So much awful stuff happens to the protagonists in the last third of the show that I often don't make it all the way through. It's worth it, though - my favorite character suddenly gets enough growth to become my favorite character, and the villain dies in a very satisfying way, allowing me to say ( Read more... )

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so this is my last year managing the Super Happy Fun Sell. The SHFS is AWA's garage sale/yard sale/used anime merch/swap meet sort of event, we sell tables to fans who want to unload their unwanted anime and manga and etc.

I honestly can't remember the first year we had it. I know AWA had been trying to find new events to fill up Thursday night to try and get people to show up early and get their badges so as to relieve the Friday lineups. I'd been doing some Thursday night panels before then.

Some of the other conventions had been doing swap meet type things, I know we weren't the first. It's my recollection that Lloyd - one of the other AWA founders - actually said "let's do this" and I think he came up with the "Super Happy Fun Sell" name, which is a play on the old Saturday Night Live fake commercial about Happy Fun Ball, Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Anyway I heard about it, and was immediately like, "this is a great idea, I wanna run it" and there we were. And that was at least twenty years ago. I'm glad I ran it because I got first crack at the weird old merchandise people didn't want any more, and because I got to sell my own unwanted merch at my own table, which I did not pay for, because Staff Hath Its Privileges.

Also, it's an event people love, people love the vibe, people love bargains, people love cleaning out their closets and making a little scratch. Putting smiles on faces is the best thing.

So, if I love it so much, why am I stepping away? Well, this kind of event that involves registrations and table layouts and conversations about lines and scheduling, that event really needs someone in Atlanta who can go to staff meetings and really be involved in the planning and make sure the event is integrated well with the rest of the schedule. And that person is not me, I don't live in Atlanta any more and I don't have the, shall we say, the spoons to keep up with this event long-distance, alongside all the other things that demand my attention throughout the year.

Don't get me wrong, things usually turn out OK, but that's because I'm on site hours in advance, making sure all the tables are where they need to be (if not, I gotta find somebody to fix it), someone's controlling the lines (if not, I gotta find staffers to do line control), someone else found the event signage (if not, I gotta find someone who knows where the signage is), and making sure somebody else is moving all the tech equipment out of the room because there's usually tech equipment sitting around in the room when I get there. There's always someone I need to find, and I don't know where to find them or how to find them or who they are, because, again, I haven't been to staff meetings in twenty solid years.

Usually there is someone on staff or staff-related who was promised a table by somebody else on staff, and that information never gets to me until the day of the show, at which point I usually don't have any tables left. Somebody in Atlanta would probably get that memo.

When you add this kind of thing on top of the pile of things that already need to get done for the SHFS - sending out confirmation emails, printing maps, answering the same fifty questions every single year about "what is a used item" and "can I sell my own artwork or plushies or keychains that I made" and other already-answered questions, well, it gets kind of overwhelming. And overwhelming is not a thing I need, particularly at a convention which by its very nature already has me amped up and on edge, at a time of year when I'm also amped up and on edge, and also have a ton of other things to do that are grabbing more and more of my bandwidth.

So, I'm not gonna do it any more. I still intend to show up and try to get in there early to grab the weird old cool stuff, but I'm sure AWA has staffers that can take over and run the event perfectly well.

I can see you're not a cook. You can't exactly dice thyme. The leaves are pretty tiny. If they're fresh, you just strip them from the stem. I suppose you can then chop them more finely, but dicing? You'd have more luck trying to dice time.

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The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.

And that's not the most alarming thing about it.

Which, good for her, but she's not going to make the big bucks in social work, which is what she's getting her BS in. Well, best of luck to her anyway. (She does have her eyes wide open, because everybody has told her that. Unsurprising.)

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so now I'm spending some part of my evening with another coworker instead of by myself, which means I can't just summarily turn off the TV. Other people are weird when they want the TV on even if they aren't watching it, but since they think I'm weird for preferring blissful silence I guess sometimes I have to compromise.

Which means that the other day my entertainment choices were either a long and frankly tedious piece on the JFK conspiracy theories, or HP1. Welp, JFK won't get any deader, and practically speaking, JKR won't get any richer. The choice wasn't really very agonizing, is what I'm saying. I feel like maybe it ought to have been, but no. (That place does not have enough channels. If I'm going to be stuck watching TV for even part of the night I really need to figure out how to get my phone on the screen.)

All this led me to realize something that I somehow don't think I ever thought about before, which is that the plot of book 2 doesn't make any fucking sense, like, right from the start. How exactly did Lucius set it up so that he'd happen to bump into the Weasley family? What if they hadn't gone shopping that day? There clearly was a lot of planning that went into this, so what was his backup? Really, none of those plots hold together if you look at them too hard. And that's not too unusual for fiction, but I'm not particularly inclined to be charitable about it.

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But never fear, he no longer has a bear living in his crawlspace. He now has two bears.

Honestly, if you ban somebody it ought to warn you before you comment on their posts so that if you forget or don't realize you don't end up in an awkward situation.

I have the distinct impression that Adrian Tchaikovsky doesn't like Donald Trump.

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We had Myrna and James over for US Thanksgiving (Saturday) here! I wound up with some extra days so I took Thursday and Friday off. It's a good thing, too, because I got my covid/flu shot on Thursday and as is typical with me, twelve to fourteen hours later I was feelin' it. I didn't get past that until Friday night. By Saturday the turkey was in the oven and the sweet potato casserole was warming and the pies had been cooked Friday night. It was a nice evening and we all ate a lot. Sunday Shain wasn't feeling great and is still head-colded up today. I spent the day getting Anime Hell started and am halfway done at this point. Which is good, because there's this week, and then there's next week, and then I get on a plane for Atlanta.

Weekend prior there was a collectible vintage toy show at the RAID gallery on Queen at Roncey, that's Royal Academy of Illustration and Design, one of the schools cranking out talented artists here in Toronto, they have a little cafe and event space in the front of the building and the back is studio spaces. Anyway we got there right as everyone was packing up. The website was pretty vague about times, but I figured they'd be going until at least 4? No sir. Apparently the event started at 10am, which is, like, you want people to be somewhere on a Sunday morning at 10am? I'm not going to be anywhere on Sunday at 10am, sorry. I feel bad for the vendors, they had to be there at 8 or 9, if they came from out of the city that means they're rolling out of bed at 6 or 7am on a weekend. Maybe this is natural behavior? Maybe every Ontario native was raised to get up at the crack of dawn to go out ice fishing or snowmobiling or hunting or whatever?

I dunno, maybe this is a me thing, maybe being a night owl and a late riser puts me working at a tangent to the rest of the city, this city might just have a early to rise vibe that I'll never be in sync with. I will say there's not much to do here after 10pm that doesn't involve drinking beer.

Anyway, we did not buy any overpriced vintage collectibles - the one guy still boothing was mostly selling Funko Pops, so there's that bit of data - but we went next door to West End Comics and pulled some comics out of the $2 bin. See, when you stay open past 4, you make money.

I know Friday the 21st was the library sale we biked across town to; nothing really worth the trip, but it was an interesting experiment to see if I could get from home to Yonge & Bloor via bike in an evening and make it back in time to go to work. Saturday we went out to the outlet mall and I got some new shoes that seem to be working out OK. I still need a new winter coat.

It's December 2, we had some snow last night, it's supposed to be below freezing and occasionally snowing a bit for the next week or so. I'm hoping for a few more mild days before the January freeze sets in. We'll see, I guess.

Which I nearly forgot about, but here we are!

You can buy points here, and then spend them on a paid account.

And then you can post a poll!

are you seriously telling me that chronic nosebleeds are potentially (yet another) symptom of (the same underlying connective tissue problems that ultimately cause) hypermobility?

Well, fuck.

(Oh, and myopia's on that list too, but I somehow find myself less flabbergasted by this one.)

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I guess winter's finally here.

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Well, she tried, anyway.

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I put my chicken in the oven and fried up the chicken skins and - listen, I gotta say, of all the food items I've tried because I read about them, fried chicken skins are fucking amazing. I don't mind saying that they are, hands down, the most brilliant thing Jews have contributed to the world, and I do hope my various Jewish friends take that in the spirit it's intended, because omg. I don't care if I find out later that you guys invented the wheel, this is better. I am very thankful.

Anyway, we've got chicken, creamed spinach, possibly creamed corn, maybe beets of some sort, maybe couscous, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows, contributed by a guest), stuffing, cornbread, cranberry sauce, and pies. I'm debating making some soup as well, buuuuuuut I think we may have enough food and not enough bowls. Oh, and there's green beans. Oh, and brussels sprouts and a salad.

(Maybe I should've made baked beans? I wonder if I have time to make baked beans. Oh, but the chicken is in the oven. Hm. Can you make not-baked baked beans? Is that a thing?)

Title:  Unassailable
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Regency
Fandom(s): Módào Zǔshī 魔道祖师 / The Untamed 陈情令
Pairing(s): Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Wordcount: 4,677
Warning(s): None

Summary: The ton in London is abuzz with the newcomers, two Chinese lords who seem to be wealthy, single, and incredibly handsome. One, Lord Lan, is the strong silent type while the other, Lord Wei, is charming and pleasant. Nobody knows very much about them but they seem to be perfect gentlemen until one is insulted by one of the minor lords.
OR
The one where Lan Zhan gets to beat up a Regency-era lord in a swordfight.

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Title:  A Cup of Love
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Wild Card - Bakery/Coffee Shop AU
Fandom(s): Módào Zǔshī 魔道祖师 / The Untamed 陈情令
Pairing(s): Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Wordcount: 9,639
Warning(s): None

Summary: Post-grad Lan Wangji does not have time for gossip, coffee shops or friends. But after an unavoidable meeting, he cannot get his mind off the barista known as the Yiling Laozu who has captured his attention. He even becomes a regular at the Laozu's cafe.
OR
Wei Wuxian wins Lan Wangji over with baked goods and latte art and doesn't even tell him his name.

---

Title: I Hurt Myself Today 
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Sports
Fandom(s): NCIS
Pairing(s): Anthony DiNozzo & Jethro Gibbs
Wordcount: 5,090
Warning(s): None

Summary: A few years after the events of Everyone I Know Goes Away In The End, Tony DiNozzo is a player in the NFL and is injured. Gibbs gets a call from the hospital and he goes to help the kid out. Tony did save his life, after all.
NOTE: This is an AU of pre-canon after Tony saves Gibbs from being killed in the apartment fire in Baltimore, Gibbs gets to help Tony out when he's injured.