Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Went to the Dragon*Con director’s meeting yesterday. It was actually a lot of fun, and very informative. Usually, I’m opposed to meetings. I think I can count on one hand the number of meetings that I’ve been to that have been useful, interesting, and well-run versus a big ole boring waste of time.

Dragon*Con also provided complimentary soft drinks during the meeting and afterwords they treated all the directors to dinner at the Hyatt. Can’t knock a free meal. Matthew had two desserts.

I got to meet a lot of the other directors and learned about the inner workings of Dragon*Con that I’ve often wondered about. And even cooler, Matthew and I got to suggest a lot of the ideas that we’ve got for the Daily Dragon and they may actually get implemented. It’s nice to be able to have an impact.

The atmosphere and dynamics of the director’s meeting is different from the general staff ones. It’s smaller, of course, making it more intimate (although it’s still a huge roomful of people). And, while the general staff meetings are always jovial and friendly, there’s a definite undercurrent of close-knit community to the director’s meeting. I think it’s the camaraderie of long-time veterans.

Matthew and I are splitting the directorship of the Daily Dragon into Editor and Publisher duties. I’m taking the Editor role. There will be a lot of overlap, but I get to put on my Editor’s Hat. I’ve been toying with the thing in front of mirrors, but haven’t had a chance to wear it in public much. I know, it’s very geeky of me. But I’m pretty excited about the chance to stretch my editor muscles.

(And, did I mention that James Marsters is going to be at Dragon*Con this year? Squeal!)

This week has been hectic and eventful, and through it all, I’ve been sick. I can’t believe I’ve been sick for nearly two months straight. It’s terribly annoying. But, I’m on another round of antibiotics, so here’s pinning my hopes on modern medical science.

Brief update of the highlights, or lowlights as the case may be, of my week:

Monday:
– Back to work after the holidays. Yuck.
– Started a new yoga session. Ouch. But in a good way. Thomas, the instructor, teased me when I explained that I’d been absent for so long because we’d adopted a baby skunk. He’s quite the character; I like him. Plus, he’s an excellent teacher. Funny thing, I’ve had more dance/martial arts/yoga instructors than I can count, but the ones I’ve always liked best are the male ones. Wonder why? But, yeah, ouch. Pissed me off to be so stiff during the sun salutation that I needed blocks for the forward bends, but by mid-session, I’d loosened up enough not to need them anymore. Makes me hopeful that I’ll get back into the groove quickly.

Tuesday:
– New Buffy! Hurray. And it had much rockitude to it. But they still haven’t addressed the Giles thing. And next week is another re-run, dammit. But the end scene with Spike . . . ah, that’s the stuff.
– We received a phone call from Matthew’s father that the husband of one of Matthew’s cousins has died suddenly. Not much in the way of details. Sad news.

Wednesday:
– Bubble Bath day. Yes, it was indeed Bubble Bath day. My shiny, new skunk calendar says so. Matthew met me at the door in a robe and ushered me into the master bath where there was much sudsy goodness.
– Decided to take the Sulfa that we had lying around from the last time I was sick ‘cause I knew I needed another course of antibiotics. And I wasn’t 100% sure I was allergic to it.

Thursday:
– I’m 100% sure I’m allergic to Sulfa. Into the doctor’s I go. They prescribe something else. I tell them to add Sulfa to the list of things I shouldn’t take. They refer me to go in for some pulmonary testing since I’ve been trying to eject my lungs for nearly two months straight.
– Matthew and I agreed to become the co-directors of the Daily Dragon for Dragon*Con as the current directors have been promoted to senior directors and need replacements for their previous positions. Aside from having to go to the director’s meeting on Saturday, we’ve started thinking ‘bout how we want to lay out this year’s Daily Dragon coordination.

Friday:
– We postpone until next week our tickets to the Shakespeare Tavern to see the Saturday showing of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” because it will clash with the director’s meeting. Plus, I’ll undoubtedly enjoy it more after the antibiotics have had a week to do their work. Hopefully.

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Matthew has been fiddling with our downstairs entertainment system for the last couple days, getting his new receiver all integrated. He hooked up the big ass speakers that, for the whole time that we’ve been in this house, we’ve been using as end tables. And he wired the smaller speakers we had been using as our main speakers as rears.

But then he declared that we needed a subwoofer. Did I say “nonsense, it sounds fine. Let’s hold off on any more home entertainment purchases”? Nope. I, being a sucker for rib-rumbling bass, agreed. We only meant to look at them to get an idea of what was out there. *Whimper* There was this fabu post-holiday clearance sale. And they threw in a 24 ft monster cable. Meep. Klipse 10″ subwoofer. It just growled so pretty at us.

And now we have SOUND.

Off to watch LoTR and feel the Balrog ruuumble!

I was going to post a big holiday catch-up entry, but this isn’t it. I was just scrolling through my friend’s list in a vain effort not to fall too far behind, and I realized something. I have seen more racist comments on LiveJournal than I have seen, heard, or experienced since grade school.

I just saw someone say in a comment “fucking chink,” about a Chinese person and actually mean it. I haven’t heard the term “chink” since sixth grade when I had to deal with some exceptionally unpleasant racism in school. And thinking back, I realized that the amount of overt racism I’ve seen people express has jacked up since I started keeping a blog here.

It makes me sad.

*Sigh* Peace on Earth, goodwill towards everyone. Please.

Today was my last day of work for the year. I’m taking off the rest of this week and next week. Woohoo! I suspect I’ll be a bit sparse on LJ for the next couple weeks with all the Xmas flurry and celebratory revelry.

Christmas shopping is done except for a pair of DVDs for Matthew’s brother + wife. We had them all picked out at Best Buy and were holding them in our hot little paws, but then we saw the checkout line. It stretched around the side of the store to the back wall. Gah! What I couldn’t figure out was why they didn’t open more registers. There were three closed register spots and plenty of people in blue shirts wandering around. Why they couldn’t nab one of those and stick them on a register, I don’t know.

But anyway, we had tickets to see Two Towers, and realized there was no way we were making the movie if we went through the line, so we had to put the DVDs back and scamper out.

The Two Towers. It was big. It was shiny. It was long. Yes, it was long. There were parts of it I really loved. Gollum does indeed kick Jar-Jar’s CGI-created butt. And the Ents were amazing. Loved the Ents. But, like with the books, there were sections that felt like they needed a bit of judicious trimming. It’s all about pacing. But still, I enjoyed it. Much shiny, fantasy epic fun.

The pred has given me the shakes. So, I’m not sick anymore, but I’ve got a hairline muscle tremor running through my system. Manual dexterity and equilibrium are things one takes for granted until they get compromised. The shakes aren’t even all that bad. I can overcome them if I concentrate, but if I forget, minor calamities occur. Muscle tremor-related accidents to date: milk sloshings at dinner x2, knife dropped several times resulting in one minor cut while preparing meals for Hobkin, pred pills spilled over desk at work, and clicking closed several applications that I had intended to maximize instead. Argh.

I’ve got a call in with my Rheumatologist. I suspect my dose should be lowered, or I need to consider weaning off of it since I’m currently symptom free.

And finally, Matthew has a cold now. Sigh. If it’s not one thing . . .

But it’s almost Christmas! Hurray! Merry almost-Christmas everyone!

My goals from yesterday:

“Today, I want to soak in the hot tub, go Christmas shopping, see a movie, eat Christmas cookies and candy, and wrap prezzies!”

Okay, I didn’t soak in the hot tub because my hot tubbing time got side-swiped by dancing around the house after hearing about my sale. But that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. We did, though, engage in a massive amount of Christmas shopping and cookie and candy eating. And I wrapped about half a dozen prezzies. The movie we saw was Long Kiss Goodnight upstairs in our home theater (a fine holiday flick!). We were going to see Two Towers but when we got home, Hobkin was so lonely we couldn’t leave him again. Hoping to catch it today.

But we’re worried about our laser disc player. It’s fairly new as laser disc players go. We’ve got two of them actually, and our first one is much older and doesn’t have this problem. But I think there’s a belt loose or something in the mechanism that switches sides. When the movie went from side A to B, there was this loud whirring, sort of grinding noise. And Matthew had to power the player completely down in order to get the tray to open at all.

Where the hell are we going to find a shop that works on laser disc players? Argh. We need a DVD burner so we can transfer our huge collection of laser discs to DVD. Crap.

But, in better news, the editor of the In the Outposts of Beyond anthology asked me for a long bio–he said around 200 words. All the bios I’ve made up ’till now have been in the under 100-word range area, so I get to spend some time coming up with a “meatier” one. Hmmm . . .

Remember the anthology editor who said he really liked the beginning of one of my stories? It turns out he really liked the rest of it too!

I just sold my novelette “A Little Soul Music” to the In the Outposts of Beyond anthology!

Woohoo! A very nice bit of early holiday cheer indeed! Woo!