gwynnega

It is Henna Day, in the midst of a spate of lovely autumnal LA days. (Another heat wave is scheduled for later this week.) Yesterday I baked pumpkin scones (from a Trader Joe's mix), and they are delicious.

The election is three weeks away, and I'm on edge, though at least the polls are encouraging.

I'm enjoying the new Shirley Jackson biography (Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin), which is full of amazing information, such as the fact that "Jackson tried to structure a story around a potato kugel recipe."

I usually have a lazy January 1st, and today has been no exception. I had my customary scrambled eggs with caviar and sour cream for brunch.

(Last night while I drank champagne and ate caviar and brie, I watched The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes for the first time in a long while. Robert Stephens is an excellent Holmes, and Christopher Lee an even better Mycroft.)

I am happy that I gave myself one extra vacation day on January 2nd, so I can ease back into non-holiday mode on Thursday.

This evening I went to my mom's for Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yam souffle, cranberry sauce, green beans with chestnuts, and pumpkin pie.

A happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate.

I'm still jetlagged (I swear, I only adjusted to Wisconsin time just when it was time to come home again!), so this will be rambly and partial.

I don't think I went to as much programming this year as at previous Wiscons--partly because I was dealing with bad headaches on a couple of the days. My favorite panel was probably "De-Gaying and Whitewashing: What Publishing Trends Mean for Writers" (with Mary Anne Mohanraj, Liz Gorinsky, Andrea Hairston, Malinda Lo, and Neesha Meminger). I was happy to finally be on a panel with oracne ("Short Stories vs Novels," which was a lot of fun), and also to have Tibetan food with her!

My favorite reading was rose_lemberg's awesome The Moment of Change feminist SFF poetry open mic at Michelangelo's, featuring Rose, cafenowhere, shadesong, britmandelo and others. (Also, Michelangelo's provided very good brownies.)

Andrea Hairston's Guest of Honor speech/performance was beautiful and inspiring (punctuated by the Star Trek theme song).

Favorite food of the con: probably brunch at Bluephies with nwhepcat. (Runner up: the amazing chocolate cake with raspberry sauce which I get every year at the dessert salon.)

Books/publications I bought at Wiscon (many of 'em from Aqueduct Press):

The Wiscon Chronicles vol. 6: Futures of Feminism and Fandom, ed. Alexis Lothian
The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, ed. Rose Lemberg
Here We Cross: a collection of queer & genderfluid poetry from Stone Telling 1-7, ed. Rose Lemberg
Unruly Islands by Liz Henry
Oracle Gretel (chapbook) by Julia Rios
Impolitic! by Andrea Hairston and Debbie Notkin
We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling by Brit Mandelo
and the April 2012 issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone

Clothes I lost and gained: I lost my purple cardigan on Monday sometime between lunch in the hotel restaurant and going upstairs to my room. I was in a headachy exhaustion haze at that point, so maybe I dropped it somewhere? Anyway, the hotel has my info, should it turn up. But at the Gathering, ellen_kushner had handed me a pair of black trousers with multicolored vertical stripes and pronounced them mine. I thought, But they're not my size or my style!--but tried them on and discovered they fit me perfectly and looked exactly my style. Also, nwhepcat gave me a beautiful rose-colored tie-dyed scarf. (But I still want my cardigan back!)

As always for me, the best part of Wiscon was the people--getting to see old and new friends, sharing fun and inspiration.

It is Henna Day as well as the first of the year, and the henna is on my head. I'm watching the One Life To Live tribute marathon on SOAPnet (currently an episode from the early nineties). For brunch I had scrambled eggs and caviar. A good start to the new year.

A very happy 2012 to you all.

I had a lovely Thanksgiving with my mom. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, an amazing creamed spinach-thinly sliced butternut squash au gratin dish (from Trader Joe's), cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

Now I am contemplating having a slice of pie, and I'm watching the Lucky Spencer marathon on SOAPnet. (Great to see these old episodes, though sad to compare them to the current sorry state of the show--and to realize that if SOAPnet ever runs another such GH marathon, it'll probably be because the show's been cancelled.)

My only foray into Black Friday-dom today was a trip to the used bookshops on Brand Ave. I bought a signed paperback of A Monstrous Regiment of Women at Bookfellows, because I'm a couple of hundred pages into The Beekeeper's Apprentice and will need the next volume soon!

At my mom's house I foraged in the closet and found a bunch of my old Sherlock Holmes books from when I was a kid:

The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook, ed. Peter Haining, foreword by Peter Cushing
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective by William S. Baring-Gould
Sherlock Holmes Detected by Ian McQueen
Baker Street By-Ways by James Edward Holroyd
Basil Rathbone: His Life and His Films by Michael B. Druxman

and, not Holmes-related, but another favorite of mine when I was a kid:

The Count: The Life and Films of Bela "Dracula" Lugosi by Arthur Lennig

...I was a seriously geeky kid.

I haven't taken a lot of photos since the Garage Kitty passed away. But today I was in the mood.

Here's today's brunch. It's my favorite egg dish that I make: scrambled eggs with kale, leek, tomato, and green salsa. Plus COFFEE.




I'd thought the Coffee Table would be open through evening for their final day of business, but when I got there around 4 p.m., they'd already closed the kitchen, so I took some pictures. Strange to see all these tables unoccupied. I also sent an email to the company that owns the building, urging them to renew Coffee Table's lease. Maybe if the neighborhood protests loudly enough, it'll make a difference?

I'm back in LA after a whirlwind trip to San Francisco. It was a monumental catch-up session with my friend E., who my friend D. and I hadn't seen in about two decades. (E., D. and I first met as undergrads at UCLA.) We went to the amazing The Steins Collect exhibit at SFMOMA, browsed in bookstores (City Lights--where I discovered there's a new book by Marilyn Hacker!--Green Apple, and Borderlands), ate Italian food and pie and Peruvian rotisserie chicken and other goodies, visited The Church of John Coltrane, and walked a ton. I hadn't been in San Francisco in far too many years. I'd forgotten what a beautiful city it is, and I'm grateful that City Lights is still there.

Oh my, it's already Saturday night and I haven't con-reported! And I don't even have con crud as an excuse (though I did have some leg soreness for a couple of days due to something I must've done during my day of travel on Tuesday).

So, Wiscon! It was great to hang out with nwhepcat, nickelmountain, skogkatt, general_jinjur, likeadeuce and many others. I read poems at the Broad Universe Rapid-fire Reading and had a lot of fun participating in the Fiction Writing in the Age of Fast Information panel with Theodora Goss, Andrea Hairston, Naomi Kritzer, Ann Leckie, and Fred Schepartz.

Some of the terrific panels I attended included: Princess Boys: Is Male Femininity the Last Wave of Feminism?; Celebrating Diana Wynne Jones (with coffeeandink, Sarah Monette and others) (though I greatly longed to clone myself so I could attend This is What Democracy Looks Like: The Wisconsin Protests, scheduled at the same time!); Whedonistas: Feminists Engage With the Worlds of Joss Whedon; and Being a Resilient Writer (the final panel I attended, and the perfect one to send me back home to my writing).

Also great fun were the vid party, the launch party for Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (featuring a concert by SJ Tucker AND bartending by seanan_mcguire!), and the Space Fairies From Beyond reading at a packed Michelangelo's, featuring Pamela Dean, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Monette, Cat Valente, and David D. Levine.

As always, there was much wonderful food, though the Concourse once again let me down by taking the butterscotch pudding off the menu before the con! (The vanilla bread pudding was awfully good, though.) I'm still fondly remembering the creamed-spinach-and-potato pie I had on Monday at Monty's Blue Plate Diner. And, of course, the Dessert Salon, at which the chocolate decadence cake with raspberry sauce continued to be my favorite.

Con programming was, I think, pretty much complete when Joanna Russ died, and I didn't manage to attend the spontaneous programming on her work, but there were some very moving tributes to Russ by Timmi Duchamp, Geoff Ryman and others before Nisi Shawl's Guest of Honor Speech and the Tiptree Ceremony.

Yesterday I had dim sum in Chinatown for a friend's birthday. Then I went to Legacy in Glendale for Free Comic Book Day.

Last night I watched Sidney Lumet's film Daniel, which featured, in supporting roles, Joseph Leon and Tovah Feldshuh (Dave Feldman and Martha McKee from Ryan's Hope) playing father and daughter! (They were both fantastic.)

Also this weekend there was a fair bit of noveling (I'm nearly done with chapter 12 of the Jo book). I also finished a poem, sent off one poetry submission and got another sub ready to put in the (snail)mail. It'll be the first time in ages that I'll have sent out a non-electronic submission.

For dinner I had what's become my customary Sunday-night meal: angel hair pasta with kale and mini heirloom tomatoes.