I signed up for Facebook. Because the cousin I lost touch with about three years ago is on it, and it seems like the only way to regain contact.
Despite the fact that I've only sent a friend request to one person, and that one blood-related to me, FB is showing me vast lists of people I know from the SCA and prompting me to contact them. I'm a bit worried that I've somehow let the vampire across the threshold here. I mean, they can't go and loot my SCA address book unless I actually let them in, can they? Not just by my using my SCA-specific email as the contact email for validating my registration?
Just glad I didn't use my personal email address.
Already I'm regretting the fact that now whenever I sign a petition for human rights or labour rights I won't be able to blithely dismiss the followup 'Like Us on Facebook! Promote us on Twitter!' Though as Mark pointed out, if I don't go and sign up a bunch of friends, it won't matter what I put on my page, wall, thingy. And if I did sign up a bunch of friends, they'd get bored pretty quickly and block me, or whatever it is.
People do this for fun?
Excuse me. There are a bunch of middle-aged people on my lawn and I need to go shout at them to get off it.
Showing posts with label reunions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reunions. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Sunday, January 16, 2011
reconstructing Dad
Yes, I had a specific reason for traipsing off to Vancouver last weekend. To meet my other (half) sister, Lorene. We'd arranged online to meet at the Starbucks in the Chapters store in Metrotown--whenever possible I try to arrange meetings to take place somewhere indoors with food or books to divert whichever person has to wait. And since it seemed likelier that Lorene would have to wait, and since I knew she was another book-lover....
For a wonder, BC Ferries and BC Transit cooperated, and I made it from the 9 am sailing to the Metrotown mall just after 12:30. We'd exchanged descriptions of clothing the night before, and Lorene was already sitting down with her coffee when I reached the mock-iron railings of the Starbucks. We recognised each other easily.
The last time we'd met, I'd been in my early teens and she was a young mother, a couple of years before my (our) father died. I don't remember it very well, and she remembers it as rather a flying visit, because we weren't able to stay until her daughter got home. This was a more extensive meeting: we left Chapters about 3pm.
Some of the talk was 'catching up', though Darlene had filled us both in to some extent. Most, though, was sharing and comparing memories of our father. What term to use? Lorene began with 'our father', though as we became more comfortable, and talk became more fluent, she slid into 'my father'. I stayed with 'Dad', avoiding the pronoun issue.
Comparing notes: did our father have a webbed toe? Yes, two (I have also). Was he an atheist or agnostic (agnostic, but was confirmed Anglican the year after me, so he could serve as a warden for All Saints church).
Swapping stories he'd told: how he got the little scar on his forehead (hit with a lunchbucket in the schoolyard). The time he (very young indeed) and a friend sold tickets for a made-up show. I had more of these--although I'm bad at names and dates, my memory for narrative and dialogue is good, and Dad only had to tell me a story once for me to have it down.
Matching memories: what subjects he taught, what he'd filmed for commercials, family friends who had farms we'd visited as children. Lorene had more of these, having been older and more attentive when Dad was alive. She told me how she'd watched the changes at the film studio he'd done work for, as it went from studio to shop to restaurant, and we digressed to memories of Vancouver neon signs and when Vancouver, New Westminster, and Burnaby were separate places.
Our father was born in October of 1903. He liked to say that he was a year old when the Wright Brothers flew their airplane, and he'd lived to see the moon landing.
He also used to say that his family was the most important thing in the world to him, and that he didn't care what happened to the rest of the world as long as his family was all right. Argumentative child that I was, I would object that without the rest of the world, our family would be in a sad way. Now I wonder whether he included his other daughters when he said that? He continued to see them when he could, and Lorene remembered that when she'd hoped to attend SFU, he and my mum had offered to have her stay with us.
Lorene and I are both the older sisters. One doesn't often get to meet someone who was in the same birth order to the same parent. I think she may have been a 'daddy's girl', as I was. We both learnt to love books and value education, though she wasn't able to go for university until she retired.
Her memories of our dad, all that came up in our first meeting, are positive and fond. I've been braced, a little, to admit Dad's faults, to discover (as in fiction one does) imperfections and failings that might diminish him. That hasn't happened with either Darlene or Lorene. Maybe because my vision of him was realistic already, or maybe because he really was a good father, if not consistently a good husband.
It seems to be rare to not have unresolved issues with one's parents, and the common desire I read of is for 'closure' (a concept I don't quite believe in) and to hash out what went wrong in one's childhood. I didn't feel that either of us were looking for closure, only to fill in the spaces in our father's memory, to hear the stories he would have told us if there had been time, and if we had known to ask.
For a wonder, BC Ferries and BC Transit cooperated, and I made it from the 9 am sailing to the Metrotown mall just after 12:30. We'd exchanged descriptions of clothing the night before, and Lorene was already sitting down with her coffee when I reached the mock-iron railings of the Starbucks. We recognised each other easily.
The last time we'd met, I'd been in my early teens and she was a young mother, a couple of years before my (our) father died. I don't remember it very well, and she remembers it as rather a flying visit, because we weren't able to stay until her daughter got home. This was a more extensive meeting: we left Chapters about 3pm.
Some of the talk was 'catching up', though Darlene had filled us both in to some extent. Most, though, was sharing and comparing memories of our father. What term to use? Lorene began with 'our father', though as we became more comfortable, and talk became more fluent, she slid into 'my father'. I stayed with 'Dad', avoiding the pronoun issue.
Comparing notes: did our father have a webbed toe? Yes, two (I have also). Was he an atheist or agnostic (agnostic, but was confirmed Anglican the year after me, so he could serve as a warden for All Saints church).
Swapping stories he'd told: how he got the little scar on his forehead (hit with a lunchbucket in the schoolyard). The time he (very young indeed) and a friend sold tickets for a made-up show. I had more of these--although I'm bad at names and dates, my memory for narrative and dialogue is good, and Dad only had to tell me a story once for me to have it down.
Matching memories: what subjects he taught, what he'd filmed for commercials, family friends who had farms we'd visited as children. Lorene had more of these, having been older and more attentive when Dad was alive. She told me how she'd watched the changes at the film studio he'd done work for, as it went from studio to shop to restaurant, and we digressed to memories of Vancouver neon signs and when Vancouver, New Westminster, and Burnaby were separate places.
Our father was born in October of 1903. He liked to say that he was a year old when the Wright Brothers flew their airplane, and he'd lived to see the moon landing.
He also used to say that his family was the most important thing in the world to him, and that he didn't care what happened to the rest of the world as long as his family was all right. Argumentative child that I was, I would object that without the rest of the world, our family would be in a sad way. Now I wonder whether he included his other daughters when he said that? He continued to see them when he could, and Lorene remembered that when she'd hoped to attend SFU, he and my mum had offered to have her stay with us.
Lorene and I are both the older sisters. One doesn't often get to meet someone who was in the same birth order to the same parent. I think she may have been a 'daddy's girl', as I was. We both learnt to love books and value education, though she wasn't able to go for university until she retired.
Her memories of our dad, all that came up in our first meeting, are positive and fond. I've been braced, a little, to admit Dad's faults, to discover (as in fiction one does) imperfections and failings that might diminish him. That hasn't happened with either Darlene or Lorene. Maybe because my vision of him was realistic already, or maybe because he really was a good father, if not consistently a good husband.
It seems to be rare to not have unresolved issues with one's parents, and the common desire I read of is for 'closure' (a concept I don't quite believe in) and to hash out what went wrong in one's childhood. I didn't feel that either of us were looking for closure, only to fill in the spaces in our father's memory, to hear the stories he would have told us if there had been time, and if we had known to ask.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
late blooming and general lateness
Flowers
Haha, I was right, the Gruss an Teplitz is not dead! That's it to the left above, and besides the flower, it has put out shoots and leaves. Yay!
The cluster of pink, photographed from below, is Old Blush, which I've dragged up over the gate-arch. Otherwise, the Dortmund is blooming steadily away in red clusters and clumps, and Sir Clough has produced a couple of large blooms in sympathy with the recent heat-wave. The rugosa is dotted with bright red hips, its autumn show.
In the back yard, one of the gallicas is still blooming with manifold redness.
RootsAnd this is my half-sister, from my dad's first marriage. Hi Darlene! Who cleverly found me and my brother, even though Barbara and Peter Gordon are not the easiest names to track down, especially when one of those names has been unexpectedly changed. This makes her cleverer than me, because my own haphazard googling for Darlene and Lorene over the last few months had come to nothing.
So on Monday, after she had returned from Mexico and I had returned from Pennsylvania, she visited, and we met for the first time.
It felt surprisingly comfortable, at least to me, as if we'd known each ther for a long time, and were just catching up on recent news. Now I'm looking forward to meeting Lorene, and for Pete-and-family to be moved in to the new place so we can unpack the family photos and see how many we can identify properly.
Shoots
In other news, the 3-Day Novel Contest is this weekend (glyph of writerly excitement), and what with my wonderfully eventful regular life, I've barely thought about it. This year it will come with extra bonus GUILT because I had hoped and planned to have Willow Knot all revised and mailed off before Labour Day weekend, free and clear.
But no. The structural revision is done, but I haven't filled in all the new scenes in the last part of the story, plus as I read over I keep finding little traces of the previous chronology, and have to fix them. Apparently I did a lot of work tying down the sequence of events and marking how many years / summers / antlers / etc. had arrived. A lot, and have had to do it again.
I'm not sure what this is most like, whether unpicking embroidery or like the ravelling that the court ladies do in the story, unlacing goldwork into spools of thread. Or, for a more guy-like metaphor, imagine you've made the Lego(tm) Space Station, but you have to take it all apart so you can build the next thing. How hard is it to turn the little command centre into a pile of blocks? Do you want to keep at least the captain's chair out of the general undoing?
Yes, I know, this is why one saves each draft, to avoid 'really' losing anything. I've been telling myself this a lot. It should be done by the 14th, though I'll have to do a thorough read-through to make sure that I haven't done anything really embarrassing with the chronology.
But this weekend--this weekend is dedicated to squashing a messy first draft down onto the page, and not thinking about it. Wheeee! I even have a really disgusting plot element, though perhaps not as intense as previous winner Skin, by Bonnie Bowman, or Tacones, which I still have a hard time reading.
FruitTo bookend with garden news, the Transparent is done, thankfully, but the pears and plums have started falling and it's time to fire up the dehydrator.
Blackberries have reacted to the severe cutting back by, of course, fruiting madly. I've frozen and bagged a few quarts and made 6 pies so far, 3 for the freezer and 3 baked. Here's a pic of the second baked pie--look, flaky pastry!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Last minute roundup
To all my VP and generally-writerly friends, a reminder that this coming weekend, August 22-23, is the VP++ Open House, here in Victoria.
If you are planning to come, give me a shout on email, or on my LJ (I'll be posting a brief reminder there too) so we can work out crash space and pickup from ferry or airport.
If you can only be here in spirit, I hope your spirits have lots of fun.
If you are planning to come, give me a shout on email, or on my LJ (I'll be posting a brief reminder there too) so we can work out crash space and pickup from ferry or airport.
If you can only be here in spirit, I hope your spirits have lots of fun.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Time is, time was
Because of the I-5 closures, we stopped in Vancouver instead of proceeding to Eugene for 12th Night. I spent Friday in the wilderness of Ikea with Chris, finding as-is furniture for his new place, which I have now seen, though I failed to inspect it as mothers are supposed to inspect their child's lodgings.
I have no idea how to be a parent to an adult. Is there an online tutorial? Or is it okay to act as if we're people who know each other?
Home again Saturday morning, and my internal calendar is muddled because of this and because of having Monday off (not a bad thing, but a muddling thing). I felt all through Friday as if it were Saturday, and today feels a bit like Sunday.
Muddled calendar being my segue into the realisation that I'm not going to be able to sit down and write a proper diary of either the UK trip from April, or World Fantasy in October. Instead I shall sprinkle recollections and observations through the next several posts.
UK 08, flying: The in-flight movies were shown not on sweet little back-of-the-seat screens, but on columns of ceiling-mounted mid-seat-range screens. If one happened to be sitting at an angle to the long string of images, the effect was more than a little disconcerting. One expects infinite mirrors to reflect oneself.
I am cheap, and had books, so didn't bother to rent a headset. Instead I slept, or blinked awake to watch the soundless films. Without sound, PS: I Love You becomes a Japanese-inspired horror film about a vengeful ghost possessing his lover's friends and acquaintances. August Rush, unfortunately, was inescapable as the melodrama intended, and somehow I doubt that the dialogue spackled the visible plot holes*. Juno was harder to judge, because I remembered enough of the reviews that I couldn't approach blank-slated. Mostly it made me desperately want to adopt Ellen Page. I may have to rent and watch Hard Candy to balance my impression of her adorability.
Two of the movies used captions to indicate the passage of seasons - is it that hard to figure out from visual cues? The third used captions for locations.
All three movies used 'spooning', the man curled behind the woman, as the indicator of the true match.
UK 08 arriving: Lucia from VPX is awesomely crazy. She met us, jetlagged and deaf, at Gatwick, and drove to Lincoln, stopping on
the way to drop Mark off at Peterborough train station. The next day she drove from Lincoln to Diss, to the bed-and-breakfast Gables Farm, with the aid of her trusty GPS Jane. (I envision Jane as looking like one of the Angels from Captain Scarlet). Jane did not approve of us stopping at the Peterborough station, and in retaliation sent us to Lincoln via the A15 instead of the A17.
Here is Lucia, inside one of Lincoln's wonderful Norman stone buildings, St. Mary's Guildhall (built 1160), which we visited by appointment, and were shown around by Ken Franklin of the Lincoln Civic Trust. Under the floor of the Guildhall (originally a royal residence for Henry II) is a section of Roman road, which has been excavated and can be viewed through a glass floor.
There is not enough room for all the history in England, so it has to be stacked.
And here is me, outside another one, cleverly called Norman House, and presently closed. It was built between 1170 and 1190 (builders weren't any faster then than they are now) and you can see how it's been altered and changed about to fit fashion and use. The rectangular windows are Georgian at the earliest.
The first Norman stone house I fell for was Hemingford Grey, in its fictional disguise as Green Knowe, and visiting Hemingford Grey was the highlight of a previous trip to the UK. Not having fictional associations with these makes it not quite so heart-racing, well, not psychologically heart-rac
ing.
Physically ... the Norman House and the Jew's House (also Norman) are on Steep Street, which Lucia and I must have climbed three times that day. Oof. The road really does look like that. Here's Steep Hill from the bottom.
The Jew's House is now a very posh restaurant, which I would have been willing to splurge for a meal at, but it was already fully booked for a special occasion. Sigh.
Instead Lucia and I met Zolah, Rocambole and Ferret of the Furtive Scribblers Club, my other writing tribe, at a lovely Chinese restaurant quite near the Guildhall, and we ate and talked until the restaurant closed and tossed us out into the street to wander through the charity shops.
And that was my first day in England.
* so, rock and classical musicians are just like the Montagues and the Capulets? seriously, it cannot be that easy to legally give up a child; all of those boys should have been snapped up for adoption within minutes; count the Magical Negroes; has this kid been listed on canon_sues?
I have no idea how to be a parent to an adult. Is there an online tutorial? Or is it okay to act as if we're people who know each other?
Home again Saturday morning, and my internal calendar is muddled because of this and because of having Monday off (not a bad thing, but a muddling thing). I felt all through Friday as if it were Saturday, and today feels a bit like Sunday.
Muddled calendar being my segue into the realisation that I'm not going to be able to sit down and write a proper diary of either the UK trip from April, or World Fantasy in October. Instead I shall sprinkle recollections and observations through the next several posts.
UK 08, flying: The in-flight movies were shown not on sweet little back-of-the-seat screens, but on columns of ceiling-mounted mid-seat-range screens. If one happened to be sitting at an angle to the long string of images, the effect was more than a little disconcerting. One expects infinite mirrors to reflect oneself.
I am cheap, and had books, so didn't bother to rent a headset. Instead I slept, or blinked awake to watch the soundless films. Without sound, PS: I Love You becomes a Japanese-inspired horror film about a vengeful ghost possessing his lover's friends and acquaintances. August Rush, unfortunately, was inescapable as the melodrama intended, and somehow I doubt that the dialogue spackled the visible plot holes*. Juno was harder to judge, because I remembered enough of the reviews that I couldn't approach blank-slated. Mostly it made me desperately want to adopt Ellen Page. I may have to rent and watch Hard Candy to balance my impression of her adorability.
Two of the movies used captions to indicate the passage of seasons - is it that hard to figure out from visual cues? The third used captions for locations.
All three movies used 'spooning', the man curled behind the woman, as the indicator of the true match.
UK 08 arriving: Lucia from VPX is awesomely crazy. She met us, jetlagged and deaf, at Gatwick, and drove to Lincoln, stopping on
the way to drop Mark off at Peterborough train station. The next day she drove from Lincoln to Diss, to the bed-and-breakfast Gables Farm, with the aid of her trusty GPS Jane. (I envision Jane as looking like one of the Angels from Captain Scarlet). Jane did not approve of us stopping at the Peterborough station, and in retaliation sent us to Lincoln via the A15 instead of the A17.Here is Lucia, inside one of Lincoln's wonderful Norman stone buildings, St. Mary's Guildhall (built 1160), which we visited by appointment, and were shown around by Ken Franklin of the Lincoln Civic Trust. Under the floor of the Guildhall (originally a royal residence for Henry II) is a section of Roman road, which has been excavated and can be viewed through a glass floor.
There is not enough room for all the history in England, so it has to be stacked.
And here is me, outside another one, cleverly called Norman House, and presently closed. It was built between 1170 and 1190 (builders weren't any faster then than they are now) and you can see how it's been altered and changed about to fit fashion and use. The rectangular windows are Georgian at the earliest.
The first Norman stone house I fell for was Hemingford Grey, in its fictional disguise as Green Knowe, and visiting Hemingford Grey was the highlight of a previous trip to the UK. Not having fictional associations with these makes it not quite so heart-racing, well, not psychologically heart-rac
ing.Physically ... the Norman House and the Jew's House (also Norman) are on Steep Street, which Lucia and I must have climbed three times that day. Oof. The road really does look like that. Here's Steep Hill from the bottom.
The Jew's House is now a very posh restaurant, which I would have been willing to splurge for a meal at, but it was already fully booked for a special occasion. Sigh.
Instead Lucia and I met Zolah, Rocambole and Ferret of the Furtive Scribblers Club, my other writing tribe, at a lovely Chinese restaurant quite near the Guildhall, and we ate and talked until the restaurant closed and tossed us out into the street to wander through the charity shops.
And that was my first day in England.
* so, rock and classical musicians are just like the Montagues and the Capulets? seriously, it cannot be that easy to legally give up a child; all of those boys should have been snapped up for adoption within minutes; count the Magical Negroes; has this kid been listed on canon_sues?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
romance, and people being killed
Tomorrow I shall be across the seas and away--as far as Seattle, for Potlatch, where I'll stay with my very cool friend Lynn, and visit with other VPXers. I'm excited. I'm packed. I finally got my critiques for the writing workshop printed out.
I must share with you the best review I've ever read. After a discussion on the Scribblers thread about the plausibility of certain classic poems, including Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight, by Rose Thorpe, and The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes, (conclusion: plausibility lacking, historically, psychologically, and physically), I found the (not entirely accurate) words to The Highwayman posted online, along with many many comments, only about a quarter of which were young people hoping to find someone else to do their homework.
A high school English class (all six of them) posted this comment about Sir Alfred's best known work: "We like the way the poem combined romance and people being killed."
What would I not do for a review like that?
I must share with you the best review I've ever read. After a discussion on the Scribblers thread about the plausibility of certain classic poems, including Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight, by Rose Thorpe, and The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes, (conclusion: plausibility lacking, historically, psychologically, and physically), I found the (not entirely accurate) words to The Highwayman posted online, along with many many comments, only about a quarter of which were young people hoping to find someone else to do their homework.
A high school English class (all six of them) posted this comment about Sir Alfred's best known work: "We like the way the poem combined romance and people being killed."
What would I not do for a review like that?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
nostalgie de la bbq deux
Setting One: an odd little motel (Rocky River). The rooms were generic hotel rooms, in a confusing number of categories (possibly due to renovations underway), the relation of category to cost being unclear. The layout was single-storey, scattered about the grounds in L or E formations, as if a regular 2 or 3-storey hotel had been experimentally disassembled. All rooms were pleasant and clean, and mine had a view of the well-mowed lawn behind the buildings. Prusik's room had a jacuzzi, which he was told not to use for fear of an extra $30 (like a fine, maybe?) Bart's had a kitchenette, and tv mounted on the wall in disguise as a flat-screen. Scott and Heather had the separate little cottage designated for smokers.
Setting Two: Terri-Lynn's house. Handcrafted in wood, with a spacious open kitchen, an open-to-the-roof living room (with a flatscreen tv so big that TNH and PNH didn't perceive it as a tv), and detailed with touches of sculpture or mysterious tools and decoration. Like walking around inside a Brian Froud painting. Outside, beautifully landscaped with pool and gazebo and the Barbecue of the Ancient Mysteries, the tended grounds giving way to forest and river behind the house.
Characters: Terri-Lynn, her husband and family, the gracious and impressively relaxed hosts.
VP instructors, staff and associates: Debra Doyle and Jim Macdonald in place, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden later, Jen Pelland and Pippin in place.
VP students and associates: oh gosh. Travelling with Scott and Heather, me, Bart Patton, Chris Azure and John Chu. Erin Underwood travelling with Jen. Laura Strickman staying at Terri's. Terri herself, of course. Have I missed anyone? Of course we did miss Linda, Evelyn, Diana, Cal, John Hawkes-Reed and Lucia, Mac, Lucy, Retterson, and all those who just weren't able to be there.
Montage: driving narrow country roads through dark looming woods, a discussion of whether we'd be in a straight horror flick or a slasher movie. Casting Heather as Final Girl, Bart as Guy Who Gets Killed First, Chris as the Killer No-one Suspects--probably the one who vanishes early on and is presumed to be a victim until he returns in the last reel. Laura decides not to have a shower after all.
-laughing way too much for someone recovering from a cold, with every laugh bringing on a coughing fit, and not minding.
-getting up (kind of) early to write, at the window looking out towards the trees.
-sprawled around Scott and Heather's room, discussing what to do about breakfast and when to head over to Terri's, Scott telling us proudly about Heather's house-repair skills.
-sitting on the edge of John's jacuzzi (if I put one foot into it, is it only $15?) talking about writing and critting.
-touring Terri's house, hearing stories of how the BBQ of the Vanities came to be, and the marble in the bathroom (truly, good fences make good neighbours, or at least good contractors).
-in the gazebo, the scrapy sound of metal chairs being moved around, Jim's narrative of saving a woman's life the morning before leaving for the reunion, complete with ekg printout (annotated commentary provided).
-pockets of intense and diverse conversation everywhere.
-Scott and Terri's husband talking house repair and construction.
-Doyle's stories of Jim phoning out of the blue, perhaps from a bus station to say he'd be home soon, perhaps from overseas just to check in, once from a brothel (in S America?) because it was the only available telephone in town.
-me tempted by potato chips, three months into my resolution to give them up, chewing dried apples for methadone (really not the same).
-Teresa exclaiming in delight over one of Terri's cool devices, the name of which I do not know, a cunningly-made rack, perhaps for clothes, with wooden arms that pulled out horizontally or slid back to hang beside the turned post.
-Jim and Teresa discussing and identifying one of the tools on the wall (a potato-fork, I think).
-Pippin commanding her father to not sing.
-the sun's reflection from the pool climbing the bank and into the gazebo, lighting it from below.
-the brave ones by the pool in swimsuits, swinging their feet in the water.
-Scott discussing why it may be that the book forum is so hard to search and isn't googleable, so clearly that I felt closer to understanding search engines that I've ever been before. Still didn't quite make it, but my mental fingertips were brushing the ideas.
-Teresa annotating the spelling list on Making Light, as various of us around the kitchen workstation admitted to those items that were our personal stumbling-blocks (vermilion is mine, but now I know a trick for it, yay! because TNH pointed out it comes from vermeil).
-Doyle and Teresa sitting on the floor, telling Norse ghost stories and English ballads.
Highlights: Patrick talking about unreliable narrators, Freedom & Necessity, and why do so few people like Instance of the Fingerpost? and why was Dream of Scipio so unreadable? and convincing me I should attend the Farthing Party (alas, transportation costs forbade it).
-learning a new non-slip way to tie my shoes, which works even with the stupid round laces on my other runners, as part of Uncle Jim's Impromptu Knot, Hitch and Bend Tutorial, including examples of the easily-removable hitch for climbing down cliffs, tying in the bight, tying behind the back, why one hitch is better used around round posts than square ones, two lines of different size fastened securely, and much more.
-the Room 50 chocolate cake.
-pancakes! with bonus explanation of why TNH and Jim can't cook together: she is a performance cook and he is a recipe cook (this has elsewhere been described as the difference between cooks and bakers) and they inevitably clash, solved here by having Jim do pancakes and TNH do bacon and eggs.
-forgetting one of the Four Humours and Temperaments, and having three or four people list them in uneven chorus; even more impressive when you consider I could have asked a techie website question and gotten at least as many answers, possibly from the same people.
-Pan's Labyrinth viewing - but I will write more of this later.
If more memories float up from the bottom of my mind, I will add them. Suggestions also welcome. What were your highlights?
Setting Two: Terri-Lynn's house. Handcrafted in wood, with a spacious open kitchen, an open-to-the-roof living room (with a flatscreen tv so big that TNH and PNH didn't perceive it as a tv), and detailed with touches of sculpture or mysterious tools and decoration. Like walking around inside a Brian Froud painting. Outside, beautifully landscaped with pool and gazebo and the Barbecue of the Ancient Mysteries, the tended grounds giving way to forest and river behind the house.
Characters: Terri-Lynn, her husband and family, the gracious and impressively relaxed hosts.
VP instructors, staff and associates: Debra Doyle and Jim Macdonald in place, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden later, Jen Pelland and Pippin in place.
VP students and associates: oh gosh. Travelling with Scott and Heather, me, Bart Patton, Chris Azure and John Chu. Erin Underwood travelling with Jen. Laura Strickman staying at Terri's. Terri herself, of course. Have I missed anyone? Of course we did miss Linda, Evelyn, Diana, Cal, John Hawkes-Reed and Lucia, Mac, Lucy, Retterson, and all those who just weren't able to be there.
Montage: driving narrow country roads through dark looming woods, a discussion of whether we'd be in a straight horror flick or a slasher movie. Casting Heather as Final Girl, Bart as Guy Who Gets Killed First, Chris as the Killer No-one Suspects--probably the one who vanishes early on and is presumed to be a victim until he returns in the last reel. Laura decides not to have a shower after all.
-laughing way too much for someone recovering from a cold, with every laugh bringing on a coughing fit, and not minding.
-getting up (kind of) early to write, at the window looking out towards the trees.
-sprawled around Scott and Heather's room, discussing what to do about breakfast and when to head over to Terri's, Scott telling us proudly about Heather's house-repair skills.
-sitting on the edge of John's jacuzzi (if I put one foot into it, is it only $15?) talking about writing and critting.
-touring Terri's house, hearing stories of how the BBQ of the Vanities came to be, and the marble in the bathroom (truly, good fences make good neighbours, or at least good contractors).
-in the gazebo, the scrapy sound of metal chairs being moved around, Jim's narrative of saving a woman's life the morning before leaving for the reunion, complete with ekg printout (annotated commentary provided).
-pockets of intense and diverse conversation everywhere.
-Scott and Terri's husband talking house repair and construction.
-Doyle's stories of Jim phoning out of the blue, perhaps from a bus station to say he'd be home soon, perhaps from overseas just to check in, once from a brothel (in S America?) because it was the only available telephone in town.
-me tempted by potato chips, three months into my resolution to give them up, chewing dried apples for methadone (really not the same).
-Teresa exclaiming in delight over one of Terri's cool devices, the name of which I do not know, a cunningly-made rack, perhaps for clothes, with wooden arms that pulled out horizontally or slid back to hang beside the turned post.
-Jim and Teresa discussing and identifying one of the tools on the wall (a potato-fork, I think).
-Pippin commanding her father to not sing.
-the sun's reflection from the pool climbing the bank and into the gazebo, lighting it from below.
-the brave ones by the pool in swimsuits, swinging their feet in the water.
-Scott discussing why it may be that the book forum is so hard to search and isn't googleable, so clearly that I felt closer to understanding search engines that I've ever been before. Still didn't quite make it, but my mental fingertips were brushing the ideas.
-Teresa annotating the spelling list on Making Light, as various of us around the kitchen workstation admitted to those items that were our personal stumbling-blocks (vermilion is mine, but now I know a trick for it, yay! because TNH pointed out it comes from vermeil).
-Doyle and Teresa sitting on the floor, telling Norse ghost stories and English ballads.
Highlights: Patrick talking about unreliable narrators, Freedom & Necessity, and why do so few people like Instance of the Fingerpost? and why was Dream of Scipio so unreadable? and convincing me I should attend the Farthing Party (alas, transportation costs forbade it).
-learning a new non-slip way to tie my shoes, which works even with the stupid round laces on my other runners, as part of Uncle Jim's Impromptu Knot, Hitch and Bend Tutorial, including examples of the easily-removable hitch for climbing down cliffs, tying in the bight, tying behind the back, why one hitch is better used around round posts than square ones, two lines of different size fastened securely, and much more.
-the Room 50 chocolate cake.
-pancakes! with bonus explanation of why TNH and Jim can't cook together: she is a performance cook and he is a recipe cook (this has elsewhere been described as the difference between cooks and bakers) and they inevitably clash, solved here by having Jim do pancakes and TNH do bacon and eggs.
-forgetting one of the Four Humours and Temperaments, and having three or four people list them in uneven chorus; even more impressive when you consider I could have asked a techie website question and gotten at least as many answers, possibly from the same people.
-Pan's Labyrinth viewing - but I will write more of this later.
If more memories float up from the bottom of my mind, I will add them. Suggestions also welcome. What were your highlights?
Monday, October 1, 2007
nostalgie de la bbq
Viable Paradise Eleven is underway. A new set of students, a new set of works-in-progress. Group critiques and one-on-ones and games of Thing and Mafia.
I feel (as I said elsewhere) as if I should be envious, or wishing I was there with them, but I can't find those emotions anywhere. I feel happy for them, I hope in a vague way that they have even half as wonderful a time as we did, and I look forward to reading Dorothy's thoughts about it all. But I don't imagine myself a student again, especially not a new student coming among strangers, with it all to do over.
I cherish the memories, the lessons and the friends that came from VPX. Those I keep.
Back in August 11-12, Terri-Lynn hosted a VPX reunion bbq at her place, which I mentioned briefly on another post. Of course, since the Xers keep in touch, reunions of some degree happen whenever two or three are gathered together, but this one grew and grew, snagging staff and instructors into its maw. And I was on the east coast in August, in Pennsylvania, hurrah!
The way eastern states and cities fit together confuses me. I mean, I know the names of places, I have all sorts of literary, fictional or historical associations with the names, but only the vaguest idea where the names are in relation to each other. So flying from Pittsburgh to New York in order to visit Connecticut made me dizzy, even when I looked at the map. Fortunately, cleverer people than me were doing all the actual transporting, both driving and flying.
On the way to the Pittsburgh airport, I saw (from a distance) one of the sites where George Romero filmed parts of the Dead series. No ghouls visible at that time. (Night called them 'ghouls'; I'm not sure when the terminology switched to 'zombies')
The staff at the Pittsburgh airport were cheerful and pleasant (huge contrast from my changeover on the way home from VPX) and one complimented my hi-top sneakers, which are a camo pattern with penwork additions by me. The portents were favourable.
Now, the earlier plan had been that Diana would be driving, and would pick up me, Evelyn and Linda on the way (woo! girls' road trip!) but due to family complications (families are complicated) that hadn't been possible. Diana, Evelyn and Linda were sorely missed--I'm harder to shake off, at least in this instance. Scott and Heather were renting a van, and willing to add me to the existing cargo of Chris and Bart. We'd all meet up at the car-rental desk.
I arrived at La Guardia (which I can't pronounce properly unless I stop and say it slowly, but you can't tell that online) and found it to be very large. I cast myself on the mercy of young men in reflective vests and found out that the Hertz desk was not a desk, or rather, that the desk was in a building on the outskirts of the airport.
Okay, I'm resourceful. I can take a shuttlebus as resourcefully as the next person. I did so, and reached the Hertz office, where I settled myself with Game of Kings and some dried apples, knowing I was the earliest arrival and that I could hardly be missed in the small glass box set on tarmac.
Considerably later, I looked up from Lymond being cleverer and more tortured than anyone else for the umpteenth time, and noticed that no one had claimed me yet. Hm. Well, my flight had been delayed due to weather, so might others. I popped over to the desk and asked about the rental, had they heard from Scott at all?
Well no, and they didn't have any rentals booked under his surname.
The unsettled feeling that I'd forgotten something vital and had screwed up and it was all my fault began its creeping progress. I reminded myself that Heather might well have booked the van. Did I know her last name? Um. No, I didn't.
I went back to Dunnett for another period (possibly the lower Cretaceous, since I had neither a watch nor a cellphone to measure it, and the office had no wall-clock) but the you-screwed-up feeling was not to be denied.
I sat at the office phone (THIS PHONE DOES NOT ACCEPT INCOMING CALLS) and called the cell numbers that I had noted down. My husband reported that no one had called him about cancellations or emergencies. Bart reported that he and Chris were happily drinking coffee at the food court closest to Scott's gate and that I should come and wait with them there. Before I could confirm whether Hertz would let me shuttle back to the airport when I wasn't myself renting anything, Scott made contact.
A while later Bart and Heather arrived, picked up a van, picked up Scott and Chris at the airport, and we were on our way.
Addendum: On the road, Chris pointed out where some of the filming of Men in Black had been done. There's some significance there, in my flying from a horror set to an sf set, but I don't know what it is.
More later - must do something about dinner.
I feel (as I said elsewhere) as if I should be envious, or wishing I was there with them, but I can't find those emotions anywhere. I feel happy for them, I hope in a vague way that they have even half as wonderful a time as we did, and I look forward to reading Dorothy's thoughts about it all. But I don't imagine myself a student again, especially not a new student coming among strangers, with it all to do over.
I cherish the memories, the lessons and the friends that came from VPX. Those I keep.
Back in August 11-12, Terri-Lynn hosted a VPX reunion bbq at her place, which I mentioned briefly on another post. Of course, since the Xers keep in touch, reunions of some degree happen whenever two or three are gathered together, but this one grew and grew, snagging staff and instructors into its maw. And I was on the east coast in August, in Pennsylvania, hurrah!
The way eastern states and cities fit together confuses me. I mean, I know the names of places, I have all sorts of literary, fictional or historical associations with the names, but only the vaguest idea where the names are in relation to each other. So flying from Pittsburgh to New York in order to visit Connecticut made me dizzy, even when I looked at the map. Fortunately, cleverer people than me were doing all the actual transporting, both driving and flying.
On the way to the Pittsburgh airport, I saw (from a distance) one of the sites where George Romero filmed parts of the Dead series. No ghouls visible at that time. (Night called them 'ghouls'; I'm not sure when the terminology switched to 'zombies')
The staff at the Pittsburgh airport were cheerful and pleasant (huge contrast from my changeover on the way home from VPX) and one complimented my hi-top sneakers, which are a camo pattern with penwork additions by me. The portents were favourable.
Now, the earlier plan had been that Diana would be driving, and would pick up me, Evelyn and Linda on the way (woo! girls' road trip!) but due to family complications (families are complicated) that hadn't been possible. Diana, Evelyn and Linda were sorely missed--I'm harder to shake off, at least in this instance. Scott and Heather were renting a van, and willing to add me to the existing cargo of Chris and Bart. We'd all meet up at the car-rental desk.
I arrived at La Guardia (which I can't pronounce properly unless I stop and say it slowly, but you can't tell that online) and found it to be very large. I cast myself on the mercy of young men in reflective vests and found out that the Hertz desk was not a desk, or rather, that the desk was in a building on the outskirts of the airport.
Okay, I'm resourceful. I can take a shuttlebus as resourcefully as the next person. I did so, and reached the Hertz office, where I settled myself with Game of Kings and some dried apples, knowing I was the earliest arrival and that I could hardly be missed in the small glass box set on tarmac.
Considerably later, I looked up from Lymond being cleverer and more tortured than anyone else for the umpteenth time, and noticed that no one had claimed me yet. Hm. Well, my flight had been delayed due to weather, so might others. I popped over to the desk and asked about the rental, had they heard from Scott at all?
Well no, and they didn't have any rentals booked under his surname.
The unsettled feeling that I'd forgotten something vital and had screwed up and it was all my fault began its creeping progress. I reminded myself that Heather might well have booked the van. Did I know her last name? Um. No, I didn't.
I went back to Dunnett for another period (possibly the lower Cretaceous, since I had neither a watch nor a cellphone to measure it, and the office had no wall-clock) but the you-screwed-up feeling was not to be denied.
I sat at the office phone (THIS PHONE DOES NOT ACCEPT INCOMING CALLS) and called the cell numbers that I had noted down. My husband reported that no one had called him about cancellations or emergencies. Bart reported that he and Chris were happily drinking coffee at the food court closest to Scott's gate and that I should come and wait with them there. Before I could confirm whether Hertz would let me shuttle back to the airport when I wasn't myself renting anything, Scott made contact.
A while later Bart and Heather arrived, picked up a van, picked up Scott and Chris at the airport, and we were on our way.
Addendum: On the road, Chris pointed out where some of the filming of Men in Black had been done. There's some significance there, in my flying from a horror set to an sf set, but I don't know what it is.
More later - must do something about dinner.
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