Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: finished rosettes, pecan tossies, and some not made by us pettifores.

Merry Christmas to those of your for whom this is not just a weirdly rainy Monday. I'm, of course, somewhere in between. My family celebrates Solstice as our holy day/seasonal holiday, but both Shawn and I grew up celebrating Christmas. (Her more than me, since my parents are secular humanist Unitarian Universalists and so I grew up weirdly not-Christian, despite two years of Catholic grade school and an extended family who were all Roman Catholic.) Plus, when Mason was little, we basically used the dominant culture's celebration to draw out gift giving. Solstice is our biggest day, but we also dribble out presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. We like the idea of Christmas morning stockings, so we do that, too. All of these things have become tradition, so we basically give presents from Solstice to Christmas morning.

One of the things you will not be surprised that I received as one of those presents was four RPGs from Mason, including the new Evil Hat Productions Girl by Moonlight. Evil Hat is the outfit that put out Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Girl by Moonlight is basically Sailor Moon-inspired Magical Girl role-playing. He also asked his game theory professor for recommendations for cyberpunk games, so I now I have three of those as well.

In other RPG news, Stay in Touch, the post-apocalyptic missive game is underway with a number of people.

I have one friend who decided to try email for the letters and so, technically, by chance, we're actually already finished. The official rules are that after players roll three doubles (you roll two dice so anytime you get the same number twice,), the game is over. We don't feel done and so have agreed to continue through another set of doubles. But, it's been interesting, because we've already hit a number of snags.

( no spoilers about Stay in Touch, outside of mechanical issues, but cut in case people don't want to read for any number of others reasons )

I'm glad I had this experience before the letters I know are on their way from other players have arrived, however.

 
Image: 1960s-style Marvel characters on a quilt, interspersed with red, blue, green and brown squares. Some of the colored squares are checked or dotted to imply the stippling done with color and shading in early comic books. 

Least any of you are worried that I was so petulant about the Facebook comment that I have given up on quilting, never fear. I turned around and started this one almost the same day. Here is the nearly finished result. I'm currently waffling about the edging. I think I may want to expand it a bit more, which would require some detail work, but... what else have I got to do? (I am still awaiting copy edits and final comments from Shawn, so, really, I don't have a lot on at the moment.) 

Meanwhile, I continue my postcard project, despite a distinct lack of funds. This will be week... four (?) of random, strange homemade postcards for my recipients. No, I think I unearthed a postcard booklet of Yellowstone postcards a few postcards back, so maybe it's only been a couple of weeks of these. I found an amazing postcard on Redbubble that I'd love to send, but I'm going to have to wait for Christmas money to arrive. My very, very cheap source of postcards dried up sometime ago. I used to be able to order postcards from Deviant Art. But, I think the powers that be figured out that I was going in via an old entryway and have since disabled it. Like, I don't think I was doing anything wrong, I just think that the powers that be discovered that offering postcards like that was was a loss leader and I was buying a f*ck TON through them. Redbubble and Etsy are much wiser about their prices and so, given that I need about 25 of these things once a week or so, they've become a very rare purchasing option for me. 

This week, in the process of moving some chairs around the living room, I uncovered a basket full of odd cards--like birthday greeting cards. For a while, I was pseudo-collecting these at estate sales. Back when I was getting into pen palling, I found it kind of silly/fun to just send out old-fashioned or odd greeting cards along with my letters. Nowadays, I am down to ONE international pen friend, so they languished. 

What I did with the greeting cards was cut them up to 6 x 4 which is the standard postcards size and then used scraps of pretty paper to cover up obvious birthday wishes, etc. The result is a lot of flowers? Odd pictures of birds? I'm not sure how I'm going to spin this one into the story I'm half-telling, but it will be fine. I'm never entirely sure (except in a few rare cases where people have actually reached out now and again to tell me otherwise) that my strange efforts are appreciated, anyway.  

It's mostly a project for me. As Mason once told his Discord: "Ima needs enrichment."

I'm like an octopus in an aquarium, apparently. 

In other news, I am continuing my nightly rewatch of a single original Star Trek episode. I accidentally rewatched "The Enemy Within" last night, and I rather wish I'd skipped that one. I will say, however, that Sulu is quickly becoming a favorite character this time around. He gets a LOT of funny lines, and, no surprise these days, but George Takei has very good comedic timing and is handsome and charming in a way I think I missed the first time through, as I was far more focused on the Big Three: Spock, Kirk, and McCoy. One of you suggested "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," as one I could randomly pick as part of this, and I think that will be tonight's episode. 

I am also using my time to bake cookies for the holidays. Yesterday, I made spritz. Today, I will be making sugar cookie cut outs, a recipe we call "Lizzy's sugar cookies," after Shawn's bestie from Kindergarten, with whom she is still in regular contact (and might still be a bestie?) 

As many of you know, I am a member of the International Pen Friends.  I also collected addresses of people who like exchanging letters via a strange cultural phenomenon known as Friendship books. So, occasionally, letters will arrive to my house from virtual strangers around the world.

Today, I got a letter from the Czech Republic. 

There is a line from the letter that really struck me about the difference between how Americans learn languages vs. the rest of the world. My new friend writes, "My first pen pal was a Russian girl. I was about 10 years old and I remember that my mum helped me to create first sentences in Russian." IN RUSSIAN. At ten, I was still learning English, you know?  

One of the reasons that I joined IPF a few years ago is because I had a vague memory of a writing assignment in fourth grade (or thereabouts) where we all practiced formatting personal letters, snail mail. Our teacher gave us each an address taken from an International Pen Friend list and had us write what I now call 'letter of introduction" to a potential friend. No one ever suggested that we learn to write in the language they were speaking at home. Instead, we were just supposed to be learning a little something about another country and practicing letter writing. Because I was probably ten years old, it never sunk in that the other person WHO WAS MY AGE was reading a foreign language in order to reply. 

I wasn't even offered a foreign language option until MANY YEARS LATER, in junior high school, where my choices were: Spanish or French.

I foolishly picked French because I thought a senior trip to Paris sounded cooler than a senior trip to Barcelona. No one ever suggested to me that maybe Spanish would help me speak to my fellow Americans... and a decently large portion of the rest of the world, as well. Although my French teacher was actually Canadian, so I guess there was that. (True fact, when we did go to Paris in high school Reagan was president and so when people asked us if  we were Canadian, we just said: YES.  Our accent had people guessing that, anyway.)

To be fair to me, I practiced my French in all sorts of weird ways, including recreationally using it while carrying on a massive missive LARP-fic with my friend Mary, with whom I was pretending to be the Scarlet Pimpernel. (We passed notes in our classes. Bonus, when it was in French, we got in less trouble because our teachers assumed we were doing some assignment for another class.)

However, despite all that (and several years of college French) none/very little of my French has stuck with me. I would be hard pressed to write to a French pen pal in French right now. In fact, I often start out my letters of introduction with an apology. I'm sorry that I am an American and can only write to you in English.... and then I usually promise to make it up to my new friend by being entertaining as FUCK.(Though I don't usually say it that way because the IPF group is a surprisingly conservative lot.)

My point, though, is that there is something WRONG about how we learn languages as Americans.

Obviously, we should be starting languages earlier, but also... I was never given a good reason to know another language. Mostly, when people tried to sell me on language acquisition they would say things like, "Well, you're going to need to pass a language requirement in university, so you might as well." Or, "Well, if you stay with it, you get to go on a senior trip." I mean, that last one worked to keep me going, for sure. I was all about wanting to travel to Paris.  But having gone, I then had no motivation to keep up with it. One thing all the experts agree on is that as soon as you stop practicing another language, you start losing it.

I guess I wish I were given the opportunity my new Czech friend had. The sense that--at TEN--if I could learn someone else's language I would be a better friend. 

I don't even remember where that first pen friend was from--was it France? (Oh, that would be ironic~) Shawn remembers having a Japanese pen friend and that rang some bells--like maybe I had a Japanese pen friend too? There was a time--I think popularized by the comic strip Peanuts--when pen pals were kind of the rage among my set. But, I was an obsessive saver and chronicler. If a letter came from a pen friend, I probably would have saved it somewhere. I have letters from the boy I met on our trip to France who was from Georgia (another great irony of my life--I went to France and met a high school boy from... not France, but Georgia).  But, I kept a daily journal / diary from sixth grade on, so you'd think I'd have mentioned something. Ah, well.  

Meanwhile, I am still struggling to try to learn Japanese. 

Although speaking of pen friends, I have one who turned me on to a new app called "Drops" that I really like. It's a vocabulary builder. A component I've been missing.

This continues to be a very weird time in which to have a small press book come out, but I was interviewed by Salon Futura about Unjust Cause the other day and it has been posted as an audio file: https://www.salonfutura.net/2020/04/interview-lyda-morehouse-tate-hallaway/

If you are interested in such things, please check it out. And, of course, if you are so moved (and haven't done so already) please buy my book: https://www.wizardstowerbooks.com/shop/unjust-cause/

Or buy one for a friend! Or several friends. Better yet, buy it and Precinct 13 as a set!

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In other news, the sun is shining today. I am hoping to go out for an early morning walk to enjoy all the bright light and bird sounds. Mason has a physics test that he has to get up for in about an hour or so. Shawn is dealing with continued bad news at work, so I'm just as happy to have an excuse to get out of the house. In fact, I may also brave some grocery shopping in a bit because we are running out of the basics: milk, eggs, and flour.

Yesterday, I took some extra yeast over to a friend (for a no-touch drop off) who has run out. I also hived off Vera, fed the new bit, and brought it over in disposable Tupperware in case my friend would like to try her hand at sourdough without the hassle of starting it. It occurs to me that if anyone else local to me would like a cup or two of sourdough starter, mine is very, very robust and healthy. I would happily make deliveries. The more I hive her off, the healthier she remains. Bonus: once you start feeding it, the starter is yours to name as you wish. My friend is going to be thinking up gender-neutral names and has informed me that the starter now uses they/them pronouns. Vera and I are very proud parents (Vera)/grandparents(me) of this To-Be-Named new starter and hope they have a long and productive life.

Another friend of mine, who I talked to on the ACTUAL PHONE the other day, told me that he didn't want to be part of this whole 'meme' of naming sourdough starters. I told him that was fine, but that he should not be mistaken in thinking that naming sourdough is in any way a NEW fad. Tons of my cookbooks from the 1960s suggest that naming sourdough is traditional--or at least was something people were already doing back then. It might be a fad? But it is an OLD fad, not a meme.

What seems to be new-ish is out-clevering one another with pun names. Though, somehow I doubt even that's really all that new.

I found myself a new pen pal on Facebook yesterday, and this is a continued reminder that if you would like mail I am happy to send you some of the really terribly cheesy greeting cards I have picked up over the years at estate sales. I am, what they call in the pen friends fandom, L/L: a "long letter writer." So, drop me a note in my PM or at [email protected].  I am also what is known as: A/A, "answers all," because I have no requirements for pen friends, not even that you write back, necessarily. 

At this point, consider it if only to help save the USPS.  

Interestingly, my Canadian pen friend informs me that we have significantly slowed down in our correspondence. Only a day or so ago, did she receive a letter I sent in early April. We used to be about two weeks delayed (which is only funny because I could drive 8 hours and throw a letter over the Canadian border,) but now we seem closer to a month. She actually figures the delay is on Canada Post's side, because they did some kind of massive layoffs. But that may be happening here, too, if we can't figure out how to keep supporting our postal carriers.

Right.

I should gird my loins and head out to the grocery store. Wish me luck!

 Mason got the news that lay-offs are coming for his entire KAYSC crew (that's the Kitty Anderson Youth Science Center) at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  Apparently, both the Science Museum and the Children's Museum did a clean-sweep of their entire staff. I'm a little surprised that KAYSC can't keep operating, since I would have thought they had an endowment, but I guess this is a "save money NOW, so we can re-hired everyone later" lay-off.  Mason is fairly devastated. This is his DREAM job in so many ways. Plus, I think it was really making him feel part of the pandemic landscape to be video conferencing into work, like everyone else. I guess, they'll still be at it for a few more weeks, but then after that is a long, cold hiatus until we see what the future brings.

But, this is hardly news these days, is it?

Still sucks, though.

One of the friends of my friend that I Zoomed with the other day said that her husband lost her job, and then quickly demurred with "Oh, well, I suppose everyone is in the same boat." I don't even know this person, but I said, "No, it's okay to be upset.  We can still have sympathy for you. Even if it's happening all over, it still sucks. I'm sorry." I thought she might burst into tears.  We need to hand out sympathy more liberally, I think. 

I also really need to stay away from the news. Normally, when I'm out driving around (which today, in Minnesota, is the last day for that for awhile,) I tune into AM950 (KTNF) because it's a very far-left radio station.  Most of the time, I'm out early enough to listen to the Bradcast, which I love, because Brad Freeman is a very calming voice and a very reasoned, and no-nonsense thinker.  Today, because I was up later than usual I ended up tuning into the Stephanie Miller Show and I had to turn her off.  She's usually very funny and finds something to laugh at during trying times, but she was freaking out about the pandemic in a way I didn't find at all helpful. ("The virus can live on your shoes! Don't even go outside if you want to live!") No, no thank you. I can't live like that, even if it's true.

Also,  having read this, DO NOT fill my comments with the places the virus can or can't live. I refuse to spend the next 18 months hiding under a blanket paralyzed with fear and dread. I am experiencing plenty of that without extra help. As it is, I already get mild panic attacks when I have to go to the grocery store because there's no decent way to stay six feet from anyone in an aisle that is two foot wide.

Well, now that the Minnesota Governor finally announced a Stay at Home order, we plan to live off what we've already laid in.  In a lot of ways, this is what the Liberal Preppers group has been preparing us for for years. Did you know that Shawn and I were in a Facebook Group called "Liberal Preppers"? They are not survivalists and are far more focused on how to community-build during a crisis than hoard, but they were vanguards when it came to "hey, have you considered buying a little extra toilet paper with every grocery run" plans. I'm glad we did. Now, we really can just stay in place for two weeks.

Okay. Moving on to other news. Yesterday, I got my first letter from the folks I am jokingly calling my "plague pen pals," the people who reached out on FB and here to offer to write letters to each other in trying times. That was lovely. It brightened my day. Honestly, letter writing is definitely a kind of therapy for me. It's like journaling, but with the purpose of reaching out to another human being. 

I'm really glad I've got an RPG game planned for this weekend. As the resident extrovert, the not seeing people is actually kind of hard on me. Despite the mild panic attacks, I do prefer the company of others.

Stay well, everybody. Check in with your friends when you can!

What did I do this weekend?  

Oh, right, on Saturday, I agreed to work at Roseville from noon until 5pm. That was fine. I mean, work, but I don't mind the actual labor and I rather enjoy my colleagues... and, of course, the books. I came home with at least one, like I always do.

I SHOULD have gone to Powderhorn to watch the May Day parade (which may be the last one)t, but Sunday was already the sort of day when I woke up late for a video chat with naomikritzer is and I like to armchair travel vicariously with my friends. Last time she went to that hemisphere it was to Taiwan and i was able to find some things that Naomi really enjoyed, so I'm hoping to do the same for her again. The disadvantage is that because jiawen already LIVES in Taiwan, I'd been reading about Taiwan for years, actually, and I know a LOT less (read: almost nothing) about China. I'm enjoying reading the guide books, though. It's a weird hobby.

Today, I need to go to the post office. I'm out of international stamps (speaking of my weird hobbies).  I am behind on some of my pen pal correspondence, plus I've got several new names gleaned from "friendship books" and so that means I need to take the time to write an 'introductory letter' and see if I can entice people to write me back.  

Today, I am picking up Shawn early and we are headed to Washington Tech to watch Mason get inducted into the National Honors Society. He was already a member of the JUNIOR National Honors Society, but this is the high school version (which, for whatever reason, starts in 10th grade, rather than 9th.)  He did not have to reapply, but admission is not guaranteed by grades--he also had be sure to have all of his volunteer hours in. An odd requirement, but it keeps him volunteering to be a debate coach, which he enjoys, but the volunteer hours are an extra bonus.  
Of course, he rolled his eyes when his mom said she wanted to come to see the ceremony. I told him that parents live to embarrass their children, so he's just going to have to roll with it. Besides, I'm sure the Randalls (the family of Mason's ex-GF) will be there, because I swear this is half of why they started going out (a shared embarrassment of their overly proud parents.)

After that, I'm headed off to watch anime at a friend's house. This is a friend who I sort of know through conventions, but mostly have gotten a little closer with via email conversations about anime/manga (with me on the manga and her on the anime). The event is a weekly thing she does with another close woman friend, and I'm very much worried that I'm going to be a third wheel.  BUT, I am looking forward to it, as I have no one currently in the house who watches anime with me. When Mason was younger, we shared Bleach fandom, but now I'm on my own. I'd be lovely if we all click and this becomes a semi-regular thing. So fingers crossed.

This weekend is Mother's Day and currently the plan is to make quiche and blueberry pie for Shawn.For those new to my blog and wondering "but what about YOU, Lyda??" The answer is that, long ago, I decided I am selfish and do not want to share Mother's Day. So, my family invented "Ima's Day" which we celebrate on December 5, the anniversary of my legal adoption of Mason. (We had Mason before our marriage was legal, but I suspect, though I don't know, that queer couples still have to do this? Even though I was very much a part of Mason's conception, the law considered me an outsider until we did the proper legal thing, with paperwork and affidavits and everything.)

So, that's me. How's you? 

 I just got back from picking Shawn up from work. She only did a half day today, and wouldn't have gone in at all except for the fact that some budget or other is due. Shawn has the crud that Mason had last week. So far, knock on wood, it's passed me by.  Possibly due to my mutant healing factor.

Because it's that season, Kowalski's had corned beef on sale. There's a hunk of it in the slow cooker right now, waiting for Mason and I to get back from dropping off his PSEO application at the University this afternoon.  Next up, getting a PSEO application together for Metro State. I will be sad if Mason doesn't get accepted into the U's program, but he's going to have to get math somewhere next year so we're going to put in a couple of back-up applications. I would have driven the application to the U myself already today, but Mason is VERY insistent that he wants to come along. He's been the one driving this, so I can hardly deny him the pleasure of turning everything in. Plus, he has a couple of questions he wants to ask the admission folks, so.... Anyway, the offices are open until 4:30 pm. It should be no problem getting there before then.

I'm slowly getting back into the mood for reading actual novels. I'm about half way through a book called CONDOMNAUTS by Yoss, which, I think, was up for the Philip K. Dick. It's... arty, but I'm enjoying it, anyway. I'lll tell you all more about it, if I finish it by What Are You Reading, Wednesday.

I have a literal pile of books I want to read next, so I'm well motivated to finish it up. It's a sliver of a book. If I wasn't dyslexic and used to being a much slower reader than anyone I know, I'd feel bad about it taking me this long to get through it.

I worked on my apocalypse story again today. I've established enough that I now have to figure out how I want to end it. I'm going to have to do something about an ending in the next day or so, though, because I need to be able to hand it out at Thursday's Wyrdsmith's meeting. If I'm going to get it back in enough time to do revisions, it needs to go out at this first meeting.  It's a weird story. Very sad. Eleanor is going to hate it; she hates sad stories. Right now, despite having an official title, it's in my documents file as "Sad Apocalypse."

Speaking of finally getting back to reading and writing again, I also managed a letter yesterday. I have about four pen pal letters that I haven't replied to yet. Did I tell you guys that I FINALLY got a Japanese pen pal?  Eiko. I have been very careful so far, not to mention that I'm a giant, nerd otaku. I don't want to scare her off.

She's already been somewhere to see the cherry blossoms, so I'm looking forward to sending her pictures of the massive amounts of snow piles we have.

Okay, I'm going to get up and put the potatoes in the oven. I'm making twice-baked potatoes to go along with the corned beef.

I started a fight on the internet today.

This, my children, is never advisable. To be fair, I stand by my impulse (if not some of my exact words). But, as a consequence, I spent a lot of today being really annoyed by people I only barely know in real life, and... I'm pretty sure that, thanks to a literal case of mistaken identity, my FB "footprint" has changed in some people's minds. Now, because there was a PM resolution (and apology) that didn't appear in public, all that remains of the fight is weird and disjointed and potentially makes me look like someone who is well-known in other venues as an absolute horrible VILLAIN.

Thanks, internet.

I guess it served to distract me from our sick kitty, but I can't say that, in the end, I even ever managed to MAKE MY POINT.

Which is: don't be a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) in front of me, end of story.

OMFG.

( Sick kitty remains sick, so read only if you want the continued updates )

I think I will get up now and make dinner for my family and maybe write some long form, snail mail letters.

 I'm sure my radio silence had you all worried.  My apologies. The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, I was merely entertaining The Canadian, supporting Mason through History Day competition, and seeing "Avengers: Infinity War" (part 1).

Gods, so much to recount. 

Let's do this somewhat out of order.  First of all, Mason has been working on a ten-minute documentary about the Kent State Shootings for History Day for several months now.  I linked to an "about" page regarding History Day above, but, basically, one is competing for the best project on theme. The topic is wide open. You can research anything that turns your fancy, but one of the ways that you're judged is how closely you stick to theme. This year's theme is "Conflict and Compromise."  Students also pick the format of their project out of a pool of options. Mason picked documentary, despite it being highly competitive and something he's literally NEVER done before. In the past, he's made a website, which is another option.  You can also write a research paper or write and perform some kind of performance (like a play, skit, or, one presumes, a stand-up comedy show or a speech? This is one category that seems a little baffling to me.) 

While I was out with my Canadian doing the Art Crawl (more on that in a moment), I kept getting texts that read: "Passed this round" and then finally "Made it to finals!"  

My Canadian and I hopped on the light rail and made it in time to see Mason pick up his topic award from TPT (Twin Cities Public Television) for $500.00.



Mason also got an honorable mention in his category, but didn't medal. (First and second place go to Nationals, third is an alternate, and fourth and fifth place get medals.)  

He was initially kind of bummed about this, but $500 is an unusually high amount for these awards.  In fact, it seems like, according to the website, anyway, if you GO all the way to Nationals and win second place you get the exact same prize ($500.00).  I mean, my travel bug is probably most bummed about not getting the trip to Washington, D.C., because D.C. is one of his most favorite cities in the US (so far, that he's been to.)  But, I reminded him that this was THE VERY FIRST TIME HE EVER, full stop. First time he'd scripted a documentary, first time competing at the Senior Level (which means he was up against veterans of this competition), and first time he's even used iMovie for ANYTHING.  

However, the metaphor that I used that I think really got through to him, though, was "This is Season One of the History Day anime, you can't go all the way in the first season.  No one would keep watching."

Okay, now returning to chronological order and moving forward from last Friday afternoon....

My Canadian was given a tour de force of Minneapolis/St. Paul.  The first thing we did was hit MT Noodles in Brooklyn Park with her mother in tow. The restaurant was as authentic Vietnamese as advertised... in fact, I'm fairly certain I didn't eat my food correctly.  But, it was delicious all the same. 

After dropping her mom off at the hotel, I took her to my favorite coffee shop, Claddagh, where we promptly ran into my Friday (used to be Wednesday) women writers' group.  I introduced my Canadian around and then abandoned her long enough to pick up Mason from school, Shawn from work, and to deposit them both at home. 

Then because "see the Mississippi" was on her list, we took a little walk along the river walkway in downtown St. Paul.  Because the wind was chilly we ended up at a Caribou Coffee where we chatted like dear old friends, which, we have been, ON PAPER, but I was pleased that it worked out IRL as the kids would say.  

We went to a couple of the remote venues for the St. Paul Art Crawl on Friday night, too.  We hit the Carleton Lofts and the Pottery store that was on Front Street (both of which being places I wanted to see the insides of since forever, and was glad to have an excuse.)  The pottery place is a funky little storefront:




Inside they had a lot of pottery for sale, of course, as well as some clay for kids to play with in the back and a potter's wheel for adults to try out. They were also serving soup in handcrafted bowls (did you buy the bowl as part of the food? I'm thinking so.) 

But, I wanted to show off more of what the crawl would be like, so we also hit the Carleton Lofts, which was more typical. There were 50+ artists of all variety (including a puppet builder--yes, the very one who built the puppet of me, and a novelist who had a sort of sad display and a desperate look in her eye.)  I ran into a woman who runs a tarot collective, who offered to let me join, and we saw the world's CREEPIEST dolls... oh, sorry, they're not creepy (or so said the artist) they're for dark side HEALING.  Yeah, no. They were CREEPY. I was, in fact, too afraid to take pictures.

That evening (with a random stop at Office Max for my panicked History Day family for printer paper), we went to hot pot at Little Szechuan. I have never done hot pot before, so I let The Canadian take the lead.  If you've never done it before, it's kind of a weird process. You get a checklist menu where you fill in what you want (and the amounts, as in half order or full,) and it's things like 'fish' and 'prawn' and 'beef' as well as a fairly wide variety of veggies. Basically, you cook each one in a broth, but they all mingle together so you kind of want them to sort of all go together?  A pot comes out with broth--ours was divided between plain and spicy and then it sits on a stovetop on your table and boils. Once it's roiling you start dropping in various things you want to eat, watch them cook, and then fish them out.  It's a lot of fun and tasty as all get out. We mostly did fish and veggies so it was quite delicious.

We had a helluva time getting the Canadian back to her hotel thanks to closings on 94 (and my fierce need to pee), we blamed it on the creepy dolls.

Mason and the rest of us were up until 3 am dealing with technical difficulties (and my perfectionist son's inability to think 'good enough'--which I guess paid off, so there's that.) 

On Saturday, I dropped Mason off at Coffman Union.  Actually, at the stairs on the River Road that lead to Coffman, because the only directions we had on the History Day packet presumed that we would be parking.  Maybe because so many of the participants can drive themselves?  Or maybe because there's just that many parents who wanted to be along for the whole day?

I collected my Canadian and we did the traditional walkabout Lowertown.  I ditched my car here at home and she and I took the light rail in to Lowertown using the Art Crawl transit pass she printed out for us.  The whole day was a whole lot of looking at odd art and checking out people's apartments/studios, because basically that's what you do. There's just a ton of people who open up their homes and set up art displays. I'd been hoping we could catch lunch at some food trucks, but we ended up at the very trendy Biergarten Germania instead for lunch.

A sample of some of the art we saw during the crawl. This one is entitled: "Super Fan," which give that I am very much a super fan of Bleach, I appreciated a great deal:



As I noted above, we ended up dashing to catch Mason's award ceremony, and then, because we had tickets, we BARELY made it, but arrived only a few minutes late for "Pounded in the Tingle" at Bryant/Lake Bowl in Uptown.  That was... well, let's just say there was shadow puppet sex.

We stayed late at the bar drinking (me a Coke and her a craft beer of some sort) and talking. We had some kind of debate about how money works and the social construct somewhere near midnight on the way home, so I'd say the day was a success.

I had thought she only had the two days, so we were slightly at loose ends on Sunday. My Canadian is a thrifter/antique shopper so someone (magenta , I think?) suggested the Minnehaha Mile and so we hit the Falls for a classic tourist destination, walked a bit of the trails, and then "thrifted" through several of the stores along the mile. I'm not a huge fan of shopping, but thrifting is really about window shopping and looking at all the weird/cool vintage stuff and I had a lot of fun. We stopped at Dumpling for a light early dinner/late lunch.

I was pretty worn out at that point and luckily the Canadian also felt the need to spent a bit more time with her mom, so we called it an early night somewhere around 5pm, which meant I could go home and see my family a bit over the weekend as well.  

It was SO MUCH FUN.

And I was super-glad that a text based friends worked so very, very well live and in "meat space."


Edited to add that I will address my thoughts on "Avengers: Infinity War (Part 1)" in a separate entry.

I spent most of last week reading a manuscript that I'm still working on critiquing for the Loft.

For those of you who don't know, the Loft has a program where you can pay to have your manuscript critiqued by a professional, like myself. Like most things that go through the Loft, it's expensive. To be fair to the prices listed there, I work really very hard on these things and the critique is very thorough--everything from pointing out passive voice to plot holes. So, that's been eating up a lot of my usual reading time.

I did, however, get a few manga (and manhwa) read. I read BJ Alex by Mingwa. Even though this manhwa is definitely a yaoi, BJ does NOT stand for what you think it might. BJ in this context is a "Broadcast Jockey," the Korean equivalent of a YouTuber. I thought a bit about jiawen while I was writing my review, because the only BJs I've ever watched are mukbang, which is a whole separate kind of thing. (If you haven't heard of mukbang, which I certainly hadn't before hearing about it from her, it's basically a You Tube live-stream of someone cooking and eating food, while chatting with people who are texting into their channel. It should be unwatchable, but I have to confess to losing several minutes of my life to more than one, without subtitles, knowing absolutely no Korean.) So, this write up is probably more interesting than the manhwa was, but, if you like yaoi, it is pretty cute and I would recommend it. It's not finished. There were only about 4 chapters up when I read it.

I also read the first volume of Cat Paradise / Gakuen Sousei Nekoten! by Iwahara Yuji which is a manga about a girl and her cat and the magical academy they attend, where they gain superpowers and fight demons. You know, typical manga stuff.

Another manhwa I read was The Baker on the First Floor by GyaGa. This one follows a yaoi artist (whoa! meta!) who falls in love with the titular baker who, in fact, has moved in to the first floor of our hero's apartment building.  There is a wild amount of back story in this one, if you take it on, since both of them have ex-lovers they are hung up on. I mean, I read the whole thing, but it's not a top tier recommendation by any stretch.

Apparently, I also forgot to talk about a number of manga that I read during the big snow storm. If you're ever curious about the manga I consume (and there is a great quantity of it), you can read MangaKast--the site where I review literally everything manga related that I read. 

The other thing I read over the last week were letters that I received from a friend of mine between 1988-1990. I have several more years worth that I want to go through, because this particular friend led a very interesting life. He competed in the Gay Games in Vancouver as a body builder and lived all over the country, including the Castro in San Francisco during the late 80s.  The letters are a surprisingly rich queer history and I haven't even gotten to the part in his life where he becomes a porn star... He and I are FB friends and he said he might one day want to write a book about his life, and I totally he should. His letters certainly read like a novel.

How about you? What've you been up to? Wha'tcha reading?