal where you e-mail them the type of book you want--for us: cookbooks. They give you a grab bag on the subject for 5 bucks a bag. Sounded like a deal! And it was! We got some fun books!  We thought it was so fun, in fact, we decided we wanted to go back...  Shawn sent a "hey, another one for us, please!" email on Sunday, only to discover that the book sale is on hiatus because one of the volunteers had COVID (on Saturday, when we were there. But this person was apparently mostly inside and only interacted with two patrons.)

Good for our interactions, but I worry about the people working there that day. My colleagues.

In fact, one of the reasons I went to my email today was to see if they'd sent out a notification to let staff know--particularly people like me, subs, who only go in when other people are sick or on vacation, so, you know, we could decide if we wanted to work at Shoreview, and make risk assessment with full information. I mean, some people would feel fine? Some might not, but we should all KNOW, right?

Nothing.  

When I asked about it. I was told "the appropriate people" had been notified. Which? I mean, they're the bosses, so what I am going to do about it? I'm not planning to work THERE any time soon. But, now I kind of feel like I need to call anywhere I might work and ASK if there have been reports, since I'm not going to be told??

Yesterday was my first "full" day at WorldCON/ConZealand. I attended a few programming events on Tuesday night, but not enough to really get a sense of how WorldCON was working for me.  

Now I have a bit more of an idea, and I have to say that I'm not finding WorldCon to be as fun for me as a regular member as Virtual WisCON was.

At least, SO FAR.

I should lay out a few caveats for those of you who maybe don't know much about me outside of my blogs about food and gardening. I am a published science fiction/fantasy author, who had her heyday in the early aughts. My first professionally published novel came out from Roc/Peguin USA in 2001. I won a few awards, was moderately well reviewed, yada yada. I also had a stint in Romanclandia when I switched to writing paranormal romances for Berkley (also a Penguin imprint) in the middle of that decade, (to be precise: 2006,) under the pen name Tate Hallaway. I have a bit over a baker's dozen of books traditionally New York publishing house published and a few that have come out from smaller presses. So, when I say "as a regular attendee," I mean not as a program participant, which is how I experience cons for the most part, even now. The last WorldCON I attended, which was when it was the 2016 MidAmerica Con in Kansas City, MO, I participated as a panelist... and, as it happened, the con wingman of naomikritzer who was up for a Hugo Award... which makes for a VERY DIFFERENT WorldCon experience than most people get.

 Interestingly all the literature that went out to the Hmong Farmer's CSA recipients was filled with reminders like, "Only take your box! Look for your label! Sign out!" So, perhaps my chaos was not unique?


Image: CSA bounty (though the jar of honey was not included, that is just on the table)

So, this time my CSA included a bunch of fun things: sugar snap peas (a favorite to just eat raw), garlic scapes, rhubarb, Thai basil, green onions, curly kale, zucchini (one yellow, one green), dill, and another (not pictured) HUGE bag of lettuce.

Most of this, my family and I will have no problem eating. Although, we were joking tonight, as I made an herbed spaghetti dish for dinner, there is possibly no way we can consume all of the lettuce we currently have in the fridge. I am personally giving it the old college try, one salad at a time. Hopefully, my digestive tract will thank me?

The one thing we got this time that I don't use often is Thai basil. I'm generally a big basil fan, but Thai basil is something I mostly think of going in pho? But, I did a little googling and discovered that there are some fun things you can do with basil, including their flowers, like this basil flower vinegar...


Image: there is condensation on the mason jar because the cool dark place I have decided to let this steep is the fridge. 

This is day two for the flowers steeping in white vinegar. I suspect this is going to end up a very lovely shade of purple when it is done. The place that suggested this also has a salad dressing recipe, so that once you have the basil vinegar, you will know what to do with THAT.

Someone on the internet also suggested basil ice cream, which I am having some trouble convincing my family is a good idea, but, man, do I want to try it.

We also finally had the mint syrup I made a couple of weeks ago in a drink Shawn basically invented. It has gin, club soda, and a lot of mint syrupy goodness in it. I don't drink very often, but I found this very delicious. (Technically, the verb tense here should be 'am finding," as I am enough of an alcohol lightweight that I am very slowly sipping this throughout the evening. Perhaps my typos will increase as the evening wears on....)  


Not super fancy as "mixed drinks" go, but surprisingly tasty... says the non-alcohol drinker.

It continues to be insanely hot and humid around these parts. I have been watering sections of my lawn and gardens pretty much every day, though honestly the entire experience of "air" is not unlike the sensation of being trapped inside a greenhouse.  So, I suspect it's pretty good for the plants.

I ordered myself a copy of an anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, Walking the Clouds (ed. Grace L. Dillon), as prep for my Loft reading class.  I have not been able to read a full novel since Trump was elected, I swear, so this will be a nice way for me to dip back into it. Apparently, the anthology is all novel excerpts.  In the meantime, I'll be catching up on some short stories by other BIPOC SF/F authors that we put on the to-read lists. 

At the same time as I ordered the anthology, I impulse bought copy of The Star Trek Adventures: Science Division RPG handbook. It was a bit pricey, but I'm hoping it will be worth it. I'm not gaming with my group again until early August so I have time to read it and see if, for once, I can actually contribute more than just drama. As it happens, things were SO DRAMATIC with my last character that I have rolled a new one for this next campaign... because no one I was playing (including, briefly, an NPC) is left on the ship. :-)

Did I mention that Mason got into PSEO at the U for next year? (PSEO = Post-Secondary Education Opportunities.) We are excited, even with COVID concerns, because he has chosen to go full time.  I think this will be good for the budding case of senioritis he already had brewing his junior year. He won't be required to do anything with Washington Tech that he doesn't want to (though I suspect robotics will still be on the list of "want to"), which could potentially be very nice for his schedule... depending on what he can get into.  He's still registered at St. Paul College, however, so that takes some of the pressure off. What he can't get into at the U, he could potentially pick up there.

But who knows what school will even look like in September?

I am concerned about my country right now. We are not handling "The Covids' very well. 

How's by you?