MMVIII.

Dec. 31st, 2008 04:52 pm
icebluenothing: (Default)
This was .... a hell of a year, really.

I left a job that was slowly killing me even though I had no fallback plan for it. I was more broke than I've ever been, getting by on ramen and peanut butter sandwiches. I put together a spiffy redesign of webmutant and starting shopping my resume around, and now I'm paid quite well at a job I really enjoy.

They turned on the proton beam in the Large Hadron Collider, and the world didn't end. An exploding star halfway across the visible universe became the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye. The SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately-developed spaceship to make orbit, and India launched Chandrayaan-1 to the moon. A woman in Spain became the first person to have a successful trachea transplant with a lab-grown replacement. We found snow, real snow, falling on Mars.

We lost George Carlin. And Gary Gygax and Edmund Hillary and Heath Ledger, Arthur C. Clarke and Forrest J. Ackerman and Stan Winston. And Boeing Surplus.

I had my first migraine. That's a club I was perfectly happy not being a member of,

The Merchants of Deva had to cancel our annual party at Norwescon, thanks to untenable new rules and regulations at the hotel. I joined the committee for Steamcon, and made it to an Orycon for the first time in years; it was pretty laid-back and uneventful, but it was nice to have a room at a con for just me and Ahna for a change.

I started using the jQuery Javascript library, and it finally made coding Javascript fun and easy.

I finally got to go to Florida for Halloween Horror Nights, and I got to take [livejournal.com profile] windbourne with me, and we went to DisneyWorld and Epcot while we were at it. I fell asleep on the plane and woke up to find my fear of flying was suddenly, inexplicably gone.

We saw Avenue Q and Phantom. And I saw English Beat, Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers, Goldfrapp, Cold War Kids, We Wrote the Book on Connectors, Vixy and Tony and Tricky Pixie (about a million times), and probably some other bands I'm forgetting. David Tennant announced he was leaving Doctor Who. Steven Moffat was tapped to be the new head writer, which I couldn't be happier about.

.... I got published. I have a story in a book, from a real publisher, a real book I can take down off the shelf and hold in my hands. And best of all, it's a Doctor Who book -- I'm finally, really genuinely a part of my favorite thing in the world. A small part, a footnote of a footnote, but still.

I bought myself a completely adorable little laptop. Used it to finish revisions on my fan-film script, write a new story for Halloween, enjoy having wireless Internet access practically everywhere I went, and now I've fried it stone dead. A short in either the power supply or the motherboard, most likely.

I put together lots of props for the Mercury's Doctor Who night, and everyone's amazed and delighted expressions made all the work totally worth it. That same weekend, my condo burst a pipe and had a terrible flood, and I've been living with a bare concrete floor in my dining room ever since.

The price of petroleum hit $100 per barrel for the first time, this year. Gas reached $4.00 a gallon. Our economy tanked, taking everyone else with it, but at least that brought oil crashing back down to $40 a barrel. Seattle was crippled by the most massive snowstorm in years.

I wasted hours and days of my life on someone I thought was one of my best friends, who turned out not to really be a friend at all. It's the first time I've ever had to explicitly tell someone I was done with them, and the first relationship of any kind I've looked back on with the sense that it was all just -- pointless. I let a lot of my other friendships fade during this time, and I wish to God I could just have that time back again.

I donated money to a political campaign for the first time in my life. I watched in horror as John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, the most calculated and cynical and anti-intellectual such choice I've ever seen, and even deeper horror as so many voters seemed to take her seriously. And then Barack Obama was elected, the country finally waking up from one long post-9/11 nightmare of hate and fear and choosing love and hope instead. Barack Obama didn't get the country to just believe in him -- he gave us a chance to believe in ourselves again.

I literally danced in the streets that night, with thousands of people, thousands, who could finally believe in their country again, who were laughing and crying and cheering and everyone was a friend, that night. It felt like we'd won a revolution without ever having to fire a single shot. It was, honestly, the most joyful and meaningful and profound night of my life and I will never forget it, not ever.

We reached the deep minimum of a long solar cycle, but after a slow start, it looks like Solar Cycle 24 is finally beginning. Maybe the future will be a little brighter.

You've been -- interesting, 2008, I'll give you that. Still, I won't be sorry to see you go tonight. Even if you do cling to life for one extra second.

Norwescon.

Apr. 14th, 2004 05:14 pm
icebluenothing: (Default)
So for this year's Norwescon, I was 1.) a pro, doing panels, 2.) in the Art Show, 3.) doing readings and selling my new book, and 4.) in charge of the Merchants of Deva party. Got all that?

I was not so good at the panelist part. Of my scheduled panels, I only made it to two of them. And one of them was my reading. Yeah. But the one panel-y panel I was on went well and was a lot of fun. I really like being a panelist, but it involves being places on time while there's lots of other shiny things going on.

Thursday I meant to make it to the con at a reasonable hour. I ended up realizing that if I went down in time for my first panel, it would involve driving down, and therefore dealing with parking, so I went down with [livejournal.com profile] retcon and [livejournal.com profile] hetaera15. Gave me more time for last minute things, like, oh, making more art. (Three of my ten pieces were put together that morning.) I also had a story to type up and several flyers to make, and between one thing and another, we got there just after midnight. I was dead freakin' tired, so needed to go right to bed, even though that meant missing [livejournal.com profile] ajka's dance. (Sad!)

Friday morning, my publisher [livejournal.com profile] helix90 whisked me away to tour the offices of our storage/shipping firm, Global Fulfillment. (Sounds like James Bond's cover identity.) I got to see the boxes of my book. This is really happening. I go over the book contract with them, we make some changes, and everything is signed. Yes, the book was printed before we had a signed contract. Yes, that's more than a little weird.

(I was a little distracted, most of Friday. Bad relationship issues with [livejournal.com profile] treebyleaf. I don't really want to talk about it; I just want to mention it here so that I'll remember, reading this later, that my weekend wasn't perfect.)

Friday night, after being violently ill at dinner (I can't recommend Dave's Diner; perhaps it was stress-related, but still), I did my readings. Both of them went quite well. The second reading, the one in the Deva suite, had a fairytale-theme that seemed to go over well, and this was the first time I've ever used a microphone for a reading. I really liked it -- I feel like I was able to do more interesting things with my voice once I could hear how it really sounds. Afterward, I sold a few books. My number-one fangirl, [livejournal.com profile] dreadangel, was first in line, which is just as it should be.

That night we had a party. We didn't mean to. We had been touring around the other room parties, got pretty damn drunk on the horrible -- HORRIBLE! -- "daquiris" at the Cult of Scott Bakula party, and ending up hanging out in the Deva suite. [livejournal.com profile] kespernorth came by, and brought some people with him, and then some more people showed up, and then people we didn't know showed up, and .... Eventually we gave into the inevitable, Riff turned on some music, and even though we had no alcohol or food, everyone seemed to have a great time. I found out later that the con dubbed it the "Black Hole Party", because people kept wandering by, getting pulled in, and never seen again. Heh. Con security showed up, but didn't shut us down. Rawk.

On Saturday, set-up for the Deva party went amazingly well. I don't remember it ever going so well, actually. And the party itself was, well, outstanding. I knew it would be. I wasn't worried at all about being "in charge" of this party, because I knew I didn't have to run it so much as just point it in the right direction. We've got damn good people who know what they're doing, and our new volunteers this year were great and enthusiastic. Judging by the comment cards we got, people love us.

Come Sunday, tear-down could have gone better than it did, but wasn't too awful. And I found out that almost all my art sold and a good number of pieces went to auction. Not bad. I'm definitely going to be doing this again.

We took advantage of the lovely weather Sunday and ended our weekend with a picnic dinner at Greenlake. The weekend may not have been perfect -- but it was damn close.

icebluenothing: (adam)
The seductive angle between wall and ladder.
The slink of the black cat across your path.
The glittering kaleidoscope of shattered, silvered glass.

Scared yet -- ? Or just excited?

Get ready for Demolition Drinking XIII: Triskaidekaphilia. The thirteenth offering from the Merchants of Deva is for those who dare carouse where angels fear to tread.

Chez Perv serves up culinary delights for the intrepid palate, while dj.Harcourt dishes out the hottest grooves with infernal endurance. Imbibe provocative new offerings from the Bazaar Bar. Schmooze and swoon once more within the swank ambience of Adam Evil's Atomic Ultralounge.

Embrace the power of 13 at Triskaidekaphilia. You're not superstitious, are you?

@ Norwescon 27 in the Lakeside Suite 5239 (Wing 5B)
Saturday, April 10th, 2004 - 9:00pm-2:00am

Deva.

Apr. 13th, 2002 11:08 pm
icebluenothing: (Default)
I can't believe I keep forgetting to mention -- speaking of the fabulous Merchants of Deva, I did indeed finish the website redesign I kept mentioning in this journal. Whole new look and scads of new content. Check that out, too.

Cleaning.

Apr. 13th, 2002 11:04 pm
icebluenothing: (Default)
I'm having a good day cleaning my condo. And the very fact that I'm capable of formulating the phrase "having a good day cleaning" means that I've managed a significant paradigm shift.

This is largely thanks to [livejournal.com profile] treebyleaf, who came over and did my dishes, cleaned my kitchen, helped me sort and put away clothes, and just generally get my head above water as far as the state of this place is concerned. And now I can breathe again -- and actually give a damn about my home instead of just trying to hold mere anarchy at bay.

Somewhere along the line today, I crossed the line from merely cleaning into decorating. Which is good -- tomorrow is the Merchants of Deva Staff Appreciation Potluck, and it's going to be held at my place, and I'd like to live up to my position as Minister of Décor.

I live in a wonderful home filled with fabulous things. It's nice to look around and see that, and not just see clutter.

This is the first time my home has been something to me other than just a place to sleep and shower since -- well, since before treebyleaf went into the hospital.

I can't wait for her to see some of the things I've done to the place. I think it'll rock her socks off.

I've been listening to SomaFM today while I've been working, and it's helped calm me down and keep me going. I've mainly been listening to the Secret Agent stream -- "the soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and P.I.'s too!" Fun stuff. Soma House Party is surprisingly good, too. Check them out.

Silent.

Jan. 17th, 2002 09:59 pm
icebluenothing: (Default)
I fall out of the habit of doing this much too easily. There are things I keep meaning to write, here, but I just never seem to get around to it. Very frustrating.

Well, I never expected any different. Actually, the amount of writing I've done here has exceeding my wildest imaginings. So why am I still so dissatisfied? I don't know.

It's been humbling, hanging around with my new friend [livejournal.com profile] autumngray, and learning that she not only writes screenfuls of text in her LiveJournal, but compulsively fills pages and pages of text in real journals, as well.

That's never worked for me. I've never been the type to manage to keep a journal. I love journals and blank books, I'm drawn to them, I pick them up and admire them, I even own a couple. They're still blank.

I write. I write fiction, stories for people to enjoy. Writing just for myself has always seemed -- pointless to me, I guess. A waste of my time. Here, at least, I know I have an audience, of sorts. And that keeps me writing.

But not enough, dammit.

.... In other news, I've been working for the past few days on a totally new redesign of the Merchants of Deva website. It's gonna knock your socks off.

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