And I Shall Call It....Gatwickia

Once, when I was a senior in college, Jeremy and I borrowed our housemate's car to make a fairly large grocery run. We came back to the car with about three full carts from Grand Union (pronounced "Grand Onion") only to discover that one of us ahem had managed to lock the keys in the car. Eric, the car's owner, was in class, and these were the days before cell phones, and our only recourse was a piteous message on the answering machine back at the house and copious prayer. But as we're both action-oriented risk-taking types, Jeremy and I decided to explore alternate options. We considered taking the groceries back to the house on foot, but this seemed like a lot of work. So instead, we decided to set up a new and culturally rich civilization on the grass median in the middle of Highway 9, just outside the Grand Onion. We had plenty of supplies, after all, though the frozen stuff was already starting to melt we figured the rest would sustain us. Well, most of it. We soon declared our new civilization would be dairy-free, in the interest of public safety. We gave ourselves governmental titles--I think Jeremy was a Grand Vizier, and I was the Secretary of Transportation, or something. We were hard at work developing a belief system based on traffic lights when someone (probably Becky, a long-suffering person if ever there was one) showed up to rescue us with Eric's spare keys. Thus ended our grand social experiment.

I'm in mind of this story right now because I arrived at Gatwick airport this morning at 8:30 am GMT after a week in London and parts south, ready for my 10:45 flight home. Worked my way through the line at the check in desk, and the woman behind the Delta counter said, "Ah, yes. The first thing I need to tell you is that your flight has been delayed. It will leave around 4 o'clock this afternoon." Ah. Yes. Four, as in seven hours from now? As in getting back to the states at 8 pm EDT, which is 1 am on the time I'm currently on? As in trying to decide if I should then rent a car and drive to Indy from Cincy, getting home around 3 am on my present personal clock, or if I should let the airline put me up overnight in Cincy and miss work tomorrow, blowing yet another precious vacation day? That 4 o'clock? That's FABULOUS. So with 7 hours to kill, and ready supplies of food in the North Terminal, I have joined the Greater Civilization of People Who are Stuck In Gatwick Airport. I am busy developing simple hand tools and building crude luggage-framed structures near the public restrooms. At least I know what my belief system is going to be based on...

Spin Around, Ninjas!



I laughed so hard I cried--this is the best literal video I've seen. They need to do a few Duran Duran videos...

I'm Not Sure It Gets Better Than This.

Sure, Wiscon was a lot of fun--best one in years, quite frankly. (Upyernoz skipped coming this year. Coincidence? I think not.) ((Actually, I did miss him a lot, the parties were dull without him and I missed him repeatedly texting me HELP THIS PANEL IS BORING GAHHHHHH. But on the upside, I didn't get norovirus this year.)) Panels were good, though I'm not sure if this was because panels were better generally or because I chose more wisely than I usually do... I adopted Jake and Jeremy's rule of panel selection, which is to read the description of the panel in the program book, and then imagine EVERY POSSIBLE WAY the panel could go horribly horribly wrong and off topic. If you would find this derailment more amusing that annoying, then go to the panel! If not, skip it. This works pretty well generally. Good panels at WisCon are really really good, but bad ones are either hilarious or horrible depending on your perspective. I skipped going to the one called "Are we done believing in god yet?" partly because it was opposite something else I wanted to go to, and partly because I knew it would just irritate me. ("No, I'm not. Are you done being an intolerant jerkface yet? OK, status quo for both of us, then! High five!") But I went to a fabulous one on bisexuality in fiction, where some genuinely interesting things got said and many laughs were had; and I went to a fun one on Internet Drama, which I attended solely for the purpose of trying to understand what for me is an extremely alien mindset: caring what other people on the internet do or say. I did get some insight into this, and I can sort of grok it a bit better (though I still don't personally care what some dipshit typing away in his basement bomb shelter thinks about gay marriage, or race politics, or the price of a cup of coffee. Just...can't....care....) But more importantly I got to hear Karen's One Asshole Theory of Systems, which was HILARIOUS.

So yes, the panels were good. And yes, Madison is ALWAYS lovely this time of year--even a downpour during the farmer's market only dampened my hoodie, not my spirits. But the high spot of the con was NOT the panels, or the farmer's market, or the meeting up with a fellow mod from McKinley's forum, or even this:

Which is, for the mercifully uninitiated, a Bacon and Cheese Beer-tini. Don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of all things beer and cheese, and I've been giving serious thought to joining the Bacon-of-the-Month club. But this--an unholy confluence of microwaved pre-cooked bacon, Cheez-Whiz, and Pabst--was like a work of concept art. I love the idea of it, and yet I don't ever want it in my living room. No, the beertini was not the apex, ladies and gentlemen. The Apex of Joy for this year's Wiscon was our unexpectedly wonderful stop at Beef-a-Roo, a hilariously-named fast food joint at Beloit Exit 1. We stopped because I needed a drink (not a Drink, mind you--though the prospect of facing the Illinois toll roads does kind of call for mild sedation) and I figured that a place called "Beef-a-Roo" had to be at least a little bit hilarious, especially since my driving partner is a vegetarian. But it exceeded my wildest expectations. From its gorgeous retro-sign to its Route 66 mural to its menu of shakes, fries, malts and--yes--beef, Beef-a-Roo won me over instantly. I gather that other Beef-a-Roos (Beef-a-Rim?) have different decorative themes, but this one, frozen in fake 1962 glory, has captured my heart forever. It's now a permanent stop on the Wiscon tour. Oh, Beef-a-Roo... you make me smile.

Dear God, What Have I Done?

After nearly 7 years of blogging, I finally broke down and updated my template. My main problem was not just my basic Fear Of Change, but the fact that while blogger used to have about 30 different templates, with easily changable background colors etc., they now have about 12 to pick from, and they all kind of suck. This was the least awful of them, and while I do like the general layout, I hate that brown-with-florettes background and want to change it. Only I can't seem to find the bit of code that sets that image--I found everything else, for god's sake. But not that. SIIIIGH. Why can't they just provide us with a library of backgrounds, borders, etc., and let us tinker around with the look of the template without having to start from html scratch?

Anyway, apologies to anyone who fell off my blogroll--I thought it would import over, but it didn't, and now I'm trying to remember what was there off the top of my head with limited success. Likewise my webcomics--though a bunch of them were defunct now anyway, as well I pruned the list. And fun linky stuff... I'm actually too tired to try to forensically reconstruct that at this point. Maybe tomorrow.

This whole emotional crisis of shifting templates is a nice parallel for the emotional crisis of buying a new car, which has been plaguing me now for months. I love my old Saturn. But I admit that it has not seemed in the best of health in the last year or so, and so (under relentless parental pressure) I have conceded the necessity of buying a new one. But which one? I have been torn between buying a hybrid, and buying something cheaper yet less gas-efficient. I finally went and drove a Prius yesterday (the civic doesn't float my boat, and all the rest of the hybrids aren't great) and I was hoping I would either fall in love with it, or hate it, thus making my decision easier. Sadly that didn't happen... It drives well, handles nicely, certainly gets great milage, and fits my ever-greener lifestyle. But... the salesman was an ass, it's got all sorts of computery bells and whistles I don't NEED which irritates me, and it's damn expensive. So I've been agonizing over the whole thing, and I think I've finally decided on the cheaper car. (Ford Focus Sedan, Manual 5 speed.) A nice simple car, much like my Saturn. Only with non-leaky gaskets and an ignition switch that doesn't cut out periodically....

yes i know i need a haircut goddam it

This whole business of actually being expected to look good for work has been a struggle for me. I am chronically clueless about things like Whether My Clothes Need Ironing, or Whether Those Pants Have A Lingering Coffee Stain, or What Makes Some Shoes Cuter Than Others. I can hedge around some of these failings; dry cleaning is a godsend. But my hair is another matter. I have had the same haircut, more or less, since 1984. I like to think of it as Timeless Style.... but really, it's just that I can't wrap my brain around doing anything that requires effort involving my hair. It's very straight and very very fine, and so getting it to do anything other than look a bit like Shaggy Meets Rick Springfield would take both time and hair products, neither of which I have much of. I could cut it off a lot shorter than I usually wear it, but it being so fine and soft I think that what looks all tough and butch and european on some women would read as sad baby duck on me. So I content myself with getting it trimmed and shaped periodically, and put gel in it when I think about it to keep it out of my eyes.

But the lingering problem is that I still don't THINK about it. I'm always shocked when I look in the mirror on some random morning when I really do need to look Good, and find that my hair is about 2" over my collar in back and my eyebrows in front, and looks like utter ass. Yes, hmm, let me see.... last time I got a haircut was before those stupid TV shots for the LEGO Castles exhibit, which was... mmm... Late January. Great. And now, 2 months later, why am I frantically running out to get an emergency haircut today? Because of a TV shot for the new exhibit that opens Monday. If it weren't for exhibit openings, June would roll around and I'd look like Cousin Itt. For god's sake.

In Which I am Utterly Spent

Against all odds, the exhibit that I was assigned not fully 2 months ago is open, or will be in a day or so. It was supposed to open Monday, but the local paper apparently promo-ed it as opening Sunday, and of course people will want to get into it tomorrow. Today we practically had to beat them off with a stick, as you could see into the installation area from the bottom curve of the ramp to the Lower Level. It did my heart good to hear that many kids screaming with anticipation... which was good, because it counteracted the palpitations I experienced during the two final case installations. We borrowed cases from another--VERY GENEROUS--museum to put 2 of the costumes loaned us by Lucasfilm into, as we don't really have large cases just hanging around. Those cases had some... structural integrity issues... during the installation process, which then led to problems with the graphics applications. One thing progressed to another, and by about 3:30 pm I was cussing (quietly) a blue streak while pulling velcro up, moving a large piece of vinyl 3mm to the left, sticking the velcro down, checking the position, unhooking the velcro, moving it 2mm right and 4 mm down, sticking the velcro, looking at it from the front again... Man, it was frustrating. Kudos to all my coworkers who valiantly put up with this and all sorts of other crap in the last couple of days. All told, things went about as smoothly as one could have imagined considering the hugely accelerated timeline. And I'm really happy with it. It was important to me to have a good product at the end of this--not just something satisfactory, or something that echoed the last venue that had these objects, but something new and interesting and cohesive and fun... and I think we did it. Come see it and find out for yourselves, if you can! Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Exhibition will be at our museum til next January 31. Oh, and there's a spaceship in the Welcome Center. Just so's you know.

Things I'm Not Telling You

So my life has been more or less dominated by work since 2009 reared its ugly head. For January it was LEGO CASTLES LEGO CASTLES LEGO CASTLES all the time. It opened January 31, which was amazing and awesome as chronicled earlier here--my first baby, as it were. I was on this exhibit from its inception to finish, and a large part of it is more or less pulled from my own brain, and seeing something like that come to fruition is an utterly new experience. It opened very, VERY well, and has been incredibly popular--which means that about 2 days after it opened, the children had found our weak spots and begun to exploit them. They broke everything that could possibly be broken, and even some impossible things--who knew children could break a welded steel plate? I ask you! Kids are scary. So the start of February was fixing, and adjusting, and tightening and re-welding and replacing and grabbing our heads and going "holy fuck srsly" a whole lot. But in the midst of all of this, another project dropped on us, as it were, from outer space, and landed squarely in my lap.

But I'm not going to tell you about it. Not yet, at any rate. The upshot is, major project, outside player requested that we do a small but flashy exhibit with them, of course we said yes, and the timeline is friggin' insane. A project that would ordinarily take 6 months at least is coming together in the space of 6 weeks. I am utterly confident that we'll do it and it'll be awesome once it's open--but I have a feeling I am about to get a lot more experience laying graphics in trying circumstances.

I'm also not going to tell you about refinancing my house, because that is one goddam sack of joy that I am trying not to think about at the moment. And I'm not going to tell you that for some asinine reason I've got the Eagles' Victim of Love stuck in my head--which let me tell you is NOT a work of lyrical genius; "I might be wrong, but I'm not?" Seriously, jesus--and I'd hate for you to get it stuck in your head too simply because I brought it up here. That's the kind of friend I am. So I won't mention it.

But I will tell you that the frogs are doing great, thanks for asking! I think they're getting bigger, though it's hard to tell. They must be getting bigger, they are eating the frog equivalent of 30 White Castle sliders every damn day and keep peering hungrily at me looking for more. I'm finding I feel a little sorry for the fruitflies, who as tiny insects go are reasonably charming and well-behaved... but then the frogs come along and zap them up, and the sheer coolness of poisonous-frog-speed-hunting in my living room overwhelms the pity I have for the flies. Maybe I'm just getting callous in my old age...