Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Oops.

Clearly my new year's resolution ought to be to be more regular on my journal. 

I wish I could say that I haven't updated because I was super-busy doing AMAZING things. I mean, I was--if you consider a fantastically relaxing stay-cation with my family where we did a whole lot of absolutely nothing amazing. I do. It was a much needed break. I'm not an introvert in any way shape or form, but the introverts in my family have taught me the joy of curling up with a good book and not coming up for air for two weeks. For them, it's necessary and restorative; for me, it's just plain relaxing. Plus given how 2019 started (all the cat troubles), this was such a welcome change.

I took the opportunity to catch up on a bunch of fannish things. I revived my role-playing blog on Tumblr, which has been fun. I wrote a ton of fan fic, which is like comfort food for me (and the stuff I'm writing right now is extremely self-indulgent in the strangest way... lots of food and Edo Period farming chores.)

 Mason's robotics season has kicked-off. They had their big event on Saturday where they learned about the challenges that their robot will have to complete. This year, too, will be the first year that there will be no "stop build" day, so my son will be doing robotics into the unforeseeable future, which puts a cramp in my evening social life, since I still haven't managed to teach him to drive. (Though he's an expert at public transportation, so, there are options.)

The other exciting thing is that I have picked up a new casual hobby.

Sewing.

I'm not doing anything too complicated, just stitching pre-cut squares of fabric together for a quilt project that Shawn started and then put on indefinite hold as other things took priority. 

This started because, by chance, one time when I went to go see Terry at the nursing home a couple of her friends from the Ladies Sewing Circle were there and we all had such a good time (and really seemed to lift Terry's spirits) that we agreed to meet again. This last time I joined them, I decided I wanted to be part of the cool kids so I asked Shawn to give me something super simple that I could do while hanging out with these expert knitters, quilters, and fabric artists. We're talking about doing it again, so I will keep my stuff together in a bag ready to go.  I've been joking with Shawn that if I get really into it, I can become That One Person Who Sits at Cons and Crafts During Panels.

So, that was my holiday. How about you?

 I volunteered to be part of a pop-up library at Anime Detour this weekend, though MELSA, the over-arching library organization to which Ramsey County Libraries belong. The gig was short two-hour shifts, and I thought why not? If nothing else, it's essentially a free past to the con.  They encouraged cosplay, so I dug out my old Aizen cosplay. The picture is blurry because the only full length mirror we have in our house is behind a door that we almost never close and even though I washed centuries of dust off the surface, the glass is still wavy with age. But, I wanted to show a full length picture because frankly, the footwear is my best part. The tabi (the two toed socks are PERFECT). The rest is borrowed or thrift store finds.



Finding the convention was kind of trip. I had not gone last year when they moved venues, so finding the Hyatt on Nicollet Avenue was a lot of me cursing while making u-turns in downtown Minneapolis. I have long joked that since moving to St. Paul the directional faeries of Minneapolis have rejected me, because things I used to find with ease now completely baffle me.  So, I'm glad I left a half hour earlier than I normally would have given myself to get into downtown, because... yeah.

The pop-up library was fun. They had a tables set up with a bunch of different activities. There were, of course, manga to look through and read (but we weren't checking any out,) comfy spots to read, etc., but we were also hosting a raffle drawing and a button for a fact table. I ended up staffing the button table. The idea is, that if you write down a fact (any fact, doesn't have to be manga or anime related, it can be like, "I am attending Anime Detour") and in exchange you can pick up a fannish related button for FREE.



Somehow I look ten times fatter in this picture. Ah, well, such is life. You can at least see the table with the buttons on it.

I had to pick up Shawn right after my shift, so I didn't get much of a chance to wander around the con. I went into artist's alley, and glanced at stuff but decided I'd better get going, because rush hour. 

And then I couldn't remember where I parked my car.

Like, I was standing around in downtown Minneapolis thinking, "Oh my god, which one of these bazillion parking ramps is the one I went into???" I have a pretty good directional memory, so I knew approximately what street (turns out I had the right parking lot on the first guess, but I went in the wrong door so the interior looked different.) At one point I was thinking, what do I even do if I can never figure it out? Do I take the bus home and wait for them to impound it?? We only have the one car!  But, after much panicked searching, I did find it. I even SOMEHOW made it across town in time to pick up Shawn at the usual time.

So that was my day. I do it again tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, Mason is still roboting. He's got tomorrow, as well. I heard from Shawn that their team won a few rounds and seemed to generally have a good day. I won't probably head out to pick him up until after 6:30 pm. Long days for that kid. I'll have to post more of the pictures that they shared on their twitter feed.

 

Team Magnatech 4229, with Mason in the olive green shirt, working on their robot in Grand Forks, North Dakota. 

We haven't heard very much from Mason while he's been off roboting, but their schedule is packed with one competition after another. Shawn has managed to watch a few of the matches on their Twitter livestream, but it always looks like unconstrained chaos to me, honestly. I can never remember our team's number (4229) and following the action is difficult. However, they were last ranked 26 or 24, which is pretty good, upper middle.  Though their feed reports problems with the controllers this morning, which means they currently can't get the robot to respond. (I swear this happens to them once a competition.)

Meanwhile, I've been humming along. I agreed to work at the library tomorrow from 11 am to 3 pm.  I may regret it for a number of reasons: 1) I might miss hearing some of Mason's stories firsthand about the trip, since he'd due back tonight at midnight, and 2) it's St. Patrick's Day official, which.. I mean, I can't imagine that libraries are a big destination on St. Patrick's Day, but who knows? 

I've got a St. Patrick's Day party myself tonight, and, since I have to be awake to pick Mason up at midnight, I can go and hang out as long as I like. 

I'm sure I have other news, but the caffeine hasn't hit yet.

 This morning started out a little rough.

We had a kerfuffle in the car. It shouldn't even be classified in the "fight" or "argument" category, but, of course, with a teenager and two premenopausal women in the car, it FELT like a category 4 hurricane.

What was it about? Nothing. Everything. It was about Inky's death. It was about Mason growing up so fast and me forgetting that he can take care of himself and doesn't need me hovering over him making sure he eats his lunch. It was about every fight we ever had where feelings got hurt.

We worked it all out by the time I got back from Menards. Mason, who has been feeling like our arguments don't have resolutions, asked me to text him what I thought the resolution of this fight was, so I did. That was actually a GREAT idea. We should do this for every kerfuffle. If for no other reason than that it GIVES ME THE LAST WORD, BWAH HAHAHAHAHA!~!  But, seriously, I had forgotten my phone at home so I stopped to get it before heading out for cat food and that gave me a lot of time to not be hormonally charged and could take a reasoned look at what the STUPID actual issue was and sort it out and offer solutions.

We had a nice text change, Mason and I. Normally, I feel like talking things out is best, but the occasional tech support via text is a good idea. 

ANYWAY, what else has been happening?  Let's see. I think I reported that I finished my short story and got it off to my critique group on Thursday night. I've since been asked to consider submitting something to another place, a flash fiction contest, and I should try to do something for that if only because it's 300 words MAX. I SHOULD be able to pull that together by the middle of April.  If not, there's something seriously wrong with me.

I've been able to read novels again, so I'll have things to report tomorrow, if I remember to post.

Oh, I know what else we've been doing! Last night we, after school, we drove out to Famous Footwear and Target to get Mason new shoes and a swimsuit for his trip to Grand Forks, ND. He and his robotics team are going to North Dakota for a tournament. They weren't able to afford any practice tournaments last year, so they're looking forward to this one. Hopefully, this will give them the chance to work out any bugs before the big tournament at the U (or wherever it will be this year.) He leaves on a bus tomorrow afternoon and will be in LATE on Saturday. I'm sure it will be tremendous fun, in the way that those trips away from home always are for Mason. Dude LOVES travel, even if it's only across town to visit a museum.

Speaking of which, I got a couple of new books at Barnes & Noble the other day, both local tourism books. One is a book of walking tours of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the other is easy day trips from here. I'm SO READY for warmer weather so that I can go exploring my own town. Also, my Canadian is coming back for her big Yarn/Knitting conference in April so I'll have chance to show her around again. This time she wants to see museums.  I also really want to get to the cat cafe. I should see if that's still in operation. 

So, that's me.  I hope you all are doing well.

 Ms. Ball, who is Mason's kitty, has suddenly become quite thin.

We have a vet appointment scheduled for her ASAP, so we'll find out what's going on then, but in the meantime feel free to keep her in your thoughts. Here she is in better days, sleeping in her usual spot, on Mason's arm.



But, I didn't sleep terribly well last night, worrying about her.

You know how it is.

Otherwise, I spent a good portion of the day dealing with our internet/phone providers. Our landline suddenly stopped working, probably some time on Sunday. Like most people in this day and age, our landline normally only rings when a spambot is calling, so I didn't entirely notice we were offline until we missed the normal Sunday night robocall from Mason's school. Every Sunday, at 7 pm, Washington Technical's principle sends out a canned message informing us of various goings-on at the high school, like which of their sports teams did well and things like that. At that point we realized something was up. Shawn checked the neighborhood group and since other people who had Centurylink were experiencing problems, we waited to see if it would resolve itself.

It did not.

This morning I called and had a guy come out to investigate the situation. Turns out, we had never actually had our phones shifted to fiber and were still running copper to the house. It was supposed to have been disconnected and removed when we got fiber YEARS ago.  So, the technician took care of that for us. Our barbaric, old-fashioned landline is once again up and running.

Spambots everywhere may rejoice.

The guy was at our house for HOURS though. It turns out, a large part of his time was spent on hold.... to his own company.

APPARENTLY, Centurylink requires its technician to use the exact same horrific phone tree that customers use.  He apologized for taking so long, but apparently the first person he got connected to, didn't understand the issue, told him the line was fine, and hung up on him. So, he had to go through the whole rigamarole of WAITING ON HOLD AGAIN until he could talk to someone who could _properly_ test the line.

As my mechanic Tor would say: "What the fuck. Excuse my language, but What. The. FUCK."

The worst part? This guy spent several hours of his workday in our "Silence of the Lambs" basement, looking around at all the weird ass stuff we have collected down there. I wonder what he thought of my ceramic head? Or the sad, empty gerbil cage that we haven't quite gotten the nerve up to part with yet, despite the fact that the gerbil has been gone for years (I mean, it's a cleaned out cage, but still.)

I, meanwhile, had a lovely afternoon. naomikritzer came over to chat and we gossiped like old women over lunch (I made homemade pizza in a cast iron pan), while the technician sat on hold in my basement. 

Mason came home late today because his robotics team is having a bake sale to raise funds. For health safety reasons, they have to cook/bake everything they sell themselves, in the school's culinary arts classroom.  So, the whole team was there making cake pops until almost 7 pm. The team (@4229Magnetech) posted a picture of their efforts on Twitter (Mason is in the maroon shirt in the middle, mostly obscured by other people):



In other news, I _finally_ formally accepted a pinch hit for Yuletide, so if I disappear for several days, it's because I am frantically writing that. I actually already wrote a couple of treats for people this year, but I hadn't accepted an actual assignment.  

Wish me luck!

Hope you are all doing well!

 First of all, I'm happy to report that, thanks to a team alliance, Mason's robotics team won a match this morning!  Luckily, alliances are a thing, because earlier the team's twitter feed reported: "Our code is so broken that we had to call in the experts."





Secondly, if the "GoH Meet and Greet" is any indication, Minicon 53 is going to be AWESOME. Rachel Swirsky, whose stuff you should buy, support, consume, and nominate the F*CK out of--is delightful and charming.  As is her husband Mike.  Seriously, I'm having a literary crush on these two.  BUY ALL THEIR THINGS. 

You guys know me, right?  I'm such a lark. I'm usually looking at my watch at 9:00 pm, thinking, "OMG, how much longer do I have to stay awake???"  Last night, I had so much fun with Rachel and Mike (and Rob Callahan and a bunch of the MiniCON crew) that I didn't get home until 11:30 pm!!  UNREAL.

I'm not headed into the con until around 5 pm today, because Shawn and I would like to try to catch a bit of the robotics stuff (and hand off Mason's new phone, which we finally got working today).  We also did some grocery shopping since Shawn and Mason will be on their own both Saturday and Sunday (which is Shawn's birthday.)  I made Shawn a couple of quiches so she would have good home cooked food to survive on, too, because that's just how damn dolly domestic I am!

Okay, off to have lunch and go see robots!