I'm breathing

Arisia! I have a schedule. There is significantly less of it than last year. It clusters interestingly.

The Bards' Tales: Musical Books
Friday 5:30 PM
Andrea Hairston (m), Tanya Huff, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe

Countless authors have woven music into their works. Some like Asaro, Bull, and Huff have featured musicians in their stories, while others like Lackey have even included lyrics in their novels and later recorded tie-in filk albums. This panel will look at some of the best SF/F that has included music in its words.

Theme Circle: Chantey Sing
Saturday 7:00 pm
Michael Gibson (m), Jeff Keller, Jeremy Kessler, Sonya Taaffe, Angela Kessler

Songs of sailing in all forms, with an emphasis on work songs from the age of sail. Open sing. Fun for all!

Gravity Falls
Sunday 11:30 AM
Gillian Daniels (m), Dan Morris, James Shapiro, Jennifer Pelland, Sonya Taaffe

What appeared to be yet another Disney Channel cartoon has instead turned into a huge hit, with the most entertaining spooky small town since Twin Peaks. We'll talk about everything that makes the show great—from the wacky cast of characters to the rare genuinely-loving sibling relationship between Dipper and Mabel to the ongoing conspiracies. Be prepared to discuss your favorite characters and jokes, and whether we'll ever see the return of Wax Coolio.

Tell Me a Story (I Couldn't Tell Myself)
Sunday 1:00 PM
Erik Amundsen (m), Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe, Trisha Wooldrige

Authors sometimes say that they started writing because they were looking for a story to read that they couldn't find. What happens when you can't find the story elsewhere and you can't make it either? What fragments do you have sitting around, ideas you wish someone would write for you and plot bunnies that plain up and died on you? Have you ever found something you wanted in a story in other media?

Reading: Linzner, Palmer, Staveley, & Taaffe
Sunday 4:00 PM
Gordon Linzner, Suzanne Palmer, Brian Staveley, Sonya Taaffe

Authors Gordon Linzner, Suzanne Palmer, Brian Staveley, and Sonya Taaffe will read selections from their works.

Theme Circle: Ballads of the Supernatural
Sunday 5:30 PM
Greer Gilman (m), Susan Weiner, Robert Rogow, Sonya Taaffe, Elizabeth Birdsall

Many traditional songs tell stories of the supernatural: ghosts, faeries, shape-changers, and so forth. Come listen or sing in this themed song circle.

When Poets Write Prose and Vice Versa
Sunday 8:30 PM
Erik Amundsen (m), Adrienne J. Odasso, Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein, Sonya Taaffe, Gillian Daniels

Writers often define themselves by their predominant mode of expression. Venturing beyond these favored boundaries is, for some of us, a rare occurrence; when a poet writes the occasional short story or a prose-writer the occasional poem, they may feel somewhat out of their depth when presenting the piece or preparing it for submission. In this panel, we'd like to discuss the experience of writing outside our comfort zones and how it serves to shape our experiences, development, and perception.

Stick With It! Complex, Rewarding Literature
Monday 11:30 AM
Lila Garrott (m), Max Gladstone, Greer Gilman, Dennis McCunney, Sonya Taaffe

Most of the time, the SF we read is easy enough to get through; however, at times, we've picked up or been recommended a work of SF only to find it more than we bargained for. Not a tedious read, but rather an epic journey, fraught with trials and tribulations yet eminently Worth It. What favorite works of the panelists' are difficult to get through, but ultimately worth the read? How does one make the reading of one of these diamonds more feasible without losing any of the effect?

From Earthsea to Ekumen
Monday 2:30 PM
Lila Garrott (m), Mark W. Richards, Greer Gilman, Victoria McManus, Sonya Taaffe

Arguably Ursula K. Le Guin's two greatest achievements are the fantasy world of Earthsea and the SF universe of the Ekumen of Known Worlds. Earthsea is a world of natural magic in which the self-knowledge of the adept is the key to effectiveness. The Ekumen is a members-only interstellar organization encompassing numerous cultures. Do we see the same vision in these worlds? Are they different sides of the same coin? And how have these two worlds influenced the fiction of the last four decades?

Plus the Post-Meridian Radio Players are performing their fully genderswapped "The Trouble with Tribbles" on Friday night. The eternal question: who am I going to see there?

And I do my brutish best

So the last few days have been rocky: a lot of doctor's appointments, a lot of phone calls. I have been averaging about four hours of sleep a night since at least the beginning of this year, which explains why last night derspatchel left for rehearsal at the usual time and I collapsed. Pretty much literally: I couldn't even make dinner. I tried eating a piece of jerky and just felt nauseated. I took a stack of books and went upstairs to curl up and read and fell asleep—sometime within the first half-hour, woke just enough to crawl over to the nightstand and switch out the light, then slept again until Rob texted me from rehearsal intermission. I estimate I slept a solid two and a half hours at a time of night when I am usually conscious and working, but I think it was a physical necessity by then. Around ten-thirty, I was finally able to get out of bed without feeling sick. Rob came home around midnight and we watched "The Time of the Doctor," from which I am mostly looking forward to more Peter Capaldi. And then I couldn't fall asleep this morning until well after dawn, but I still think the crash was the correct choice, if you can call it that. This afternoon was also spent on the phone with many doctors, but I was a lot better about dealing with it.

The significant event of today was that after months of trying and failing for one schedule-related reason or another, rushthatspeaks and I finally made it to the Lone Star Taco Bar.

The trip can be summarized by a text I sent Rob shortly after dinner: "MBTA: aaaagh die in a fire die aaaagh. Lone Star Taco Bar: worth it." Taking the 85 from the bottom of Rush's street to Kendall Square was prompt and efficient, even allowing us to see the last of a peach-rust sunset over the roofs of Union Square. Waiting for the 64 at Kendall was an exercise in darkness, frostbite, and cruel misdirection. The bus was supposedly running at half-hour intervals. It didn't come on the hour. We went into the MIT bookstore because we liked our fingers. The bus came at twenty past. We hurtled outside; it drove away. The next one didn't come on the half-hour. Other buses came. And went. And came around again. At this point we tried to concede defeat and take the Red Line to Harvard Square to pick up the 66 to Allston, but we didn't even make it down the stairs: there was a train at the platform, jam-packed standing; it was stationary and the platform was so crowded we couldn't have gotten past the turnstiles. We conceded defeat of our concession and went back upstairs to the bus shelter. It was bitter cold and huddled full of people who wanted the CT2. A kind student with a bus tracker on her tablet showed us a theoretical 64 approaching, so we didn't entirely lose hope, and almost exactly an hour after we had arrived at Kendall Station we caught the bus that was supposed to have come five minutes later. The rest of the trip was uneventful to the point of banality, which was fine. I could almost feel my feet by the time we got off in Allston's Union Square.

From here on I am going to rave about food. I had never before eaten barbacoa, but according to Rush the incredibly tender, smoky, richly flavorful beef that came almost naked on a soft tortilla with a smear of avocado and a dusting of cheese is a legitimate representative of the species, which they did not expect to find outside of Texas ever. I had a bite and I was impressed. The carnitas were less stunning, but equally tasty, slow-cooked to the point of melting. My heart, however, belongs to the grilled street corn: blackened in sweet stripes, drizzled with crema and lime juice and a dry salt sprinkle of cotija cheese and just a little of some kind of chili for flavor more than heat. (This was a restaurant that remembered that peppers have more to offer than capsaicin. Ask Rush about the sweet potato habanero sauce.) The house-made chorizo was delicious, with slices of smoke-soft green chili and shavings of non-pretentious radish on top to cut the pork fat, but seriously, I cannot imagine returning to the Lone Star and not ordering the street corn again. I gnawed at the cobs. I have a complicated relationship with my front teeth these days and I gnawed. Also of note: the Victory Club Nachos, described only as "the original 1943 bar snack." I know nothing of the history of nachos. I tend to think of them as late-night drunk food, leaning heavily toward multiple toppings that may or may not belong in the same mouthful and swimming in cheese. At the Lone Star Taco Bar, what they turn out to mean is a plate of warm, crisp-baked tortilla chips—made from the restaurant's own tortillas, we were willing to bet—with a cohering substrate of melted cheese, as expected, but mostly covered with grated cotija cheese, even more crema, and an enormous quantity of shredded Napa cabbage. (The occasional pickled jalapeño lurking beneath.) Do not be fooled by the salad-like simplicity. We polished the plate. They had flan for dessert, but we didn't have room; we settled the bill and then headed back into the dumbass cold to play Russian roulette with the 66 bus schedule. Without alcohol, we would have been two well-fed people for about thirty bucks. With alcohol, I learned that I like tequila when it comes aged in a cocktail with tamarind pulp, orange juice, and lime.

And then Rush took me home and showed me a video of Japanese sushi candy, which I feel I must have seen in a David Lynch movie sometime, and we agreed that we will have to order a package from its mildly terrifying website and make some (it is not sushi-flavored; all sources indicate it tastes like grape) and then go out for actual sushi, which we will stare at in existential confusion for a long time and occasionally, cautiously poke with a chopstick. We should have persued Jeff de Boer's artwork afterward to recover, courtesy of zombie_dog, but the internet has no sense of timing and so in fact we saw his intricate and beautiful armor for cats and mice and ray-gun derringers and giant tin toys before I fell down the black hole of other Japanese candy videos and eventually Rush cut me off and drove me home. They lent me Alan Moore's From Hell (1999) and Robert Aickman's Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories (1975), though, so I think we're still good.

There are some assorted notes from the last few days that I would have made if I hadn't been burning out, but I think I should save them for a post of their own. I will remind everyone who's heard it already that A Man for All Seasons opens tomorrow night at the Factory Theatre in Boston and derspatchel is playing the Common Man, which means you get to see him read history wearing my glasses. I refuse to apologize to the ghost of Paul Scofield for switching my allegiance to Ron Lacey as Sir Thomas More. He looks less the Holbein painting, but he's a more complicated saint. And I've only seen the rehearsals.

Today was, actually, good. I remember: I like this.