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Vanguard
Saturday, January 2, 1999 This morning I tried again to visit a certain store on Capitol Hill. They were open this time, so I went in and browsed around. I knew what I wanted, generally, but I needed to sort out the exact combination of items that would suit my purposes. I finally made my purchases. I was tickled that the workers praised my choices: "Those are some of the coolest things we sell!" But maybe they say that to all the customers, like at an expensive dress boutique. "Fine choice, Modom." In the late afternoon I drove out to Jack's place in Redmond. I was so glad to see him! The last time was Christmas Eve Eve, as I drove off into the snow. He's been frustrated lately with a new PC, which has been giving him fits as he tries to install Windows 98 on it. I couldn't help him with the mysterious error message he was getting, so we went off to the movie we wanted to see.
The movie we had in mind was "You've Got Mail," starring cute Tom Hanks and adorable Meg Ryan. It was fun! It was interesting seeing the adaptations that Nora Ephron had made. In the original story, the male and female leads were coworkers, not commercial rivals. If Ephron had a point to make about the homogenization of American business, I missed it. I found that I was laughing out loud at times when no one else was laughing, but I couldn't figure out a pattern to that. I think Jack wanted to see the movie because he likes Tom Hanks. Jack and I first got in contact via email, but we didn't correspond for months and months before meeting, as these characters did. In real life (not a movie), I recommend going face-to-face as soon as possible. We went for a bite to eat after the movie, at Taco del Mar. This is a favorite place of Jack's, and fortunately I like it also. They were almost closed, and offered us some spare pieces of fried fish along with the food we ordered, but we turned down that bonus. Jack said he wanted to offer his buddy Brett a ride to Vanguard, a monthly science fiction party I go to. They'd gone together to the New Year's Party given by John Hedkte the other night, which tickled me. But Jack couldn't give me the kind of details about the party that I was craving, and later on neither could Brett! I wanted to know the conversations they had, who was there, what went on, and all that. I'll have to ask around for other folks that were there. So we swung by Brett's place, which was on our way. He was sleeping, leaning back in the chair in front of his PC, according to himself, with his head hanging straight back, so he was glad we'd come by and woken him up or he'd have had a very stiff neck in a few hours. He was willing to come to the party, but first he wanted to show me various parts of a model train setup that his twelve-year-old son is working on, and show Jack some articles that he'd printed from the web recently. I think this was part of the waking-up process for him.
Vanguard was fun, though a bit restrained because everyone had been partying two nights before. Suzle Tomkins handed out copies of Mainstream, the last issue of a zine that she and Jerry Kauffman have been putting out for many years. I got a copy since I am a contributor! I did an illustration for an essay that Luke McGuff wrote. He wrote the essay at least four years ago, and I did the art two years ago, so you can see that this final issue was a long time coming! I do feel very fan-validated, appearing in someone else's zine like this. It was a strange sensation having H---- ask me my name. I've known her (but slightly) for years! She did recall, unprompted by me, the time I took her to an orientation meeting of the Mountaineers a few years ago. Oh, well, she seems happy and had a nice young man with her, and is quitting smoking, so I'm glad she's doing well. I got a kick out of seeing my dance buddy Denys. He's been busy lately teaching VB programming, though how this keeps him away from Vanguard on Saturday nights I don't exactly understand. He always finds me very funny, which I view as a mark of good taste. He hadn't met Jack, so I pointed him out from across the room. Jack liked the t-shirt Denys was wearing, which depicted a ninja-bunny from some manga (Japanese comic book) or other. I know I talked too much about dance camp during the evening, but that's what I've been up to lately, so I couldn't resist bringing it up!
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