i'm goin' to toontown

[Edited to add: yes, this is last year's letter, but it's pretty much still valid.]

Dear purimgifts author:

( Cut to spare my friendslist )

Dear purimgifts author:

( Cut to spare my friendslist )

Dear purimgifts author:

( Cut to spare my friendslist )

I have a tumblr account.

That isn't new; I've had it for some months now in order to follow the tumblr blogs of people I like, plus other blogs I was finding interesting. What's new is that my account is no longer zero-content, because I have finally started reblogging things.

Why? Well ... about mumble-something years ago, there was this guy I knew in Gargoyles fandom. We were involved in producing various fanworks together, including both of us being on the staff of The Gargoyles Saga ... but what we mostly collaborated-slash-competed on was filk. I mostly fell out of the active fandom around the time when I got married (though I visited the conventions again a time or two), and while we followed each other on LJ for a while, Patrick and I sort of gradually lost touch.

And sometime in December I re-encountered him on tumblr -- I believe by way of looking at the tag for Disney's Frozen. And then this happened.

Followed by this, this, this, and this...

And finally this.

As I said in one of the posts: Whoever had January 14 in the betting pool for “how long will it take before she breaks the no-content policy”, or either “filk” or “connecting with an old friend” for “what’s going to finally make her actually post something,” please stop by the office to collect your winnings.

I am not sure yet how/whether I'm going to connect my Dreamwidth/Livejournal account to my tumblr account. Any thoughts? Also, are there any of you lovely people who have (or wish to recommend) tumblrs that I should know about?

So as I mentioned last month, I unofficially participated in NaNoWriMo this year. And discovered that (a) writing a set number of words every day is really good discipline, (b) dialogue and descriptive lists are really good for using up wordcount, and (c) it is virtually impossible to get much writing done on Fridays when sunset is between 4 and 5 pm. So I decided halfway through the month that I was not going to count Fridays, and that I would instead take four days out of December to make up the 30 days.

And I made my 30K wordcount goal as of December 4. :D

Mind you, I don't actually have a satisfactory end to the story yet. But I fully intend to keep writing until I've got one. Maybe next year I'll try the full 50K.

(bnewman, if you're reading this, we should possibly talk about songs.)

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!

Dear purimgifts author:

( Cut to spare my friendslist )

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.)

HEY GUYS. Want to know why this year's NorthEast Floating Filk Con (Contata 6 / NEFilk 21) is going to be raw hammered rock-the-house awesome?

Of course you do! And there are so many, many reasons. There's our widely acclaimed con suite and our traditional chocolate-tasting party, but you know about those if you've been to Contata in recent years. There's our amazing guest lineup for this year, including the incomparable Judi Miller and the incredible Tom Smith, but you know about those if you've looked at our website linked above.

But what you may not know, and what I am here (belatedly) to tell you, is that this year's Contata is going to be witness to something that hasn't been seen since 1987:

The Rocky Horror Muppet Show.

Yes, you heard me.

Details here!



P.S.: I'm playing Gonzo.

Dear purimgifts author:

( Cut to spare my friendslist )