mood

proud

Check out gfish's Etsy shop of Awesomeness!

So far, he's listed the bluetooth headset he's been working on (see his LJ for details on the making of), and you can convo him for custom orders of same; I believe he can modify other models of headset as well.

The Jacob's Ladder is also there, to show what kind of work he can do. (Though we realize that probably won't be getting sold in large quantities.) :)

Keep checking back for more shiny geekery!

mood

musical

Tony's always on top of this, but I'm always lagging...

Thursday, February 18, 2010, 8pm: The Night Kitchen, Seattle (Holy crap that's tonight!)
Join us as we inaugurate the lounge at The Night Kitchen, a new all-night restaurant downtown, right around the corner from the Moore theater. We've got Betsy Tinney on cello, and Sunnie Larsen on Violin! Space is very limited in their small lounge, so come early for best seating!

March 5-7, 2010: Consonance 2010, Milpitas, CA
We're not playing a concert, but we'll be there! And so will Tricky Pixie and Katy & Ju and Judi Miller and Chris O'Shea, so you should totally come!

Sunday, March 21, 2010, 7pm: Kitten Sundae at SoulFood Books, Redmond
A Sundae on a Sunday, at Soulfood!. Kitten Sundae is two bands combined: Vixy & Tony mixed with Skinny White Chick and shaken vigorously. Come join us, Betsy Tinney, and SJ Tucker, as we rock the end of the weekend!

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 6pm: Opening for Tricky Pixie at the Mandolin Cafe, Tacoma
Come join us in Tacoma, at the Mandolin Cafe! Vixy & Tony will be playing a full set of music from 6-8pm, opening for Tricky Pixie, who will also be playing a full set of music from 8:30 to 10:30pm. Of course there will be some commingling of bands: try and stop us! :D

Saturday, April 3, 2010, 4pm: Norwescon 2010, SeaTac
Join us at the DoubleTree Hotel Seattle Airport for Norwescon 2010, the Northwest's premier science fiction and fantasy convention. The schedule is still in flux at the moment, but for now we're scheduled in Evergreen 3/4 at 4pm on Saturday. The plan is for two hours of music that combines Vixy & Tony with SJ Tucker, Betsy Tinney, and perhaps even additional special guests. As always, it's a con, so please check the convention's daily schedule updates on the day of the show for all of the details. PS: Don't miss Tricky Pixie performing on Friday afternoon, 4pm in Grand Ballroom 2.

...and after that I have begged Tony for a BREAK. Which actually means "start recording another CD." But y'know. :)

• I have met Talis! And she gave me a prezzie! Which I think I'm going to wear tonight, as it's lovely and it fits perfectly and it's shiny and it's heavy and velvet and WARM.
  
  
• I'm feeling better! And also worse. By which I mean that the cold is progressing so there's lots more coughing and sniffing, but that also means that (without getting too gross I hope) things are breaking up and moving, instead of being a big dried block in my chest. It was like singing around a brick wall the other day. This is much better. Also going to bed early was a very good move.
  
  
• Tony appears to be trying to fry his nose off with his laser pointer, so I think it's time to go to the concerts before he puts an eye out. :)
  

• Our hotel room is lovely, and it has TEA. Real tea! Not just, y'know, some teabags near the coffee maker, if you MUST have tea you can have tea that tastes of the coffee the last 25 guests had. A whole tea service with electric kettle for actually BOILING the water, and cups and spoons and biscuits even, and it boils faster here because the electricity is a higher voltage (or something, I don't know) and I have no idea what one does if one wants coffee in one's hotel room but WHO THE HELL CARES because TEA!
  
  
• All the little mundane details are the ones that fascinate me. Yarn and dress fabric in ordinary department stores! Traffic lights that go through yellow on the way to green, as well as on the way to red! Demerara sugar as one of the common sweetener options for tea! I'm so easy to impress.
  
  
• I had vegetarian bangers & mash! In a real English pub! Did I mention I'm easy to impress? Even the gravy was vegetarian. And it was all *delicious*. It's not so hard to be a vegetarian here; I thought I'd be eating Indian for every meal, but we actually haven't had Indian at all yet.
  
  
• It is taking quite a bit of conscious effort sometimes not to start speaking in the particular British accent of whomever has been talking to me. I get this way when reading or watching movies. I also got this way in New Orleans; we all had southern accents for a few days after we left. In both cases I think it comes partly from unconsciously imitating however the local polite strangers speak to you-- shopkeepers, train conductors, etc. That's how it was in NOLA-- there's some impulse there to emulate the polite-speech in an effort to be polite yourself. And also I'm just a habitual mimic. But I'm terribly afraid people will think I'm making fun of them, so I'm trying to squelch the urge.
  
  
• I adore the tube system so! It's so civilized. And so easy. And it only made me a little claustrophobic once, when I was REALLY exhausted and there was an especially narrow and twisty passage to walk through. Mostly I can go around down there without thinking about it. (Things being very narrow and confined are really the only time I get that feeling.)
  
  
• I had never seen a real raven before. They have DEEP voices. I knew they were huge but I didn't know they were baritones!
  
  
• I'm kind of embarrassed about how many American fast food places are here (and how in-your-face their ads are). Of all the cultural exports we could be sending... eugh. Despite this, I'm amused that McDonald's has a chiken tikka wrap. I don't think we'll see that in the US. (Which is too bad; if I ate meat still, I'd have that.) Instead what you'd see in Seattle is Teriyaki. :)
  
  
• I also find myself making an effort to say the "right" words for things-- queue, lift, petrol-- in an effort to be understood. This even though I know I'd be understood just fine; the whole "separated by a common language thing" is a source of amusement but rarely a source of actual problems. So sometimes I make an effort *not* to. I wonder if the British find the difference as cute as we sometimes do.
  
  
• I also find myself wondering whether the stereotype of the Ugly American (rude, belligerent, demanding, etc.) still exists, or is oudated, or is just put aside in the tourist traps. Because EVERYONE has been absolutely lovely to us, without exception. I mean, the filkers of course, but all the strangers, too, is the part that's remarkable. I wonder if it's that they no longer expect travelers to be rude, or if we're just particularly nice, or if the employees of tourist traps are just instructed to be very very nice to all visitors regardless of behavior.
  
  I will leave it at that for now and get ready to be social soon; from our window I can see various concom people loading various techie bits into the hotel. But first I probably need to get my contact lenses to behave, and Tony needs to put on some pants trousers.

	mood		hopeful
	music		Tony coughing

Haven't had the brain to post, but we're here! Had a great two days (2 1/2 really) of fun in London; now shortly going with Mike to the con.

The nursing home I was looking into for Mom called the day we left, to say they didn't have a place for her right now, but they'd let me know. Disappointing, but at least saved me the worry of wondering all week whether they'd call and I'd miss them or that I'd have to arrange things from afar.

Tony & I both have colds, despite Tony's best efforts to keep from giving his to me. Hoping if I could pull it off in New Orleans I can pull it off here. Thoughts, prayers, good vibes, reiki, alien brain waves, whatever you want to send would be welcomed.s

mood

thoughtful

Apollo 1, fire during a test, January 27, 1967.
Gus Grissom
Ed White
Roger Chaffee

Challenger STS-51-L, disintegration during launch, January 28, 1986.
Dick Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Christa McAuliffe
Gregory Jarvis
Judith Resnik

Columbia STS-107, disintegration during reentry, February 1, 2003.
Rick Husband
William McCool
Michael Anderson
Ilan Ramon
Kalpana Chawla
David Brown
Laurel Clark


Spirit, MER-A, transformed from a rover to a stationary research platform, January 26, 2010. (A new life... it's kind of like reincarnation!)

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
-Gus Grissom

(reposted from tereshkova2001.)

mood

curious

Alright, I can't stand it anymore.

So Sooj got Tony this t-shirt for Christmas. Well several from this company, actually, but this is the one I really have a chance in hell of identifying people from. :)

So. 80's rock stars. There's no answer key and other than Madonna, the company ain't tellin'. It's been a fun puzzle, but I think it'll be more fun with more people. :)

The company put out a numbered version (though the emphasized white bits aren't as obvious in it) for reference. Sadly the videos on the TV sets aren't numbered, but what can you do.

So anyway. ( Can you name that rocker? )

Also, you might wanna follow that link above to the colored one. Certain features are picked out in white that are probably meant to be characteristic-- Michael Jackson's one glove, for instance-- and they're harder to see in the blue version.

(We REALLY can't figure out who the guy is with suspenders and a SKULL in his hand. If you look at the colored version and at the actual shirt, it's definitely a skull.)

Under this cut, what Tony, Torrey, Susan, Fishy, Liss and I have come up with in the past couple of days (don't look if you wanna try and guess yourself):

( (But we could be wrong.) )

mood

curious

Okay, so. Someone has finally done it.

In addition to serving incredibly delicious food, including yummy cheese grits, rice balls, carnivorous cocoa (not literally), and ZOMG FRIED CHEESE CURDS TO *DIE* FOR, The Night Kitchen has finally done it. They served me a coffee drink that I actually liked.

It may be that I'm finally ready to learn to like coffee.

I've been half-wishing for some time now that I could cultivate a taste for it, because it's the most easy and universal social beverage. You can get coffee nearly anywhere, and for some reason coffee in restaurants is so much easier than tea. You order coffee, you get a cup that keeps getting filled. You order tea, you get a Busby Berkeley production number, with teabag, teabag wrapper, spoon, usually a separate little teapot, and (if you're me) a landfill's worth of sweetener wrappers, all dancing around your cup-- to which you have to keep adding again and again if you want more than 1 1/2 cups. More hot water, more teabags, please. And you have to keep asking, because they don't refill it automatically like they do for coffee. And the water's never hot enough. And the tea selection is often dismal. Good restaurant tea is hard to come by.

Er, but I digress.

Anyway, so the Night Kitchen has this AMAZING little thing that comes in what looks like a tall shotglass and has two shots of espresso and caramel and I don't even remember what all but I had a sip of gfish's and I liked it. A lot.

So either my palate is just finally changing that much (something similarly sudden happened when I first started to like red wine, years ago) or the Night Kitchen is just that good, or both. So, coffee veterans, lend me your suggestions. What do you recommend for the coffee-curious? Bear in mind you're selling your idea to someone who has loathed even coffee desserts all her life, and who has a *dire* sweet tooth. I'll need to segue gradually into this bitter world.

mood

hee!

I quote rollick:

"Oh, and speaking of om nom nom, I only recently realized that it came from Cookie Monster, and that's why it became so instantly universal — half of us grew up watching him nom things. Here he is talking about it in a surprisingly erudite and philosophical recent interview:"

( You've gotta see this, srsly )

HEE. I hadn't remembered that that's where it came from, either. It makes so much sense!

mood

pleased

President Obama has named his first transgender appointment: Amanda Simpson, Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce.

(Via kightp.)

(...as with most such articles, it's best not to read the comments.)

Edit: The video in the article is really fascinating, by the way. Simpson and another person talk about their experiences.

mood

accomplished

So I realized belatedly that I never did get around to finishing my posts about the Trains of Heaven Adventure. I just came across the partial post I had typed up in wordpad, and I still had my notes in the back of my song notebook, so I've just posted part 3 as a backdated post. The "trains of heaven" tag will get you there, if you're interested. :)

I'm really surprised at how much detail I still remember based on my cryptic little scribbles. It's been a fun trip down memory lane this evening. I wound up not getting anything else done, but it was worth it.

Miss my circus family still.

mood

accomplished

The last books of 2009!

( Oops, almost forgot to have a cut. )

mood

pensive

Like 2008, 2009 was a roller coaster, another mix of perfectly awful and perfectly heavenly. I haven't vibrated apart from it yet, which is good, because things seem likely to continue this way.

It's funny reading my 2008 summary post and how I felt at the end of the year. I might as well just copy and paste those opening paragraphs. Did a whole year actually go by at all?

( It's all music... )

mood

easily amused

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I'm really digging my new LJ style. I change it every so often when I get bored and want something else to look at; it's easier than rearranging the furniture. :D

This style caused me to google "hanafuda" and read about the evolution of a deck of cards. So hey, I also learned something new! From Livejournal!

mood

working

There will be lengthy and pondering posts (perhaps), but first: a meme! The Year In LiveJournal. What is it, first line of first post of each month? Something like that. (Again, for very stretchy values of "line." Because I like to get the feel of what was going on.)

( And it's way-hey, me lads, click on refresh again... )

Happy New Year!

	mood		delighted
	music		(in my head) Dar Williams, "Teenagers, Kick Our Butts"

Okay, I twittered about this the other day but it's so awesome that I keep watching it over and over, so I have to share. (Commented chez foxipher but I'm feeling like it deserves its own post.)

So, local area Shorecrest High School did a "lip dub" (a music video lip dub that's one long take, no edits.)

( embedded video behind cut )

Then they challenged rival high school Shorewood to do better.

Here's Shorewood's response. :)

( another embedded video behind cut, because I care about your friends lists )

For bonus material, here is Shorewood's internal news video with the teacher's call for volunteers to help make the video. (Includes an aditional backwards-video demo.)

( one more! )

According to the local newspaper blog article about it, 27 production students spent about 3 weeks in preparation before getting about 500 students involved. (That article also has a link to an earlier article about Shorecrest's video.)

I just... it's not just that I find the videos from both schools terribly fun to watch. It's also that it's the most successful and positive way I've ever seen to pull a school community together and build "school spirit"-- a fun and creative endeavor that EVERYONE can participate in. It was exciting just to *watch*; it must have been thrilling to be a part of it and watch the finished product.

It almost made me wish I were teaching again, and that's saying a LOT.

You go, kids. You're all awesome.

mood

gleeful

Some say to survive it you need to be as mad as a hatter...

mood

busy

Just a reminder that the next *two* Saturdays you can catch Vixy & Tony at Wayward Coffeehouse. :)

Saturday, December 19th, 7pm
We're playing at Wayward with Sunnie and Betsy, and special guests ASH Productions! They're making a special trip up here to Seattle just to sing with us!

Saturday, December 26th, 8pm
Seanan McGuire reading & concert, with Vixy & Tony as backup band. Spend your Boxing Day with faeries, zombies and more!

More info:
http://waywardcoffee.com/
http://vixyandtony.com/schedule.html

mood

hopeful

You may recall my post about helping the world, one stranger at a time.

Well, here's a re-post of an epilogue from popelizbet on save_dave:

You did it, folks.

The day before Thanksgiving, Sabrina had the total at $7300 and change, received.

All of you are so wonderful. Thank you. Times a billion.

I'll keep updating you on Dave's story, and when hnmic can make it out there to show him how to work Livejournal, he may just come thank you himself.

***

There are other needs out in the world.

Our own rowangolightly is putting together a moving fund following some personal troubles of her own, through auctions of her own items & donated by friends, at rescue_rowan (run by fellow Friend of Save Dave apocalypticbob.) Lots of tasty treats and tasty books available, many available in time for $WINTERHOLIDAY gift giving.

***

All of us keep passing it on, around and around and around and around again.

A couple of days late, y'all - know I give thanks for all of you.

-Lizbet

rescue_rowan