Prose and Kaa

So this meme is going around. You're presented with these eight buttons of various colors, and I assume you can pick one to press and it bestows upon you the power described thereunder.

I saw it and thought that rather than give a one-word + one-sentence answer, I'd blather on for several paragraphs and treat it seriously. Because apparently I have nothing better to do right this second. :) And I'm going to tag it 'writing' because one of my characters has a couple of these abilities, and quite of bit of who he is is based on the ability and the problems it causes in his life.

( But I will hide it so you don't have to scroll if you're reading this on your friends page. Because that's the kind of great person I am. )
Yeah, I'mma go with Blue. Because flying. But my hand would hover over Green for a long time before pressing Blue. :)

At the beginning of September, three friends and I attended the 25th annual Dragon*Con. This was my fifth year attending, and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

Dragon*Con runs from Friday through Monday over Labor Day weekend each year. If you can possibly make it and you enjoy science fiction, fantasy, horror, cosplay, filking, skepticism, science, space, the occult, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, animé, gaming, comics, writing, reading, parades, scantily clad people, parties that go all night, meeting famous TV and movie actors, musical performances, spending lots of money on art, getting autographs, and just generally anything having to do with pretty much anything fandom related, you would probably enjoy it. Along with 40,000 others who also enjoy those things. And all in the oppressive heat of Atlanta, Georgia in summer!

The Atlanta Skeptics have hosted something called The Star Party for three years running. It's not an official part of Dragon*Con and is hosted at the observatory at Georgia Tech on the Thursday evening before the official beginning of the con. It's an evening of astronomy, science, food, drink, and unadulterated, unabashed geekery.

And, for me, my first encounter with The Crazy™ this year.

( You know you want to click this. )

Cats

Because you know you love it. Lucy and Matt both learned some very, very bad habits from Granddaddy's other cat, Tiny. Matt claws furniture to get attention, and both Lucy and Matt are fond of raking their unsheathed claws over my bare flesh, also to get attention. This must end. But they're 16, and I don't want to get them de-clawed. Any suggestions? Right now I'm using negative reinforcement with an unpleasant sound.

I said before that neither of them were "players." I think one of my superpowers is manifesting itself in a new way. Whenever I make a claim like this, the universe has a way of making a liar out of me. To be fair, I haven't actually witnessed any playing, but one of Gremlin's catnip toys mysteriously found its way under my bed, and another of Gremlin's and Taz's toys wound up in a place where it normally is not, and broken, probably to get at the catnip within. So I'm thinking one or both of the cats are up to something when I'm not there or when I'm asleep. Involving catnip.

Matt lets me pet him at will, now. But only if I'm sitting down. If I stand up, I become an evil, cat-eating...thing that is evil.

I used to brag that my cats—and we're talking Gremlin and Taz, here—never used to wake me up to be fed. Taz would occasionally rake his claws across my face, but it was because he wanted to play or be petted. (I shall leave as an exercise for the reader to decide whether his tactic was ever successful.)

Lucy has now awakened me several mornings, quite frantic, and when I dutifully followed her as she hopped to where Timmy was in the well her food bowl, it was empty. After I had to have Taz put to sleep, I got rid of anything the cats had eaten or drunk out of, just in case it was something catching and I got another cat. I can see, now, that a trip to PetSmart is looming large for me. One of those perpetual dry-food dispensers and a water bowl are a necessity.

MANGO

A while back I mentioned a new "local" restaurant called Fuego Mundo. I swore then that I would have to go back and try basically everything on the menu, including the mango pie. Well, I've been back several times, and it's been really good each time. I've been for dinner a few times, but today I decided to try lunch. I had the grilled turkey breast fillet, which is basically a boneless, skinless slab o' turkey breast, marinated and then grilled over their wood fire; The Latin side combo, which consists of rice, black beans, and sweet fried plantains (heaven); a beef empanada with their vinegary "pico de gallo"-like sauce; and for dessert, the mango pie.

The turkey breast came out perfect: moist, tender, and flavorful. The Latin was good, as always, as was the empanada. I think I could live on their empanadas alone. I mean, it's got meat and bread, and the sauce kinda counts as vegetables. Hmmm. The mango pie provides dairy....

The mango pie (are you listening, slymongoose?) was creamy, sweet-but-not-too-sweet, rich, and very mango-y cheesecake in a graham-cracker-crumb pie crust. A tasty and not over-filling end to a nice lunch.

I'd also like once more to point out that on rainy days—or potentially rainy ones, like today—Fuego Mundo has a back entrance from inside a parking deck. You could go there during a monsoon downpour and not even get damp.

I probably don't need to say it at this point, but I'll be back. And back and back and back. It's only a 20-minute drive from my office. Both ways. And besides, everyone takes an hour-and-a-half lunch, occasionally, right? Right?

Babylon 5

It's no secret (because I tell anyone and everyone who will listen) that I'm a big-ol' geek. And one of my biggest geek-ons is for Babylon 5. I think it was about two weeks ago, now, that geek_72 mentioned on FaceBook that Claudia Christian—who played Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5—was selling her personal scripts on her web site.

I contacted her (really someone like her agent or assistant) and purchased two of my favorite episode scripts of the ones remaining. When I received them a few days later, they were autographed to me (squee!) and included some other collectibles from Ms. Christian, also autographed (squee!). The scripts join my small-but-growing collection of B5 stuff. I may have to create a Wall of Squee™.

Gaming

Had an especially fun session this past weekend with our usual group minus the out-of-towners who come from Alabama to join us. We solved a murder mystery! :) One of our party (the magic-user) was seen by three eye-witnesses stabbing a guy in cold blood. And they weren't lying. So, in typical D&D fashion, we solved the crime: we resurrected the corpse so there was no longer a murder, then used a combination of past vision and teleportation to see who really did it, and eliminated him with extreme prejudice. And in the course of this, we discovered that the Egyptian god Set is really, really pissed off at the party member who was framed. And we can expect more little incidents like the frame-job. Joy. But at least my cleric and the magic-user discovered a fantastic one-two punch of spells guaranteed to turn any bad guy into a puddle of sticky goo. Mmm, Minions-of-Set-goo. Now in Bear Flavor!™

So because we can't kill a god (yet), we decided to go after our big bad enemy, Bob, one more time. Bob has kicked our ass so many times it's not even funny. But hey. Better than Set, right? :)

(Have I mentioned I'm a geek? Because I am one. And a big one, at that.)

Writing

Had the first chapter of one of my works in progress critiqued by a second local group that only meets once per month, but they give harder-hitting, deeper critiques than my Tuesday Night Writers Group, because we read them ahead of time, critique them before the meeting, and the limit is 10,000 words instead of 1200. :)

I was tickled pink that they all liked it, but found that they all kind of picked up on the same problems. Which tells me that 1) I'm not telling the story right if no one picked up something I thought was obvious; 2) the ending, as planned, will suck; and 3) my main character isn't fleshed out enough. There were others as well, but those are the main three points. I think I'll need to rethink this story a little. Which means I'll be working on my novel for a bit. :)

Birthdays

Attended totallysirius's 30th birthday dinner at Cowtippers. Was fun. Got to see some folks I don't see often enough and consume mass quantities of good food.

In other news, ladyimp's and monkeypocket's daughter is the cutest thing ever. Just so you know. And she knows the most important thing for a two-year-old to know: the best way to eat macaroni and cheese is with both fists. Spoon? There is no spoon! I'd do it, too, if I could get away with it.

My friend !Evil Phil¹ and I have a long-standing running joke.² I am, often without any conscious action on my part to precipitate it, able to, as craftsman would so colorfully put it, "fuck up an anvil."³ I've had computer problems that persist for weeks or months, and then !Evil Phil comes over and lays his hand on the computer and it works. Until he leaves, at which point the computer reverts to being possessed by whatever evil spirit it had been inhabited by until he laid hands upon it. The last such occurrence involved getting my Internet router to link up and be friends with my phone router. My problem is so persistent and pervasive and perfectly perplexing that I decided it had to be one of my superpowers (as you'll read if you follow that link).

Before I left work last night, I was trying to think of ways to further reduce the amount of my hard-earned filthy lucre that never sees the insides of my bank account. It dawned on me that, although I have and need my cell phone, I am paying $44/month for a plan that gives me more minutes than I have ever or will ever use. To give you some clue, I had⁴ nearly 80 hours of roll-over time. I talk on the cell phone for maybe 15 minutes per month, and that's usually calling my mother to say I'm on my way home or am halfway there or whatever. Paying $44/month for this is...well, "clinically insane" is the only phrase that leapt to mind.

I dropped by my friendly neighborhood AT&T store last night and had my account switched to the Go-Phone. I signed up for the $0.25/minute plan with no contract and no other features. Just a straight $0.25/minute no matter what. The lowest amount you can put on the account per "refill" is $15, so that should give me approximately 60 minutes of cell-phone use per 30 days. That should be more than adequate. The other plan is $.10/minute with free mobile-to-mobile and a $1/day connection fee. In other words, if I make 1 call per day, I can't even talk for 15 minutes over that same 30-day period. The math (is hard!) worked out to favor the $0.25/minute thing when I worked it out. I figured I could switch if it became too problematic.

I got home shortly thereafter with the printout in my hands that clearly shows the flat-rate plan I signed up for.

I logged in. I went to my account. It showed the other plan. The $0.10/minute + $1/day plan. The one I specifically didn't want to try.

So I went through the lengthy process of calling the number and going through the extremely annoying voice-recognition thing to change it. And it said it was changed.

Only...when I checked online again, it wasn't. So I called and did it again. And again. And again.

After the fourth time, I realized this was my superpower at work. I needed a dose of hero power.

This "morning"⁵ I called GoPhone and had them look at it. She was very confident that I had just not followed directions. I could hear it in her (smug) voice. Until...it didn't work for her. Twice.

So it was she that called in the Big Guns™. I got transferred to GoPhone's Technical Support Department. <insert Hero theme here> What he basically had to do was delete my account and add it back.

Yes, my superpower had so fucked up my account that there was no way to salvage it.

Grant was also one of the funniest Tech Support people I've ever talked to because he kept up a constant narration about what he was doing and the results of his actions. "Okay, now I put '1' and then...no, that's not right, it should be a '2'...and then this...and now that...and...Okay, that didn't work, so we'll try this other screen...." :)

The upshot is: I have the service I signed up for. I have the same cell phone and number that I had, for those of you who have it, so there's no need to reprogram anything. Believe me, you don't want to. We have proof now that my superpower can affect things at a great distance from me connected by only the most tenuous of threads. Don't blame me if your cell phone suddenly goes haywire when you try to call mine.

Well, uh, yeah. Okay, you probably can blame me. Or my superpower. KaZot. But just remember that I have no actual control over KaZot, so I'm not doing it on purpose. :)

<mumbling> Note to self: I should really learn some way to control KaZot for the good of Humanity....

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1. The exclamation means "not" in some flavors of programming language, for those of you not in on that particular loop. Heh, "loop." Get it? "Loop"! Oh, I slay me!
2. How can it be standing and running at the same time? English is weird.
3. Think about it.
4. Keep reading....
5. Any time I get up is technically morning. So what if the sun had risen a good 8 hours earlier?