Catch Up

My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.
-- Mary Todd Lincoln

Friday, August 31, 2001
One year ago: Market Carpet
Two years ago: Open Source as an Ant Farm
Three years ago: Cold Mountain
Four years ago: Knight-Errantry

Long time no write! I think the disruption of routine just got me out of the habit. But I'm posting entries that got written in note form but not completed (start here), and will return to regular writing in September. Be sure to catch up, if you want to read about the fire in my apartment building -- big drama!

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In June, I attended the film festival, and thrashed around to find a place for Jack, his younger daughter, and me to live together here in Seattle. I finally asked Joe Ross, one of my dance buddies, if he had any places available, since I knew he and his brother Dan own rental properties. He did have a space! Two bedroom (we'd wanted three, one for an office), no garage (but good-size basement), an old Craftsman style house with large rooms, fireplace, big front porch. And the rent was reasonable! Turned out the place was a duplex, with a single woman living upstairs from us (private entrance), and had a "shack in the back," a small cottage that took up most of the back yard (a young couple lives here). But I had Jack and H---- come take a look, and we decided to take it. That meant we had a month to get them moved down, while Jack dealt with chairing Vikingcon in August.

In July, I don't know how many trips I made back and forth from Bellingham, filling the back of my Volvo wagon each time. We ended up with a Uhaul and some strong guys and got Jack and H---- moved. The house is very nice, and H--- was a good sport about her room being down in the basement. I asked my sister M---- to commiserate with her, since she'd slept down in the basement during part of the time when we'd been growing up.

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The first weekend of August I spent at my Capitol Hill place (we're keeping it for a while, at least -- office space, server space, a retreat for me). I was hosting two women for the Seattle Lindy Exchange, one from Portland, and one from North Carolina. Both were good guests, and we danced our feet off! I even got to the latenight dancing most nights.

In the middle of the month, Vikingcon finally happened. I don't know if I'd have been so much in favor of Jack being the chairman, if I'd known he would be also dealing with being laid off, and moving, all in the same summer! He asked me to do a daily newszine like I did at Swingout Northwest, then revealed that he'd like me to handle the pocket program also. "Well, the schedule stuff will be mostly the same in both, won't it?" The convention was fun, but we weren't able to get my stuff printed on campus as we'd hoped. Lesson: I should have gone up the weekend before and tested the systems envisioned for me ahead of time. We ended up doing the printing at kinko's, which worked out fine.

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And now I have a new web home! It took a while to get this posted; I decided now was the time to put the first years of this journal in their own folders where they should have been, so I had to do mass search and replace to correct various links, then also individually review each old entry. Whew! But I like having the eponymous URL (that was supposed to be Jack's first Christmas gift to me, in 1998!).