tigertoy

Thought I might be hanging out with friends last night, but that ended up coming to naught, so I went to Friday Night Magic at Armored Gopher.

( some success, some failure, up way too late )

Back from Capricon.  Had a good time.  What limited how good a time I had was mostly me and not the con.

I went into the con tired and banged up from a fall on Thursday.  Getting to the con was uneventful, though there was a bit of winter so it took a bit longer than I expected.  Got to the room and discovered that I'd managed to leave behind a small box of medicine, which meant that I didn't have my nasal spray.  This made me cranky.  Missed most of tollers' Cafe set, because (a) I hadn't checked the schedule to know I needed to be there, and (b) the plan was to be there by then, but the plan didn't survive contact with the enemy.  Ended up going to dinner in the hotel restaurant with janmagic, Nick, their niece Suzanne, and birder2, because the weather was icky and we didn't want to take a long time.  The restaurant, Saranello's, is a pricey Italian place, but the pasta dishes were not that crushingly expensive.  The food was good.  The high point of the con was the Cheshire Moon concert.  I had a little trouble hearing the lyrics, but both lizziecrowe's voice and ericcoleman's instruments sounded beautiful.  Unfortunately, I went up to the room planning to get my guitar for open filk, and realized that I was already so tired that I couldn't enjoy anything, so I didn't go back down.  Worse, thanks to the aforementioned lack of nasal spray, I didn't sleep well.

Got up Saturday, ate food I'd brought, checked out the dealer's room, where I bought a couple of Magic things at sale prices and just one book, because as far as I saw none of the other paperbacks I'm waiting for were there, and I have so many books to read already that I'm trying to avoid buying much.  harperjen and sweetmusic_27 had cafe sets which were nice.  I skipped out on most of Dave Perry to see the art show, which turned out not to have much that I really lusted for.  We headed out for dinner, adding Cathy and Pat to the party.  We first stopped at Walgreen's and I nipped in and got a nasal spray, and then headed on down the road to Hackney's, our selected restaurant where we've eaten the last couple of years -- only to discover that it was closed.  So we wandered down Milwaukee Ave. until we found the first likely-looking restaurant, which turned out to be Golden Chef Chinese.  The food was plentiful and OK.  I had Kung Pao beef, which was was quite bland despite my having ordered it "very very spicy".  We got back in time for the last few songs in the Toyboat concert.  Despite being "unplugged" they were still loud enough I needed earplugs.  They were followed by Il Troubadore in Klingon garb, who gave us a very fine show.  The open filk took a while to get started, but we had a pretty good circle for a few hours.  I got very tired around 1, and just as I was starting to wake up at 2, decided that I needed to pack it in if I wanted to get to the Toast and Jam session in the morning.  Slept better than Friday night, but still not enough; got up 9:30-ish, which gave time to eat breakfast, pack, get everything other than my filk stuff into the car, and get to the cafe by 11, where Il Troubadore and sweetmusic_27 made the musical center of a really good jam up until 1:00, when there was supposed to be a reading.  The author never arrived to claim the stage, but the jam seemed to have run out of steam as people needed to leave.  We were hanging around, and I decided that it didn't look like like the music would come back and I was only going to get tireder, so it seemed sensible to leave, which we did after some time for hugs and saying goodbye.

The trip home was trouble free, but I was already feeling very very tired, so it's just as well I didn't try to linger.

So, today was the day that I collected my preordered stuff for Dark Ascension, and also got to play in sealed.  I decided to go ahead and open my box (except for a few packs for afterdraft).  I did get a Sorin.  Other than that, it was sort of meh.

( I did OK at FNM )

My phone rang while I was at coffee.  I stepped outside to take the call.  It was Robin.  She told me that Meg had found a way through the fence of the yard she was exercising in, and had gotten hit by a car.  Animal Control found her and took her to the U of I; they tracked Robin down and she got there, but Meg's injuries were too bad to save her, and Robin didn't have my number at the time.  By the time she could tell me, Meg was dead.

For those who came in late, Meg was my 80 lb. malamute, who hasn't lived with me for several years because of stuff I don't want to talk about in a public post.  Because Robin lives in Champaign, I could visit her and the other malamutes once a week.  Right now, of course, I'm regretting how little time I spent with her recently, like it always is when someone you love dies unexpectedly.  I'm not sure if I even have any pictures of her.

I got to play Standard last night.  I did horribly.  I signed up for the after draft.  When it hadn't started by 11:15, I should have walked out, I was too tired to enjoy it, but I didn't.  I did OK in the event but by the last round I was not myself and not fit to be around.

( geeky details )

Just pulled in from the trip home from GAFilk.  The trip home was trouble free.  Pretty tired, so I don't think I'm going to say very much in this report.

The week leading up to the con was stressful for me, and I've been having trouble coping.  I was far enough down that I wasn't really ready to enjoy the con, and so I didn't get as much out of it as I should have, but it was still good to hear music and be with friends.  The con seemed awfully small this year, but things seemed to go smoothly.

Coming in, the house is at the proper temperature; all indications are that the repair was successful.

I had several places I wanted to be to celebrate the new year, but I decided I would go to spend time with old friends rather than new, so I went to Milwaukee.

The trip up had some minor bits of stress.  I got going almost on time, but not fully mentally functional, as I would discover as I drove past Rantoul on I-57, only realizing at that moment that I was on the wrong road -- I was supposed to have stayed on I-74 to get to I-39, because I was going to VOTK.  Shortly after that, I realized that when I'd put my snacks in the cooler I'd forgotten to put the sandwich I had made (that I didn't eat on Thursday when I didn't go to EFRC because I felt too crappy with my sinus infection and cold), so I was mentally hitting myself with a hammer.  I had just installed my shiny new IPASS tollway transponder, and I drove through the automatic lane at the toll plaza at the Wisconsin border -- and the transponder didn't visibly do anything.  Wait, the papers they sent with it said it's supposed to have blinking lights.  Shit, I said, I guess it didn't work, now I have to deal with a missed toll when I get back.  But I managed to decide that since I couldn't do anything about it then, I wouldn't worry about it.  Made it to VOTK, an hour later than I meant to.  Although it was slightly above freezing, it was very windy and felt miserably cold.  I took a few pictures of Jasmine, and renewed my membership and got a calendar.  Then on to Milwaukee, where I got to filkart and ithiriel's house, and got hit by the tired bus; I got into the living room and collapsed in a chair.  After a bit of vegging and some cheese and crackers I was able to move; we grabbed a bite to eat at Culver's and then drove to Lytheria.  I found myself feeling more like a spectator than usual.  Filk didn't happen until after the toast at midnight, and it was only me, filkart, wyld_dandelyon, and beige_alert; we ran out of steam by about 2.  The filk was nice but less than I expected.  Got home and fell into bed.

Today, after I got up at noon, we determined that Champion Chicken, the restaurant that is a cornerstone of my friendship with Art, was closed for the holiday, so we went to Athens, where they had a prime rib buffet, a little pricey at $15 for a fairly short buffet, but the food was decent and we all had too much.  Then Art and I went for a short trip to the museum, so I could see butterflies in January.  ithiriel stayed home and made us biryani, which seemed unnecessarily generous.  And then I came home, because I needed to get home before the tired found me again.

Here at home, the furnace is still limping along, but it's still keeping the house warm.  The furnace guy told me he'd call me on Friday to set up an appointment, but he didn't, so I have to try to call him and hopefully fit that in real soon.  I did manage to get logged in on the IPASS site (after more swearing than should have been needed), and my account had been charged for the toll on Saturday.  So I guess the thing works after all.

I used to post reviews of all the books I read, but at some point it became a chore; I would put it off, until I accumulated a stack of books I hadn't reviewed that I had trouble remembering the details of, which cluttered my desk and made me feel like a heel.  So I stopped doing it, and just put books I finished away on the shelf.

But I just finished George R. R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons, and I have to say something about it.  This is the long-awaited continuation of Martin's multi-volume epic A Song of Ice and Fire.  The first volume, A Game of Thrones, was amazing, and A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords followed soon and continued to be wonderful.  A Feast for Crows still had most of the magic scene to scene, but it was starting to drag, to become grim, and after plowing through to the end of it, not a whole lot had happened.  But still it left me wanting to know what happened in all of the stories that he left off in exciting places.  Then Martin suffered an epic case of writer's block, and we didn't see more for so long that I'd mostly forgotten about it, despite occasional tantalizing reminders in the form of short pieces set in the world that came out in some anthologies.  Then, fairly recently, a hit TV series came out based on the series.  Not being a TV watcher, I haven't seen it, but it's made more people aware of it than ever read the books originally.  So I became excited again at the prospect of reading A Dance With Dragons.

It's an even thicker tome than the previous four, nearly a thousand pages.  It took me weeks to plow through it.  The chapters were well written and evocative, but it was hard to remember what was going on in the multiple plot lines with the huge number of characters.  The story is grim, with lots of unpleasant stuff happening.  Some of the stuff we've been waiting to see is starting to take shape.  But at the end of the thing, most of the action is still poised waiting to happen, except for some things that seem to have ended badly.  (Though we're not entirely certain what's happened in a couple of the most important ones.)

I'm quite disappointed.  The world is wonderfully well imagined, and the writing continues to make me care about the characters, even as they suffer, despair, and die.  I still want to know how things turn out, but it's become more like a train wreck, I just can't look away.

6 out of 10.

Played Magic at the Gopher tonight.  Innistrad draft.  I had a mediocre deck, lost the first round 2-1 to Mark H, smashed Derrin in the second round, and in the third round went 1-2 against James Manrique.  Got an FNM foil Contagion Clasp as my door prize.

I did a lot better in the after draft event.  My first couple of packs had decent red cards, and I picked up a couple of artifacts, and realized that I was well on my way to a mono red deck.  So I actually tried to get it, and in the end, I had enough that I didn't need to put in any other colors, and it was enough -- I didn't lose a game.  Got Fifth Dawn, Rise of the Eldrazi, and Chronicles packs as my prize.

A little trading.  Parted with a Land Tax; got an Extraplanar Lens for my cat toys EDH deck, 3 Kessig Wolf Runs, so I think I can make a werewolf deck (still short some cards, but I think I can get by), a Phantom Nishoba toward my cat collection, a couple of other random things.

Also got to see a really amusing new game: Tok Tok Woodman.  It's a dexterity game, and yet it is amusing enough that I am almost willing to buy it.  Players take turns swinging a plastic axe at a plastic tree trunk, trying to knock off the bark pieces without knocking over the trunk.  15 seconds to learn the rules, very silly.

I have just returned from a housefilk at chaoticgoodchic's, hosted by her and janmagic.  chaoticgoodchic provided us some most excellent beef and other fixin's.  It was an unexpectedly small group, but we still enjoyed ourselves.  I made it home OK but I'm definitely feeling the fact that it's 4 in the morning, so while I do want to post, I'm not going to go into more details.