July 2024 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Voting for the Hugo Awards

One of the privileges of a WorldCon membership – whether you’re attending the convention or just supporting the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) with a membership – is the ability to nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards. After the committee filtered through the nominees to determine the top six in each of fifteen categories, they assembled a Voter Packet that was made available to the membership. That Voter Packet includes a mix of excerpts, entire books, trailers for one movie and a couple movies in their entirety.

In terms of quantity of material to review, it was certainly overwhelming. I made a deliberate effort to read the material provided in the Novels, Short Stories, and Astounding New Writer categories, and was lucky enough to have seen half of the movies already. As I polished off what I was going to make it through in a specific category, I logged into my ballot and updated that section. Pictured below is the Novella category with no votes logged.

Screenshot of 2024 Hugo nominees for the Best Novella category

Each category starts will all items listed as Unranked; you select the numbers one through six for each item you’re voting on. You may also use the No Award option at the bottom, if you think none of the nominated works deserve the award. You don’t have to rank all six items, and you can place the No Award in between rankings if you think some items should earn an award and some shouldn’t.

Oddly, to me at least, there is betting on the Hugo Awards. I only found out about that because there was some fraudulent voting in this year’s process that the committee identified and removed from the counts. Regardless, the entire process of assembling the nominees, and Voter Packet, and tabulating the votes is tremendous effort by a team of volunteers. I applaud them and appreciate the new literature this process has exposed me to.

Rethinking our approach to Bristol

I have mentioned several times that we enjoy attending Bristol Renaissance Faire each year. But in last year’s post, I also mentioned some unpleasant waits… in particular, the hour it took us to get from the highway exit (after driving more than an hour to get to that point) to actually walking through the gates of Faire. That was compounded by arriving after the food lines started getting long – because of the traffic delay – with the perennial problem of finding somewhere to sit, knowing that finding a place with a table is unlikely. So we approached this year a little differently, specifically stopping to eat lunch most of the way there, which allowed us both adequate seating (with a table!) and a minimal delay from the highway into Bristol’s parking.

Cirque du Sewer's last show of the day involves fire. In this case, a cat jumps through a flaming hoop from one stool to another.

Since we had already eaten, it was easy to select snacks at less crowded times, and we even found seating at one point in what used to be the Kid’s Kingdom. As an added bonus, arriving later meant we had energy to stay until almost closing, catching different performances from some of our favorite acts, such as Cirque du Sewer’s Fire Show, which includes a cat jumping through a flaming hoop. In a stroke of luck, we had near perfect weather for opening day (as opposed to the next day, which had storms that shut down some shows for safety and eventually the Faire itself).

Assuming the prices don’t continue to rise astronomically – ticket prices increased last year, and the parking jumped from $10 to $15 this year – we’ll probably follow this approach in future years.

Still searching for creative time

The search for free time is a recurring theme this year, between travel, local excursions, work, conventions… the list seems never-ending. But I have stories to write, fun things to crochet, images that need drawing and coloring! The trick that I’m learning is that no matter how enthusiastic I am about the project, I don’t actually need to do it all in one sitting. The images below are a good example of that.

A black and white image with a patterned cloud in the upper third of the page and raindrops scattered through the bottom two thirds.

I follow a couple artists on Instagram, mainly ones who focus on watercolors, which is a medium I have little experience with. This particular image came from Andrea Nelson’s account. While the basic concept is fairly similar to what she did, hers has a lot more dark space in the cloud, separating the sections more. That’s one of the fun things about working from an inspiration… I’m making my own version, not a copy. Even the drawing part was split across multiple sessions as I had time… those little circles in the cloud take a while to draw!

The same image with a patterned cloud in the upper third of the page and raindrops scattered through the bottom two thirds, now with a blue background and different colors in the raindrops. The cloud itself is still black and white patterns.

The next step was painting the image. I started with the background, then moved to colors for the raindrops. It’s been a busy couple weeks, I can’t remember if I actually did the raindrops in a different sitting than the background. I did, of course, have to let the background dry before trying to reach past it to the raindrops. And I had to let the raindrops dry before outlining them with a white gel pen. Like a recipe, I tried to stay true to the original art for the first iteration. The next iteration – still a work in progress – is a little bit more me, and I already have ideas for a third iteration.

In black and white, a patterned cloud with meeple falling below it.

That’s right, it’s raining meeple! I’m not as happy with the cloud on this one – I like the first cloud more, with more subdivisions and the patterns seeming more chaotic. I’ll keep that in mind for the next one.

That said, I definitely like having the meeple there. The drawing was all done in one sitting, and the background paint (not pictured) on its own when I had at most 15 minutes to spare. Next up is painting the meeple.

What do you think the third version will have?

Alaska: Shore Excursions

Our Alaska cruise involved a day at sea, three port days, and another two days at sea – including one passing through Glacier Bay National Park – before ending in Whittier, which is near Anchorage. Most of the movement between the ports was done at night, giving us a reasonable amount of daytime in each port for shore excursions if we wanted.

We wanted. In fact, we managed to schedule four excursions across the three ports, without having to feel like we were rushing from one thing to another. In each port, we had some time to explore the area (mostly shopping) near the ship, including finding lunch twice. The photos below are from our shore excursions, grouped by port: Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway.

Ultimate Saxman Experience: Cultural Showcase, Native Crafts & Culinary Tasting

An eagle ornament and paint near the beginning of the painting process.
Alaska Craft Soda from Forty-Ninth State Brewing – a root beer can stacked on a spruce tip soda can
A trio of eagles carved onto branches of a pole
Tlingit dancers displaying the back of their capes, identifying their family affiliations.
The decorated front of the building where we saw the Tlingit dancers.
View of the water from the Saxman Village.
A totem pole in progress.
D&D Mammoth Ivory Dice at the Saxman Village store. It’s a standard set of 7 dice, priced at $1000.

Best of Juneau: Whale Watching, Mendenhall Glacier & Orca Point Lodge Meal (yes, we saw whales, but they don’t show up well on the photos I took)

A mountain view near Mendenhall Glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some green between us and the glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some people for scale.
Wandering the path near Mendenhall Glacier, alternating between talking and singing because continuous noise alerts bears of your presence.
St. Yakov, the boat we took on our whale watching excursion.
Orca Point Lodge, where we stopped for an early dinner during our whale watching excursion.
A land bridge outside the Orca Point Lodge. We were warned that the land bridge would be underwater by the time we finished dinner. (It was.)
Sea lions lounging on a buoy with raindrops on the windows.
A great view of mountains and water on our whale watching excursion.

Kitchen Science Alaska: Garden-to-Table Skagway and Musher’s Camp & Sled Dog Experience

Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, the science part which involved beakers of mystery liquid and testing for acidity.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, where we saw a Big Green Egg and another smoker.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, raised garden beds growing mostly salad greens, which don’t travel to remote areas well.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, feeding the sourdough.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, assembling our own Baked Alaska desserts.
Holland America’s Noordam in Skagway with a mountain in the background.
Mountain views behind the Noordam while docked in Skagway.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Me in front of an amazing view on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
A passenger view of the vehicle – a Unimog – we rode at Musher’s Camp to go up the mountain to see the sled dogs.
An action shot of the sled dogs, just starting their run, from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.
An action shot of the sled dogs from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.