Category Archives: Life

Got back from Gen Con yesterday afternoon. Saw some people I’d met last year, met some new people, wandered the giant dealer’s room in a daze, bought some books and games, played games including a marathon session of Cards Against Humanity, attended readings, attended panels (of which Brad Beaulieu‘s on tension stands out), and got too little sleep.

Fun times.

My parents are visiting this week, so there’ll be no post Wednesday. See you guys next week.

While I was in Kansas, I deliberately limited Internet access so I wouldn’t distract myself from working. I did check email, twitter, and Facebook a couple times a day, plus the occasional sweep through my rss feeds.

What I didn’t check–hardly even thought about checking–was LiveJournal. Partly that’s because I don’t have the app for LJ, but most of the reason is that I’ve been leaving LJ behind for some time. I very rarely post there–everything is posted to my blog these days and is cross-posted automatically.

When I got back, and scrolled back through what I’d missed as far as LJ would let me, all the posts were by only a handful of people. If you’re reading this on LJ, you’re probably one of them.

I feel like I’ve lost the feeling of community that LiveJournal once had. The blog Facebook twitter diaspora makes it harder to keep up with a smaller group of people. But it seems unlikely to change.

I’m not leaving LJ, but I haven’t added new people there in ages. If any of you guys leave, let me know where to find you.

I often feel like I get nothing done. Usually once I think back on what I did in a day, that’s demonstrably not true. To prove it to myself, last weekend, a four-day weekend, I counted up how many tasks I checked off my to do list.

Items on the to do list and completed: 40
Items not on the to do list and completed: 16 (including installing new shower heads, setting up the rain barrel, laundry…)

Items remaining on the to do list: 3
Number of those items that were added to the to do list during the weekend: 1
Number of those items started but not finished: 1 (that was finishing my outline for the novel workshop later this month)

Items removed from to do list and postponed: 9 (at least)

Total items done: 56
Total items not done (out of items I meant to do during the weekend, not out of all items on my to do list, or all possible tasks in the universe): 12

Not bad at all.

The blog is on holiday today, finishing up the last of the preparations for tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans among you, and if you’re traveling, best wishes for a smooth trip. Also, make sure the turkey’s fully cooked. For you non-Americans, have a great Thursday tomorrow.

Random things I’m thankful for this year:

1) My garden – It’s fun to play with, and it makes food.
2) Tennis, running, and every other sport I do – Something has to keep me humble. I’d hate to be good at everything.
3) Penguins – Because they’re cute, and such graceful swimmers while seeming so ridiculous on land.

Congrats to Anne and John! It was a lovely wedding, and a great time with family.

Random notes

* Dylan’s Candy Bar is big, but most of the candy is stuff you could find elsewhere. Still, fun to look at it all and imagine being seven and let loose in there.

* The Brooklyn Bridge is long.

* If you want to visit Ellis Island, get tickets online in advance.

* Occupy Wall Street is a lot smaller than it looks on tv (but obviously much bigger than this photo).

* The Central Park Zoo is nicely done, but I felt bad for the polar bear doing endless laps.

* This sign is in the zoo, which is in the park, which has trees. But still…

* Brooklyn seems to have more trees than Manhattan. Manhattan sticks them all in little islands (or big islands, in the case of Central Park). It’s quite possible that there are parts of Manhattan for which this isn’t true, but it’s something that’s struck me every time I’ve been there. (And I gather the mayor has a plan to add more trees, which there is some dissent about because it’s possibly not the most well-thought-out plan.)

I’m definitely going back to Gen Con next year. I met a bunch of great people who I’m not going to list because I know I’d forget someone, bought books and a toy dalek for myself and some games for the kids in my family, attended interesting panels on writing and books which I’d be mining for blog posts for the next month if I’d taken better notes, discussed lots of publishing-related things, and helped defeat a Nazgul.

Playing games late at night is much more fun than the typical overcrowded con room party where you stand around trying to make small talk with people you can’t actually hear.

Downtown Indianapolis is really nice. Some folks at the newspaper in Toledo used to talk about Indianapolis like it was something Toledo should aspire to, and now I see why.

Sunday afternoon before leaving I stopped by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. If you’re ever nearby, go. I didn’t see all of it, but what I did see was fantastic. There’s a strong emphasis on current Native American artists, which often covered examples of melding traditional culture and arts with modern and European-inspired ones. There was one absolutely stunning painting by Yatika Starr Fields (called Renewal, go look at it) that I stared at more than once. On my way out, I got two books from the gift shop: Everything You Know about Indians is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith and a book of oral histories of contemporary woodland Indians. Should be interesting reads.

Since someone asked how I created my awesome magnetic whiteboard, here is how to make your own. (Step 7 is the key step.)

1. Read a blog post about how someone else uses their giant whiteboard to plot novels with big swoopy arrows or for some other cool purpose. Wish you weren’t a grad student and could afford one/had a wall to put it on. Repeat at least annually for several years.

2. Get frustrated with plotting and structuring novels on paper or a small computer screen.

3. Decide that since you own a house and have a job, you can get a whiteboard.

4. Be shocked by the cost of 5×3 or bigger magnetic whiteboards. Read reviews on Amazon, which reveal shipping problems like bent corners. Decide not to risk it.

5. Notice that there exist things called magnetic paint (it isn’t magnetic, it has metal in it) and whiteboard paint. Read reviews. Get very excited.

6. Dither over dry erase vs chalkboard. Magnetic paint is dark, so would be easier to cover with the also-dark blackboard paint, and the paint manufacturer (Rustoleum) talks about making magnetic blackboards, not whiteboards. Whiteboard paint might take several layers, each of which makes it less likely to attract magnets. The whiteboard paint has much poorer reviews than the blackboard paint. But dry erase is much nicer than chalk.

7. Go to Home Depot and spend ~$50 on one can of Rustoleum magnetic paint and whiteboard paint and assorted rollers and paint trays.

8. Tape off a randomly sized section of wall (a bit bigger than 3×5) based on where the windows are. Forget that the rollers won’t be able to go right up to the edge of the windowsill because they’re cylindrical. Find a drop cloth that might have been a rug pad in a previous life.

9. Sand the wall. A lot. But not enough.

10. Stir the magnetic paint FOREVER, or for the 10 minutes the directions call for, whichever comes first, and then paint the wall. Add a coat every half hour until the entire can has been used. Lose count of coats after 4 or 5. Scrub arms with a pumice stone to get the drops off.

11. Experiment to find out that a magnet will hold 4 sheets of paper and one index card to the wall. Theorize that one layer of whiteboard paint = one sheet of paper as far as the magnet is concerned, so this is ok.

12. Wait a day, then tackle the whiteboard part of the plan. Whiteboard paint has to be used within two hours of being mixed, which means you can do 4 or 5 coats. Four sounds safe.

13. Paint. Discover that the reviews weren’t kidding, the whiteboard paint is very thin and runny, and your wall, which wasn’t flat to begin with, now has rivulets of paint running down it. More thin coats would be better than thick coats, but that’s not possible with the two-hour time limit. Wish that it came in smaller cans. Also discover that four coats isn’t quite enough to hide the magnetic paint.

14. Refuse to fret about the bumps and not-completely-white spots until the two-day wait for the paint to cure has passed.

15. Write. Erase. Stick papers up with magnets. Rejoice.

Except not really, it’s still Friday unless I had time to edit this.

I’ve posted some takeaways from the conference at my tumblr. I heard some interesting talks, met some great people, and learned a lot. More details later…sometime.

Good morning! I’m in Chicago through tomorrow for Web Content 2011. I had a great weekend, going to a talk and booksigning by Tamora Pierce, spending time with family, investigating the Field Museum, and now getting ready for a three-hour content strategy workshop…

Ok, actually it’s Friday evening and I’m scheduling this post even farther in the future than usual. I hope we all had a great weekend. More on the conference later.

Just a quick note to say that I’m back from Beijing and have posted some photos of places and random things. (And of people, on Facebook.)

It was a great trip–wonderful family, interesting city, good food, and lots of fun sightseeing. I walked my feet off. (Shoes that are perfectly comfortable for wearing to work aren’t necessarily all right for walking 24 hours a day, oddly enough. Good thing I brought my running shoes.)

I will make an actual post about the trip later (i.e. if my sleep schedule ever normalizes), explaining some of those photos. But here’s the Cliff Notes version of the trip that I kept so I wouldn’t forget where I took which photos:

Sat – left
Sun – arrived. Dinner.
Mon – Purple Bamboo Garden. Lunch at a Muslim restaurant. Swam, strolled around malls. Dinner – Peking duck.
Tues – Old Summer Palace. Lunch at pizza buffet. Olympic plaza.
Wed – Free morning, went shopping – fruit (dragonfruit, and snake skin fruit looks like a pangolin). Forbidden City. Dinner – hot pot.
Thurs – Ming emperor tombs. Great Wall has so many stairs.
Fri – Silk Market. Tailored dress, skirt. Misc other things. Annoying bargaining. Dinner for Ellen’s birthday included pigeons.
Sat – Temple of Heaven. Vow renewal – part of a traditional ceremony at a palace belonging to the second son of a Qing (?) emperor
Sun – Fitting for dress and skirt. More Silk Market. Dinner at the duck restaurant again.
Mon – Zoo and aquarium. Dinner at Schezuan place (taro-covered spare ribs).
Tues – Art museum, Lama temple, picked up dress and skirt. Dinner at mall food court (where someone was making fresh noodles)
Wed – Hiked at gorge, lounged around at hot springs, late snack at congee place.
Thurs – left.