Day in the Life of an Idiot

I had really thought that I'd be settled down into a routine by now, but apparently not so much.

I have a lot to catch you all up on, but let's start with last weekend, which was incredibly busy for us. On Friday, Mason had been agitating for a road trip. He's been feeling less confident driving on the highway and wanted practice with ima in the car. So, he put me in charge of finding a fun, relatively close place to visit. So, I pulled out my handy-dandy book on 60 trips 60 minutes from the Twin Cities and found Sand Dunes State Forest (which is not terribly far from Zimmerman, MN.)

I decided this place might be a chance for us to reclaim sand dunes, plus I had NO IDEA Minnesota even had sand dunes, much less a pine forest growing on a sand dune. Plus, the little write-up in the book promised loons. Mason got up really late, so we decided to get lunch in town. We went to the Basil Cafe, which is becoming a favorite. I suddenly remembered that I am usually standing outside of the mosque around that time on a Friday, so I quickly put out the call on our Da'wah specific Signal group and managed to get the place covered in my absence. All while this is happening, Mason is saying "Are you sure we should really go? The mosque watch is important!" And, I'm like, "So is living life. I can't be chained to that place! Relaxation is also resistance!" And, anyway, by the time we were headed out a half dozen people had responded that they would help cover the shift. So, hey, Minnesota Strong!

The drive out took me past my work, which was kind of funky, but as I told Mason, we almost NEVER head out northwest when we are on one of our explores. There are several State Parks out in that direction that I've never been to and I had hoped that we could loop over to Lake Maria State Park on our way back. The Dunes were nice. It really is sand under your feet so going up and down the hills was a bit of a challenge. I had stupidly worn jeans. I thought it was going to be more forest than dunes, so I was worried about ticks. I think I would have been a little less grumpy if I'd been in shorts. The weather was INSANELY GORGEOUS so I was also fooled into thinking I wouldn't get hot. Reader, she got hot.

The promised loons were, in fact, out in the lake cavorting. There seemed to be either a mated pair or a child-parent couple out in the water. One of them was particularly frisky and was either having a lot of fun just rolling around in the water or practicing diving. They were too far out to get a good picture of and, of course, I forgot that I always carry binoculars in my backpack. Still, they were a lot of fun to watch and we spent several minutes on the shore just silently enjoying nature. The actual hiking, as noted, was a bit of a struggle thanks to the sand, but we did make it to the top of one of the dunes to see the fire tower. The fire tower was not one you could climb, however, as it was very rusted out. I think they removed the stairs some time ago so that people wouldn't die trying to get up there.

On the way back, I convinced Mason to drive us a half hour out of the way so that I could get a passport stamp at Lake Maria State Park. We drove in and instantly wished that we had a lot more time! Lake Maria is known for its population of banded turtles and so Mason and I vowed to make our way back there some time soon to try to see some.

At this point, Mason was getting really tired of driving (plus he's so tall, his back starts to hurt, we are thinking because the seat doesn't go back quite far enough for him), so I drove us to pick up Shawn, who stayed an extra half hour at work rather than take the bus home. We chatted together on the way home and had pizza for dinner. A good day, all around.

On Saturday, we all got up early to start prepping the kitchen for... fleischkuechle. Yep! It's that time of year again! Shawn and I did our usual alliterative errands (coffee, cardborad, carbs) but also included a C/Kowalski's run in order to get stocked up on meat and other fleischkuechle supplies. We started making them around nine or ten and were done frying the last one by five or six. In the middle, Shawn's brother Keven came over and hung out and helped us eat them. It was another absolutely insanely perfect day, weather-wise, and so we did all the deep frying in the backyard, which was lovely beyond compare. It also gave the whole afternoon a kind of genteel, relaxed vibe somehow. Plus, it made for really easy clean up. I left the deep fryer outside until the next morning, even, so that the oil had plenty of time to cool off.

Then on Sunday, we got up early went out to breakfast at Keys in Roseville so that Shawn could hang out with her friend Sue, a former MNHS employee. Sue and I overlapped in the same department, so I tagged along. Mostly I ate too much and listened to Sue and Shawn gossip about people at work that I don't actually know? But, Sue's eldest son married a Brazilian woman and so she shared some really cool pictures of Rio de Janeiro. Even though I didn't have a lot to contribute to the conversation, it was still very pleasant and we made it home in time to chat with my folks via Zoom.

I spent the rest of Sunday recovering from all the fleischkuechle that I ate and writing up various goofy things for my players to run into on Tuesday Thirsty Sword Lesbians game. The other reason I decided to do prep work for a game I normally white knuckle is that I'm going to be just walking in the door about the time that the game starts. We are starting at 7 pm and I'm officially done at 6 pm, but that commute is always exactly a half-hour no matter how fast I drive. (There are just too many stoplights for me to time it any faster.) A half-hour would normally be a decent amount of time, but I will also not have yet had dinner. So, I need to get home, change out of work clothes, eat, and get myself in front of the computer in time (and in the right headspace) to be the GM. Last time we played on a Tuesday, I almost forgot to show up! So, I was more than a little under-prepared. This time I figured I'd go the other way and be too prepared and hopefully that will make me FEEL less chaotic and more in control (even though these players are notorious for going everywhere except where I point them.)

I guess we'll see.

At least I know where *I* want the lesbians to go and what my plan for the plot is, even if they do not go there.

I'm also about a hundred pages into a book by Marie Kondo that I brought home from the library on Thursday night. Shawn also picked it up and started reading it a little. It's called Letter from Japan. I was drawn into it because it's largely a light, cultural exploration of Japan. She probably wrote it as a kind of companion piece to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but, in this book, she only mentions tidying as her own personal fandom (she actually uses the word fandom. It turns out both her brother and her best friend are otaku!) The book was not shelved with the memoirs, even though she tells a lot of personal stories. Most of them, I guess, are reflections on cultural attitudes towards various things--including an absolutely scathing critique of isekai manga. (For those unfamiliar, isekai are "other world" stories where people--usually from our world, often from "now," travel to an alternate fantasy or gaming-type reality. I link to the official definition in the previous mention of the term.)

I found this very fascinating, actually, because she sees traditional shounen manga as espousing cultural values of hard work, endurance, and "doing your best." She talks very specifically about how the heroes you used to find in Shukan Shonen Jump (Weekly Shounen Jump) are all about hero/ines striving to be their best selves, to try to perfect some art or become the king of pirates, aka the Best at Something. She sees the new trend towards other world adventures as people (and she's not wrong, at least on the surface) FAILING in this world and getting the easy gig of being an expert in another world. She hates this and sees it as a betrayal of what is good and right about the messages that manga give to young and old people alike.

I mean, I had not thought about it like that before? She does have a little bit of a point since I've noticed that a lot of the people that end up in isekai have died of overwork. Some of them even kill themselves because they can't hack life as a salaryman any more. People who are NEETs (No Education, Employment, or Training) fall into games, etc. I guess that could be seen as rewarding failure, since many of them are either average or subpar in Our World and/or their only skills (like being good at a video game) are ones that are really unremarkable in our world.

I just did not expect Marie Kondo to have any kind of nuanced or hot take on manga! But she actually has a whole chapter devoted to it! I may have to review it on my manga site when I finish it.

Speaking of manga, because I've had to reformat everything for my new phone, it finally occurred to me that I could be reading a LOT more stuff on my iPad, including manga. Last night, I downloaded an app that Anoka Library has been promoting that allows readers to borrow graphic novels, comic books, and manga ebooks without waiting. I found Why I Adopted My Husband: The True Story of a Gay Couple Seeking Legal Recognition in Japan and read it last night. Like a lot of LGBTQIA+ books that are published in Japan, it is 50% memoir and 50% How-to. It's also deeply depressing since the book is fairly new and Japan still does not recognize gay marriage. If you're interested what I thought of it in more detail, you can check out my manga review site: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

So, the other big excitement was yesterday (Tuesday) when I got a text from Shawn at work around 12:30-1:00 pm. (Keep in mind to get to work on time, I have to leave the house no later than 1:30!) She tells me she's experiencing SHARP pain in her back. She's worried that it's a kidney stone, plus her pee is really dark. I'm like, "I love you, but you will not say that it's fine and worry about this LATER, we are going to Urgent Care right now." I grabbed Mason when he walked in the door, having taken some rugs to the laundry for us, and said, "We're picking up mom and you're coming because you have the Uber app and can get her home." I texted Shawn the plan and I dropped them both off at Urgent Care almost precisely at 1:30 pm and somehow made it to work with time to spare. (This never happens? There are too many controlled intersections between here and there for me to hit the greenlights all the way, but somehow I DID IT.)

When my boss asked about my day so far, I explained that I just came from Urgent Care and that I might be getting texts throughout my shift from my wife. To my boss's credit she was extremely understanding and basically asked me if I just wanted to go home now, but I decided to stay because Mason was there so Shawn wasn't alone. The docs did a thorough check-up, even gave her a CT scan, blood work, etc., and determined that it was UTI brought on by a kidney stone that she unknowingly passed already. We are all glad she went because internal micro-tears and bacteria is step one on the road to sepsis and we are NOT DOING more SEPSIS in this family, I swear to god!

Mason was an absolute trouper. He even walked to CVS on Fairview to pick up her meds.

I had a fairly slow shift otherwise at work last night, other than the constant updates from my family about Shawn's health and the general freak out from my Signal groups about the arrests of Legal Observers. (If you missed this, here's the PBS story: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/federal-prosecutors-charge-15-people-with-conspiracy-to-impede-agents-during-minnesota-immigration-crackdown.) 

But to lighten the mood, here's a couple of fun/funny stories from my job last night....

So, there are some things about my job that I truly adore and they are things I have never had the pleasure of doing at any other library job. Anoka County has a little low bookcase off to the side of the entryway where the staff puts their "staff picks." We get little bookmarks with our names in them to stick into the book, but we don't get to write our glowing reviews like you sometimes see at bookstores. But, just picking the book and seeing which ones go out the door and how fast someone picks them is tremendous fun. I've been having a lot of luck having my picks picked, but yesterday I broke a land speed record.

I noticed that someone had snatched up the Charlie Jane Anderson book that I'd set out last week (they only had All the Birds in the Sky, but I thought it was a good pick for the beginning of Pride Month,) so as I was shelving I started pondering what to set out next. In my cart was a copy of Heated Rivalry, which I have not read? But, I mean, I am pretty sure I can recommend it based on its queer content and popularity alone. So, I stuck it out at around 4 pm, but by 5 pm it was GONE. Someone took that book so fast that my bookmark was tossed off to the side in their haste!!

I replaced it with a copy of naomikritzer 's Liberty's Daughter, which I was excited to see that our library had! 

The other story isn't "funny" per se, but the other fun thing that I get to do as a shelver is "re-stock" some of the themed end caps. Right now in the fiction section we have pullouts for "time-travel!" "mysterious bookstores" "gaslight mysteries" and "summer romance" Last night all of them needed re-filling so it was kind of a fun little scavenger hunt for me to search for books by keyword in the catalogue and then find them on the shelves. Being the kind of employee I am, I found a lesbian romance to add to the summer time romance picks. (Again, if anyone bugged me about it, I'd shrug and say "it seemed appropriate for Pride Month.")

I would never have had time to do something like this when I worked at Ramsey County. My entire shift was just running from point a to point b just to keep up with the sheer volume of books that go in and out of that library system. I loved that part of working for Ramsey County, but it is actually nice to have a slower paced job where I can really enjoy being around books.

Sorry this got long. Hopefully, you didn't sprain anything skimming by it!

My computer (who takes its coffee black, since some have asked) seems to have fallen into the "it could be worse," but not exactly 100% solved category. My laptop now has a resident gremlin whom I have named Apostrophe (although it sometimes manifests, not at ALL creepily, as 666). The gremlin's favorite thing to do is to pick a punctuation mark or a number and endlessly repeat it. 

Sometimes.

Sometimes everything is fine. 

So, I am currently limping along with what I have and making back-ups like mad. 

There's still time to get memberships to Quantum-Con, where I'll be a GoH this weekend: https://quantum-con.org/

Despite being one of the guests of honor, I have a pretty light schedule... Good news for you!  That just means there's more time for you and I to hangout and chat! 

=================
FRIDAY

SATURDAY
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm


SUNDAY
=====================

I am planning to do my usual convention report, so look forward to that even if you can't join me this weekend for what I'm certain will be an INTERESTING time! (I might even be UNIQUE. We shall see!)

---

*I have talked to the con com about the fact that my pen name is misspelled throughout the programming page, but as the convention begins today, I suspect that it will not be corrected "in time" (since the time is nigh!)

 I truly love fandom. 

I've been in Bleach fandom since at least 2012 (a date easily checked because that's when I started my AO3 account.)  And, you do not need to immediately comment that you've never read Bleach. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anime or manga fans, either!  For whatever reason, Bleach just happened to be the thing for me that hit me in the right place at the right time. I felt 15 years old again, absolutely caught up in something that I felt desperate to share with other people. That feeling is probably familiar to you, my nerdy friends. So, as I talk, just imagine Your Thing anytime I say Bleach.

I've been really lucky that, over the years, I've had other Bleach fans gift me things. People have written stories for me, people  have drawn amazing art for me, and opalsong even podcast one of my fics ("Hey, Opalsong, if you like Free! you should read my Bleach x Free! crossover," I say for the nineteenth time before I remember that YOU PODCASTED it.) There are so many things people have offered me as part of this fandom that I will cherish forever, but until recently no one has ever offered to share a amateur bound book of my work with me.

Behold!

Image: a fan bound book with the title "Academy Blues" by TSP Bindery. (https://www.tiktok.com/@tsp.bindery).  

This volume actually contains two of my multi-chapter fics. First,"Forever With You Never Sounded So Stupid"and "Academy Blues." Not than most of you care, but both of these fics are part of my emotional process of recovering after the absolutely stupid, rushed ending of the official Bleach manga. I will not get into it (in part because if I start ranting, I will not stop), but suffice to say this is a fix-it that, in my own personal head, is now canon. I literally note which panel to stop reading, because my story perfectly fits canon up to that point. I also actually include a lot of the information gleaned from the official light novels that Shounen Jump commissioned to also try to actually fix the mess Kubo Tite left behind.

Anyway, the cover isn't all that exciting, honestly. But wait until you see the interior....



Interior chapter start, this one featuring Renji from Bleach....

And a second one,

Image: featuring a bone tree from a part of the Bleach universe known as Hueco Mundo, the Hollow World

Also scatterred throughout are some bits of a manga-style comicbook that aysmiro drew and shared with me, while I was writing this particular set of fics.  As I was telling a friend, the pieces of this fan manga are so important to me that I've desperately been saving it on various digital back-ups for years. Now, thanks to this fan project, I have high quality printouts forever. 

 

Image: a fan-drawn manga of a fan work of Bleach.

The crazy thing about this, of course, is that in the past year or so there's been a scammer who has targetted me twice attempting to suggest that they will draw a comic book/manga-style work from my story. (It's usually kind of obvious it's a scam because they'll pick a story where I'm like, "three people have read this. Why?")  I always answer this with, "if you found my AO3 profile, you know I've given blanket permission for you to do this. Have at it!" and then they always come back with, "Yes, but for a commission," and I have to say, "Friend, I write fan fic for free. If you want to do fan art for the love of it, go for it. I am not paying you to make fan art of my fan work." Especially since this book I got? I paid nothing. The book artist wouldn't even let me pay for shipping.

Anyway, fandom is the best. 

 First, I feel that I'll be accused of burying the lead (alternately lede, if you are old school)  if I don't start with this: I got the library job out in Anoka County!!

This is exciting!

And also a hassle!

As I may have mentioned in my previous post about this, there were two jobs available to the candidates. I was sincere when I told the interviewers that I did not care which one I got, if I got one. It is, of course, easiest to say that when actually landing the job seems like a distant prospect. The job I ended up with has, what is quite obviously, the more terrible schedule of the two options. Library work always requires evening and weekend work, but I will be working both Saturdays and Sundays every other week. This is particularly rough for me, as someone who often hopes to attend SFF conventions on the weekends. I am unclear how friendly this workplace will be to me announcing that I can not work some assigned shifts? I won't have to test this until July, when Convergence is going to slam headlong into a "week 2" of my schedule, aka my weekend hours. (I am also GoH, as mentioned many times now, at Quantum Con, but as CHANCE WOULD HAVE IT, that weekend falls on my "week 1" week and thus is not a week I am expected to work weekends.) 

So, it's going to be interesting to work all that out. For the moment, I am excited to be taking on some extra work, especially since the nice thing about this particular schedule is that I will only be expected to work two four hour shifts, every work week. The way everything actually works out, given that week 1 begins on a Tuesday for me, there will, in fact be weeks where I will have worked the previous weekend and then also have to work into the evenings of both Tuesday and Thursday. But then I'll get this weidly long gap before I have to do it again.

I can see why this position was open? I can only imagine people want out of it ASAP. 

Given that we are a one car family, this is also just... a lot of logistics for us. We have solutions to all of that in the works already, however.

Second, since a lot of you got very invested in my phone problems yesterday, I am happy to report that I am already in possession of a brandnew phone. I have not yet moved everything over to it, but that will probably happen tonight. (I may need my wife at home to hold my hand, as Tracfone can be notoriously annoying when activating and switching to a new phone. At least my previous/current phone is still in my possession and I can access it. The worst is when you've lost or totally bricked your previous phone.) In the meantime, the gods have chosen to laugh at me. Yesterday, after spending the day (and notably my patrol) with my phone OUT LOUD sans earphones,* I dropped it. I didn't think anything of it until, without thinking, I went to turn it on with my headphone jack and VIOLA. It suddenly decided to work again. This was, of course, about two second after Shawn had hit the "buy it" button at Best Buy. 

Ah well.

Otherwise, today is Wednesday and I have managed to read almost nothing the entire week. I have a zillion books out from the Ramsey County Library right now. They're even manga, something that I am known to consume at ligthning speeds. For whatever reason, I have just not picked them up. I'm going to renew them one more time, but, obviously, if I can't get through them after that, I'll just have to give up. The same has been happening with my audiobooks. I did start to listen to Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon, but I just couldn't get into it. What I have on audio right now is:

Sunbirth by An Yu
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

If anyone has a recommendation of which I should try next, please let me know!

I just hopped over to Instagram and it looks like my mutual aid folks are up and in operation today. I still need to have a little bit of something to eat for lunch, but I might wander over there in a bit and give them some of my time. Also, I am curious AF if Colin actually got enough money to fully fund "distro" or if we're going to be sending out sad little bags of beans and a couple of apples or what. Curiosity and drama. It's what my end of this resistance runs on. 

If people want, I can also give you an anti-ICE resistance update at some point. The short of it is that last Friday I was on a live call while on foot patrol near a local mosque and listened to a commuter attempt to stop an abduction here in St. Paul. According to what I heard on school bus patrol yesterday, there was also another person stolen from their family and their home extra-legally the day before (Monday, also in Saint Paul). The bastards are still doing their grab and go of human beings, many of whom are attempting to follow the legal process of immigration. (And even if they aren't? Masked men randomly hauling a person away isn't how this is supposed to happen.) We, the Resistance, are generally low on commuters and patrolers "post surge," so that isn't helping matters. If we don't get recordings of these events, ICE can lie about them more easily and/or act like they never happened. Luckily, I know for a fact that during the Friday's kidnapping, our commuter was able to get the name of the person ICE abducted. Thanks to being there and his quick thinking, that meant we could follow-up. While I listened, I heard reports of people returning to the scene to try to find family, friends or other contacts to make sure that the abductee's family knew they had been taken and try to get them legal aid, anything else they might need right away.

I can't even imagine what it must be like. To say goodbye to a loved one or your parent or your child as they (or you) head to work in the morning and then.... they just never come home. And you don't know where they went or if they're okay. And by the time you find out, if you ever do, they might be in another state or another country, all alone.  If that happened to Shawn I wouldn't even know what to do, how to go on. To think that my neighbors face this every day is just heartbreaking.

And this is why I pray some of us will never stop fighting.


==
*The live call I join is unvetted and everyone involved knows that they could be overheard. Everyone is very circumspect about locations and events.

 
Image: me in my fancy new Norweigan Resitance hat made especially for me by Paula Rice Beiver

I promised a picture of the hat that Paula made for me at Minicon, so here it is!  As I noted, I really feel like there are some magical ways in which the resistance here in Minnesota operated. The generation and distribution of whistles--you could not walk into a place of business and not see a bowl of them (bookstores, coffee shops, car repair places, restaurants, etc.) People handed out whistles on the street, in little free libraries, etc.. I feel like there are probably people who have a story that goes with "and then I was handed/picked up my very first whistle."

Similarly, the fact that so many people were making these very historically meaningful Norweign resistance hats as a way to promote visiblile solidarity, at one point, we had a shortage of red yarn. 

Up the revolution, y'all.

As for news from today, I may have mentioned that I am currently hunting for a job. The capitalist system is not kind to writers, and especially not to ones who have stalled out on their second novel in a series. So, I drove all the way out to Blaine in Anoka County to interview for a job as circ staff at their library system. It seemed to go okay? I was, of course, stumped by one of those corporate-speak interview questions: "tell us about a time you made a mistake and what steps you took to correct it." I suppose what I should remember is that they're trying to find out if you are the sort of person who handles critique well and I should just make something up so that I can say things like, "Even though I felt ashamed that I had made the mistake, I did not get angry. I was able to listen to my supervisor and cheerfully apply their suggestion!" Because that's what they want to know. Are you the kind of person who punches someone when they tell you that you screwed up. Alas, I fumbled around and, well, NOW I HAVE A STORY ABOUT A TIME I SCREWED UP. :-P

But, that's sort of all I know. There was a lot of rigamorale around the fact that everyone in my family needed to be somewhere this morning and we only have one car. Luckily, naomikritzer was able to loan me her husband's car (he really can't use it at the moment becuase he has a broken arm) and so half my family could go off to their dental and physical appointments, and I could head off for my interview in Ed's car.

As a bonus, we got to chat a bit when she gave me a ride back to mine, after I returned the car this morning. 

I am now trying to decide how energtic I feel. As you know, because I mention it a lot, my mutual aid place, ZCC, is still hopping. Even if I can only go for a few minutes, there is almost always something that needs doing. Since it's only 12:30 as I finish writing this, I think I will wander on over there and do a little good for the resistance efforts. Might as well, since, if I get this job, I'll have a lot less time to devote to things like that.

Image: Minicon Con Suite signage done in intentional 60s/70s style.

Minicon is going to stop putting me on panels. I managed to miss another one yesterday (Saturday.) I would say through no fault of my own, but that would be a lie. I made the very intentional decision that I wanted dinner that was more than a gobbled con suite sandwhich.The only "to be fair to me" part of this equation is the fact that I had a solid block of panels fro 5:30 pm until 9:30 pm and no dinner break. Still, I probably could have made it work with a little inguinity. (Voice over: Readers, she did not.)

But, we'll get to that part of the story in a minute.

I got to the convention yesterday some time just afternoon again. Since the Con Suite seems to be the hang out and find people to chat with place at Minicon, I wandered over there with the secondary thought that more coffee is, for me, never a bad idea.I know many people for whom "more coffee" is a terrible idea or for whom it quickly reaches the level of a terrible idea, but I am one of those lucky souls who can--and do--drink caffeinated coffee right up until bedtime.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the person I ran while looking for coffee wascaffeine! He was sitting with a bunch of folks that I either did not know or did not know well. As it happens, my favorite thing about cons is talking to the people I have not yet me who might be awesome. And they were! Names, of course, now escape me, but there was a mustache that I shall never forget! Very curly! Very Salvador Dali!

I had a lovely chat for a good long while with everyone there about various Apple+ shows we'd seen and now I have a recommendation to try to watch Ascention, a mini-series about a generational ship. This rather highly specific conversation that started because I had brought up the Elon Musk character type that you find in science fiction novels of a certain type, often newer SF/cyberpunk--although, not always, as I would argue the Charlie Stross's Manfred Macx from Accelerando (2005) reads as Musk-like, even though it may pre-date the Real Life version's heyday. At any rate, that got me remembering For All Mankind, an alternate history series that I absolutely adore--at least the first several seasons of. Alas, unfortunately, one thing that hasn't aged well is that it has a Musk analog, though at least the character in For All Mankind is Black. (I have a hard time finding other people who have seen it because Apple+ is not as popular a streaming service, despite the fact that it has a lot of good, originally produced SF like Silo and, of course, Murderbot.)

caffeinemeantioned that he felt I was missed on the cyberpunk panel. He felt one of the panelist was of a type that he thought I would have been a good counter to. Well, poo. Again, it was a choice I made? I can't really regret that one, though. Shawn's 59th birthday comes around only once!

At some point, despite really enjoying the company and the corresponding conversation, I decided I should probably move along and so I wandered off to check out the dealer's room. I ran into Anton P. again and he wanted to introduce me to the bookseller who is going to be at Quantum Con, so we could figure out a way to have some of my books at there. (Look at me, reminding people about this con again!!)

We made our way slowly around the room, stopping first to chat with Greg Ketter, who was staffing the Dreamhaven Books & Comics table. Greg, as you may know, went viral right after Alex Pretti's execution and so one of the things I got from him was a donation for Da'Wah Institute, a local mosque that I regularly patrol (even still.) Da'Wah is having a lot of finanical woes thanks to Operation Metro surge and is running a fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with-minnesota-dawah-institute-during-a-difficult-time. Greg is not a fan of the GoFundMe model and so we arranged for me to pick up an actual direct donation. He told me a little bit about all the other causes he's been giving money to and how weird it is that people are STILL just randomly sending the store/him $20-$100 bills, sometimes with no note at all.

I managed to not buy anything in the Dealer's Room, despite being sorely tempted by a woman who makes these absolutely incredible spider brooches. I just ran out to the car to see if I was smart enough to grab one of her business cards, but, alas, I was not. If I remember to today, I will, so you all (at least all of you who are not spider-phobic) can look at these amazing objects d'art.

Then, I need to confess that I have some very dear friends, Laurie and Cate, who I run into who at cons, during the resistance, etc... (and I think because god hates me)... I always, ALWAYS flub their names. For some reason, in my head, I always want to call Cate, Cat, and Laurie, Laurel. It's annoying. I tell you this as a confession of my sins in the hope that the universe will absolve me and I CAN START GETTING IT RIGHT. Because I was talking to Anna W. and Anton and they came up to chat. I went to introduce them and completely fucked up their names again. Gods, I love for that to never happen again. (Voice over: Readers, she will do it again, later, in this very story.)

I finally went to my first panel around 4:30 pm and it was "Greg and Naomi are Still F*cking Angry." This was basically a panel for collective healing from the trauma many of us are feeling around the federal occupation that was ICE. Despite (or maybe because) of that, it was a really good panel. For those of you unfamiliar with Minicon or Twin Cities are fandom, there was ZERO push-back. Not one question from the audience of the "but aren't you all domestic terroritsts?" or "but we need to get rid of criminal immigrants, right??" variety. Not one. THIS is largely why the metro area of the Twin Cities was NOT the city/cities to fuck with. It is not 100% blue, but it is REALLY 99.9% blue here.

rant/

As a side-note. I do think it's funny in a sad way that everyone on our side who talks about this tends to forget Saint Paul and suburbs like Columbia Heights (where Liam, the Bunny hat boy is from) and will use "Minneapolis" as a short had for where EVERYTHING happened (sometimes even while filming in front of the SAINT PAUL capitol building), and, ironically, the more inclusive term for all of us is "the metro area" which fucking Trump and his cronnies got right when they called their evil, "Operation Metro Surge."

/mini rant

Anyway, my point? A good panel. Well with it.

Then, I had a panel with Naomi at 5:30 called "Evil Overlords." That one was fun, but I will admit that other than writing about Morningstar/Lucifier, I don't have a huge amount of personal experience writing about Evil Overlords. The good news is that GoH Pat Wrede does. I happen to know thatnaomikritzerproposed this panel, in part, to make sure that Pat had a chance to talk about her newest novel The Dark Lord's Daughter. This panel was also an excuse to introduce a new generation to Peter's Evil Overlord, aka "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I were an Evil Overlord" list: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html We almost got off the rails when someone brought up some real life evil (again, why do people do that?) but the heart of the audience member's question was actually about how one DEFINES evil, generally, and so we were able to wrestle it back to true before everyone started to implode over the morality of the bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The panel I skipped in favor of dinner with Lois McMaster Bujold and Naomi Kritzer (the sheer number of Hugo awards I dined with was astronomical!) was "On Writing Badly." As I noted to the two of them, I guess I know a lot about that since my career has utterly tanked? I will have to ask around, but I sort of presume the panel was not about writers who suck at writing, but more about how important it is to allow first drafts to suck, etc.

The final panel of the evening was "Reading Dystoria vs. Living Dystopia" which turned into a very lively discussion, despite the fact that it STARTED at 8:30 pm. Again, Naomi moderated. Adam Stemple andpegkerrwere on the panel with me. Peg started us off in a good direction talking about how writing the fan-project Alternity surprised her by how many responses to an evil overlord (Voldemort in this case) used in the local response to Metro Surge that they predicted. Naomi asked us what we thought dystopia novels and stories got wrong in comparison to Real Life Dystopia and what they got right? A lot of the responses to the first question seemed to revolve around the fact that none of us expected evil to be this obvious and this stupid. Books and other media have prepared us largely for smart and clever evil. I tried to talk a bit about the fact that I feel like one of the things that books about dystopia get wrong is the idea that it takes someone special (or with a special McGuffin, like the One Ring) to resist. This met with some push-back (and not necessarily wrongly) from the audience who wanted to argue that the Hobbits were supposed to represent ordinary people. I agree with that? My issue is that Frodo did inherit the One Ring, so it's not like he stepped up JUST BECAUSE. He was called because he had the McGuffin and had to choose to be a hero. Most of the people I know who faced guns with whistles were ordinary people, some in their pajamas, who decided that evil simply must be stopped right here, right now. I think I made my point better when I suggested that a way to think about it is how different a triology LotR would have been if the first town that the Nazgul stopped at looking for "Baggins" simply grabbed their whistles and formed a human chain saying, "We don't know any Baggins, but we will not let you take them!"

Because that's what happened here, in essence.The Nagzul showed up and we said, "We see evil and we are willing die to make sure that it does not spread."

Obviously, that didn't fully happen yet, but that was what the vibe of our response was.

ANYWAY. That very naturally led to me hanging out in the con suite way too late, drinking coffee with a dear friend who was a former A.I.M. member, and swapping "war stories" from the ICE raids. (Side note: my friend obviously generally has more expreience facting down Federal Agents and it made me feel weird about the work I've done for the resistance. Like? Was I brave enough? Does any of it count if I never saw an ICE agent FOR CERTAIN? Of course, in the morning light, I see that all actions against fascism are acts of bravery, but it is so weirdly easy to turn this into a heirarchy of activism.) 

Right! Well, that got long! Apologies for that. I'm off now to hopefully hang out with a friend who I played a journaling RPG with. I started the project, mailed it to Poland, and then the person in Poland mailed it to this friend who wrapped up the adventure. So, I haven't seen the finished project. I have one panel today that I am moderating called "Second Book in the Series." I'll let you know tomorrow how all that goes!

 For the second time ever, my wife's birthday is conflicting with Minicon. I am probably going to miss a number of the panels that I've been assigned to? But, I think, HOPEFULLY, the only affected panels are Friday night's.  

Here's what they gave me:

 Once again, I have failed to post anything beyond once a week.  Ugh, I suck. Sorry, everyone!

To be fair to me, Ramadan has only just ended (happy Eid to those of you celebrating today). Ramadan has meant several late nights for me, as I've been doing anti-ICE patrols--though one of my groups actually had people patroling in the wee hours of the morning--like, 3:00 am! I wish I were the sort of person who could have done that? I bet the Dispatch calls were fascinating. And, maybe it would have inspired a vampire story or two, who knows?

Part of me will miss this. In particular, I will miss the Night Owls.

The Night Owls (which actually start at the fully normal hour of 8 pm) are an interesting group. It's a group resistance Signal call for anyone up and about until dawn, no matter where they are located. So, I've had people on with me that were coming in from exo-suburbs and even nearby small towns.

The culture of a lot of the Signal calls is that commuters and stationary/foot/bicycle patrolers say pretty quiet and only turn their mics on to do a plate check. This varies from community to community, of course, with some dispatchers encouraging more back and forth or doing round-robin check-ins. It really depends on who your "Guy/Gal/Enby in a Chair" is.  There's things specific to specific groups too?  My hyper-local community always signs-off with "Have a great night, Fuck ICE" in the same sort of casual tone you might tell a partner "Love ya!" before hanging up. I joke that I can always tell people from my area when they show up on the larger calls because they still do this even when its not the culture of the call? Other dispatchers sound a little thrown to hear folks from my neck of the woods just casually signing off with a happy little swear. There are also cool acronyms that I'm not fully privvy to, like some folks from the other side of the river apparently say: SSFI for Stay Safe, Fuck ICE.  I tried to say that today since there are lot of little ears around the mosque during Eid, but my dyslexia was like... UH GO SLOW... so totally outed myself as NOT one of the cool kids, after all. :-)

But the Night Owls are their own special crew. Their chat is actually vetted, but the call is open to anyone commuting, etc., late night. Once daylight savings time hit, my stationary patrols started at 8:30 pm so I joined the Night Owls. The Night Owl folks are just chattier? Largely, I think because it is often the same crew--people who do the late shift UberEats or whatever other driving gigs they might have.... people who are just up all night. They will talk about their favorite energy drinks or talk about the usefulness of jumper cables or sometimes even awkwardly attempt to flirt over Signal voice chat. Ocassionaly, someone will break in with a startled, "Y'all, I just saw the world's biggest rat run across west 7th! And I used to live in Mumbai!" There was a whole discussion that spanned several nights about the ICE agents on Grindr (a gay dating app).   

I got invested, you know?

These people became some Real Life version of my own personal soap opera. I am going to admit that I have clearly formed some parasocial relationships with certain code names. 

That being said, they were really there for me when I needed it. There was an incident that I haven't blogged about a couple of Wednesdays back where my plate check came back hot, or shall we say VERY COLD, possibly even icy if you get my drift. I was stationary (on foot), alone, and dispatch very kindly asked me if I wanted a drive-by from one of the other commuters in the area. This icy vehicle was also stationary? We had clocked each other? Like, they were parked and the three of us had made eye contact. So, my voice jumped an octave higer than I intended and I was like, "Uh, yeah, I would not hate that, dispatch. Thank you!"

Y'all, within MINUTES rescue arrived. 

Rescue was a gender fluid person on bicycle patrol. This fully bearded, beautiful human being rolled up in 10 F/ -12 C degree weather in a skirt and Wicked Witch of the West striped tights. They had a high-powered telephoto lens camera with them and, I kid you not, the sight me--this tiny, fat lesbian on a phone--and  this amazing person arriving on a bicycle caused my icy van to decide THE THREAT WAS TOO BIG (which, honestly, was the most ICE-like move they made). They fled. I reported that my sus van was on the move to dispatch and I could hear commuters everywhere leaping into action. I am sure my sus van had a tail before they turned on to the next biggest throughfare. 

When I had to sign out, I heard the Night Owls making sure someone would continue to swing by to keep an eye on the mosque. I was so thrown by this experience that I didn't remember to text our contact inside the mosque until I got home, but I only live minutes away, so they got the word out for people to be extra careful that evening, too. I don't know, of course, for sure the folks we chased off were who we were afraid they might be, but I'm just as happy to have freaked out any other potential bad actors, you know? I swear that right now, in the Twin Cities, you do not want to be a "local, independent pharmaceutical entrepreneur" because some commuter has eyes on your business!  

So, I think this is why I feel kind of connected. Like, these are my comrades in arms (or by phone, as in the case of the Minnesota Resistance). 

Happy Eid, but good-bye my dear Night Owls! SSFI*!


====
I'll still be doing rapid-response work, but probably no longer at night.

 Apologies for the long silence.

I've mostly just been keeping on keeping on, as they say. I'm still regularly going to my mutual aid place, the Food Communists. Their work continues apace, although Monday was fairly quiet, as such things go. By yesterday, the pace had picked back up, but they're closing today and tomorrow due to renovations at the church they work out of. So I have two days completely off! What will I even do with all that time? She asks, looking around at housework she's ignored for almost two months.

I'm still doing the school patrol (M-W) and mosque watching too. Although, at the mosque we have switched to evenings (and every day of the week) during Ramadan at the request of the imam. I have not been standing outside every single night of the week, however. I signed up to be the point person on Fridays and Saturdays, but am otherwise trying to let other people fill the slots. We are getting some help from neighborhoods outside of our own, so it's looking a little less sparse than the last time I reported, by all accounts. 

I'm noticing some cautious hope during the school patrol, too. More moms are willing to bring their very little (pre-school aged) ones with them when they come to meet elder siblings at the bus stop. Very heartening. It does feel like the cloud is lifting finally.

I'm starting to be able to write a little bit again, which is lovely. naomikritzer and I started working on something together that has lit a fire under me. We'll see what, if anything comes of that, but it's been nice to feel inspired again. Hopefully, that will bleed into the Boy. net sequel (and it should. I tend to be like that. Writing anywhere seems to mean writing everywhere. I am, apparently, polyamorous in my wirting style--I have more to give than to just one project!)

We woke up today to dense fog. Shawn was actually telling me that she hoped it would last all day, because she really wants to go for a walk in it s she can pretend we live on heather-strewn moors.

How've you been?

I guess it is Wednesday? I have nothing of note to mention in terms of things I've read. I've been listening to an extremely boring podcast about the Roman Empire--it's exactly my speed right now, but it's run by a university and I have notice a distinct lack of salacious factoids about what the Romans got up to... ah, well. It helps me get to sleep and that's really what I am using it for.

What about you? Listening to or reading anything fun?