More edumacation
Wall-of-text post is finally up (behind the lifestyle filter) about my Saturday night panels. That was a bumpy ride, to be sure. But we had sandwiches!
Looks like the chances are good to be doing my schtick at MarsCon 2010 and SheVaCon 2010. I think I’m almost relieved that the NekoCon audience is probably far too jaded for such a thing.
Brief updates
- 14:27 Realized I’m glad that home ‘Net is working, ’cause I sure as Hades can’t research my MarsCon panels at work. My life is weird (good). #
- 20:36 Trying to find a sewing pattern which would be a starting point for Kyle MacLachlan’s House Atreides uniform. #
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How to Motivate Your Cleaning
Now, it may seem like a bad idea to have a party only a week after getting the last boxes out of the apartment. As we continued to clean and stack and sort and discard it became clear that indeed, it really really was a bad idea.
Our favorite lifestyle group decided not to hold a December party this year – a month off was the group’s gift to the folk who usually host it. Well, we jumped into the gap, and by Friday, we’d begun to wonder if we’d remembered to don parachutes first. Friends came over Friday evening to move large furniture, but by the time we’d exhausted ourselves that night, the place still wasn’t ready.
Somehow – I have no idea how – we got the house ready by Saturday evening, and if one bedroom was full of re-packed boxes and odd pieces of furniture, well, we were willing to pay that price. The actual party went smooth as silk; we had about 20 people or so, and several of them decided independently to bring housewarming gifts. Conversation was geeky, food was yummy, and the company was awesome. Starr spent much of the evening looking slightly dazed, as if still thinking “Did we really pull this off? I mean, really?” Or maybe that was me.
I had decided earlier that, around 1:30 or 2, we’d politely show people the door; somehow, this didn’t happen, and we still had about six or eight people in the middle of an intense discussion at 5:30, when I collapsed entirely. Starr had to wave the white flag as well; we picked a friend who we could trust not to steal the silverware, and asked him to make sure that everyone got home okay.
When I finally got up yesterday, not only was the place locked up and shutdown nicely, they’d even cleaned both the kitchen and the table where we’d stacked the party food. Talk about a bunch of twisted perverts…
We’ve got to do this again sometime. But not soon.
Feasting quietly
As I am most years, I’m thankful that I didn’t get up at oh-god-hundred to stand in line for a discount on a piece of merchandise that will be out of stock by the time I get in the door. As it is, I did leave the house before sunrise, but on the other hand, I was treated to quite the spectacle as the sun came up over the Bay. So, hardly all bad.
Last night, I managed to cook a 3-pound turkey breast perfectly, without doing anything but defrosting it in cold water for two hours and then tossing it into the oven on a roasting pan for ninety minutes. The homemade mashed potatoes came out exactly as I wanted them, and even the brown-and-serve rolls browned properly for once. “Unexpected Thanksgiving dinner” went over quite well to a weary R.N. last night 🙂
Sadly, I’m reading that some of my LiveJournal friends have had to return briefly ‘to the closet’ just so they could spend the holiday with family and loved ones. This makes me angry and sad simultaneously. We still live in a world where I still have to filter certain harmless posts to my own journal; but far worse than that, these awesome people have to filter their own lives. I don’t dare to hope that I’ll live to see this burden fade away… I only hope that maybe the next generation will.
Acceptable abuse
I’m a little stunned this morning.
As practically anyone with sense predicted, the homosexual community reacted extremely badly to the passage of Prop. 8. It’s one thing to have had rights denied to you for centuries, it’s another to have recently-attained rights taken away by people for no other reason than they don’t like you.
So, why am I stunned? Well, certain religious organizations were active in the process to remove those rights, and plenty of others stood complacently by. So, gay people are lashing out at these religious groups. And the stunning thing is that religious folks are acting surprised and hurt!
I swear, I’m reading this in many places online, such as LiveJournal, news sites, opinion blogs: “We’re just treating you like abominations and taking away a chance at happiness you briefly had. We don’t understand why you’re so upset. Why would you have a problem with this?” Of course, it’s not those specific words, but it’s absolutely the attitude. “We don’t understand why you’re so angry, and honestly, we’re a bit offended.”
Frankly, I’ve always attributed discrimination against gay people, in most cases, to malice. “We don’t like you, and it’s socially okay to mistreat you, so we’re gonna.” I never before realized that someone could be unaware that treating another human that way was wrong. “Why does this bother you?”
Wow.
