I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

I am pretty sure the last time I was at Lunacon was in 2008. So it's changed a lot:

(1) The hotel has been substantially renovated. I actually quite liked the changes aesthetically (fireplace!), but by the end of the weekend I was a bit nostalgic for the old look (and the old coffee shop!)
(2) Apparently the con's gotten smaller since I was last there, and apparently also there was some extra-special organizational chaos going on -- but from where I was sitting, I felt approximately zero impact (programming? what's that??), so whatever. Everyone I saw seemed to be having a pretty good time, or at least holding it together while enabling other people to have a good time (so thanks to all those people for that).
(3) In particular, I very much felt the absence of ablock, as well as xdaemon and aurelis and several other specific folks I associate strongly with Lunacons past. (No bagel run! Sniff!)
(3a) Relatedly, this may be the first time I have ever been at Lunacon without at least nominally working tech.
(4) It is also for sure the first time I have ever traveled to Lunacon on the MetroNorth commuter rail rather than roadtripping from Boston. (No Rein's Deli!! Double sniff!)

In any case, however, it was excellent to get to see kalessin and mercury_sparkle (even if it was mostly in the ops office, at least we still got to have dinner together)... and lots of other dear friends, and some cool new ones. And I did make it to the hot tub for about 20 minutes (went down by myself, but chatted with the nice folks who were in there, and it was all good) before heading up to a certain single-malt-themed party.

And bringing MuffinButtons to Lunacon for the first time was definitely fun and worth doing. FAQ #1: How'd you do? I broke even on my con expenses (including transportation and Saturday dinner) with literally about $4 to spare. Oh, um, except that's on gross receipts and I still have to pay sales tax out of that, so came out a bit under, after all. But that's still pretty good.

And, signal boost: my next-door booth neighbor was this adorable young math teacher who draws an adorable, smart webcomic called Monster Haiku. And every single time new people came up and he would pitch them the book, my brain kept serving up to me the idea of how much Tiger Boy would have liked it. Which was both exasperating and endearing in about equal, if small, measures. Yes, every strip actually is a haiku (in the basic American 5-7-5 sense, not the Japanese content-structure sense). With monsters. Since I use LJ as my RSS aggregator, I have syndicated it as monsterhaiku.

... And now I'm headed out shortly for my performance at the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Society. This is a scaled-down reprise of the January show I did at Temple Israel Center in White Plains ( LJ | DW ), consisting largely of Anna Russell's delightful parody piece "How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta", plus a bunch of solo/duet/trio selections, and finishing up with Trial By Jury because hey. 7:30pm at the Community Church of New York, 40 E 35th St (corner of Park). Robbie, our Fearless Leader, called me this afternoon to warn me that some of our folks might have trouble getting to the show if the snow got bad, and so, basically, "be prepared to wing it, the show must go on, all that". So if we end up doing a spontaneous from-memory 4-person rendition of the entire Act I finale of Iolanthe... well, I just hope they have a camera running. :-}

I was about to say "belated con report", but it's really only been two days since I got home, even though it feels like about 6.

Things that were awesome about this Arisia for me: ( lots )

Things that were less awesome: ( few and minor )

But, seriously, that's kind of all I can think of. It was pretty fab all around.

So I've pretty much made up my mind to sign up for vending at Lunacon in mid-March. :-)
And now I have done three loads of laundry and it's time to go to bed.

This coming Sunday is a major work event for which my entire department is working late nights all week trying to get ready.

The weekend after that is Arisia, when I'll be working 9-hour days at the MuffinButtons vendor table. I am super excited about this, but have also decided that my priority outside of vending hours will be... going to sleep as early as I damn well feel like it. (Maybe I'll get up at 6am on Sunday morning and catch the *end* of the DJ/80s dance, which I totally forgot about last year and kicked myself for missing.) Any other early birds who want to hang out for breakfast in the lobby around 9-10am, please do -- I found that that was one of my favorite times of the con last year.

The weekend after *that* is a Shabbat dinner with my synagogue choir, and special choir performances at both Friday night and Saturday morning services, in honor of Shabbat Shirah (the Sabbath of Song, so named because we read about the Israelites' crossing the Red Sea and their ensuing Song of the Sea). And, um, I got recruited to coordinate the dinner signups, which is cool because it's basically "put together a fancy signup sheet and then hound everybody until I hear from all of them, and then hound everybody some more until I get all their prepayments", at all of which I am an old hand, but... it takes some cycles.

Also, the ASL 2 class (8-week sequel to the 6-week ASL 1 class I took in the fall) starts up tomorrow night.

Also, I am lead program designer for the Blue Hill Troupe's spring show. The hard part of my job is more-or-less-almost done, but I still have to set up a bunch of article templates based on the design specs we've settled on.

Also, remember that book project that I'm trying to get out the door? Maybe by the end of this month?

Also, I, um, agreed to serve as production stage manager for Utopia Unlimited's next opera production, La Fille du Regiment, which is dress-rehearsing the last week of January for performances Feb 1-2.

Basically, I've now decided that if there's anything I haven't already promised to do for someone in February, I am not doing it. (So, BHT yes, ASL yes, shepherding book through manufacturing yes, everything else no.) Seriously -- I had signed up to participate in the synagogue Purimshpiel, but I emailed them yesterday morning to back out, because no. I just don't need a whole new set of Sunday-afternoon rehearsals shoehorned into my month. Even if it is a short month.

March will be Lunacon, and then -- holy crap, it'll already be Passover. Where does the time go?? (But, 10-day stay-cation!!)

... Speaking of Lunacon, I am thinking of vending there too, but I already bought a personal membership, and now the table fee comes with one (and they won't credit me for the existing one). Anyone want me to transfer a membership to them for this year? I'll sell it for the $30 I paid in October; they're already up to $50.

It's Tuesday! Hence, I'm working from home. Well, I would be if I were doing any work at the moment. I'm waiting on feedback on the catalog project, but I do have page proofs on which I should input my final copy edits so I can order a set of lasers for the author. But, I tell myself, it needn't be right this minute. Right?

To get it out of the way, I will report that there is still no real progress on the wedding-planning front; we are stuck firmly in procrastination mode. Still planning on 8/31/08, but until we sign something officially with a venue, at least, it's hard to consider that really sealed up. The only thing I've been looking into with any enthusiasm is wedding dresses, and even that is hard to sustain (I may make a separate post with all the gory details, but will elide them for now).

The novel thing this Thanksgiving is that, no, I'm not traveling; my dad and stepmother are coming HERE for it. (This will, in fact, be the first time my dad gets to meet Tiger Boy. The TigerParents are also coming up, and we're making dinner at muchabstracted's house, which, unlike our place, has a dining room.) They arrive tomorrow night and are leaving early-early Saturday morning. Thus, we have roughly two days: Thursday cozied up in the house, and Friday out-and-about (not sure yet where to take them, though there is no shortage of museum ideas). They're staying at the Hyatt Regency on Mem Drive -- a.k.a. the new Arisia ziggurat hotel -- so that'll be fun.

Speaking of Arisia, I've been idly pondering two things: ( both hotel-room-related, in a sense )

November, of course, has been Community Theater Month, since all shows must by local ordinance be performed between Halloween and Thanksgiving. ( recap, with sneak preview of spring season )

The last happening of note in the past few weeks has been getting not one but two shout-outs from grade school: one on Facebook, from an old friend of my little brother's; the other here on LJ from someone I've always secretly hoped would someday look me up, and finally did. *waves to ksn* *looks expectantly at email inbox*

Oh yeah, and: The Menschen Take Manhattan! Honorable Menschen are going to be performing at the JCC in Manhattan next spring, on a Shabbat afternoon, which looks like it's going to be March 22 (immediately after Purim). All you NYers, consider yourselves alerted.

And now, I should go do something useful with the rest of the day, snow notwithstanding. One of my tasks for Thursday is the cranberry relish, and I can do that today. And clean house before my dad comes to see it. And tend to the ailing Tiger Boy (sore throat, poor baby). And lay out the shul newsletter for December. And finish those page proofs.

jessruth said to me a week ago, "You haven't updated since Staxmas! I have no idea what you've been up to!" Yeah, I know; busy busy, not much to narrate. -- But when Tiger Boy says to me "Hey, you haven't updated in a while!"... I know I am overdue. :-)

So let's see.
( long rambly State of the Chanaleh )

LJ stuff: Suddenly both jweiss and Kosher Boy have succumbed. Welcome, brass_rat and toyb, respectively. :-D

arisia stuff: Did I mention I'm selling buttons in the honest-to-God Dealer's Room this year? I may live to regret it, but hey, I have to try it once. You can find me at Table 8. And hey, Pup, Joelll, I'm crashing with you after all. *grin*

Um, and there is more upcoming, but I think this is it for tonight. Bed is seriously calling.