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I don't know that I can sort through all the craziness in LJ and Facebook that's followed on the heels of the news about Osama bin Laden. I do believe I'm just going to move on ahead and kind of start from past all that. There was a great discussion on it that I caught part of on NPR today. For my part, I'll just note that whether something is justified or not is a different question from whether that thing represents the meting out of justice, and I feel ill-at-ease looking at anyone's death as an occasion for celebration.
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It's so very nice to be back home for a couple of days! I left here on Friday morning and will be leaving again on Thursday or Friday. In the meantime, my plans for tomorrow are to finish up my FAFSA application and look at putting together a class schedule for my first semester of college. Thursday I get to pick up my bike. I tried to pick it up on the way back from Detroit on Monday evening, but though I would have made it to the shop ten minutes or so before their official closing time of 8 o' clock, I called to see if they'd still be there and they said they were already closing up. It's ok; if I had a bike tomorrow, I suppose I'd be tempted to go out and ride around on it instead of accomplishing things.
Speaking of Michigan, it was wonderful. Especially given that it wasn't a convention that I wasn't planning to go to until I found that I could synergize with a trip for the purchase of car parts.
Through the whole weekend, I never found myself feeling that I lacked for something to do. There were a few panels that were worthwhile; one was a discussion by a professor of anthropology on how reading science fiction (particularly Jack Vance, though other authors got a mention too) turned him into an anthropologist. I jotted down some names to look into on my phone and got his business card in the thought that he might be valuable to have a connection to.
There was a lot of board gaming.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danaeris and I played in a Dominion tournament. I did fairly poorly, but I still had a wonderful time doing it and met some neat folks while playing. She and I also went together to the amusingly named 'Poly People Populating Penguion' social event. I didn't stay there too long though; it was so loud; I was getting a sore throat trying to talk over the noise! Instead, I wandered back to the room to get my copy of Power Grid hoping to find some players. By the time I'd walked from the elevator to the game room, I had four people who wanted to play.
"Ooh, you have Power Grid!"
"I do! Looking for a game?"
"Sure!"
More boardgaming happened on Sunday night. Since Danae had the room through to Monday morning, she and Posi and his friend Ghostie and I, along with Wocket (another guy we met who was looking for a game) played two more games of Power Grid that night. Wocket was a great guy and an adept Power Gridder. Posi and Ghostie seemed to enjoy learning to play the game. Posi is interested in more of it, and that's definitely a win!
Danae and I missed out on some panels, one poly-related and one kink related (it was kind of neat to see a significant number of panels on the "after dark" track), because we were doing party hopping that night instead. Danae put fae make up on me, and I wore my horns and shiny red shirt Asian-ish shirt with black khaki pants. I felt like I looked pretty good! And I know that my sweetie looked pretty good too! I love that we both have horns to wear together. *bounces*
There were so many wonderful bits of home-brew fun. Someone brought a working ski-ball machine that he made out of parts scavanged from a shed that a relation of his tore down. There was a gigantic machine that was in the process of being built from I-don't-know-how-many sets of Chaos Tower parts. It was, in keeping with the theme of the con, open source (or perhaps more accurately organically crowd-sourced?); anyone who wanted to could spend time tinkering and building with it. And there was a camera pointed at it and connected to an intervalometer; someone was putting together a time-lapse series of the machine coming together. What an awesome idea! It *really* makes me want to start doing some time lapse stuff like I keep thinking of.
The three of us got out to Sala Thai, my very favorite Thai resturant that's very close to where I used to live in Warren. I also got to see Danae's parents again, who were in the area briefly to get dinner and breakfast with her while we were much closer to where they live than Chicago. I got to seecustardfairy, jojomojo, and aielaagain. And fuzzyjelly and stormgren for the first time in person ever! And of course I was so happy to get to see red_ceilidh again too, albeit briefly. I chatted with her in the dealer's room a couple times, and introduced her to Posi and to Danae, and she gave me some juggling balls left over from drench a wench (that won't make any sense to the vast majority of you) and a NASA badge ribbon that she so-thoughtfully put aside for me! And there were so many other good things. I'm really thinking about going back again next year.
(Speaking of badge ribbons, I got nine of them this year! For only my second con where I actually got any of them, that's pretty good. I'm really thinking about having some made for myself. Something like 'Have you hugged a dog today?' that I can pass out in return for hugs. *bounces* Oh, hugs; at one point I hugged someone for their "The next person to hug me gets this button" button, and then passed it on when I got a hug from someone else. I love the casual physical affection in fan space!)
But I'm rambling I suppose. I'll say in summary that the whole weekend was entirely wonderful. And that's not even directly mentioning all the wonderful time spent in the company of the kitty I love, both in the company of others and alone with a very nice hotel room all to ourselves.
Ahem.
On Monday, while Danae was brunching with her parents, Posi and I drove out to the junkyard to find my transmission. It was on the somewhat ironically named, given the sort of neighborhood it was in, Joy Road. The staff were unusually nice though, and quickly helped us find the right part and get it into the van. I have this paranoia that it's somehow going to be the wrong part, but I'll hope that's not the case. I should find out this weekend when Super Mechanic Juan and I (though probably mostly Juan) install it. He's going to take the drivetrain out of my car entirely, so maybe I'll get to give it a thorough cleaning while we're at it.
So right now, my car contains both a new (to me) radiator fan in the trunk and a new (to me) transmission on a tarp on the back seat and it smells heavily of old grease and car parts. I can't wait to have a car that's quiet enough that I don't have to crane my head over to hear audio books over the noise!
This past weekend was wonderful. Thanks to everyone involved in it, especiallydanaeris and posicat.
-----
It's so very nice to be back home for a couple of days! I left here on Friday morning and will be leaving again on Thursday or Friday. In the meantime, my plans for tomorrow are to finish up my FAFSA application and look at putting together a class schedule for my first semester of college. Thursday I get to pick up my bike. I tried to pick it up on the way back from Detroit on Monday evening, but though I would have made it to the shop ten minutes or so before their official closing time of 8 o' clock, I called to see if they'd still be there and they said they were already closing up. It's ok; if I had a bike tomorrow, I suppose I'd be tempted to go out and ride around on it instead of accomplishing things.
Speaking of Michigan, it was wonderful. Especially given that it wasn't a convention that I wasn't planning to go to until I found that I could synergize with a trip for the purchase of car parts.
Through the whole weekend, I never found myself feeling that I lacked for something to do. There were a few panels that were worthwhile; one was a discussion by a professor of anthropology on how reading science fiction (particularly Jack Vance, though other authors got a mention too) turned him into an anthropologist. I jotted down some names to look into on my phone and got his business card in the thought that he might be valuable to have a connection to.
There was a lot of board gaming.
danaeris and I played in a Dominion tournament. I did fairly poorly, but I still had a wonderful time doing it and met some neat folks while playing. She and I also went together to the amusingly named 'Poly People Populating Penguion' social event. I didn't stay there too long though; it was so loud; I was getting a sore throat trying to talk over the noise! Instead, I wandered back to the room to get my copy of Power Grid hoping to find some players. By the time I'd walked from the elevator to the game room, I had four people who wanted to play. "Ooh, you have Power Grid!"
"I do! Looking for a game?"
"Sure!"
More boardgaming happened on Sunday night. Since Danae had the room through to Monday morning, she and Posi and his friend Ghostie and I, along with Wocket (another guy we met who was looking for a game) played two more games of Power Grid that night. Wocket was a great guy and an adept Power Gridder. Posi and Ghostie seemed to enjoy learning to play the game. Posi is interested in more of it, and that's definitely a win!
Danae and I missed out on some panels, one poly-related and one kink related (it was kind of neat to see a significant number of panels on the "after dark" track), because we were doing party hopping that night instead. Danae put fae make up on me, and I wore my horns and shiny red shirt Asian-ish shirt with black khaki pants. I felt like I looked pretty good! And I know that my sweetie looked pretty good too! I love that we both have horns to wear together. *bounces*
There were so many wonderful bits of home-brew fun. Someone brought a working ski-ball machine that he made out of parts scavanged from a shed that a relation of his tore down. There was a gigantic machine that was in the process of being built from I-don't-know-how-many sets of Chaos Tower parts. It was, in keeping with the theme of the con, open source (or perhaps more accurately organically crowd-sourced?); anyone who wanted to could spend time tinkering and building with it. And there was a camera pointed at it and connected to an intervalometer; someone was putting together a time-lapse series of the machine coming together. What an awesome idea! It *really* makes me want to start doing some time lapse stuff like I keep thinking of.
The three of us got out to Sala Thai, my very favorite Thai resturant that's very close to where I used to live in Warren. I also got to see Danae's parents again, who were in the area briefly to get dinner and breakfast with her while we were much closer to where they live than Chicago. I got to see
custardfairy, jojomojo, and aielaagain. And fuzzyjelly and stormgren for the first time in person ever! And of course I was so happy to get to see red_ceilidh again too, albeit briefly. I chatted with her in the dealer's room a couple times, and introduced her to Posi and to Danae, and she gave me some juggling balls left over from drench a wench (that won't make any sense to the vast majority of you) and a NASA badge ribbon that she so-thoughtfully put aside for me! And there were so many other good things. I'm really thinking about going back again next year. (Speaking of badge ribbons, I got nine of them this year! For only my second con where I actually got any of them, that's pretty good. I'm really thinking about having some made for myself. Something like 'Have you hugged a dog today?' that I can pass out in return for hugs. *bounces* Oh, hugs; at one point I hugged someone for their "The next person to hug me gets this button" button, and then passed it on when I got a hug from someone else. I love the casual physical affection in fan space!)
But I'm rambling I suppose. I'll say in summary that the whole weekend was entirely wonderful. And that's not even directly mentioning all the wonderful time spent in the company of the kitty I love, both in the company of others and alone with a very nice hotel room all to ourselves.
Ahem.
On Monday, while Danae was brunching with her parents, Posi and I drove out to the junkyard to find my transmission. It was on the somewhat ironically named, given the sort of neighborhood it was in, Joy Road. The staff were unusually nice though, and quickly helped us find the right part and get it into the van. I have this paranoia that it's somehow going to be the wrong part, but I'll hope that's not the case. I should find out this weekend when Super Mechanic Juan and I (though probably mostly Juan) install it. He's going to take the drivetrain out of my car entirely, so maybe I'll get to give it a thorough cleaning while we're at it.
So right now, my car contains both a new (to me) radiator fan in the trunk and a new (to me) transmission on a tarp on the back seat and it smells heavily of old grease and car parts. I can't wait to have a car that's quiet enough that I don't have to crane my head over to hear audio books over the noise!
This past weekend was wonderful. Thanks to everyone involved in it, especially
danaeris and posicat.