Getting involved at a convention

Smaller conventions are typically run by non-profit organizations, and as such, are a labor of love put on by volunteers. I spent last weekend at Capricon, an awesome winter convention in Chicagoland.

You won’t see a lot of big name media guests and lines for signatures at this type of convention.  Instead, you’ll have a handful of guests – authors, artists, musicians, and others – who enjoy interacting with other geeks.  Take a look at WindyCon’s website for an example of guests coming to Chicagoland this fall.

Conventions don’t magically happen.  They’re the result of extensive planning, typically starting more than a year before the event.  If this year’s convention can announce the dates and location for next year, that means there’s a contract for the location and somebody has already been working on next year, all while preparing this year’s convention.  And that’s just the beginning.

There’s a schedule, generally provided in the program book and a portable version called a pocket program.  The schedule encompasses the various departments within the convention – areas that have to be staffed with department heads and more, along with volunteers to help during the convention.  Most small conventions have a con suite, which offers food to attendees.  That means shopping for food and drinks ahead of time, and having people available throughout the hours that con suite is open, including people who can handle food.  (I don’t know what is needed for that, I just know there’s something special.)  

There are typically panels – multiple rooms running various topics concurrently – and gaming.  Somebody comes up with panel topics and finds people who are willing to discuss those with whoever shows up.  If there’s a game schedule, that’s another set of volunteers that somebody needs to coordinate.  Even if there’s no game schedule, there’s a games library and a checkout process.  Plus registration, operations, security, art show and auction… a lot of people are needed to make these conventions happen. 

And then there are the parties, typically run by groups of fans or other conventions… maybe I’ll talk about those next week. 

Setting the mood with music

Music is all around us. There’s the hum of the furnace pushing air into the house, the slight rattle as something tumbles in the dryer, the percussive beat to the cat jumping on the counter, and the subsequent crash of a drying eggshell shattering on the floor.  

In January, I posted a song on Facebook each day as the first song of the day.  These ranged from silly (Mahna Mahna) to fun (Que Te Pasa) to heart-wrenching (Empty Chairs at Empty Tables).  My qualifier was that I post the first song I sang – even if just a snippet – on that day.  The song itself didn’t necessarily set the mood, starting the day singing is always a good thing. 

And assortment of radio stations on Pandora

Some mornings I start by walking on the treadmill; on those days, my first song was more likely to come from Pandora. As you can see from the screenshot, that doesn’t narrow it down much… my stations include Disney, Broadway, 80’s music in English and Spanish, along with some other odd mixes.

At work, if I have any music on, it’s usually classical; I find it hard to focus on working if I want to sing along. In the spring, the music selection will probably be open windows and chirping birds. But for now, there’s snow on the ground and I can’t hear the cardinals at the bird feeder through the closed windows and the humming furnace.

Dolittle… a fun romp with talking animals

Robert Downey Jr. returns to the big screen in Dolittle as an eccentric rich man who takes a young orphan under his wing while demonstrating a tendency towards creating wacky gadgets and talking with animals.  I know, it sounds quite similar to his role as Iron Man, but in Dolittle, the British kid gets to keep his own accent.  And there are multiple animals, instead of just a talking raccoon.  To be fair, Tom Holland may have kept his real accent too… he voices a dog.  (The less that is said of Downey’s variable accent, the better.)

We had seen the previews for Dolittle repeatedly and thought it would be an entertaining pair of hours.  It’s not high quality literature or cinema, it doesn’t even address the personal and social issues that Eddie Murphy delved into as Doctor Dolittle in his incarnation of the role.  The over-arching plot is that Dolittle and sidekicks must search for a miracle cure for the Queen on an undiscovered island, using only notes that Dolittle’s late wife left behind… after they retrieve those notes.

Most of the animals have ongoing issues that Dolittle is supposed to be solving, including a gorilla who’s so frightened of confrontation, he is hesitant to play chess; an injured squirrel who amuses viewers with his occasional commentary; and an emotionally stunted tiger living in the shadow of his brother, who as everybody knows, eats poachers.  The silliness is increased by an over-the-top villain who is clearly envious of Dolittle’s rapport with animals and is desperately trying to outdo him on anything.

This movie’s good for a few laughs.  If you happen to see it at a theater that sells alcohol (and you’re of an appropriate age), the alcohol will probably help.  Especially when Dolittle helps the dragon.

Blending hobbies: crochet and karate

Sometimes it’s fun to blend my hobbies. Over the years, I’ve crocheted assorted images into pillows or towels, and even coasters with Space Invaders aliens. You can see some of them here. Some of the fandom-related items have appeared in art shows at local conventions, looking for new homes.

The karate ones have only been created as gifts and donations. I carry a crocheted karate towel in my sparring bag, and a matching one was donated to the raffle prizes at the 2016 World Championships. (I have no idea who it went home with.) A karate scarf I made with all of our belt colors was auctioned off at a holiday party a few years ago.

Blue pillow with white figure doing a flying sidekick to the right; purple pillow with a white figure doing flying sidekick to the left

When Eagle Academy, the karate school I attend, announced that they were going to have a Casino Night with raffle prizes and a silent auction, I crocheted a pair of karate pillows with flying sidekick figures. The Casino Night (21 and over, of course) is a fundraiser to raise awareness about human trafficking. It’s paired with a Parents’ Night Out event, so kids can play in the awesome gymnastics area across the hall while parents play games in the dojang.

If you’re free tomorrow night (Saturday, February 1st, 2020), considering attending the Casino Night in Aurora from 6:30-9:30pm. The address is 881 Shoreline Drive.

Garden planning for 2020

I got an early start this year and accomplished one of my goals already – laying out a garden plan for the year. The work on it this year is fairly significant, because I calculated and mapped out the gardening space for square foot gardening. It’s a method I’ve been using for several years now, but this is the first time I’ve mapped the space ahead of time at this house.

Square foot gardening layouts for the garden beds and an assortment of seeds for planting

As you can see in the image, I have a decent amount of growing space – each square within a bed is a square foot, so I have 30 in the keyhole bed, and 16 each in the squares. The triangle is a bit awkward for squares, so we decided to try something different there instead of figuring out how 8.76 square feet maps out in a triangle. I ordered a kiwi plant, cute little ones that grow on vines and might survive our winters.

Except for the sunflowers, all of the seeds are allocated for an initial planting date (weather permitting, of course) in one of the beds shown above. The sunflowers will be split between the old shed area and the center of the star bed out front.

You’re probably thinking that I have way more planting area than I have seeds… and you’d be right. I decided not to start seeds indoors this year; I’ll be purchasing tomatoes, peppers, Brussels sprouts, and possibly a couple other plants locally once it’s warm enough to transplant them. That and any basic herbs that don’t come back in the star and the garden tower. The chives, mint, and cilantro always come back, and the dill probably will, but I have to see how the basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme handle the winter.

There’s snow on the ground, so it’s at least a couple months before I can even start the early seeds – radishes, carrots, peas, kale, and mustard greens. But I’m sure spring will sneak up on us faster than expected, and I’m glad I’m ready for it this year, at least when it comes to garden planning.

The Phantom of the Opera

I finally saw a stage performance of The Phantom of the Opera. Back in college, when we stopped in London on the way to my year abroad in Glasgow, it was my third choice, and we only had time to see two shows; my first choices were Cats and Les Miserables.  Interestingly, I’ve seen both of those again, multiple times, but kept missing Phantom.  When I received a Broadway in Chicago e-mail saying it was coming to town in December, I decided that this would finally be my opportunity to see it.  I checked our schedules and bought tickets.  Simple, right? 

Not quite… my work holiday party was scheduled late, and I ended up flying back from California that day; my sister-in-law got to use my ticket.  So I bought myself a single ticket for the following Saturday.  I’m glad I finally saw it, I love the music, and would see it again.  [Spoilers after this point!]

But holy moly, what a bunch of nutcases!  Just looking at the three main characters, wow.  You have Christine who is fine with receiving singing lessons from a mysterious voice and initially unconcerned with the acts of violence that propel her to a lead role.  Kudos to Raoul for his devotion to his long lost childhood friend, but he ranges from gaslighting her – telling her there’s no Phantom immediately after a violent attack at the theatre – to somewhere between pushy and over-protective while helping plot to capture the Phantom, using Christine as bait. 

As to the Phantom himself, having insinuated himself into Christine’s life by advancing her training and pushing out the previous leading lady with seemingly random violence, he throws a temper tantrum when Christine falls in love with someone else.  And then he manipulates the entire theatre crew to position himself with Christine on stage, so he can propose to her in front of an audience, knowing that she’s in love with Raoul.  Talk about audacity! 

All’s well that ends well, I suppose… the Phantom, rejected, eventually allows Raoul and Christine to leave, though he presumably lingers around Paris for a time before moving to New York for the sequel, Love Never Dies.

Cats (the movie)

You may have heard that the movie version of Cats received terrible reviews.  This is not one of them, presumably because I went in expecting the Broadway musical… and got the Broadway musical. 

If anything, this star-studded version of Cats was easier to follow than the stage show, because they added bits of dialogue explaining the overall plot.  They took some minor liberties by adding motivation for Macavity’s actions (played by the amazing Idris Elba) and replacing Growltiger’s song with light action in the story. 

Where the movie stands out is by using technology to do what they can’t do on stage.  Jennyanydots’s song typically involves other cats donning mouse and cockroach costumes, but in the movie, they have separate actors for those roles, and more importantly, were able to use technology to show the size difference between the mice, cockroaches, and cats.  Of course, this allows for the on screen eating of some of the cockroaches….

Technology combined with good sets were used to good purpose when showing cats in human places; the size difference helps the perspective.  A human bed is positively huge, even with three cats on it.  (That may be slightly flawed… I can tell you from personal experience that the bed is quite crowded when all three of my cats are on it!) 

I gather some people were weirded out by the CGI fur.  I’m of the opinion they were watching the wrong thing.  The fur was neat, and the color variety amazing amongst the cats, but the impressive use of CGI was the expressiveness of the cats’ ears and tails.  Those are hard effects to do on a live stage, so I’m glad they made good use of technology to accent how cats use their entire bodies to express themselves. 

All in all, three tails up, one from each cat at my house. 

Goals we set are goals we get.

We’ve reached a new year – 2020 – and as I do each year, I take the time to look back on my victories from last year and the goals I’m setting for next year. I realized belatedly that a couple of my goals related to organizing around the house didn’t meet the SMART requirement – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based. Specifically, they weren’t really measurable – “organize the shelves” doesn’t have a defined end.

I completed two project management courses as part of my perpetual goal of maintaining my certification; I started a third, which I should finish early this year.  I added a new garden bed and grew delicious strawberries in it, had some delightful kale and pea crops, and lost every squash plant in the garden to hungry woodchucks.  This year’s garden plan (still in progress) includes planting squash in the higher bed, where the woodchucks are less likely to eat the plants before they have fruit. 

My old shed is gone, I’ve re-used most of the bricks that we found behind it, and am expecting to plant sunflowers where it used to be.  It’ll be a while before that planting happens, since we’re barely into winter at this stage.   My first seed catalog has arrived, so I do expect to have a plan done by the end of this month, but I don’t expect to put any seeds in the ground – not even kale or spinach – until at least late March. 

I deferred a couple goals to this year, such as re-doing the master bedroom closet and testing for my hapkido black belt.  I added other goals that replace them, at least in terms of me having time to accomplish everything – I think I started 2019 with 11 annual goals, and I finished with a list of 15.  I’m starting 2020 with 20 annual goals and 12 weekly ones, which include a minimum number of German lessons on Duolingo each week and using something from the freezer (clearing out old harvests well before the next one needs freezer space).  

What are your goals for the year? 

Pedestrian thoughts

I had the opportunity recently to walk in two rather different environments. (Three if you count walking near home, but the amount of traffic is significantly lighter here.) I rarely drive in downtown Chicago; I prefer to take the train in, and if the weather is nice, walk to wherever I’m going.

If you’ve ever walked in downtown Chicago, you know there’s strength in unity… the larger the group of pedestrians is, the more likely that turning cars will have to wait, instead of them pushing through the intersection and making people on foot wait.  Yes, in theory, pedestrians have the right of way in a crosswalk.  It’s a lovely theory and doesn’t usually hold up to drivers’ impatience.

Imagine my surprise then, walking in Carlsbad, California and having drivers defer to me, a lone pedestrian in a crosswalk.  This happened multiple times, so I don’t think it was just a fluke.  The weirder part about it was that the turning cars stopped even if I wasn’t to their side of the crosswalk yet, waiting until I was clear before taking the turn.

I was, as ever, delighted not to get run over while out walking, and would love it if the drivers here picked up similar habits.  The ease of walking in Carlsbad certainly explains how I managed to walk 18 miles in my week there.  Of course, the warmer weather helped too.

Thoughts on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I finished watching season 3 of The Expanse with a couple weeks to spare before the release of season 4. As I pondered what to watch next, Amazon Prime suggested The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I recalled a couple friends mentioning it on Facebook, so thought it would be a good placeholder while waiting for the next season of The Expanse.

Oops.

What do I mean by “oops”?  Season 4 of The Expanse released a week ago – and I’m loving the online release of entire seasons, instead of having to wait a week  between episodes – and I haven’t seen a single episode.  I’m almost done with season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; when I finished, I’ll have to decide between its recently released season 3 or season 4 of The Expanse.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is set in New York City in the late 1950s and centers, appropriately, on Midge Maisel, whose life takes a sudden turn at the end of the pilot episode.  She suddenly goes from a supportive housewife whose husband is trying stand-up comedy on the side to being the stand-up comic.  Not surprisingly, given the era, she encounters discrimination as a comedienne, but verbally holds her own against heckling audiences and other unsupportive comedians.  

Each episode is a mix of seriously funny content and the drama of Midge’s home life, not the least of which is her day job at the make-up counter.  This is a truly funny show that keeps viewers coming back for more.