i'm goin' to toontown

(It is completely ridiculous that I haven't posted a thing since August.)

This is to announce two things! Firstly, that I will be away tonight and tomorrow night on account of traveling to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding; I will probably have intermittent email access, but don't expect to see me online.

And secondly, for those of you who have not already heard me flailing about it, that I am attempting to unofficially participate in NaNoWriMo this year. (Or an abbreviated version thereof; I'm going for 30K rather than 50K words in total.)

oh god.

So here's a few things I've been meaning to post about, and I am doing that very rare thing of posting from work on my lunch break because I don't know if/when I'll manage to get online tonight. First, recent stuff:

Purimgifts! I participated in this fic exchange again this year. I received a thoroughly adorable trio of BtVS ficlets from Green: Family Means No One Gets Left Behind, Baker's Surprise (including a recipe for chocolate hamantaschen!), and To Life. My own contribution, for the_ragnarok, was a three-part Bible/Temeraire crossover (idek) called Three Things And Four.

Consonance! My second ever West Coast filk con (after Conflikt a few years back), confirming my impression that West Coast filkers are generally excellent people. I really hope I get the chance to go back another year.
ladymondegreen has a full report of the rehearsals and the concert here and here, plus a little bit of costuming we did Saturday night for the open circle she hosted. *cheerful* (One of my favorite bits involving the costumes: kanef, on first seeing us, asking me "So ... is this some new really, really strict religious observance?")
The concert was downright exhilarating, the costuming was insane fun, the open filking afterward was wonderful as it always is, there was opportunity to meet some wonderful new people and to talk to old friends and acquaintances I very seldom see, and basically what I'm saying is it was the best kind of filk con. Even if the jet lag flattened me for days afterwards.

Family visiting! My brother and my dad are here from Israel, and have been staying at our house since Monday night. I have missed them both terribly; it's been great having them here.

Which leads me into upcoming things:

Nephew's bar mitzvah! This evening we (we being me, Alex, my brother and my dad) are driving up to Rochester, where we will spend the weekend celebrating the bar mitzvah of my sister's oldest kid. (How is he thirteen already. HOW.) Don't expect to see me around the internets tonight; I may or may not be on Saturday night, depending on family goings-on and internet availability. We return Sunday night, whereupon I will be plunging directly into frantic preparation for:

Passover! And hosting a seder at my own table for the first time in my life. aaaa panic panic aaaaaaaaaa We've cleaned the whole house except the kitchen already; we won't be turning over the kitchen until the night of Saturday the 23rd, leaving a very narrow margin for all the food prep we have to do in advance. Since cooking is permissible on holidays, I can leave some of it for later -- but anything requiring an electrical appliance such as a blender? Yeah, that's got to happen before sunset on Monday the 25th. Which includes the charoset.

FUN TIMES, MY FRIENDS. See you all when I see you!

The illustrious ladymondegreen has given me a meme; the premise is "what were you like at a specific age?" and the number she gave me was twenty. My answer is supposed to address relationship, where I was living, what I was doing for work and school, what I feared, and my best memory.

Follow me behind the ( cut-tag: )

If any of you would like to pick up this meme, ask me for a number and I will give you one! (If I don't already know your age, I may have to ask for at least a ballpark.)

Greetings to all from the land of milk and honey and jetlag! We are safely arrived as of last night and are ensconced in my brother's apartment in Ramat Beit Shemesh; I have been climbed on by various adorable nieces and had philosophical discussions with nephew who is getting too old to be called adorable (at least to his face) and I have slept, although not enough; noisy birds woke me up at about five-thirty AM local time.

Anyway -- I may be sporadically around internet-wise for the next week and a half, but don't expect to see me between tonight and Monday night; I will be offline celebrating the holiday of Shavuot.

wheeeeeeeeeee israeeeeeeeel :D :D :D

Hi, folks. I'm currently in scenic Rochester, NY, at the home of a neighbor of my sister's, who graciously offered us the use of their guest room while they are out of town. I am taking advantage of sporadic wifi to post this and let y'all know not to expect to see me online between tonight and (possibly) Saturday night or (more likely) Sunday afternoon.

Chag sameach to my coreligionists, happy weekend to everybody else, and see you when I see you.

<3

Man, have I really not posted in here since September? *brushes dust off of random flat surfaces*

Things I could post about but haven't been:

• Recipes! I have recently made, among other things: low-carb kishka, sugar-free and dairy-free chocolate ganache frosting, and whole-wheat sourdough bread stuffing.
  
• Books! For some reason, this year I've been reading a lot more new things than I have in previous years. Including finally picking up the Hunger Games series, which oh my god, you guys.
  
• Music! I have been living on the acapella offerings that my wonderful friendslist supplied me with back in the summer, further fortified by the various albums available on Spotify. (College acapella has changed some since I was in college. Everybody has vocal percussion now, apparently.)
  
• TV! Doctor Who is on hiatus, Supernatural has not been making me as happy this year as it has in years past, and ... truth to tell, most of what I've been watching lately has been older stuff. Some of it much older, including original-series Who.
  
• Writing! Seriously, did I never even post links to my purimgifts fics from last year? WTF, past me?
  
• Work! ALWAYS FUN.
  
• Homestuck! I got sucked into this webcomic about a year ago and have been mildly obsessed with it ever since. It is bizarre and amazing and there needs to be filk about it. Speaking of which:
  
• How much I miss conventions and housefilks. But that's a sad topic. :(
  
• Another sad topic: how much I miss my mother.

It's been getting better.

I was talking to somebody recently about why I haven't posted a lot, and it seems to be at least in part that I have lacked the energy to polish anything I write -- and the inclination to post anything I haven't polished. As my dear sdelmonte says: the perfect is the enemy of the good.

This post isn't perfect, but it's going up anyway.

Hi, gang. You know I love you.

Because a lot of people saw my last friendslocked post and didn't know what was going on. I realized I've been remiss in telling people about the state of my mother's health; it's been really hard to talk about.

Last spring my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She's been in and out of the hospital (Sloan-Kettering) since then, with varying frequency; they had it under control for a good while, and then they didn't.

I cannot overstate how excellent Sloan-Kettering was through all of this. They took such good care of her, I can't even begin to tell you.

Yesterday they released her to home hospice care. And while it's good that she can be home now, the reason they released her is that at this point there isn't anything else they can do.

They've said weeks.



So this is why sdelmonte and I aren't at Balticon this weekend as we'd hoped to be. I'm sorry to miss all of you who will be there.

My brother and his family have come in from Israel, and my sister and her family from Rochester, and my mother's siblings, and family friends. And our whole community is organizing to help. And my mother is as comfortable as we can make her, and she's in good spirits, and ... that's pretty much all there is to say.

Again: those of you who are inclined towards prayer, please pray for her.

by B. Wittenberg, age 35 1/2

a list in four parts

( 1. En Route )

( 2. In Ramat Beit Shemesh )

( 3. In Yerushalayim )

( 4. Going Home )

All in all: a week wasn't anything like long enough. I want to go back.

Cesil Kohlman Levin, educator, dies at age 94.



I love you, Grandma.

Miss you so much.

There isn't any easier way to say this.

We lost the baby. Yesterday morning.



To forestall the likeliest questions:
* We're both about as close to okay as it's possible to be under the circumstances.
* This is not private. Please don't hesitate to tell anyone who you feel should know.
* Currently we are still planning to attend OVFF at the end of the month.

I'm not disabling comments but I may or may not be answering them.