fandomonymous (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fandomonymous) wrote2018-10-31 03:32 pm
fandomonymous) wrote2018-10-31 03:32 pm
you're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older
Well that was certainly a month that happened.
San Francisco was exhausting and also a delight. Not quite as magical as last year but still pretty stellar.
Thursday was mostly spent schlepping stuff around since I was actually staying with one of my comets in the East Bay my first night. (If I had known that was going to be my plan I would have flown into Oakland instead of SFO, but eh, better planning next time.) Downtown Alameda is cute and reminds me a bit of Forest Hills here in Queens - some solid attempts at liveliness, decently walkable, but definitely not the same as In The Big City. They even both have attempts at bohemian coffee shops with middling food and good tea, though Julie's selection is way better than Red Pipe's on the tea front, and unlike Red Pipe has a back garden. The comet in question was also coming back from Boston on a tighter schedule and more grueling flights than I was, so while we spent some good time together, we both were really exhausted and out of it. :(
On Friday, I finally went to Alcatraz for the early morning tour, which was pretty well done - besides the famous cellhouse tour itself, they're even preserving gardens made by military families from before the jail, as well as keeping signs of American Indian resistance that would otherwise have been considered graffiti. It's a long morning though, and unless you feel like wading into the tourist trap that is Fisherman's Wharf it's not easy to find lunch after. I ended up wandering into Chinatown, which was fine, but I definitely could have gotten a better meal than I did, and all the wandering cut into the time I wanted to spend on Haight Street. Haight-Ashbury as a neighborhood is definitely one I haven't explored nearly enough and want to see way more of (and do some proper thrifting).
Friday was also the pre-gaming party for Roguelike Celebration. RogueCel as a whole was wonderful, as it always is; it wasn't the starry eyed magic of last year, but interestingly it was possibly more 'productive' for me. As always, I saw a number of lovely people, including some I hadn't seen since Atlanta 2015 and some who I'd admired from afar on the Internet but never interacted with. I also spoke near the end of the con, a brief thing on comparative death experiences in roguelikes. I ended up turning that eight minute talk into a full Roguelike Radio episode (my first in at least 2 years!) and I'll be talking about this again on Spelunky Showlike in a few weeks.
Monday was spent battling the first signs of a cold and going to SFMoMA, which was also lovely. I have a pile of notes on art that I want to keep exploring, here's just a few: Rene Magritte is still a personal favorite after I saw Voice of Space at the Guggenheim in 2017, and the nook the SFMoMA made for various versions of Empire of Light was just spectacular. (Weirdly, the Wikipedia entry says there were three versions, but I know I saw at least five - were others prints??) They made another small space tucked away for a set of Agnes Martin pieces that intentionally and successfully felt outright holy; they were also my real introduction to Sol LeWitt, who delights me from a "procedural generation" standpoint for reasons that will be obvious to the reader.
Tuesday was spent getting home, through a cold. The rest of the week I was knocked on my butt from the illness and jetlag but also really inspired - I have a bunch of notes now for a future "What roguelike should I play today?" Twine-style recommendation engine, and have actually built a small, silly, and absolutely fabulous Twitter/Mastodon bot in the style of Robot Loves Kitten.
**
Besides that:
Cool Work Stuff is still afoot, and I may have gotten a major data access breakthrough for my department. Which is a silly sounding accomplishment, but also a pretty big deal in the 'politics' of my workplace, so yea, go team Kawa. My performance evaluation was Fine, which is pretty much exactly where I was thinking it'd be, but freaked me out beforehand, because of course.
Alison (the other cutie mentioned last month) came to the Arena again for a night and once more we were both mostly tired/busy but it's always lovely and comforting and good to have her around. I feel like she encourages me to be the best version of myself, which is interesting and nice to have (versus the PB and Andy, who mostly encourage me to keep being myself but don't necessarily actively encourage self-improvement in quite the same way.)
PartnerBeast and I did another Crazy Walk, this time to the Cloisters on a blustery Sunday. I do not like medieval art nearly as much as I like modern art, but the courtyard gardens were lovely, and the walk itself was worthwhile. It was entertaining to overhear a guided tour and have PB mention to me sotto voce what the docent was getting wrong; we also ate a lovely Senegalese meal in Harlem on our way up, and rewarded ourselves by heading down to our usual favorite bar, where I ended up naming a cocktail!
Andy helped me solidify some things to start building my new computer, which I hope to have done by Christmas (and hopefully earlier, but we'll see how sales and such go). I'm very excited to finally have a good machine again. I haven't built a computer since grad school - and needed external help to do so - so I'm nervous, but we'll make it work.
Still doing story game night with the PartnerBeast, focused mostly on Powered by the Apocalypse variants lately. I particularly liked what I saw of Under Hollow Hill, thought that may have just been a particularly good DM and group. I'm still freezing with decision making/improv sometimes but working on improving.
**
Up next:
Tomorrow my dear friend Jess and I are going to a Christine and the Queens concert! I am honestly not super into her music but it's decently fun, and Jess loves her work intensely, so this should be an interesting time.
There is a lot of Cool Work Stuff afoot as well as regular work, hoo boy.
I'm hosting my parents and sister for Thanksgiving so that should be Interesting. I have mostly avoided family drama by limiting contact - thanks to the PartnerBeast for suggesting I invite my mom for lunch on weekdays, to give myself the easy out of needing to go back to work.
November's Crazy Walk is this weekend, to Red Hook for sandwiches.
I will hopefully order all my computer parts by the end of the month for my build? We'll see.
San Francisco was exhausting and also a delight. Not quite as magical as last year but still pretty stellar.
Thursday was mostly spent schlepping stuff around since I was actually staying with one of my comets in the East Bay my first night. (If I had known that was going to be my plan I would have flown into Oakland instead of SFO, but eh, better planning next time.) Downtown Alameda is cute and reminds me a bit of Forest Hills here in Queens - some solid attempts at liveliness, decently walkable, but definitely not the same as In The Big City. They even both have attempts at bohemian coffee shops with middling food and good tea, though Julie's selection is way better than Red Pipe's on the tea front, and unlike Red Pipe has a back garden. The comet in question was also coming back from Boston on a tighter schedule and more grueling flights than I was, so while we spent some good time together, we both were really exhausted and out of it. :(
On Friday, I finally went to Alcatraz for the early morning tour, which was pretty well done - besides the famous cellhouse tour itself, they're even preserving gardens made by military families from before the jail, as well as keeping signs of American Indian resistance that would otherwise have been considered graffiti. It's a long morning though, and unless you feel like wading into the tourist trap that is Fisherman's Wharf it's not easy to find lunch after. I ended up wandering into Chinatown, which was fine, but I definitely could have gotten a better meal than I did, and all the wandering cut into the time I wanted to spend on Haight Street. Haight-Ashbury as a neighborhood is definitely one I haven't explored nearly enough and want to see way more of (and do some proper thrifting).
Friday was also the pre-gaming party for Roguelike Celebration. RogueCel as a whole was wonderful, as it always is; it wasn't the starry eyed magic of last year, but interestingly it was possibly more 'productive' for me. As always, I saw a number of lovely people, including some I hadn't seen since Atlanta 2015 and some who I'd admired from afar on the Internet but never interacted with. I also spoke near the end of the con, a brief thing on comparative death experiences in roguelikes. I ended up turning that eight minute talk into a full Roguelike Radio episode (my first in at least 2 years!) and I'll be talking about this again on Spelunky Showlike in a few weeks.
Monday was spent battling the first signs of a cold and going to SFMoMA, which was also lovely. I have a pile of notes on art that I want to keep exploring, here's just a few: Rene Magritte is still a personal favorite after I saw Voice of Space at the Guggenheim in 2017, and the nook the SFMoMA made for various versions of Empire of Light was just spectacular. (Weirdly, the Wikipedia entry says there were three versions, but I know I saw at least five - were others prints??) They made another small space tucked away for a set of Agnes Martin pieces that intentionally and successfully felt outright holy; they were also my real introduction to Sol LeWitt, who delights me from a "procedural generation" standpoint for reasons that will be obvious to the reader.
Tuesday was spent getting home, through a cold. The rest of the week I was knocked on my butt from the illness and jetlag but also really inspired - I have a bunch of notes now for a future "What roguelike should I play today?" Twine-style recommendation engine, and have actually built a small, silly, and absolutely fabulous Twitter/Mastodon bot in the style of Robot Loves Kitten.
**
Besides that:
Cool Work Stuff is still afoot, and I may have gotten a major data access breakthrough for my department. Which is a silly sounding accomplishment, but also a pretty big deal in the 'politics' of my workplace, so yea, go team Kawa. My performance evaluation was Fine, which is pretty much exactly where I was thinking it'd be, but freaked me out beforehand, because of course.
Alison (the other cutie mentioned last month) came to the Arena again for a night and once more we were both mostly tired/busy but it's always lovely and comforting and good to have her around. I feel like she encourages me to be the best version of myself, which is interesting and nice to have (versus the PB and Andy, who mostly encourage me to keep being myself but don't necessarily actively encourage self-improvement in quite the same way.)
PartnerBeast and I did another Crazy Walk, this time to the Cloisters on a blustery Sunday. I do not like medieval art nearly as much as I like modern art, but the courtyard gardens were lovely, and the walk itself was worthwhile. It was entertaining to overhear a guided tour and have PB mention to me sotto voce what the docent was getting wrong; we also ate a lovely Senegalese meal in Harlem on our way up, and rewarded ourselves by heading down to our usual favorite bar, where I ended up naming a cocktail!
Andy helped me solidify some things to start building my new computer, which I hope to have done by Christmas (and hopefully earlier, but we'll see how sales and such go). I'm very excited to finally have a good machine again. I haven't built a computer since grad school - and needed external help to do so - so I'm nervous, but we'll make it work.
Still doing story game night with the PartnerBeast, focused mostly on Powered by the Apocalypse variants lately. I particularly liked what I saw of Under Hollow Hill, thought that may have just been a particularly good DM and group. I'm still freezing with decision making/improv sometimes but working on improving.
**
Up next:
Tomorrow my dear friend Jess and I are going to a Christine and the Queens concert! I am honestly not super into her music but it's decently fun, and Jess loves her work intensely, so this should be an interesting time.
There is a lot of Cool Work Stuff afoot as well as regular work, hoo boy.
I'm hosting my parents and sister for Thanksgiving so that should be Interesting. I have mostly avoided family drama by limiting contact - thanks to the PartnerBeast for suggesting I invite my mom for lunch on weekdays, to give myself the easy out of needing to go back to work.
November's Crazy Walk is this weekend, to Red Hook for sandwiches.
I will hopefully order all my computer parts by the end of the month for my build? We'll see.