(no subject)
Jan. 3rd, 2018 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe holidays disrupted the routine of my life a bit, but mostly in good ways.
On Jewmas,freeradical42 and Talia came over and we had lunch and talked and freeradical42 showed me how to play X-Wing. We did not eat Chinese food and we did not watch a movie, although we joked about doing both. Actually, freeradical42 joked about it being a chiyyuv, which is a joke I've become a little uncomfortable with. For me, the most important thing about the observance of Christmas is not having an observance of Christmas. If you eat Chinese food, it's because the restaurant is open and you like eating Chinese food, not because it's a minhag. There shouldn't be a minhag of Christmas.
While I'm being grumpy, I don't think I enjoyed X-Wing all that much. The space battle part was neat in how
open-ended it was. I liked that it doesn't need a grid, and measurement ranges are more continuous than discrete, but the whole pre-game stuff of collecting ships and picking out modifications and assembling your battle group was overly fiddly, not to mention costly. Sincefreeradical42 and some other friends have gotten into it in a big way, I suspect this won't be the last time I play, borrowing their ships , but I can't envision myself ever wanting my own, or ever instigating play myself (much as I never got into M:tG, but can play with a borrowed deck when I'm among enthusiasts).
In spite of that, I had a good time, as I usually do whenfreeradical42 and Talia are around.
I should mention Yuletide. I defaulted, as I think I mentioned, and was somewhat relieved to see that my recip must have defaulted after me, as I did not receive a gift. I'd have felt guilty if I had. I did want to participate in Yuletide in some fashion, though, so I popped into chat and answered a hippo request and betaed a really awesome fic. I want to mention that because sometimes I need to remind myself that there are a lot of ways to actively participate in fandom, and actually producing fanworks is not the be all and end all.
Festivids is going well, though. I have a completed draft, though it needs some polish before being submitted. All my fanwork energy seems to be in vidding these days.
Purimgifts has opened signups and the current lean is to not sign up. It's my favorite exchange, but I defaulted two years ago, barely got in my assignment last year (and only because I can write Toby/Andie in my sleep), and just defaulted Yuletide. I may not have it in me to do art, even spectacularly half-assed art, at the moment.
Friday I drove up to Somerville MA for New Year's. Some CTY friends rented a house and we spent the weekend hanging out and catching up. My last session at CTY was 2001... and it's now 2018. I'm constantly amazed that I've managed to stay in contact with so many of these summer camp friends, considering there's only a handful of high school classmates I'm still in touch with. Somehow the teenage summer camp reunions at various peoples' parents homes sustained enough momentum that we're still doing it close to annually fifteen years on.
We were really feeling the length of time it's been when we checked up on The Fruitopia Bottle, a thing we did in my last year at CTY without anticipating the consequences. We have been saying that on the bottle's 20th anniversaryroseandsigil ought to show up in a Hazmat suit and say "Hi, I'm the person that started this stupid tradition and it is time for me to end it. Give me the bottle and nobody gets hurt."
The Alcove, the ill-defined community of CTY alumni who have often been at the center of my social life, is powered by Pure Geek Social Fallacy (#4 & #5 in particular), which is another reason why it seems miraculous how persistent a presence it's been in my life. The CTY people at New Year's break down for me into a few categories- People I've remained in constant touch with, who are some of the people I love most in the world. People who are fun to spend time with, but we don't put in the effort to communicate outside of these larger gatherings. And people with more complex histories, people who at varying points over the last fifteen years I have got along better or worse with as our lives and personalities have evolved. And there are Missing Stairs that we've finally started to talk about, and exes who don't like spending time with each other, and people who don't like puns (gasp!), but... for the most part the Alcove is such an important and positive presence in my life, still.
I made everyone watch Detention,morbane! Wow, that's a really different movie to watch the second time. Still really enjoyable, but so much of the first half of the movie makes more sense. I really enjoyed watching the baffled faces people made as the movie shifted into something they hadn't anticipated. And they spent the rest of the weekend talking about magnetic bears.
And we cooked for each other {My best challah ever! Brown sugar in place of white sugar, and a mix of all-purpose flour with whole wheat that favored the whole wheat, which led to a really rich tasting challah), and drank with each other, and told stories and bad jokes to each other, and played games, and had a low-key, cosy great time. Because it was freaking cold outside and nobody wanted to leave the comfort of the heat.
Then I woke up Monday morning hoping to leave early to beat the traffic, and my car wouldn't start. It turns out that 10F weather plus not starting your car for a couple days is a recipe for dead batteries, duh. I'm pretty sure I've done this before, I have a terrible habit of visiting Boston in winter. AAA took ages to take my call and I ended up leaving several hours late, which added an extra hour of traffic to the trip, but I got home okay.
On Jewmas,
freeradical42 and Talia came over and we had lunch and talked and freeradical42 showed me how to play X-Wing. We did not eat Chinese food and we did not watch a movie, although we joked about doing both. Actually, freeradical42 joked about it being a chiyyuv, which is a joke I've become a little uncomfortable with. For me, the most important thing about the observance of Christmas is not having an observance of Christmas. If you eat Chinese food, it's because the restaurant is open and you like eating Chinese food, not because it's a minhag. There shouldn't be a minhag of Christmas.While I'm being grumpy, I don't think I enjoyed X-Wing all that much. The space battle part was neat in how
open-ended it was. I liked that it doesn't need a grid, and measurement ranges are more continuous than discrete, but the whole pre-game stuff of collecting ships and picking out modifications and assembling your battle group was overly fiddly, not to mention costly. Since
freeradical42 and some other friends have gotten into it in a big way, I suspect this won't be the last time I play, borrowing their ships , but I can't envision myself ever wanting my own, or ever instigating play myself (much as I never got into M:tG, but can play with a borrowed deck when I'm among enthusiasts).In spite of that, I had a good time, as I usually do when
freeradical42 and Talia are around. I should mention Yuletide. I defaulted, as I think I mentioned, and was somewhat relieved to see that my recip must have defaulted after me, as I did not receive a gift. I'd have felt guilty if I had. I did want to participate in Yuletide in some fashion, though, so I popped into chat and answered a hippo request and betaed a really awesome fic. I want to mention that because sometimes I need to remind myself that there are a lot of ways to actively participate in fandom, and actually producing fanworks is not the be all and end all.
Festivids is going well, though. I have a completed draft, though it needs some polish before being submitted. All my fanwork energy seems to be in vidding these days.
Purimgifts has opened signups and the current lean is to not sign up. It's my favorite exchange, but I defaulted two years ago, barely got in my assignment last year (and only because I can write Toby/Andie in my sleep), and just defaulted Yuletide. I may not have it in me to do art, even spectacularly half-assed art, at the moment.
Friday I drove up to Somerville MA for New Year's. Some CTY friends rented a house and we spent the weekend hanging out and catching up. My last session at CTY was 2001... and it's now 2018. I'm constantly amazed that I've managed to stay in contact with so many of these summer camp friends, considering there's only a handful of high school classmates I'm still in touch with. Somehow the teenage summer camp reunions at various peoples' parents homes sustained enough momentum that we're still doing it close to annually fifteen years on.
We were really feeling the length of time it's been when we checked up on The Fruitopia Bottle, a thing we did in my last year at CTY without anticipating the consequences. We have been saying that on the bottle's 20th anniversary
roseandsigil ought to show up in a Hazmat suit and say "Hi, I'm the person that started this stupid tradition and it is time for me to end it. Give me the bottle and nobody gets hurt." The Alcove, the ill-defined community of CTY alumni who have often been at the center of my social life, is powered by Pure Geek Social Fallacy (#4 & #5 in particular), which is another reason why it seems miraculous how persistent a presence it's been in my life. The CTY people at New Year's break down for me into a few categories- People I've remained in constant touch with, who are some of the people I love most in the world. People who are fun to spend time with, but we don't put in the effort to communicate outside of these larger gatherings. And people with more complex histories, people who at varying points over the last fifteen years I have got along better or worse with as our lives and personalities have evolved. And there are Missing Stairs that we've finally started to talk about, and exes who don't like spending time with each other, and people who don't like puns (gasp!), but... for the most part the Alcove is such an important and positive presence in my life, still.
I made everyone watch Detention,
morbane! Wow, that's a really different movie to watch the second time. Still really enjoyable, but so much of the first half of the movie makes more sense. I really enjoyed watching the baffled faces people made as the movie shifted into something they hadn't anticipated. And they spent the rest of the weekend talking about magnetic bears.And we cooked for each other {My best challah ever! Brown sugar in place of white sugar, and a mix of all-purpose flour with whole wheat that favored the whole wheat, which led to a really rich tasting challah), and drank with each other, and told stories and bad jokes to each other, and played games, and had a low-key, cosy great time. Because it was freaking cold outside and nobody wanted to leave the comfort of the heat.
Then I woke up Monday morning hoping to leave early to beat the traffic, and my car wouldn't start. It turns out that 10F weather plus not starting your car for a couple days is a recipe for dead batteries, duh. I'm pretty sure I've done this before, I have a terrible habit of visiting Boston in winter. AAA took ages to take my call and I ended up leaving several hours late, which added an extra hour of traffic to the trip, but I got home okay.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-23 12:56 am (UTC)After talking about vids the other day, I wondered if you'd have fun making a vid of Detention that's equivalent to the fic you have previously prompted for The Grounding of Group Six. Vid thesis: "This is an entirely genre-conforming teen movie, played absolutely straight..."
There shouldn't be a minhag of Christmas. - Perhaps a silly question: does calling it Jewmas conflict with that principle? Or is that fine because it means "anything instead of Christmas" rather than "specific things at that time"?
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-23 02:48 am (UTC)That's a great idea, we should brainstorm it the next time we're in chat together.
does calling it Jewmas conflict with that principle?
A good question... I mean, look, the reality is that nearly all of my Christian friends, no matter how religious, have plans on Christmas, and for the Jews I know, Christmas is just this unplanned day without any real meaning. So that I can call some Jews the day before Christmas and say "Hey, I don't have any plans, want to come to my place?" which is what I did this year. And last year I didn't do that, I just stayed home and vidded. Jewmas for me just refers to a bunch of Jews getting together on Christmas, which isn't a thing that has to happen, just a thing that often does happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-25 08:20 pm (UTC)Well - I haven't seen it since that 0.5 time. This is more a whim than a project! I am glad the idea amuses you, though.