callistra

The kids have found their stockings and have eaten all the sugar they could get into easily. Plus the dart guns with the extra bullets - there's bullet everywhere (though not in their tummies, thanks!)

Feeling really happy though tired right now. I didn't sleep well, but I don't care cos it's CHRISTMAS DAY! Wheee! Merry Christmas to every one. I appreciate having all of you in my life, one way or another. :)

I'm also ecstatic to see the amount of whining about Christmas was unprecedentedly low this year! yay! And OMG every one is celebrating in t heir own way! WELL DONE PEOPLE FOR GETTING OVER THE WHINING AND BACK INTO WHAT'S IMPORTANT (TO YOU!)

Today, I chose to celebrate with blood family, and cherish my extended family from a distance. I have failed to get gifts organized for every one I wanted to, but you know what? It's not important. :) I'm not kicking myself over it because I have already lavished love and cherishing over people for the whole year. I'm going to have a shower and find a pretty dress and wear my OMGSHINYNEWJEWELLERY!

Love to you all, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas, whatever YOU make of it :)

Someone decided they would try and charge seniors for 'wear and tear' on concrete pathways within their own retirement homes.
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/seniors-made-to-pay-200-to-use-path/story-e6frg15c-1226186561605

Reasons NOT to donate to the Salvation Army: primarily it's a homophobic organization who gives only to those they deem worthy.
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/11/why_you_shouldnt_give_to_the_salvation_army.php?utm_source=front_page&utm_medium=best_of_box&utm_campaign=Best_Of

Ten unique cemetaries. :)

Someone has re-made the Antikythera Mechanism... who knows what for.
:)

An Op-Ed about Black Leading Men in Movies. All leads go to white men - and Will Smith.

Also, Association of Black Women Historians releases a statement against the book and the movie 'The Help," saying it distorts, trivialises and ignores the experience of black domestic workers.The book and novel support and encourage cliches and stereotypes which minimize the domestic workers' lives and bypasses/sweeps past the inherent racism and abuse. I can across this link in reference to how the story is co-opted into the Hollywood style of telling it from a white person's POV even though it is a black person's story.

This also led into a very brief dip into TV tropes. The Vasquez is a reference from Aliens to a woman who is competent, capable, and prepared for the situation in hand (and usually coloured), but often ends up dead rather than the pretty, feminine lead. Michelle Rodrigez said "... people can call it typecast, but I pigeonholed myself ... Saying no to the girlfriend, saying no to the girl that gets captured, and eventually I just got left with the strong chick who's always being killed."  That sentence alone says a lot about the roles women are allowed to play in Hollywood films.

This also lead into Waif-Fu (it was a brief foray into TVtropes, I promise!). Yes. There's not a lot I can say about that except yes. Waif-Fu it is.

Somewhere along the way I also picked up a link for Women On Boards. It's a topic that interests me greatly, since in a way Boards seem to be where policy and ideology for organizations are developed, and if we want to shift our general work places to be a little more women-friendly, then Boards are one place we need to examine and perhaps get onto. I've been very proud that WASFF has had over a third women for the last few years, and when Iattended a Women on Boards meeting, they were saying the magickal change point is one third. Anything less than one third, a Board is likely to maintain it's status quo, however once over a third of the board are women, then slow changes start to occur. I find that interesting in that I wonder if it's that anything less than a third is a token gesture, or is it a power bloc issue? Perhaps it's more of a sign than a signifier; as in, it's not causing the change, but it's a sign that the changes have been occuring? Who knows! :)

A webpage of harshest rejection letters for famous books.

That's it for now! I have a house to clean up after a 4yo birthday party :) 

Long haul flight was hard. Hard hard. My back is out, and my tummy is very bloated and the plane was 100% full. I found it much harder to sleep this time around, but did eventually manage it anyway, to the point where I slept so deeply that when they tried to wake me for breakfast, it just didn't happen. To be honest, I needed the sleep more than I needed the breakfast! 

So, stepped off the plane and into the bar/cafe. Had some breakfast, did my 1660 words, and had a shower. Book is going well, still really excited and enjoying playing with it.

Waiting until 1:00 now for boarding. I started to get vertigo while I was writing as I am having difficulties finding my land legs! Obviously hours and hours and hours on planes and in airports makes me used to the constant vibrations. The ear pluggy things are still working brilliantly.

Can't wait to get home and get ny life back.
:)

Have had an awesome time, now I'd like some time to process it, go through all my business cards and email a few people to say hi.

 So. I slept, missed important stuff, got up and then drifted around the dead dog party and had a spa with two gorgeous young men. They were just delicious hee! But they were also twenty two and so young hahahahahaha so anyway drifted to the con suite and ended up going out to dinner with a whole bunch of people, Grace, Miriam, Gini, Brandie,... There were nine of us I think and we had a brilliant dinner at a place called Pam Pam'swhich tbh was a bit of a dive. It the company more than made up for it. I got to have chicken fried steak! I have photos. It was ok. 

We had such a ball we're going to do an anthology together. Dear gods LOL this should be highly amusing. I need to get a first draft to her by the end of November.... Hahahahahahaha I'll just tack it into my nano schedule.

Then we came back to the par and hung out and had some great chats with Kim, who is from Toronto and part of the Toronto team. She tried to talk me into doing to Toronto and made me promise to write her. Um, GOING to Toronto not DOING Toronto, :) dead dog parties a great. :) so the I drifted about a bit more and then showered and bed! 

Nancy checked out the next morning, and I went to the zoo! When Anastasia heard that I was thinking about going to the zoo she pulled out a free pass and made me promise to go, so I did. It was pretty awesome! She saved me $40 which I think promptly spent on a one hour private-ish tour,where the driver went wherever we wanted and was really lovely. He was also the second person to suggest I should go to Hillcrest, and that there was just 'something aout me' that meant he could tell I would like it. Hillcrest is the goth/alternative area that Anastasia was hoping to get to on Saturday night but it hadn't worked out so we got drunk instead... I think we got the better end of the deal. :) 

So the zoo was pret awesome, and the tour I picked was also pretty awesome, and the family with us too some pics for me, so there is now actual proof I went somewhere!most of the photos of me are ones I took myself. Ok, looks like we're heading up to part four of this post. Wow, it had been a busy time!

 Some of you may have noticed I fell silent for a few days. Um. That is because things then got busy! 

Oh dear, scanning my phone to remind me of everything isn't working too good.. I might need to scan the programme too! As far as I can work out, that was the day that after the Connie Willis panel I spa'd for a bit and then laid down on my bed and chatted to nancy and accidentally fell asleep and missed the Connie Willis and Neil Gaiman panel! Eeeeek! Ah well, these things happen. Was this the night I went to Trellis's and had lobster?it was ok. It was seared and served I. Two halves with Mexican condiments and yeah. It was ok. I also ate the creme brûlée,and had two long island iced teas, so it was a good start I was with Ferret and Zoethe and Yani and his partner, and I also chatted with Allison Goodman and her husband for a bit too.

Then I checked out the room parties. I was so stuffed from dinner, but the con suite meal had been fish tacos, and people had INSISTED I try them, and Katie helped me put a standard fish tacos together,so I did get for try one, even though my stomach was already groaning! It wasn't all that exciting tbh, I think the very full tummy combined with me being two or three hours after peak time made it a. It less exciting than usual. I didn't finish it, even though there was chipotle sauce on it. :) 

So... The parties. The SFWA party was on, but I didn't know anyone and every one was already earnestly talking to each other, so I moved on to the British party but they still seemed to be setting up and were about as friendly as the SFWA party but then... Then... The Edge party fucking Rocked. Not only did they have massive amounts of apple pie, but they were also doing champagne and chambers cocktails, which gave me a happy glow and I randomly chatted to a woman who writes epic fantasy and had just finished a series for someone and then saw the big throwing out of the creepy guy by security and then I found Anastasia and she and Rachel had limoncello so we played Smooth with that, but I gotta tell ya, it doesn't work so well with a sweet alcohol like limoncello. 

Part  2 of this post coming in a sec due to iPad weirdess :)

First, my apologies. I am sitting in the dark at a table at 1:30ish in the morning, and I can't see my keyboard, so please be patient! There may be more typoes than usual!

Gosh. Today. Okay, let's start with the morning. Once again, there was lolling, and sleeping in. It was lovely. I headed out to the mall to see what was possible for breakfast and after checking out all the food hall options, I had a salted caramel mocha, sat quietly and enjoyed the open air food hall and then headed off to the Cheesecake Factory where I attempted to consume a breakfast burrito consisting of potato, egg, chicken chorizo, salsa, beans, avocado... it was massive It was well over a foot in length. needless to say, i didn't finish that meal! 

After that I wandered the mall, and some women did some amazing things withmy hair. unfortunately the clip was $59 and the 6 side clips $8 a shot,... so I then spend half an hour trawling Macy's and JC Penny's to discover they don't tend to do barrettes and clips and etc. Poo!

I came back and checked out the dealer's room, then the art show, and then the opening ceremony. Connie Willis is a lot of fun. So, con isnow officially open! First panel was by the San Diego Zoo and involved all these weird animals  that i can't remember the names of but i have pics of! :)

Then I gathered together Grace, Miriam, and a new recruit called Keyan and we headed out to Outback Steakhouse for some deep fried onion. And we had it. And it was... as you;'d expect a breaded, deep fried onion with a creamy sort of dipping sauce. I did enjoy it, and can now die happy and all, but yeah, It was OK.

Before that, however, we had to wait for 15 minutes or so, so we hit Target and I bought... dundun dun.... booze! Yep, from Target! Apprently Target inb America has been trying to go upmarket and it has upset some of thepeople who use it, which is funny because target Australia seems to be trying to go downmarket and get cheaper and crappier... but there was booze! I bought abottleof sweet tea vodka for $10.99 and shared it all nightlong. I also bought some Twinkies,a  hostess fruit pie, a butterfinger, and mini peanut butter cups.he butterfinger was OK and the cups went during the Aussie party thrown by Garth Nix and Sean Williams.

So, yeah, Aussie room party, was pretty full on. Garth and Sean had gone all out and found boxes of Australian wine and beer and softdrinks, and so the room party was very popular and very awesome. I helped clean a little afterwards, and they didn’t need me for serving, which was all-good. I finally saw Jonathan so gave him a hug and a hello.

 

My lappie ran out of power last night, so now I am sitting in Connie Willis’ GoH speech while I finish this write up.

 

I was drinking sweet tea vodka last night, which was actually pretty awesome. Very definite tea notes, would have been brilliant with ice. I met a lot of Johns, a Corby, and a a Nathan (or Nate?), a  Kevin, a Rachel, and an Anastasia. Anastasia organizes things, and is part of Comicon, and is running some of the larger parties for WGC2011, and she, Kevin and Rachel are into Goth industrial, and have invited me to a Goth industrial nightclub on Saturday night! Yay! Highly amused – we decided all this in the first 5 minutes of meeting each other!

 

I ended up having discussions about gender roles and masculinity, violence as a language, practiced John’s pitch with him, discussed novels and publication. It was a good party, and Garth and Sean kicked every one out at around 1:30, so I helped clean up a little before I went and got the lappy and sat in the cold dark garden to try and post.

 

Decided to skip part 1 of the WFC business meeting. I am such a freak sometimes. cherishes the freak

 

There’s a consuite here that has food! And drinks! I shall stop drinking the expensive hotel bottled water and move onto the free bottled water instead. And they have breakfast and sandwiches for lunch and stuff, which is awesome. My breakfast this morning was the buffet, which was dreadful. Worst meal I have had in California yet! The sausages were spicy and yucky, and are produced in a solid block shaped into sausage shapes and you then slice them off or break them off if you can. The waffle was horrible and the scrambled eggs were blah. The cherry pastry was leaden and stolid. Yuck. And it cost me almost $20 when I included the tip! Tomorrow, I have porridge at the con suite.

 I have met Ferret and Zoethe, which was lovely, and I rabbited at them a little about kitchens, bread, opinions on the net, stuff.

it's bright! And sunny! 

Anyway, let us return to the beginning of the day. I slept! OMG I slept deeply and well! Until 7:00 this morning, Yay me. Poor Carol had my bad sleep instead! Yay carol! 

So up we pop out of bed, and get ourselves finished off and Chris and Maggie took us to the airport, where we were filed, stamped, indexed, and  sniffed. Carol won the lottery this time, getting sniffed for asplodey material. She apparently, was not asplodey.

The TSA went through my luggage this time, and United crushed my expensive new suitcase. I cried a little but the luggage people were lovely and I have the paperwork to get a new one or something when I get home. Carol's suitcase has had a zip broken, but external parts of the suitcases aren't covered. :(

We caught a shuttle to the hotel, and checked in easily enough, and Carol had a nap while i unpacked my clothes, washed my handwashing, looked at the prices of washing, read a book, and tried to get onto the internet. internet seems to suck from here during the day. It's not brilliant at night either, but since i am actually logged in, that's a major win over this morning.

We went for a walk and checked out this 200 shop open air mall, and we went to the Cheesecake Factory! OMG it was AWESOME And SO OMGCHEAP! Carol had this awesome looking appetiser that were taco-styled lettuce wraps with chicken, two sauces andvegetables in them. i tried the buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce, a banana peanut butter milkshake and a caramel peanut butter fudge cake cheesecake. The bread they gave us at the beginning was also divine, I much prefered the dark bread, soooo goood.

Then we went shopping! Most of my shopping is either practical/necessary (clothing) or for other people, but i finally bought myself something just for me, the other of my favourite perfumes. It was only $60ish and I have been looking for it since I was about 18 and never found it/bought it for myself. I spent $235ish on clothes ( 8 items maybe?) and a pair of shoes. The balls of my feet are bruised from all the walking, and I have a blister on one foot.

So the perfume was at Bloomingdales and the clothes etc were at Macy's. Now it's time for some quiet reading and a decision about a bath vs a shower. What does every one else think?
:)

So pleased to be on the next leg of the trip. I'll be home in a week! Yay home!

Hit San Francisco today! 

To start with, i slept badly last night. I did all the right things, but it just didn't work out. So i dragged myself out of bed at 9:30 and we headed out to a farmer's market that had a harvest festival!

Yay harvest festival we though, and headed out. it took us quite a while to get there, and then find parking, and then walk to the ferry hall, and then it turns out the market was a yuppie market for wine, cheese and organic stuff, and the 'harvest festival' part of it seemed to consist of putting pumpkins on all the cafe tables. Anyway, it was nice to wander around, and then we got some new Orleans style iced coffees. I ordered it with no idea what made it a New Orleans style, and was reallyhappy tos ee it was mostly coffee, and with only a normal amount of milk on top. I was a bit worried about the solid cup and a bit of milk in my tummy, but wanted something cold, flat, and refreshing containing caffeine to help perk me up. I had pumpkin pie for breakfast, but didn't have time for a coffee.

 So we wandered around the Piers for bit, and I got to see a seal! Just the one, swimming about and wondering what us humans were up to.

We walked through the parks and to the financial district, and got to see the 'Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations, which was pretty awesome. There were also some stalls around the place and I bought myself a ring and bracelet. We walked up this ginormous hill to China Town. I had to admit defeat; I had a huff on my ventolin and had to rest on the way up. Once we were up it was all downhill or flat anyway :) So we went to China Town and saw lots of stuff for sale, mahjongg sets, jade, purses, umbrellas, stuff. Trinkets and stuff. I bought Mahjongg earrings! yay me!

We went to a restaurant and picked random food for sharing, and it was lovely. I picked a chicken, mushroom and sausage claypot, and we also got pork fried rice, egg rolls, oyster, beancurd and pork claypot, chinese greens and mushrooms. The chicken claypot crunchy rice bits were made into a soup for us at the end, and it was delicious! 

We walked on to penny arcade museum, though I guess it's now a quarter arcade? There were all these old quarter games, like fortune tellers and movies and things. I looked at pics of the 1906 earthquake, and discovered what the belly dancer does on her day off (apparently she likes to play the banjo in her underwear in high heels.) There were also great big mini-carnivals, and for 25cents the whole thing would light up and all sorts of tiny intricate things would happen, such as the carousel started moving, the ferris wheel started up, boxers started boxing, the little band start playing... i took videos of some of these, can't wait to get them off and upload them.

After this we walked up the wharf, and headed back to the car. We saw a dancing rapping skeleton, street artists, more seafood than i could poke a proverbial at, and five million little booths selling corn dogs, clam chowder, and churros. Ok, so maybe only five or six, but still... I was thinking I should buy a corn dog just to try it. I didn't though.

We hopped into the car and went to The Mission, which is a neighbourhood with Borderlands book store. Borderlands had closed 3 minutes before we arrived, so we decided to go for Burritoes instead. Five blocks up and two blocks sideways, and we're at this little place and we join the queue. It was a long deep shop, almost an entire side of it devoted to little men making yummy food. There were salsa available by the ladlefull, fruit juices such as canteloupe, or strawberry, and beer. The burrito was awesome! And it was only $6.79! The beer was $3. Perfect accompaniment! I had marinaded pork burrito with cheese, sour cream, and avocado. There's also rice and beans in it, and three or four types of self serve salsa and chilis. It was lovely.

Then we came on home! We walked for a LOT of today.

I realised today that for the last year, I have had something bad or difficult every three months. A year ago now i was sick for three months before my operation. The operation was in January, and took me ages to get over. Vin went into hospital in march, and then had his bleed. Then late July I had the car accident, and then October I was flat on my back for two weeks with sickness. Despite all this, I am still here. :) And that is just the stuff I remember! 

Anyway, it's time for me to plug all my devices in and go to bed. I have to get up early for the Alcatraz tour tomorrow. We're going toh ave clam chowder for dinner somewhere, and then come home and pack for the flights to San  Diego on Tuesday. Tomorrow I am going to insist on my coffee time, i think! My shoulders are really sore from the shoulder bag, which is heavy even when empty! I lugged around my laptop and my jacket all day long in case I needed them, and used neither in the end. I might even have a slight sunburn, but that will be gone by morning. Poor Carol says she might be sunburnt too, and she is way fairer than me! 

Good night friends, love you all
:)

This might be a boring post - we spent most of the time since the last post asleep! Haha! Just warning ya...

LOL

I am enjoying this so much. Maggie and Chris are so patient with us as we examine and compare every last tiny detail of our lives. highlight this morning was Carol asking all these questions about their eggs and the ensuing discussion about free range, barn laid, and  other words that may be useless when deciding what eggs to buy. Apparently brown eggs cost about twice as much as white eggs do here! 

Had an AWESOME dinner last night of oven baked salmon, brown rice and vegies (corn, zucchini, squash in a cheese and stock based sauce) and it was just so divine. The salmon literally melted on my tongue, the herbs just perfect and the vegies a really lovely complement. The dog here loves raw zucchini! We sat around and chatted until about 8:30ish local time and then headed bedwards. carol managed to sleep in until a respectable one o clockish in the afternoon. I got up at around 11.

Today there is the possibility of heaps of things. There was a harvest festival at a farmer's market, but it was around 12ish when we found out about it, and we figured we wouldn't be able to make  that, so we might try for it tomorrow. Otherwise there's all sorts of interesting and amazing things to check out, and hopefully we'll try and buy some more clothes while we're out. If we don't, then we don't, I refuse to stress out about it. I might be daggy but they'll be clean, so whatevs.

I have had all sorts of writing ideas, which I have let just dissipate. just the usual questions, like 'why DID we evolve to be on land when two thirds of the earth is water? Wouldnt it make more sense to remain in the sea?" and some others I have lost already. I don't worry about it though; I am more pleased with my questioning mind starting to come back and examine things and wonder 'what's the story?'

I actually kind of enjoyed the 36 hour flight/travel to get here. I could think as much as I liked, and I can buy what I needed when I needed it, and I had a sort of freedom in that I didn't have to look after any one else much. Carol and I worked together and would tuch base, but if i needed to do something, I could just do it and trust Carol to be OK. So I spent a lot of time inwards. If I wasn't asleep, I was often pretending to be, and allowing my thoughts to spiral downwards into slowness before sleep. Processing time, i guess!

I am wearing my jeans and a tshirt today, ready for anything. It's nearly 2, and I expect Carol will be out of the shower soon, and then we'll be on our way!

My hands are still peeling. I feel like I am leaving a trail behind me - hand skin, excess hair. It's disgusting but interesting at the same time, and I know that if I didn't show people my hands they wouldn't even notice. So I should probably stop doing that, right?? Anyay, my hands are starting to get better, yay! I was a tad worried about the whole finger printing thing, since all ten of my fingers skin lifted only a week or so ago... but there were no problems.

Off to find my hand cream, have fun peeps!

I'm kinda tired. We managed a bit of sleep on the plane, and then we slept for a bit in a bubble, (pictures later) but still a bit tired. It's 4:02 pnm and we're waiting for 6:20.... slowly. Carol bought some wine in Perth once we were through customs, but unfortunately security took it away here, so it's in a bin somewhere. :( We had a lovely pizza together, with caramelised onion and roasted garlic on it, and it was lovely! Still managing my antibiotics OK, and I got my hearing back after a few hours. I have bought stuff to help with that for the next leg.

Not a lot to update here, so I will go and log into LJ for a bit and see what's happening there!

Also: when we arrived, this airport freaked me out. All the staff SMILED at me, and they seemed like nice, genuine smiles. Weird,...