I posted my report to DreamWidth. I tried to set up crossposting and it doesn't seem to work. Please go over there and make an account if you can. I'm tigertoy there too.
Why is the band playing Near My God To Thee? I'm hearing rumors from sources I respect that LiveJournal (which has been Russion owned for a long time) may be about to actually disappear for the non-Russian world, so I finally took the plunge and imported all of it to DreamWidth. Assuming the import process worked properly, everything should be there except my picture gallery, which can't be automatically imported.
This specifically includes my EFRC reports, which are the only thing I post here anyway. If you want to read them, you should go to dreamwidth.org and make an account (if you don't already have one). If it's easy to do, I'll crosspost, but I will primarily be posting to DW. I'm tigertoy there too.
The import process gave people's LJ logins access to the old DW entries. I'm not sure how that works. If you have a DW account, or you create one now, and you can't see my EFRC report posts, send me a message over there and I'll give you access.
I signed in at 9:10 and met Jerri and Haleigh at the Spice Girls, where the drain hole on the big water tank had stripped out and the plug would not stay in. The guys ended up taking the tank and trying a quick welding job, but it leaked. I don't know if a less quick welding job would have done better; I don't know anything about welding. Then the keepers wanted to take the tank that wouldn't hold water out, because the tigers were likely to use it as a toy, but Joe (who'd barely been willing to allow the welding) said no.
On to the clinc, where Shenzi was very exuberant and fun, but being pretty well behaved with her teeth. Unfortunately, she seems to completely unerstand how the door works now. She knows she can pull it open. She even recognizes that the lock is what keeps it from moving when she sticks that pointy little snoot through the wires to grab and pull. She's also really quick and pretty sneaky. I was trying to get the pile of stinky straw I'd collected out, and zip! she was out in the main clinic building. Fortunately the outside doors were all closed, so she got to run around the large area for a couple of minutes before they herded her to where I was able to grab her and put her back. Rebecca told me later that she does get to have play time in the big area frequently and I shouldn't be too worried about it, but I still see it as a big fuckup on my part even if everything is OK in the end.
We did the field first. Nobody had bone, we were feeding turkey, and we were trying to hurry, so we were just throwing food over the doors. Except that when I was feeding Rose, I did have the cage unlocked... and then after I put the food in, I locked up and then opened the slide gate without being OKed. Again, no actual harm done; I had locked the door, and even if I hadn't, locking the door after the cat had come in wouldn't be a problem in Rose's case. But again, a fuckup on my part, and something I have maybe done once or twice since we started having a supervisor check locks like 10 years ago, but not more than that.
I managed the rest of the day without doing anything terrribly dumb. Despite aspirations of finishing early, it was around 3 when I finished cleaning Starlord and rejoined the others as we got to Pandora. We paused a minute to fetch meds so that Pan would get her meds before she ate. Apparently she's been bad lately but she took them just fine for me. I cleaned the Magic Sisters, who were much more cooperative about all coming in than they used to be, assued Belle Fille that she's a good girl since she'd already been fed, and had Nemo walk in through the chute when I came up, Chloe follow him, and then Chloe leave before I could get the slide gate down. She came back pretty quickly, but it should be noted that she was the difficult one today and Neems was a very good boy.
We got back to the building around 3:45 and I got a call that turned out to be mom's new broker, telling me that her old broker is retiring and that there were a couple of issues to take care of. (That sounds sorta sus when I put it that way, but she knew far too many details for there to be any question that it was real.) Still, it took long enough to turn that into scheduling another call for tomorrow when I'm at my computer that I missed all of the West. I got there in time to tell Kimbo he's a good boy and say hi to Zoe as I walked by.
Then I rode along as Jerri went to give Ana her meds and take care of Paws, and spent some more time being coyote furniture (without letting her escape this time). I got to visit Hershey for a bit, and then we were closing up and leaving, but when I got to the office, we had a crisis because Ginger, one of the office cats, was missing. After turning the building upside down looking in every place we coudl think of, Rebecca finally found her -- in the stove (!). Apparently there's no back panel on the stove, so she can get into the pan drawer -- and has done so before, so maybe they should have checked there sooner?
I have jury duty next week, so unless I don't have to actually come in Tuesday, I will miss next week. I'm planning on coming Sunday the week after, but I already had plans for this weekend before I even found out that I have juiry duty.
Bubbles leopard was the last survivor of Operation Snowplow. an FBI operation that took down a ring of people who sold "canned hunts" and meat from endangered species. A bunch of cats were legally evidence in a complicated case and were kept somewhere until the trials were finished, and then the government didn't need them so they needed homes. Our records are that we got Bubbles in 2006. We don't know how old he was, beyond that he was an adult leopard. My memory is that Operation Snowplow went on for 7 years. In any case, he was extremely old, and two years ago he was in severe renal failure. He hung on somehow until Saturday. Rebecca thinks he'd had a seizure the day before he died. No one was there when he went, so we don't know if he had another one. We named him "Bubbles" ironically, because he had the nasty disposition that I've seen in most leopards, but at the end, they say he was happy to be in a warm, safe place in the clinic and tolerated some handling including being given fluids without sedation.
Today it was almost 40 -- which is like 30 degrees warmer than it was a couple of weeks ago. Why did it feel so frickin' cold? We did the normal cleaning for Tuesday, but we had no visitors and no extra tasks, so we finished early. Nobody had motivation to do anything more. I talked to Rebecca in the office for a while after, which would be a lot more sensible than standing around in the parking lot talking.
Kya sounds normal today, but still seems to have some infection. She's been very bad about taking her meds, today included. Pandora was a good girl for me. Cassius is still hanging on. George seems to have bitten off the very end of his tail.
In my fridge, I had one large zucchini that I forgot I had when I should have used it a couple of days ago, 2/3 of a chicken breast I kept out when I froze the rest of the package, and half a can of Cream of Jalapeño soup. (I bought the soup on a "let's see what we can do with this" whim. The soup is a disappointment, it has almost no heat but plenty of the flavor of jalapeños, which I don't much like.) Add to this the fact that I'm trying to experiment with quinoa in my culinary travels, and I came up with this:
Caramelize 1/4 cup of chopped onion Add 4 oz finely diced chicken breast Add some salt, 1 tsp or so Add 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped as finely as possible When the chicken is cooked, add the zucchini, sliced Simmer until the zucchini is mostly cooked Add 1/2 cup of quinoa, rinsed in the strainer I just bought Add 1/2 cup water, bring to boil, simmer 10 minutes Add some more water until it looks right Simmer another 10 minutes, quinoa should be done Add 2 oz. shredded sharp cheddar cheese Add 1/2 can condensed cream of something soup (will try cream of onion next time I think) Stir until thoroughly mixed together
I haven't posted about EFRC because I haven't been working there. As soon as lockdown started, they told me they were closed to the public and they didn't want volunteers helping with animal care. I've been out a couple of times since. The cats are doing fine except for a couple of the oldest and sickest ones we knew wouldn't last much longer (Henry and Cash). We've been open at least sometimes for tours by appointment, everyone wearing masks of course.
Joe's 75th birthday was a couple of weeks ago. I should have thought to post then but I'm completely out of the habit of posting.
I will visit every few weeks, but until I can help and they need me, it doesn't make sense to spend 4 hours driving for 2 hours looking at the cats every week.
It's OVFF time! If any of the three people who read this care, I will have EFRC calendars available as usual; if you tell me now you want one, I'll make a point of finding you at the con.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, hearing lots of music, as many hugs as possible, and painful choices for the Pegasus awards!
If anyone is still reading this journal.. I am still reading LJ and I'm still posting my EFRC reports here. I'm keeping my account for now because I have so many pictures hosted in scrapbook, and still checking for new posts regularly. But I'm actually posting some stuff on DW, and I'm not crossposting. I'm tigertoy on DW. You're welcome to subscribe.
Armored Gopher Games, my friendly local game store where I've been spending my Friday nights playing magic for the last 5 years or so, is closed. Dave the owner was burned out. Things were supposed to be arranged to sell to the original owners, but the wheels came off the deal at the last minute. Right now we don't know if it can be salvaged, and I don't really know the details but it doesn't look very good.
I went to FNM at the other game store in town, Titan Games, for the first time yesterday. Titan's not a bad place but it didn't feel like home. I don't know if it can become that for me, or if I'm going to drop out of magic again. Playing magic helped me get through some tough times, but I haven't felt as much into it the past few months as I used to. But not having it in my life feels scary.
Thanks for all the good times, Dave. I hope things work out for you. I hope things work out for me.
So, given that I was Fan Guest of Honor, I guess I owe the world a con report.
Chamabanacon was this past weekend, sent into exile by high school football. The Marriott in Normal is a very nice hotel. The only thing wrong with it is that it's not in Champaign. I remembered enough from getting lost last year to find the hotel without trouble this year, and got checked in and settled in without incident. Attendance was down this year because it's been a rough year for a lot of folks, but the people who were there were happy and welcoming. After Opening Ceremonies, headed a couple blocks down to Maggie Miley's, the local Irish pub. Just a little expensive but the food is quite good. Returned in good time for my Guest of Honor concert, which went well enough despite my not having prepared as well as I should have for it. Filking Friday night went well, though we didn't last much past midnight.
Saturday I got to a panel with toastmaster Adam Seltzer, who's an amazingly interesting person (as well as an amazingly warped songwriter). I spent some time in the dealer's room with my display of tiger stuff and memorabilia from my trip to Ecuador in 2005. At the Never Ending Filk Panel we determined that the filk record producers are becoming less record labels and more independent producers. Survived an hour in the Wolfe's Lair with Golden Guest of honor Gene Wolfe, and then got to hear some of GoH Alex Bledsoe's reading before running off to change and scribble a few lines of notes for my Guest of Honor speech. The food at the banquet was pretty good, and I guess my speech was OK, at least no one threw any tomatoes at me. I managed to play a couple of games of Dominion and then heard most of Adam's concert. Open filking went well for a couple of hours, but we were done before 1. We're all so old.
Sunday was conversations and goodbyes. I stayed for the dead dog, but it was very low key, with only a few folks staying.
There will be a Chambanacon next year. Our good friend P.J. Ralph succumbed to cancer this year, and he left his art, games, and books to the con, which raised a nice amount of money. Next year we have Seanan McGuire as our guest of honor and lots of wonderful stuff, so I'm sure all you people who couldn't make it this year will be there next year.
I'm home in one piece from Windycon. Sorry I couldn't stay for more of the dead dog but as tired as I am now, I would not want to still be on the road for sure!
If I try to tell myself I'm supposed to write a con report now then I'll never post anything. The one thing I do want to make a permanent record of was dinner on Saturday night. Place in Glen Ellyn, so like a 10 minute drive from the Windycon hotel, called Hokkai. All you can eat sushi, including simple and fancy maki and a good selection of nigiri, plus appetizers. Very tasty and quite reasonably priced at $21.49 a head.
So I've just looked through the cards for the new Dominion set, Empires, and they look great. But I don't think another big expansion will fit in the 3 long boxes I carry my Dominion in, and I don't want to add yet another box. It already weighs a ton and takes up a lot of volume.
The week before last was the last time out for Hardened Scales in Standard for me (because last Friday I was at Kittencon). I finally made a few tweaks, and I want to record the final version of the deck. I got second place, and half the field was playing some version of the deck.
It's rainy and squishy and I feel like I just want to go back to bed and try again tomorrow. But I went out for my walk, and my brown thrasher is back singing his lovely song.
After spending the week fiddling with my EDH decks, I took the same standard deck to FNM. We had 10 people. I came in 3rd, after losing in the first round to the winner.
After FNM we actually had a chaos draft. Eddie (whose last name I don't know) had 28 unique packs. We got to first draft the packs and then draft the cards. It was fun, but I was up way too late.
I played my Hardened Scales deck at FNM again. We had 12 people. I lost in the first round to the eventual winner (it was a close game), and then won the next three, getting second place on tiebreaks.
There's a net deck that's trying to do the same things that's slightly different. It runs 4 Nissas (of which I own 0) and 4 Endless Ones (which I own 1). I haven't tried playing with either of those cards. A couple of copies of Nissa might be worth running, but I'm fairly certain that 4 is too many. I haven't tried Endless One, but it doesn't seem very good. It also runs more fetches, which is probably a good idea. (I keep drawing hands with only white mana, despite having only 7 Plains in the deck.) I'm really happy to see my deck talked about and played at big tournaments, but I'm afraid it may not do as well when it starts to be something that people are actually expecting.
Standard didn't fire last week, and it looked like it would fail again this week, but 8 people were there when rush of people who showed up at 6:30 finished. I went 3-0, with the same Hardened Scales list as two weeks ago.
It's time for me to go to bed, so I won't put in the details now. If I find myself motivated, I'll add them tomorrow.
WTF? I wrote this last night, but it didn't post, and I only noticed now.
I have returned from Capricon, where in spite of my initial feelings when I looked at the schedule, I was never without enjoyable ways to occupy my time.
Friday we arrived a little late and missed the beginning of billroper's Cafe set, but I got to hear several good songs. I realized while I was hearing those that 4:00 on Friday was a badly over scheduled chunk of time. I wanted to see beamjockey's presentation on Pluto, because pretty much all I know from the New Horizons mission is what made it onto the radio, which doesn't include actually seeing the pictures. After that ended, I walked through the dealer's room, where I found a few paperbacks I wanted to buy, and noticed that there were quite a few tables of authors hawking their apparently self-published books, which I think is a good trend in general, although between my slow reading speed and my limited budget, I generally keep my book habit satisfied with mass market paperbacks. I also got a quick run through the art show. At least there still is an art show. And there was some nice art in it. Hopefully the people who have money found some they liked. Then we went to dinner at Spear's which is just across the parking lot from the hotel, but that was quite far enough to go through the gale. Spear's is a gourmet $15 hamburger place, though they have a few things that aren't served on a bun. The food is good and the portions are reasonable; it's a bit expensive but everything is in Chicago. Friday open filk went pretty well, despite the fact that we never got the lights turned all the way on.
Saturday, after I got up and had a combined breakfast/lunch in the room, I went down to the game room for a bit. I sat at an empty table, stood my Splendor box up, and read my book, and just about the time I decided to go head to the cafe, a couple of people joined me for a game. It was a good game, but it ran longer than I expected and by the time it was done it was halfway through Sassafras' set in the cafe. So I decided to play the game that one of my Splendor players was there demoing, which has gone through a successful kickstarter and is apparently now in production. In a marketing failure, in spite of the fact that after playing a couple of games and geeking about game design, I walked away not actually remembering the name of the game. I think it's Legends of somethingorother. It seemed like a fairly well designed little game, there are several different strategies/ways to get points and they can all be valid. The theme is thin. The card art is decent. If I see it in the game store and I recognize it I might get it. Then I got to the last half of Mike Nixon's set in the cafe, which I have to confess I wasn't really paying attention to, and then Three Fifths' set, which was the high point of the weekend. Three Fifths are just getting better all the time, and they had sweetmusic_27 with them, doing her magic stuff which she claims she hasn't rehearsed, but she was sounding as wonderful as the others. Then we decided we didn't want to brave the elements so we went to dinner at Saranello's with filkart and ithiriel. Saranello's is a serious restaurant that people with expensive cars who aren't staying at the hotel frequent, and by those standards its prices aren't that high. (Pastas are about $15, fancier entrees like $25.) The food is quite good, and it's really convenient to be in the hotel. Note to self: next year, get Saturday's dinner organized on Friday and get a reservation. This might even allow closing down the cafe, getting dinner, and then getting to Space Time Theater, which we missed. After dinner, I dropped by the game room, and got another game of Splendor, which was a pretty good game. I was the last player, and I managed to sneak in with 15 points, with both of the other players ready to go to 18 if they had one more turn. Then open filk, where I was very tired but managed to enjoy the music for 3 hours or so before giving in to fatigue, where of course once I staggered into bed, I couldn't get to sleep for hours.
Sunday, we got our stuff to the car and went to Toast and Jam, which was pretty nice, and then we headed out into the growing storm, since tcgtrf had skipped out on his reading due to the weather forecast. There was a little snow on the roads, but it wasn't really a problem, except that birder2's windshield washer was not working, which made seeing the road a little iffy.
Winter War was this weekend (well, it's still going on, but I won't be there tomorrow because I'll be at EFRC). I never got around to either submitting events or preregistering, but I played in 3 events. Dominion, which I should have been running (the person running it did not know the game well and arbitrarily said that he would be doing some things different from the rules). He was running with only Adventures cards, which isn't a good idea -- Adventures cards are a little broken, especially when they're all together. I won the first game despite my luck making the cards I had underperform. The second game had Port as the only path to extra actions, and my bad luck meant that I only got to buy one pair before they sold out. We played a third game which was remarkable because all of the actions game extra actions, so Port (which was there again) was only good, not great, and Coin of the Realm, which is huge in games where extra actions matter, was a dud.
The next event was a double, Suburbia and Castles of Mad King Ludwig. I hadn't actually played Suburbia before, and I was struggling a bit, because despite trying as hard as I could to boost my income, I didn't have any money for a long time. Turns out that even though they don't give income every turn, lakes are a better plan than they seemed, and Homeowner's Association (which I didn't get) is kinda broken. I finally got something rolling when I got a Stadium and started racking up my reputation, but I still didn't win. Then we played Castles, which I'd played once before, but we ran out of time, when they closed the room we had probably another half hour to go. I did all right but not awesome. I'd play either of these games again but I don't feel the urge to run out and buy them.
This afternoon, I played a game I had not heard of before, although I guess it's a couple of years old, called Keyflower. The name turns out to be a mashup of "key", because it's part of a series of Key games, and "Mayflower". The theme is that we're building settlements in the new world. It's a worker placement, resource management game, so familiar themes but a bit different from anything I'd seen before, and it definitely seems to have replay value, but I don't recall ever seeing it on my local game stores' shelves. I concentrated on having a lot of meeples, upgrading my tiles, and taking other points as they came along, and won the game, but I don't know if I actually played well.
So I got up this morning, and it was really cold in the house. The furnace was flashing an error code.
I called the furnace guy, and he found my house a bit more than an hour later, and saw that there was a visible hole in the igniter. (Once he pointed it out I could see it.) He tested it to be sure, and it was bad; he installed a new one; and now I have heat again. Cost a little more than I would like but not enough to really be a problem
I'm also going to update on Magic. I didn't touch a Magic deck for the first two weeks of 2016. Friday at FNM, I played my Hardened Scales deck in standard, the last time before the new set becomes legal. I did awful, 1-3. It's a marginal deck that has to get lucky to do well against serious decks, and I just didn't.
This weekend was the prerelease for Oath of the Gatewatch. I went to the event today. My pool was lousy -- I didn't get much value and I didn't get cards that seemed to make much of a deck. I had far too little removal. Really, the only thing I had was bombs, so I ran what ramp I had and a bunch of high cost spells. After losing the first 2 rounds, I won the next 3, so I got one prize pack. My streak of winning the door prize lottery is also done -- I got sleeves.
I haven't posted in a while because I've been a bit busy with stuff, but since I use this journal as a record of my own life I want to note some of it.
For New Year's I went to nbowa's. Hung out, played poker once (wasn't the first one out, was actually ahead at the break, but as the stakes went up I quickly ran out of chips), played some other games, had some alcohol but didn't get drunk, generally got to hang out with a bunch of cool people. I did bring my guitar and played a few things.
Last weekend, birder2 and I went to GAFilk. The drive was long but the weather was not bad. The music and company were fine. I was really tired most of the weekend. It did not help that I forgot the filter for my humidifier, so I didn't have that relief from the dry hotel air, but I seemed to be sleeping as well as normal, just not feeling rested. I was particularly having trouble Saturday night, where I was mangling songs I should be able to play relatively well.
I started to have symptoms of a cold Tuesday, and skipped my regular activities in favor of bed rest until Friday.
