I want the time and money to:
Cook more from scratch
Join a vegetable, fruit, meat, andor dairy CSA
Compost
Grow herbs (basil and cilantro for sure)
Get my private pilot's certification
Knit more
Take a sewing course to learn all the basics I am ignorant of
Sew more
Learn quilting
Practice piano
Practice horn
Join a community band/symphony/orchestra
Take a Thai cooking class
Organize my mp3 collection
Keep the sink from becoming full of dirty dishes
Roomba the living room more regularly
Keep my desk area clean
Exercise more
Bellydance
Read more books, both fun (sci-fi/fantasy) and educational (Great Books)
LARP regularly (monthly?)
Write a LARP
Volunteer for cons I like (Arisia, Intercon)
Be more involved in politics/community
Take a vacation out of the country
Take more vacations that aren't cons/meetups
Buy new glasses
Go on a cruise
Go skiing

Italics indicates something I've made progress on or completed

Eight years ago I was crazy excited by the idea of 64MB of information on a keychain. People are regularly carrying 1,000x that information on their persons these days. Neat!

Hahaha, I found my first exposure to slashfic. Harry Potter, of course!

Ah, the decade in review.

The weather isn't letting up, and lots of you can't make it. The concert is canceled, to be rescheduled for a later date.

Sadface.

For those of you planning on coming to the concert today, we are indeed aware of the weather and its possible affect on travelling. Our plan is to decide sometime in the 12:30-1:00 timeframe, based on the weather then, if we're still going to go on. At this point, we're aware that the concert isn't going to be what we wanted it to be, but it can still be SOMETHING...

Am I correct in that many of you would not mind hearing holiday tunes in early January if we wanted to reschedule?

EDIT: Concert postponed.

Hey, everybody! I have recently joined an a cappella group, and we are doing a holiday concert type thing! It would make me really happy to see my friends there! I know this isn't everybody's thing and that many folks might be out of town (either by default or because of the date), but if possible please spare an hour of your time and a suggested donation of $10 out of your wallet and come hear (and sing?)

Important details:
Sunday, December 20, 2:00pm
Unity Church, 6 William Street, Somerville - approx. 5 minutes' walk from Davis Square T
All proceeds go to benefit the Harvest Pantry - suggested donation $10

Relevant details:
5 women, <1 hour of singing, with a sing-along section (so you can get your holiday cheer on, too!)
Medieval and modern carols - I think out of all of our pieces, there's only one that is both a modern "Christmas carol" and that we're singing "straight." There's some really gorgeous stuff in here, guys. lignota is an awesome arranger.
Out early enough for a dinner mob afterwards... *tempt tempt*

( Poster here! )

Hey everybody!! Sassafrass, the a cappella singing group I joined a couple months ago, is going to put on a holiday concert. It would mean a lot for me for my friends to show up and be supportive for my debut!

By concert, I mean we're five women singing fewer than a dozen songs, the whole thing will take less than an hour, and we're (likely) singing at a local food pantry and requesting people make a donation there as the price of the show. So nothing huge, formal, or requiring tons of your time. That said, the songs are gorgeous and the cause is good.

The concert is currently slated for Sunday, December 20. More details when they're hammered out, but I wanted to semi-date-grab now.

Right. So this post is about something stupid and inane when compared to all the stuff I'm dealing with, but hey I get my coping where I get it; as long as I don't completely ignore job-hunting I'm allowed to obsess about a LARP, right?

( A lot of random notes and thoughts about Rage Across the Cape, for those who care. )

alexx_kay is an awesome friend and is treating me to a visit to Sleep No More on Thursday, December 10, at 7pm. I say this because you should also get tickets for then so we can decompress all together afterwards!

Alexx's first post slash review of the event is here and contains no spoilers. His second post, after thinking about the event for a few days, is here and doesn't contain spoilers as much as hints on how to enjoy the most of the event if you're sure you're only going to be able to go once. (It seems to be mutually agreed by all who have attended that you will want to go more than once.) It still might be more spoilery than some want, though, so be forewarned.

So buy tickets! Come along! Art!

I'm cleaning off my computer desktop and found dream.txt, created on June 8 2008, saying the following:

* large ship containing platoon out for years, we all thought we were just in training, turns out we were actually fighting
* I was hypnotized (as platoon commandeR) such that I wouldn't remember the actual battles adn still think we were all joking
* Some team member or I figured it out and hypnotized me and we were able to see wat was going on
* We retruend to earth, and relativity had the effect that Earth hadn't aged too much perhaps 50 years and once we docked we all began to age immediately into old folks
* One of the couples had a child who instead regressed back to being a baby? mine?
* started with me competing against three others in command school
* had these tasks to do that pitted us against each other, computers - both physical and mental
* remember being on the ship and wanting to log onto IRC, but realizing we had no terminals - we had plenty of opportunities for games and fraternization with each other, because we had to have that bond and be a good fighting team. But no contact with the outside world, because well we were in space and they wouldn't let us know it
* Once I remembered, dream turned into computer simulation of what we had done. our ship looked kind of like a scorpion! crawling around other planet, fighting other scorpion ships, you could see where we took damage and crawled amongst buildings - not quite like Tron, but similar. At one point we were pretty much bullrushing through groups of civilians. Ship was not actually that big, really, large dormatory
* Then there was simulation of what would happen if we won - kind of a flowchart where this green dot on a globe had several green lines coming off of it, and the successes we had followed down specific lines, but unfortunately it seemed we were heading towards a final dot that referred to destroying our own world (by pissing off enemies? by accident? had our near-relativistic speed pushed the Earth's orbit off course?)

Due to the spelling,etc errors therein, I assume I wrote this JUST after waking up to try to get the dream down before I forgot it. Interesting!

My membership in the Broadway Across American e-Club has acquired me this email what reads:
Special Pre-Sale Offer For You!
Buy Tickets Before the General Public
In The Heights
January 12-24
Boston Opera House

I believe, my friends, it is on like Donkey Kong.

I am going to go ahead and make the executive decision that we are NOT going the week before Arisia, because I will die be completely unable to enjoy the show due to stress. That leaves the following dates:
Tue 1/19 7:30pm
Wed 1/20 7:30pm
Thu 1/21 7:30pm
Fri 1/22 8:00pm
Sat 1/23 2:00pm and 8:00pm
Sun 1/24 2:00pm and 7:30pm

Ticket range: $44.05 for the ass-back of the balcony, $56.75 for front balcony/side mezz, $86.10 for mezz center, $102.50 for orchestra/front mezz.

Thoughts?

I am sad that etherial and rosinavs cannot honeymoon in Maine.

I told myself I was getting in bed by 1am tonight, dammit.

Then I balanced my checkbook, paid bills, caught up on *reading* others' LJs, and friended-back a bunch of folks who have friended me recently (Hi guys and gals!), and now it's 3am. *sigh*

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
- John Adams

Anyone wanting to join for tasty brunch, jazz musics, and some HONK should be at Johnny D's in Davis Square at 11:15. Sorry for late notice.

(Also, I will be leaving from there to go to Code Monkey: the Musical at BU. You can also accompany me there!)

A little under a month ago, queenortart (who I know via Intercon, but am not sure we've ever been face-to-face introduced) posted to interconlarp with a call for help. She was looking for NYC and Boston-area folks to help her surprise a pair of honeymooning friends with special gifts without spending an arm and a leg having the hotels do it.

I have a strong romantic streak and really really really really really really love surprises, and like making the world a place where this kind of thing happens (in the hopes that someday it will happen to me.) So I volunteered. Over the weekend, queenortart emailed me saying that Mr. and Mrs. X were in Y hotel in Boston, staying until Wednesday the 7th, my budget was $100-150, and they already received champagne and Godiva chocolates in NYC. Go crazy.

This email very, very nearly got lost in the shuffle of the past few days, which would have made me incredibly sad. Instead, when my tabletop game got canceled last night but I was trying to plan with zapf something else to do, my eyes fell on it and I realized I had only last night to enact this plan.

So huge ginormous thanks to zapf for driving me around last night. We hit up the Wine and Cheese Cask in Somerville, where I got all wide-eyed and clueless at the staff in return for a recommendation on a (rather expensive, to me) bottle of rosé and a triple-cream cheese to go along, with a couple different types of cracker. We tried Burdick's next in hopes of getting some chocolate-dipped $FRUIT, but it had JUST closed. :( Stopped by Target just to get a little wicker basket to lay everything in, and while I'm slightly ashamed of it, got a small amount of Hershey's Bliss chocolates (with melty raspberry center) just to scatter at the bottom of the basket. The final piece of the puzzle was a bunch of big fat red globe grapes from Shaw's. We arranged it all in the basket and headed off to the hotel. The front desk wouldn't give us the room number of Mr. and Mrs. X, which is fine because they instead offered to deliver our basket. We dashed off a quick note (I did not actually write, "Congratulations on your nuptials!" in fancy, flowy script like I wanted to) wishing them well from their anonymous Boston benefactors, stuck it in the basket, handed it off to the staff, and considered MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I just really, really hope the hotel in fact delivered the basket!

I got monetarily paid back for all of that, plus queenortart might bring something special from England to Intercon for me this year. But the whole plan was more about paying it forward than getting paid back.

zombie_dog and I are in search of a ride from Camberville/Boston/anywhere T-accessible to Worcester for doompuppy's birthday party on Saturday. Anyone available? Ideally we're interested in staying for the partier portions of the evening, yet heading back early enough for him to not die at work the next morning (i.e. can't stay overnight in Worcester.) Please halp!

So guys. Guys. Not to continuously be all JoCo fangirl on you, but look: Code Monkey: the Musical.

More info here.

I'll be going to the matinee showing on the 11th.

Ooft! This was a full weekend and a fuckton of fun. I will be happy to finish this post and crash, though.

On Friday evening I went to 90s Night at the Common Ground in Allston with hermitgeecko. I'd been before, but that was... wow, over a year ago. I really want to make this a more regular trip; certainly not weekly, but once every couple of months maybe. It's a cheap, fun night out. hermitgeecko and I had a fantastic time cutting up the floor all night long, so I'm guessing I'll be able to convince her to go again. :)

Saturday daytime was datetime and Rock Banding and other video gaming with zombie_dog and briefly kibbutzing with tkitch in the Foundation kitchen. Evening was the pre-JonathanCoulton/PaulandStormConcert dinner, where I determined once and for all that "double bock" is a synonym for "tasty to put in juldea's mouth," and then the waiting in line (or not at all in line, mister, no really) and the actual concert. Being there early snagged us awesome seats (thanks, rigel and londo!) Paul and Storm did a fantastic funny show as usual, powering through even as the Boston crowd wouldn't STFU about "what she said" et al. I still think they do a little bit too much of the same schtick every time with some of their songs and their choreographed movements, but at least this show there were new songs! Jonathan did a fantastic set as always, probably fully half of the songs chosen being not the "popular" ones and ones I didn't think he'd do live ("Betty and Me" and "So Far So Good"!) He also Kanye West-ed himself during "Mr Fancy Pants," which would earn my little internet-denizen-heart for life if he didn't already have it. *sigh*

Today was SLEEPING IN and then a leisurely morning on the internet followed by a sudden mad rush to get out of the house to get to Never After. Social foo occurred, but I think will mostly result in good. I hope. The show was awesome: quite entertaining, brilliant lyrics (I never got my chance to rant about how much I loved some of the homophone wordplay), cute story. There were a few negatives but certainly not enough to bring the whole thing down, and I really do hope it explodes from here. Then another food mob, at Martsa in Davis this time. Yay people. A little bit more video-game-datetime with zombie_dog, and then some of that internet stuff I do, and the night is now complete! *yawn*

On the schedule for the upcoming week: hang out with zigdon before he leaves town, Mage game, laura47's housewarming party, doompuppy's birthday bash, Arisia programming meeting. Meep. I don't know when I'm going to fit taking care of my house and laundry and stuff in...

Blatantly stolen from rigel:

Plans, we haz them.

Step 1 - Find your way to The Paradise Lounge by 5:00pm.
Step 2 - Eat dinner with fun, geeky people. Finish by 6:45 if not earlier.
Step 3 - Head next door to The Paradise to be in line at 7:00.
Step 4 - Get amazing seats in a group because of being there that early.
Step 5 - Profit!

If you want in on this, please let rigel or me know by noon tomorrow (Saturday), just so we have an idea of how many people to expect at dinner. If you're undecided, you're welcome to show up at the Paradise Lounge at 5 to try to find your own dinner seating or show up around 7 to try to join in our uber-early line, but I can't promise you it'll work out.

Current Attendees: rigel, rigel's sweetie, tpau, mrpaladin, and me.

I have at least one, possibly two free entries to Saturday night's Jonathan Coulton slash Paul and Storm concert at the Paradise in Allston, 8pm. (If I have a second, it will come with caveats to be discussed later.) Anyone been wanting to come but couldn't afford it?

Ticket is NOT first come, first served; I will make priority for people I know better, or who I know to be specifically in the "I love these guys but can't afford the show" situation. But I won't let the ticket(s) go unused, either.

Also, plans are being made with rigel to go for early dinner and then make it to the show early, so if you want in on that, keep an eye here!