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Committee Assignment
Sunday, January 17, 1999 Rereading the Potlatch entries from a year ago has got me revved up for next weekend! Jack and I will drive down to Eugene on Friday. Speaking of Potlatch, we are already starting the planning for Potlatch Nine, to be held next year in Seattle! I had been planning on spending the entire day at work on Saturday, before I remembered that there was a critical meeting to be held at noon (or so I'd been told!) at Jane's house. Imagine my chagrin when I arrived promptly at noon to find that they'd moved the time forward an hour and had started at eleven. You know how I hate to be late! But there wasn't any slight intended by this; just someone replying all to the wrong piece of email, one that didn't have my name or Marcia's name on it. She arrived at the same time as me. We didn't miss too much, though. Victor Gonzalez and Sheila Lightsey, representing Corflu 2000 (a fanzine fans' convention) had been presenting the pros and cons of holding Potlatch one weekend, and Corflu the very next weekend. I don't have any issues with this idea one way or the other, and it will probably happen as proposed. After going through all those issues, we got down to discussing who wanted to do what on the committee. Victor said he wanted to do the website. I'm ok with this, but made my one request: please let the site be at a location where it can stay, both before and after the convention. I wish that Potlatch 6 and Potlatch 7 still had their webpages up, like Orycon does. It's good for historical reasons, and prevents broken links. Victor and others saw my point. I was a bit surprised (and concerned) that Jane had apparently already decided to run the hospitality suite, which is what I did the last time Potlatch was in Seattle. What would be left for me to do? There are many roles on the committee that I'm entirely unsuited for! Jane picked up on my feelings without my saying anything, though, and while some other topic was being talked about in the rest of the room, proposed that I should be in charge of consuite fun: toys, games, special events. I was immediately reassured, and now look forward to the whole thing. Given the email problems arranging the meeting (the time change wasn't the only missed mail) I urged strongly that an email list be set up at one of the free sites, and this got taken care of today. After we covered all our issues, we walked a block down the street to Kate and Glenn's house, to see Glenn constructing a roller coaster/ferris wheel with K'nex, a cool building toy. This amazing structure dominates the front room of their house now, and is about sixty percent operational. The coaster cars only derail at one place on the track. Neat!
Saturday afternoon and today during the day, I was at work, plugging away through bugs assigned to me. There weren't very many other folks there, which is good -- fewer distractions and interruptions! I don't mind repetitive work like this. My bugs aren't code defects in the product, but external website problems that make us look bad. I get the fun of writing to the webmasters, advising them of bad HTML on their site, or stricter script interpretation now, or some other issue, and asking them to change. They usually cooperate, since it's in their users' interest, but some are so anti-Microsoft that they refuse!
I knew Jack had his daughters with him, but advised him of my whereabouts, since my office is much closer to his place than my home is. "Keep me in mind if you and the girls go do something fun, or whatever," I wrote. He didn't have anything planned, and there weren't any suitable movies handy, but said, "you are welcome to stop by for a boring evening at home with me and the girls (we could watch Star Wars on Video or something)." I decided to stop on the way and buy a couple of "previously viewed" videos. One, "Picture Perfect," I'd seen and found tolerable and I thought the girls would like it; the other, "Good Will Hunting," I hadn't seen but wanted to sometime. Jack was sitting on the living room floor, playing his guitar and working on a new song, when I arrived. We watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and ate chili mac that was prepared by his older daughter A----. I think she rushed it, though! The macaroni (from Kraft Mac and Cheese in a box) just wasn't really done! It wasn't hard to the bite, but it had the taste of raw starch, even after I gave up, added a bit more water, and put my portion in the microwave. I did manange to finish it, though, and she didn't seem offended by my actions -- she can be a volatile girl sometimes. When the show was over, we played Scrabble, at the girls' request. I think Boggle might be a better game for this family; by the end of the game the girls were getting silly and Jack was getting impatient. Boggle is faster, and can be easily adapted for different levels of skill. No waiting for other players to finish their turns, which was the part that bugged Jack in Scrabble. He won, but the game was very close overall. Jack went off to his computer to work on Java, and I watched "Picture Perfect" with the girls, visiting Jack a few times to listen to him vent about environment variables and feed him squares of "Lindor" chocolate. The movie isn't bad (it stars the breasts of Jennifer Anniston, in case you missed it) but the male leads are miscast. Kevin Bacon is supposed to be a sleazy guy who is only attracted to unavailable women. He succeeds in this, but we don't get why Anniston is interested in him! And the good guy is entirely bland, not charming at all, so why does she eventually fall in love with him? And any points the movie is trying to make about honesty fall by the wayside. After the movie the girls went to bed, and Jack gave up on Java for the evening. We watched "Almost Live," a local comedy show, then an old episode of the X Files. I'm not a huge fan of the show, though I don't mind it, so I had no sympathy later when Jack was saying he stayed up too late. Watching it was his choice! Jack laughed later when I thanked him for a very nice evening. Bad food, him bickering with the girls, then off to the computer, adds up to a nice evening? But I had a good time and was very comfortable. I like being part of the scene there.
We woke up to the sound of the vacuum cleaner! A--- was getting an early start on her chores. It was still a bit early for that one, though, considering that the house is a duplex and the folks downstairs probably wanted to sleep a bit later than eight AM. So she continued on to doing the dishes and baking blueberry muffins. Said Jack to me, "I'm betting she has some big favor to ask later." The muffins were good, though, so I wasn't complaining! I went back to the office and continued sending email to websites. I didn't get all the tasks done that I wanted to (I'd also wanted to make progress on the other areas I work in) but I stayed as long as I could stand it. Then, on my way to buy gas before getting on the highway, I realized that this was a good chance to do some shopping! A few new items of clothing will come in handy next weekend. So off I went to Bellevue Square. Lane Bryant was having a lingerie sale, and everything that was on clearance had an additional amount knocked off the price, so I got some really good buys! A new matching set of bra and panties in a cool coppery-rust color, and other fun items, and a new skirt and blouse. I don't think I bought anything that wasn't on sale! A quick dinner at MacDonalds was only marred by the fact that I'd left the book I thought I was going to be reading on my desk at work, so I had to pull out the book I'd just finished the other day and start re-reading. I got sidetracked on my way back to the car; Penny's had all the holiday candles on sale, so I succumbed to my desire for a really big three-wicked candle. I'd resisted until now because these are overpriced, in my opinion, but large "Terrazo" brand pillars were half off, then a further twenty five percent off of that. The candle is about eight inches in diameter and nine inches high, mottled brown in color, and supposedly autumn-leaves scented. Where will this candle obsession end? So I've enjoyed the weekend, and I did get some work done. Tomorrow I'm going in for a root canal in the morning. I feel some mild aprehension about it, but at least it will be over. After that, I'll have a crown put on! I've only been delaying this for about a year.
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