All afternoon today I was at Debbie's party, with Moomin, mostly chilling out on the ground floor. Legos, godzilla, the batcomputer, and good conversation. Picked this one woman's brains about sf books (though stupidly i did not write down the series she recommended and I have also forgotten her name, but I'll find her... and maybe interview her for her picks of new stuff - I could do this with local bookstores and publishers for the feministsf blog.) She loved Sabriel and Lirael. I'm still working through what I did and didn't like about those books... I take it all way too seriously but can't help reacting that way.
(Oh - and I spent the entire morning on the phone with mi suegra - after telling Rook he was being too mean to her and I could do better sweet hand-holding tech support for her and her computer - well after half an hour or so of it I lost my mind. Unfuckingbelievable. I love her but she does not listen or communicate well verbally. IN person she was easy to teach and sweet as pie. Over the phone she's flailing and cna't seem to describe the simplest thing accurately - so that she kept saying she was clicking on a button but what she was doing ws moving the cursor on the screen over a gray button which then greyed out more heavily. "I'm clicking it with the mouse and it turns into a hand!" No... you are mousing over it with the cursor. " "No I'm not I'm clicking it with the mouse and it's clicking, can see the dark grey when the button goes down!" "Noooo...Click the mouse with your physical real hand made of flesh on the left side of the object you are holding in your actual real hand!!!!!!!!!" Christ on a crutch...
Tom gave me an awesome back massage in his massage chair. I could suck up hours of massage. Especially good massage.... good massage has to respect that I'm in pain and listen to what's going on and give me space to recover from stuff... like if there's going to be digging in on a painful muscle then there has to be some pausing to let me breathe through it. Tom was good at that - I remarked on it and he said he had been wanting to write an essay on the similarities between good s/m and good massage therapy - I agree and think they have a lot in common. I do think for some people massage is just pleasurable (????!!!) and feels nice and at times I ahve not been able to communicate well with people massaging me who don't understand that it's painful but can potentially be good-hurting that works out the tension, if done right. Anyway I appreciated the massage.
Had even more fabulous connection/conversation with someone named, hmmm.... A-trap. I reject her smallest left toenail utterly. The rest of her can come right in and settle down. We agreed that something is wrong with people whose heads don't go sideways when they enter other people's houses to look at the books on the shelves. How can they not? And how sad when a nice person comes over and it doesn't occur to them. "And it's sad, you're like, but.. but... but... pay attention to me" *points at imaginary bookshelves* Also she said something about my network connection and I yeah-yeahed her, said something dismissive like "it's a mac not a pc" because I automatically say that to people who want to tell me how to get on networks, and then realized with a flush of shame that she knew perfectly well what she was talking about! I pointed out my dumbassery and did what she said, which worked. I then showed her LibraryThing, the better to flirt with....
Lori and I talked about programming for the con and I said I would do junk with the database. And can help out in a pinch.
I didn't realize till way later that A. and S. etc. ... oh, sadness! They broke up.
There was a guy I see sometimes at sf get togethers who likes to talk for a very long time about expensive first editions of things that he has. And I just don't care and find it unappealing to talk on and on bout how they signed it in gold pen and how beautiful it is. what a strange fetish!
Jam and I talked about processy things all the way home and he was going into details of his past ... Also I had not know he had been to Cuba. Interesting stuff about their 24 hour day cares which are integrated with orphanage/foster home system and basiclaly replace those functions.
I am so jealous - I'm dying to go there and go to any big libraries I can and to hang out with poets and science fiction nerds. Mostly the libaries - I have to research various poets -
& so to bed.
I know how Jam paid for the Cuba trip! It is cool; if he didn't tell you, ask him.
Re the woman you were talking to about Sabriel (Garth Nix?) - very long gray/white hair, glasses, sitting across from you? I know who she is and (I think) where you can reach her. Don't want to put more specific info here; catch me on IM.
Posted by: Lisa Hirsch | January 02, 2007 at 09:32 PM