now I want to know more about cities and dialects and magical plagues...

Readercon was lovely in that way of working up to what I feel like a con ought to be: more interesting panels than any one person could attend, and with a bunch of people I know and like, some of whom knew other potentially worthy people to perform introductions or just expand the conversational group I happened to be in. Also, given that I appear to have about the heat tolerance of a polar bear this summer, the industrial air conditioning was (for the first time ever) fantastic. Also, I was introduced to Gordon van Gelder, and Ellen Kushner briefly played my (terrible, terrible) guitar, which I find very confusing, as I still have no mental context for sharing space with people who I've known of since I was twelve or so but never actually met. The world is full of weird, and is likely to go on being so if I do this sort of thing much. Not that this is a bad thing, particularly.

Driving from Baltimore to Boston & back, however, was probably not as clever an idea as it seemed in January. I am mighty, and I made it both ways without incident, but ugh. Also for the record, I would far rather be driving 40 in the dark because that's as fast as it's possible to go and still see the road through the rain than sitting in stop and go traffic with hay bales in the noonday sun crossing the Washington Bridge. (Admittedly, the hay bales are not a usual feature of NYC roadways.) And I only went over it once...

Now I think it is time to start a list of all the house construction projects that I would (in a perfect world) like to get done in the next six months, so that I can ignore them in favor of novel revisions, or actually reading my library books. We'll see how that goes.

now I want to know more about cities and dialects and magical plagues...

Readercon was lovely in that way of working up to what I feel like a con ought to be: more interesting panels than any one person could attend, and with a bunch of people I know and like, some of whom knew other potentially worthy people to perform introductions or just expand the conversational group I happened to be in. Also, given that I appear to have about the heat tolerance of a polar bear this summer, the industrial air conditioning was (for the first time ever) fantastic. Also, I was introduced to Gordon van Gelder, and Ellen Kushner briefly played my (terrible, terrible) guitar, which I find very confusing, as I still have no mental context for sharing space with people who I've known of since I was twelve or so but never actually met. The world is full of weird, and is likely to go on being so if I do this sort of thing much. Not that this is a bad thing, particularly.

Driving from Baltimore to Boston & back, however, was probably not as clever an idea as it seemed in January. I am mighty, and I made it both ways without incident, but ugh. Also for the record, I would far rather be driving 40 in the dark because that's as fast as it's possible to go and still see the road through the rain than sitting in stop and go traffic with hay bales in the noonday sun crossing the Washington Bridge. (Admittedly, the hay bales are not a usual feature of NYC roadways.) And I only went over it once...

Now I think it is time to start a list of all the house construction projects that I would (in a perfect world) like to get done in the next six months, so that I can ignore them in favor of novel revisions, or actually reading my library books. We'll see how that goes.

Xposty from dreamwidth.

things to think about

There was a link to Michelle Sagara's lj on Making Light recently, which is actually the third time I've been pointed at her journal from somewhere else. (First something about "theory of mind," which is fascinating both as a cognitive development issue, and from the adult perspective as the idea that there was a time when your brain didn't seem like a private world; and later a reflection on not telling people what ways they should personally feel oppressed.) And she's been talking about parenting and how human relationships work and other things that are all very clever and relevant to things my brain is trying to work on right now. (and also the new apple retina screens, which is bad, because I really don't need a new laptop at present, but please do sign me up for the scaled good resolution...) Anyway, two particularly brilliant links:

Responsibility, fault, and blame which involves handling situations where all the options are bad, and dealing with fixing things that need to be fixed whether there's any fault to be assigned, and better phrasing for "oh you should just let that go" when the thing you'd like to be rid of is clinging to you like a limpet.

Love as endurance, part 2, about the difference (and the transition) between parent/child concepts of love, and the kind of love that works between adults. I wish I could go back and give this (and maybe a copy of I Capture the Castle) to my 14-year-old self, although I'm not sure she would have been ready to listen to it. But if nothing else, it's something to inform the "you can live happily ever after, but you're going to have to work on it" discussion.

...and on an entirely different note, have some pieced together bog mummies from National Geographic. Some of the writing is a bit unnecessarily sensational, but fascinating all the same.

things to think about

There was a link to Michelle Sagara's lj on Making Light recently, which is actually the third time I've been pointed at her journal from somewhere else. (First something about "theory of mind," which is fascinating both as a cognitive development issue, and from the adult perspective as the idea that there was a time when your brain didn't seem like a private world; and later a reflection on not telling people what ways they should personally feel oppressed.) And she's been talking about parenting and how human relationships work and other things that are all very clever and relevant to things my brain is trying to work on right now. (and also the new apple retina screens, which is bad, because I really don't need a new laptop at present, but please do sign me up for the scaled good resolution...) Anyway, two particularly brilliant links:

Responsibility, fault, and blame which involves handling situations where all the options are bad, and dealing with fixing things that need to be fixed whether there's any fault to be assigned, and better phrasing for "oh you should just let that go" when the thing you'd like to be rid of is clinging to you like a limpet.

Love as endurance, part 2, about the difference (and the transition) between parent/child concepts of love, and the kind of love that works between adults. I wish I could go back and give this (and maybe a copy of I Capture the Castle) to my 14-year-old self, although I'm not sure she would have been ready to listen to it. But if nothing else, it's something to inform the "you can live happily ever after, but you're going to have to work on it" discussion.

...and on an entirely different note, have some pieced together bog mummies from National Geographic. Some of the writing is a bit unnecessarily sensational, but fascinating all the same.

Xposty from dreamwidth.