good thing, bad thing, long thing, short thing... (rivier asked for spam--blame her)

Flying fickle finger of j'accuse! goes to thegrrrl2002. Despite unrelatedness of topic, I think you talking about writing pushed my brain sideways into figuring out a much more interesting framework for a fic. Yay!

~

We're driving to Penn's Woods for Thanksgiving with my in-laws, of course. (6+ hours each way, and The Boy wonders why I bought a cigarette-lighter power converter for my laptop...) We will be driving back the Saturday of that weekend, because on Sunday, The Boy has to get on a plane and fly to Dublin for work for 2 weeks.

I hate you, life. Don't you look at me.

At least (at least!) we knew it might be happening (though not for so long), so I didn't get tickets to go to Miami those weeks, because the boss of The Boy wouldn't commit to an answer one way or the other, but now... ugh. Great. I'm gonna get to do all the Christmas shopping for his family (not that he's ever super-helpful in that regard anyway, except for carrying stuff *g*, but even "slightly helpful" is better than "entirely absent").

I suppose the bright side is that if my occasional agoraphobia kicks in, I can just get the hell out any time I feel like it. But this is a bad, bad time for him to be on another fucking continent for two fucking weeks, and I really wanna go to see my grandma! She just turned 90, and I haven't seen her for like 2-3 years. And I don't have much family left. *sniff*

Sorry, I'm trying, but I'm just not super-pleased by this development.

~

I would cut-tag this, but if I did, I couldn't cut the spoilers further down, so my apologies.

Yesterday, being Sunday, I got up at the ass-crack of dark (6am, which is earlier than I even get up to go to work) to take an 8am bus to Springfield for the last day of United Fan Con. Two hours on bus; my baby (which is to say my laptop) and I worked on some fic on the way, though chances are that it needs to be scoured for floridity of prose. I just have a feeling.

Got there at 10am, registered, made my first run through the dealers' room (I like to cogitate on things). Went to Richard Hatch's Q&A thingie at 11, and he was much funnier and less annoying than I'd feared (his early stated objections to the new BSG had left me with a bad impression, but in person, he seemed cool).

Noontime, I went to attempt to grab lunch, and learned that Springfield is still a pit, insofar as nothing was open at noon on a Sunday. This includes CVS, the giant local drugstore chain. Okay, The Boy's family is in rural freaking Pennsylvania, Amish country (though he's not Amish, but Pennsylvania Dutch [pure German descent, Dutch in this case being a corruption of Deutsch, and my god I am parenthetical]), which is quite a god-fearing Protestant area, and there's more stuff open at noon on Sunday than in downtown freaking Springfield. For shame, Springfield, for shame. Grabbed a cinnamon stick and some vanilla chai from Dunkin Donuts and went back to the con hotel, where I totally made like a con bum, sitting on the floor in the hallway eating my snacks with my laptop plugged into a wall socket to recharge the battery for the trip home. *g*

1pm, went to see Mira Furlan's Q&A. I loved B5 (and I watch Lost, though I'm not hugely fannish about it--but The Boy is, which is bizarre for us), but she's even more charming in person. Also, she has the more adorable verbal tic, speaking on stage--she said "y'know" something like three times per sentence, on average, and it was just ungodly cute.

2pm, another turn through the dealers' room. I ordered an embroidered SGA shirt, bought a Blue Sun t-shirt, one of the keychains in the shape of the gate, a few SGA promo photos, and some SGA patches. (I am dangerously close to being able to put together a Daedalus uniform, and omg someone needs to stop me right the hell now, please and thank you.) Then I sat in the video room and charged my laptop battery some more while watching the last few minutes of "The Gift", an ep of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the beginning of an ep of the original BSG on the TV there. While watching vids on my laptop. I can fannishly multitask like a theoretically dangerous thing.

3pm, and went to the auditorium to wait for my (very high, as I had a single-day ticket) number for the autograph line. Read my book, bonded with some geek guys and traded them some duplicate SGA S1 trading cards for some extra autograph tickets they'd gotten from people who'd already left. Yay fannish commerce!

Continued waiting, and was apparently giving off "BIG SGA FAN" vibes (I swear I was dressed like a norm), 'cause I sat down near a small group of people, and one of them says to another, "You can bully her into looking at your giant binder of SGA pics!" (At which I looked up and smiled and said, "Yeah, bring it." *g*) So she turned out to be even dorkier than I omg yay, because she had, like, one of every official promo pic out there, and some from GateWorld and New Atlantis (yes, I recognized the photos, hush) printed up on photo paper. Lots of Paul McGillion autographs, including a couple on screencaps of the kiss in "Duet", where Paul had drawn in a little dialogue bubble that said, "Rodney, get off me!" *giggles* I'm always surprised and delighted that I can go to cons by myself and have funny little geek-bonding moments with strangers. It's one of the little joys of fandom. *g*

Got through the line, had stuff signed by Rachel Luttrell before her Q&A, and realized I've never gone to a signing before the Q&A before. It was a little strange. *g* (miera_c, I asked your question then, and her answer was Kermit, and she talked about how she loves "The Rainbow Connection," and how sad it was when Jim Henson died, and Kermit wouldn't come out of his dressing room, and then his voice changed...) She was very sweet though, and she had a ponytail and one of the Creation SGA t-shirts on, which nearly killed me. *g*

5pm, Rachel's Q&A! I actually scribbled notes for to remember things. Asked about how she ended up on the show, she said she'd decided that, after tryouts for that pilot season, she was going to take a break for a while. *g* They actually called her back several times, and then called her to say that she didn't get it. ... And then she got a call a few days later where they said, "We need you in Vancouver in twelve hours."

She talked about her dog Nala, who goes with her to the set every day, and won't let anyone into her trailer without her saying it's all right. "Teamsters are afraid of her."

I forget how it came up, but it turns out that Claire Rankin (Kate Heightmeyer [and Nick's sister Fleur on Forever Knight, which still makes me laugh]) has been Rachel's best friend for a very long time--they lived together in LA. Rachel didn't get her the job, but said she might have caused them to lean in her direction when casting.

When asked whether they were practical jokers on set like the cast of SG-1, or whether they were serious: "Oh god." (implying, really really not. *g*) Not practical jokes as such, but she says David Hewlett is a comic genius on and off camera, and PMcG is hilarious.

Asked to briefly describe her costars. Jason Momoa: awesome. 6'4", but he's like a Great Dane puppy, enthusiastic and bouncy. David Hewlett: she said he's become one of her greatest friends. And that he's a geek. *g* And that he's incredibly sweet, and if something's wrong, he'll be the first person to come talk to you and try to help... (oops. I suspect rivier didn't need to hear that.)

Torri Higginson is the complete opposite of her character, fun and funny (I've heard that elsewhere). PMcG she described as a jokester, a trickster. "And who did I leave out?" she asked, which got much laughter from the audience. She said that her dad had visited the set, and he said of Joe Flanigan portraying Shep, "He's really the big hero guy, huh?" But she said that while he portrays Sheppard wonderfully, Joe is really shy! And a little awkward sometimes, just because of that shyness. *dies again*

She was asked to sing something, and said she'd think about it, maybe at the end, then sang a bit of "I Know Him So Well", from Chess. Gorgeous voice. Wow.

( very light season 2 spoilers )

Then it was 6pm, and I had to book it over to the bus station for the 6:15 bus. Or so I thought, because it ran late, and we didn't actually leave until closer to 6:45. I narrowly avoided throwing an elbow into the face of the woman who would not shut up about how the wait sucked and the line sucked and she'd already gotten screwed by Amtrak today, then waited until I left a gap in the line so that the Albany passengers could actually get to their own damn bus and cut in front of me. THEN she kept hitting me with her shoulder bag. So. Very. Close. To Violence. I watched vids on my laptop on the way back to chill out. *g* (One of which was an SGA vid set to "Where My Heart Will Take Me", and the cognitive dissonance was nearly overwhelming. For people who didn't watch Enterpise, think, oh, an O.C. vid set to Remy Zero's "Save Me", or a Veronica Mars vid set to Phantom Planet's "California." It was just not right, above and beyond "Where My Heart Will Take Me" being so cheesy that it goes past "ironic embracing of its own cheesiness" and straight into *shudders*.)

Finally got back to my apartment around 9pm. And ate a real meal. Good day, but looong.

~

I have been 99% offline since, like, sometime on Thursday. Have I missed 1) anything cool or funny, 2) being mocked, or 3) anything on which you'd like my ill-considered yet probably long-winded opinion? Let me know. Or just call me a dork, and I'll go and read back through your personal journal. *g*