Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Xodiac the Dragote's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 19th, 2012
9:27 pm	Trip I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it in earlier entries here, but a while back I was invited to go to my cousin's wedding. Which is normally a day spent dressing nice, meeting people you don't know well (or at all), and having a meal that's anywhere from "better than average" to "a culinary experience." Except I live in Washington State, and my cousin lives back in New Jersey. So, in a month I'm going on vacation. Once again, no big deal. I've done it before. Except... This time I'm going to do a BIG chunk of it alone. Every vacation or trip in the past has been with someone. School trips. Family trips. Guided tours. Going to a convention. Going somewhere to meet and/or stay with friends. Not this time. After the wedding, I'm staying a few extra days in the NJ area as my parents fly back. I plan to check out some of my old haunts and see how they changed (did you know I grew up in New Jersey?) and do some touristy things in NYC. I definitely want to check out Ground Zero, at an absolute minimum. And then I'm taking a train down to my state's evil twin, Washington DC, where I'll be checking out the monuments. No friends to meet. No guided tour. No family, not after the wedding. It's going to be an interesting week! Current Mood: giddy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
12:54 am	Another NorWesCon Come and Gone It's the local Sci-Fi/Fantasy con, held 20 minutes from my new digs. Last year Fox bought the house just a little too late for it, but this year I slept at home instead of at the hotel. This had two benefits. First, I wouldn't have to find and/or pay someone to take care of the cats. Secondly, I save a few hundred bucks. On the downside, that means I'm sleeping 20 minutes away. So I had to forgo the room parties, because I couldn't just go to bed afterwards. And there's the simple annoyance of having to get there and back, rather than just walking to my room. But the greatest disappointment this year was in the con panels. There were, tops, a half-dozen that I actually was interested in. Worse, most of those were early on Saturday — and thanks to my fucked-up sleep schedule, I overslept my alarm and missed them. So over the course of the con, I attended two or three panels. Most of the rest of the time I was in the gaming room. Oh, sure, I toured the dealer's room and art show, and raided hospitality for foodage. But 90% or more of my time at the con was in the game room. It's disappointing, really. But the panels were just kinda meh. At least I did have fun gaming. And Fox and I found someone demo-ing a game they're kickstarting later this month, one we really liked. Fox is saying he'll pledge possibly four digits. So I'm looking forward to playing that for real in a year or so. But this year... it was a fun con, but not a good con, if that makes any sense. Current Mood: content (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
12:36 pm	Son of a... Checked my camera today, because I wanted to take a picture or two of costumes this weekend. Try to turn it on, won't turn on. Change the battery, put the first in the charger, try to turn it on, yay, it turns on. Wait, what's this garbage on my screen? Turn it off and on several times, and same thing. Same pattern, too. It looked suspiciously like a cracked display. But I never dropped it, and it's been in its case, which should have protected it from this sort of thing. I honestly don't know what the hell happened. Worse, I just looked for my warranty slip, and couldn't find it. Called the store, and they have no record of a warranty under my name. I could swear I bought one, but apparently I hadn't. So it's looking like I need to buy a new camera. Ffff.... Current Mood: aggravated (Comment on this)
Friday, March 30th, 2012
4:02 pm	MegaMillions The MegaMillions national lottery has, as of now, a $640,000,000 jackpot. I figured that was worth a $1 gamble, and bought a ticket. I hope at least some of you out there did as well. But that brings up a question: if you win — and you're the sole winner, mind you — what would you do with that much money? Would you take the annuity, or the lump-sum payment? And what would you buy, if money is no longer an object unless you're shopping for jumbo jets or office buildings? My answer in the comments. Current Mood: hopeful (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 19th, 2012
4:24 pm	Days are long... And I don't mean because spring is around the corner. The last few days my sleep schedule has been off. I sleep for 4 or 5 hours, then I get up, and after a while I take a nape that turns into 4 or 5 more hours of sleep (instead of maybe 2 for a regular nap). It means I've often been asleep when I'm awake, and vice versa. Which is why I went to bed last night at something like 2 am (as opposed to 7 or 8) and woke up at 5:30. And I haven't gone back to bed, yet. I just experienced a full day. As in, all daylight. Man... it's weird looking out the window and seeing light! I never knew there was so much of it! Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 10th, 2012
8:52 pm	A post! A veritable post! The reason I haven't posted anything here in the last, oh, month or so is because there's not been much to post OF. But, as always, if you wait long enough, something interesting will happen. Or, alternately, enough moderately interesting minutae will happen that it can be gathered up into an update. So, lessee... A few weeks back I hosted the Programming Department meeting at my house, in which we look over what panels people thought up, brainstormed more, and left with the aim of finding hosts for as many of them as we could. So, as of right now, if EVERY SINGLE PANEL we thought up gets hosted and placed in the con (hint: not gonna happen) we have well over 200 hours of material. And that's not including the Gaming Track. This is very good. So I'm happy. Sometime around then, my XBox went belly up for good. I'd bought mine used (from my roommate, yet) after it got back from repairs, but even when it had just been newly refurbished it never quite worked right. There were E74 errors, or it simply wouldn't boot up, about one time in three. I was hoping it'd last long enough for the 720 (or whatever it'll be called) to come out, but no go. So I had to spend $300+ to buy a new one (used ones on Amazon or eBay weren't significantly cheaper, and given the hit-or-miss quality of used stuff I eventually decided to go new). Then, the week afterwards, I got overtime. Juuuuuust enough to pay for my new XBox 360! I wish I'd gotten more — most of March was available at my site, because one of the guards is on medical leave — but they apparently decided to bring in an outsider to cover the hours needed rather than give the existing guards OT. Good for him and the company, I guess, but bad for me. Oh, well. Last week, I bought Mass Effect 3. I needed a break from Halo: Reach. I'm not sure how far in I am yet; at a guess, somewhere between a third and a half of the way done. Good game, though there's still a few important goals that I have no idea how to achieve, yet, and I haven't tried multiplayer. And tonight, my parents came over. Fox and I are not, to say the least, experienced gardeners. My parents, on the other hand, have been taking care of a yard for 30 or 40 years. So they (well, mostly Mom, since Dad's back was acting up) helped me trim rosebushes, pointed out which plants were dead and which just hadn't awakened yet from winter's slumber, and gave advice on how to get rid of the moss that was starting to encroach on the front yard. And some other advice. Afterwards, we had homemade chicken mozzerella, with spaghetti on the side. Dad, as usual, went bonkers over our cats, we chatted a bit, and then things wrapped up. It was a very pleasant day. Current Mood: accomplished (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
5:55 pm	XBox Live solved Well, you may recall that my account was hacked just before New Year's. Well, it's all good now. Better than good, really. XBox Live Support did me right, by God! Lost to hackers Returned by XBox Live Support 4920 Microsoft Points 5400 Microsoft Points $74.99 + tax $199.99 + tax 3 weeks or so of playing time 6 months of free XBox Live Gold About the only thing permanently gone is the roughly 100 minutes of prepaid time on my cell phone as I reported this and worked with a rep. That comes out to less than $7. So say what you like about Microsoft itself. XBox Live Support is good. Current Mood: ecstatic (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
2:16 pm	Odd and not especially fun week Snowwwwwww!! The Seattle area got its first snow last week, starting Sunday. At first it was fine, even nice. A half inch to an inch isn't going to screw anything up except to the really moronic drivers Seattle seems to breed (OMGSNOWWHATDOIDOIKNOWI'LLDRIVEATFIVEMPGONTHEHIGHWAY!!) but it will make the scenery look awesome great. But that was just a preview. Starting early Wednesday morning, it snowed some more. And more. And more. Down here at the south end of the lake, we got six inches over the course of the day. That's enough to cause real problems, not least to traffic. No, my parents knew about the coming weather. They'd called me Tuesday night and offered me a bed at their place, which is significantly closer to work than my actual home. But I decided not to take them up on the offer Wednesday morning. At the time, there was only about an inch, maybe less, on the ground in Redmond, and I can handle that just fine. More, I didn't have enough supplies to make it through the next few days at work if I didn't stop at home. I needed more reading material, among other things. Driving home wasn't bad, for the most part, except for the one guy I got stuck behind just before a ramp I needed to take (so I couldn't switch lanes) who insisted on going about 20 on the highway when I was doing just fine at 45-50. He was more of a hazard than any speeder, just by being an obstacle in the road when people can't slow down easily! But I made it down to Renton, and tried to get up the big hill my house is atop. I barely made it up; it had snowed a lot more in the south, and was already at about three inches by then. But I did make it. Wednesday, I decided I may just take my parents up on their offer. That hill had been problematic already, and the roads outside looked ghastly. I wasn't looking forward to trying again with even more snow, and having to walk two or three miles, through cold and snow, in order to get home Thursday. Between that, the shorter commute, and the offer of a free meal, I decided that unless the promised rain washed away a lot of snow, I'd be sleeping at my parents come Thursday morning. That didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I wake up on Thursday, at my folks', and find that the morning's ice storm had knocked power out. So, no TV. I couldn't use or even charge my laptop, which I'd thoughtfully brought so I'd have something to do. I could basically go back to be, or I could read — something I could do plenty of at work. Sigh. I did as much of the former as I could before resigning myself to the latter. Which wasn't easy as the sun started to go down. Worse, the rain hadn't come, and it was starting to snow some more instead. The meal went fine, but getting out of their driveway turned out to be a bitch. My father had advised me to back out of the driveway and up the street, then do a K-turn into someone else's driveway to go the rest of the way forwards. This is because they live at the end of a street that's on a slope. A rather gentle slope, really, but it can be a problem in the snow. But as before, there wasn't as much snow in Redmond as there was in Renton, and I thought I could do a K-turn at the end of the driveway and go up the entire hill forwards. Maybe I would have made it that way, maybe not. But as I exited their driveway, I made my turn — and hit a snowbank. My parents had left half the driveway entrance unshoveled, expecting people to back out and go up the street backwards. I didn't, and I got stuck on the unshoveled part. All in all, it was about 45 minutes of digging, swearing, shouting, pushing, and spinning wheels before we got to anything that could be called "driving." I was late to work. Coming home, I went home. It was my last work day of the week, after all. But when I finally got home (by then that hill was not much of a problem) I found the power was out there, as well. No heat, and because Fox said he'd smelled gas the hot water was off to boot. I mean, really? I put a bunch of blankets on the bed and went to sleep. Power came back around 10:30 AM Friday, and things got back to normal. Mostly. There's a lot of trees down in the neighborhood thanks to the ice, including a few branches in our own yard. No damage to the house, the fence, and while we haven't looked closely yet, it doesn't look like there's damage to the landscaping. Other than having some wood to chop up, we came out fine. But it was an irritating week. I really missed living across the street from work. Current Mood: drained (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
2:29 am	Happy New Year! Had a fun New Year's Eve shindig at the house. The first we've had at any place in years. It was small, with only Dennis, Rebecca, Heather, and Rebecca's boyfriend, Sean, attending. I'd planned for a three (or, arguably, four) phase event. The first was a reprise of the "stitch and bitch" Dennis held at his place a month or two back. Basically, artsing and craftsing and general creativeness, starting at 2 PM. But nobody arrived until nearly 4, which kinda sucked. Nevertheless, we got creative for a couple of hours, including me completing one part of Bo that absolutely needed a second person: getting some velcro glued onto the undersuit in difficult-to-access places. Dennis got some work done on remaking his wings, and Rebecca did nail art. Afterwards, we moved to games. We played a game of Munchkin, which Rebecca won (no surprise). Then, dinner at Old Spaghetti Factory, where we had a very attentive waitress. Then, back to more Munchkin, along with a few games of Apples to Apples. The last phase of the evening, of course, took place at midnight, when we watched the local celebration and fireworks. All in all, a good night with good friends. It was a lot of fun. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Friday, December 30th, 2011
2:37 pm	My XBox Live account... ...was just stolen. I was toodling around on my computer, and about 25 minutes ago (that is, 2 pm pacific) I got an email asking for confirmation of the purchase of 6000 Microsoft Points. Which was puzzling, because I hadn't bought them. I wasn't sure what I'd ever do with so many, either — 800-1200 is the typical cost of a XBox Arcade game. So I was inclined to cancel the order, but I wanted to check my XBox Live account anyway and see how many this gave me. Even though it was asking me for $74.99, I might actually want to keep them. Maybe. But probably not. I didn't think anything actually underhanded was going on, though, until I found that, when I turned on my XBox, I couldn't sign in — because the account was signed in somewhere else. Which was impossible, as I keep my account on a thumb drive that was sitting directly in front of me. A quick check discovered that I couldn't force a sign-in, either. Suddenly, signing in on this account required me to enter my email and a password, and neither were what I'd set them to be. I immediately called XBox Live customer support and explained the problem. I told them to cancel the charge to my card. They asked for my name, phone number, XBox Live account name, and email address. Then they suspended the account as they investigate. This may take "25 to 30 days, or less." So that's the amount of time that I essentially can't play XBox. Or at least I can't play XBox Live, or access my account there (including all my Achievements and my killer Commendations in "Halo: Reach" — the latter of which, I think, is what made someone want to steal my account in the first place). Hopefully, the investigation will conclude that since I complained so quickly after my address and password was changed and my card charged, that my identity is the valid one and not this new address, whatever it is. Hopefully. And the rep did tell me that if/when the account is returned to my control, I will be credited for the days I couldn't play, so while I may be losing a month (or less... or more, if they find against me) of time actual gaming, I won't lose the money for it. Still. Grrrr.... Edit (4 pm): I just got another email, saying the 4960 MS points I'd legitimately had in the account were transferred away to someone else. I immediately called support back and demanded to know how they did anything on my suspended account. Turns out the first guy I talked to was utterly incompetent. He filled out the service tag wrong, leaving it essentially blank, and then proceeded to lock the wrong XBox Live account. The new rep seemed to know what she was doing, though. Hopefully. Edit 2 (6:30 pm): A friend on XBox Live told me he saw "me" playing FIFA Soccer, a game I've never bought or played (sports games, imo, suck, at least as a video game). So it looks like it wasn't Halo scammers, but rather a case similar to this one. Current Mood: pissed the fuck off (Comment on this)
Monday, December 26th, 2011
11:50 am	Christmas 2012 It's a little late, I know, but I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. It was cold and wet and windy here in Seattle, but I still had a good time. Woke up early, due to the wind (early, to me, is 11:30 AM) and toodled around the house for a few hours before setting off to my folks' for dinner and gifts. Gave my mom a waffle iron, which she'd apparently forgotten she'd asked for, so although it was the only item on the list she gave me, she was duly surprised. Or a good actress. May dad, as ever, was hard to shop for. I wound up giving him a shirt of the type he likes. But since I bought it in Fred Meyer's, I didn't have a box. I used a cereal box, instead. He was rather dismayed when he unwrapped it, and thought he was getting cereal as a joke gift. I told him to shake the box and tell me if it sounded like cereal. Turns out, it sounded like a shirt. He was happy. I gave my brother a gift certificate to Amazon.com, which is always useful. Amazon is the 19th century general store, updated to the 21st century. One of these days, though, I really need to get down to Arizona. Then I can visit his house, see what decorating style he and his wife likes, see what they have and what they don't, and get them an actual gift. Oh, and I got foxcutter the DVD collection of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Awesome anime. In return, I got... lessee. 2 pair of socks, some chocolate, a dental care kit (for after the chocolate, I guess), a $25 gift card to Fred Meyer's, a $100 check, a foot-tall stack of assorted comic books (thankfully, there seem to be at least two complete series in there), a cordless drill (18 volt!), a nice shirt, a $100 gift card to Best Buy, some chocolate-covered macadamias, and the traditional one-a-day calendar. It was a good exchange. And a good dinner, too. Turkey is almost always tasty. Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Monday, December 12th, 2011
12:52 am	What's up of late Just kind of... checking in. Terra's doing better, though her dosage is still being adjusted. But her weight's up, her appetite is good, and though she's still shedding it's not covering a chair with her fur every week. Last Friday my parents came over. It was my Mom's birthday, and my present to her was a home-cooked meal of whatever she chooses. She chose lasagna. Oy. I know she likes it, but did she have to pick the most tedious thing she could think of? Oh well. I learned a lot in making it (including how to make lasagna), and it came out well. I included an Italian-type salad, like they serve at Olive Garden, and garlic bread, and that all came out great, too. And the leftovers will serve as another meal. Afterwards we watched Up, which my parents had never seen. Still just as much a tearjerker as ever, but also still a fine film. Game night was last night, ended about 90 minutes ago. K'Sharra and her boyfriend came over for a little of it, so we had some extra people to make things different from the norm. But then they had to leave, because she wasn't feeling well. Dang. Well, anyway, that's that. Not much of an update, but not much of note happened, either. Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
4:50 pm	Thoughts on Joe Paterno Have you seen the 1999 film Office Space? If not, you should; it's a very funny look at life under the corporate thumb. If you have, though, then you surely remember the scene where Joanna, the waitress, is reprimanded by her boss for not wearing enough "flare" — buttons with smiley face, flags, and perky sayings on them. She points out she's wearing the minimum required, and the boss says (paraphrasing, here), "That's the minimum. The bare minimum. If you were really into the spirit of things, you'd wear more. So wear more or get written up." To which she responds, "If you want people to wear more than the minimum, then you should increase the minimum." This is exactly how I feel about the situation with Joe Paterno, Penn State's now-ex-football coach. It seems there was some shenanegans going on in the locker room involving his defensive coordinator. He found out, and reported it to his boss. And that's all he was legally required to do. But he was just fired for not upholding his "higher responsibilities." In other words, he didn't go to the cops. Police and prosecutors admit he did all that was required of him; he won't be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact, or the like. But he got fired, anyway. I think that's wrong. I think, like Joanne, he fulfilled his responsibilities. If they wanted him to do more, they should have made it a legal requirement he do so. Or at the very least put it in his contract. This, as it stands, is bullshit. Current Mood: aggravated (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
4:47 pm	Food for thought It's said, with some decent accuracy, that the people best suited to wield power are those most reluctant to do so. But doesn't that mean this whole "democracy" thing is guaranteed to give us rulers who are usually unsuited to wield power? I wonder if it's possible to design a ruling system that rotates people in and out of power, like democracy does, but chooses those who least want to serve. Kind of like jury duty, I guess, except legislators have too much power for it to really qualify as punishment or an onerous duty. Still, I wonder... Oh, and I voted. Yay! Current Mood: contemplative (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 31st, 2011
11:56 pm	Halloween For the last, what, eight years? Seven? Whatever. For that long, Fox and I have lived in an apartment. And trick or treating is virtually nil there. (Which is odd; you'd think it'd be more intense, as the population density is so high. More candy, less walking. But whatever.) But now we live in a house. So I decided to make ours the house people want to return to next year, and bought full-sized candy bars at Sam's Club. Reese's PB Cups, Snickers, and KitKats. Then we had to hope that there'd be enough, and for that matter that this wasn't too much. Maybe trick or treating here would be as nonexistant as at the apartments. Thankfully, the latter didn't happen. I kept track, and it turns out we had 41 people come to our door (well, 41 in costume; I'm not counting parents escorting their kids around) between 6:45 and 8:45 PM. Didn't last as long as I expected or hoped, but still tons better than the 6 people we got (at most) at the apartments. And that's still plenty less than the amount of candy we had available. So there's enough leftover candy to last months, if not longer, at the rates Fox and I consume it. A good night. I hope everyone else had a fun Halloween too! Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
6:58 pm	Cat update Got the pills yesterday. She's eating them with her food with no trouble. I have to pill her twice a day (!), but since she's fed twice a day that's not much of a problem. The vet wants to do another checkup in three weeks or so to see how well they're working, and to see if they got the dosages right. With luck, it can be cut down to once a day. So things are looking... ok. Current Mood: optimistic (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2011
10:07 pm	Terra Last week, I had some friends down here whom I hadn't seen in a few months. They immediately expressed surprise at how gaunt my cat, Terra, looked. I hadn't really noticed, because I see her every single day. But once they pointed it out, I had to admit she did look pretty thin. So last Friday, I took her to the vet. They did an exam, and today the bloodwork came back. She has a hyperthyroid gland. This isn't good, but it's certainly not as bad as it could be. There's medicine to treat it, and there's actually a way to cure it. The pills cost, I'm told, about $60 for a 3-month supply, meaning $240 per year. The treatment is a $2000 (or so) one-time procedure. So I'm trying to figure out which to do. The thing is, Terra is 9 years old. That's not especially old, but it's no youngster. She's middle-aged, really, and I can expect her to live another 6 - 9 years, assuming nothing disastrous occurs in the meantime. Which means if I do the pill thing, I can expect to pay $1440 - $2160, spread out over all those years instead of $2000 all at once. Pricewise, then, it's comparable, if not favorable, to buy the pills. I guess the only issue is how hard it'll be to feed them to her. Current Mood: optimistic (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
7:39 pm	Stitch 'n' Bitch I was invited to a friend's place to partake in some socialization, mac and cheese, and work on crafty type projects. So I took over some stuff to work on for my Bo suit. Alas, my plan failed. It turns out the method I was using was... well, doable. But a pain in the ass. I needed to buy a sheet (yes, sheet) of velcro. Those exist, but apparently only online. So I ordered one, and since there's not really any point in finishing a failed method, that kind of killed my fursuit work for the evening. Still, there's the socialization aspect. And homemade mac and cheese! Very important. No regrets! Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011
12:18 am	Lions and Lambs Today I did some fursuit work! The first bits since I moved in here in... geez, May. Bent wire for Bo, my sheep. I decided to stop experimenting and go with what worked so well in the past for my best heads. It's just one bent wire, but still, progress is progress. And I went to see Lion King in 3D today. I hadn't seen that film in at least ten years, and possibly not since it was in theaters in 1994. Looking at it now, with older eyes and a mind somewhat accustomed to writing reviews (albeit to books, not movies) I have to say there were a few more "comic relief" moments than I remembered, or really thought the show needed. I'd also have added a bit to some of the confrontations. Not the climax, but some of the others, like when the cubs first encounter the hyenas. Still, it's a damn fine film. I still think it's probably Disney's best, at least their best animated. Current Mood: optimistic (Comment on this)
Friday, September 30th, 2011
10:06 pm	RainFurrest 2011 Well, the con is over, and I think that I might even now be recovered. Maybe. So, how was it, you ask? Not bad. I honestly wasn't expecting too much when I went in, a holdover from spring and early summer when we had pretty much no content. But things did get back on track. Still, the con had greater than its usual allocation of SNAFUs. Such as ordering 12' screens for 12' meeting rooms. Setting them up made them scrap the ceiling, which is a no-no. Such as late starts to pretty much everything on Thursday. And such as the entire registration system going tits-up for the first time ever. That said, things went pretty well on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I picked up Alan Dean Foster at the airport on Wednesday and had a very nice dinner with him and the con chair at 13 Coins. On Thursday morning I woke up at Oh God Early and took Alan to the YMCA — it turns out he's a competitive weightlifter. Who knew? (Well, I'm sure he did, and his wife, and... okay, I'll shut up now.) Then I went back to bed for an hour or two, returning to the hotel in time for Opening Ceremonies. But I didn't really stay at the con very long, going home around 10 PM. (I decided that, with the hotel so close to the new house, I'd save a couple hundred bucks by cancelling my room. Which also made keeping the cats fed during the con a nonissue.) Friday was a bit hectic as I spent a lot of the early afternoon helping Gerry get tech items like projectors and whiteboards moved and set up. Went to some panels, of course, during my downtime, but nothing sticks in the mind. I went home, pretty beat, at 8:30. Saturday, I was in charge of the tech and Gerry was at work and unable to help. Luckily, there weren't many moves and setups to do, and I was able to spend more of my time in panels or wandering or whatever. I made sure to check out a few panels with Alan, which was fun; he's a good speaker, keeping things interesting and trying not to monopolize the microphone. I picked up the entries to the Writing Challenge at 9 PM and managed to read 4 or 5 of them before I went home and crashed at 1:30 AM. I tried my best to read the remaining stories Sunday morning, but I had to attend the art auction to make sure I got the piece I wanted. It's of a coyote blowing into a tuba titled "The Coyote Who Could Not Sing," by Blotch. I loved it and had to have it, and for nearly the price limit I'd set for myself, I did actually win it. Then i went to talk to the other Challenge judges. Unfortunately, we each chose the same work as second place, and since we all agreed it was that good it actually won first. Frankly, I think the one I put in first place should have won, but what can you do? The Scritch 'n' Bitch — I'm sorry, the Scritch 'n' Hiss — went reasonably well, with only one or two comments about the programming department. Then came the Closing Ceremonies, where I finally was awarded a set of the three pins and patch. I'm honestly not sure I deserved them this year, but since I do feel I deserved them a year or two back and didn't get them, I'll take 'em. Interestingly, the reason I got a set was because the Powers That Be decided to give them to everyone on the Executive Team. And I'm on the ET for 2012 as well, as well as several other repeaters. So I don't know if they're going to give them to the ET each year, in which case I may get several by the time I step aside, or if this is a one-time thing. Time'll tell, I guess. Monday I tried to take Alan back to the airport, but it seems he took the shuttle instead. So I just said hi to frysco, had breakfast with nikonraccoon before she went home herself, and took a nap that turned out to last six hours. Interestingly (well, to me), work called me to offer overtime. I'd kind of expected this, but only for Monday. Instead they wanted me to work pretty much all weekend. The one weekend that they want me to work a lot, and it has to be this one! Gah! Ah, well. It was a good con. And next year I'm Director of Programming! It's all me, baby! So if you have any requests, suggestions, or want to volunteer in regards to panels, panelists, or events, let me know! Current Mood: relieved (Comment on this)