Wraithfodder's Lair

All under the cut, as I have rambled.

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Not that there were other parts, but I see one more flake of that wretched white stuff, I'll scream. SNOW SNOW SNOW. Of course, now it's sleeting. Hopefully won't take out the power as it's gonna be cold, but then it will warm up to rain, maybe fog, then back to sleet and snow. And Spring is just around the corner, so they say....

So my winter is shovel snow, climb ladder, clear ice from gutters, put out extortion cube of suet to keep woodpecker from banging up the house, only to have fat squirrel suck it dry. ARGH! I shall have to make a DIY squirrel guard to keep that rodent from sucking dry the food block that keeps the bird from drilling holes in the house.

Mediawest*Con programming has begun, so there's new work. Wow, less than three months away! Maybe the snow will have melted by then... ;)

TV-wise, have not seen anything I'm too excited about, except the second season of Broadchurch with David Tenant starts this week (ack, gotta find out WHEN) so shall watch that. Alas, Longmire season 3 is on Netflix, so I guess I'll get the DVD down the road.

Almost done with audiobook of latest Pendergast audiobook (Blue Labyrinth) by Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child and alas, sat too long on my butt and now I'm 4th in line to get the next C.J. Box book (Endangered) out of library, so opted for audiobook version instead.

Am getting a little excited for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I just discovered debuts a few weeks before MediaWest*con, so hoping that movie will be at the theater out there and we can go see it in a group on the new IMAX screen I think should be done by then.

Alas, no pets yet. I keep visiting a local cat shelter and just pet the cats, which the folks there don't mind as they want the cats to be socialized. It's a free-roaming shelter. They had a huge six-toed cat which got adopted. A real gentle giant. And there's this young cat that like to hop in my lap and chew my jacket (which fortunately already had holes so no big deal). One day...

Meanwhile, did you see the flying weasel picture? A real hoot, and it's real!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/safariandwildlifeholidays/11446267/Incredible-photo-captures-weasel-riding-on-the-back-of-a-flying-woodpecker.html

Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock won't air on PBS till this coming Sunday so I'm sticking my fingers in my ears. No spoilers. LALALALALALLAA!

There's still nothing that grabs me fannishly like Stargate Atlantis did, although Sherlock comes close. I do watch CBS's Elementary and it's good and entertaining. Big Bang Theory is still the only comedy I watch - love all the sci-fi in-jokes. Why couldn't they have had something like that when I was a kid?

Let' see, what else?

I watch Almost Human - it's the only decent cop-buddy show on the air. It's pretty simple at times, but I do like the characters. Now Sleepy Hollow... yeah, I could listen to Tom Mison read the phonebook. He's great as Ichabod and thus far, they're doing excellent with Ichabod's view of present day America (why do you not drink the water from the lake? uh yeah, sure, parasites, pollution, you name it!) ;) Being Human has returned but it's against Sleepy Hollow, so I watch that show until it goes into repeats and will hopefully catch Being Human (which amazingly follows Almost Human, so surely we must get another show with Human in the title and a "C" word in front) in repeats on cable rewind.

Still watch NCIS, but since it repeats left and right, it's not must-see TV. I watchted the first Intelligence on CBS, tried the first couple minutes of next episode, then bailed. Nah. I definitely stay up to watch Person of Interest, which has major cast changes with the death of one character, with Reese trying to just leave it all behind (which may get some resolution in tonight's Reese-on-a-plane episode). I can't think of anything I really watch on Wednesday nights anymore, unless it's PBS or cable. Oh, I got hooked on the French series, um, American title The Returned, I think, about dead people who suddenly started showing up in a town next to a dam. They're not zombies, per se, they just show up as if nothing happened and have no memories of dying. Everybody is of course creeped out. All subtitled, slow in comparison to US stuff, but loved the music, and it was intriguing.

I watch the pilot for Helix on SyFy and do like it. Don't know if I'll ever think of the song Do you know the way to San Jose? in the same vein ever again. I'll stick with it, I think, because I'm a sucker for lethal virus stuff, although it made me think of a hybrid between the movies Outbreak and World War Z, the latter which I just saw on DVD and when the heroes went to the WHO (World Health Organization) who was one of the doctors at WHO but Doctor Who, the new Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi. Neat. Of course I sit there watching Helix with quibbles such as why does a facility in the Arctic have such big wide corridors and how the hell do they heat it and does everybody have huge air ducts like they had in the Seaview?

Otherwise, we had snow, we had ice, we had the 'polar vortex' and temps went below zero Fahrenheit and the car door froze shut on one car and the garage door froze shut and I had to get out the hair dryers to thaw the frigging wheel things on the rail (yes, those technical terms). Wind chill was below zero while shoveling so I had to leave glasses inside, shovel albeit a bit fuzzily, so I could wear a N95 mask on my face to I didn't freeze off my nose and lips. Yeah, THAT cold. I had to shovel the driveway, and then when I finally get to the end, the road isn't plowed, so had to wait for them to go by as yeah, I went to work.

( Meanwhile.... )

Yup, another Mediawest*Con has come and gone and for the first time in a long time, Elvis went to the con. Since our third roomie roomed with two of her friends, Elvis shared the bed with me, at least for two nights, until I realized he was always deflated in the a.m, so I booted him and brought in the snake instead. Not to mention, the mockingly sarcastic comments from friends of "she's giving him another blowjob" accompanied all my rescuciation efforts on poor Elvis.

Before your mind goes into the gutter, please click below.

( The sordid details ;) )

And here’s the rest of my Mediawest*Con trip diary.

( Mediawest*Con, Amtrak and puppies, part 2 )

I knew I forgot something. Gathered these all up - links to fans comments, LJ entries, etc. on MediaWest*Con.

( Links! :) )

Here’s my con report, complete with photos, videos, etc. from everything I could l remember or decipher from my shorthand notes. If anybody has anything to add, comment away in the Comments section below. Enjoy! Oh, and it will be at least two entries, as the door decorations are gonna taken up a LOT of space.

( Part 1 of MediaWest*Con (2011) travelogue )

 

Yes, my life is so exciting I'm videotaping the bluebbery pie that's fresh out of the oven. However, the bubbling, and squeaking noises, are amusing. Okay, maybe just to me, but I'm waitin for it to cool down so I can eat it! :)



Otherwise, today I got robbed. Bought gas. $3.579 a gallon!!! for the cheap stuff! However, I drove by another gas station and it was $3.759 for the cheap stuff. It's insane. Gas is gonna be over $4 if not more by Memorial Day, which will make our annual MediaWest*Con drive rather pricey, and if you attend MW*C, the sign-up phase is now going on. More details at http://blog.mediawestcon.org/

Also, I've discovered the joys of audiobooks (okay, I'm a bit behind). I went through the cassette audiobooks I got at the summer library sales - got a Tony Hillerman novel and a Robin Cook one (that's because my car is so old it has a cassette player). It really  makes the daily commute better. However, got my hands on the doohickie connectors so I can now connect my CD players to the cassette player and listen to the books on CD, of which there are LOTS more in the library. I'm working my way through thrillers. Just finished Kyle Mills' Darkness Falls, about ecoterrorists of sorts destroying the oil fields. I listened to that as I watched gasoline go up over a dime in one week. ACK! I've determined, despite length, that unabridged is far better than abridged (listened to one abridged one done by Stephen Collins - about a killer shark - and it was like listening to a SyFy film) ;)  Right now I'm going through the library stock, as well, it's free, although if anybody  has recommendations for good thrillers/horror/scifi. There's still a few more Robin Cooks and Tony Hillermans to go through at my library.

The snow is melting. A day or so of rain, plus no snowstorms and some higher temps, helped immensely. The driveway is now basically snow free. The lawn is not. The bluejay I buried in the snow has yet to resurface. Sorta hoping something digs it up as frozen food soon. I had to clear all the ice/snow/bird seed under bird feeder as it turned into a hideous mess, and oh yea, they found the pumpkin! I had put it there by the birdfeeder, hoping squirrels would eat it, but it got buried under snow. Then, the squirrels found it and hollowed it out. Here's the pumpkin pothole picture:

Well, just went through a month's worth of LJ entries, of course, to discover I missed about a week. Darn. Hopefully I had read all that. Anyway, lots of cute squirrel photos, a cat playing in a bathtub IN THE WATER (adorable) and Stargate Atlantis fanfiction to bookmark. Boy, do I need to buy some spare time on eBay so I can read it all!

Came across http://community.livejournal.com/gate_pages/58913.html in which it says No Stargate Atlantis audiobooks for third set.  Yes, they're set before Continuum. Also, there are no Atlantis stories. Daniel and Vala are toplining the entire set, so it'll be solely SG-1 this time out.

And don't forget, these are all full cast audios, not dramatised readings. The cast is small, admittedly, but they'll be more dialogue driven than they have been up to now.

I'd read earlier that Michael Shanks and Claudia Black were doing six, but was too busy to go back to look, and well, no Stargate Atlantis. Darn darn darn. I mean I really do like Shanks' books, but I want SGA stories too. I wonder if it was a financial decision (not enuf SGA sales?) or if the writers just didn't do SGA? Anyway, I will miss them. I was hoping they could somehow SOMEHOW get Joe Flanigan or David Hewlett to do one.

*** For some unfathomable reason I am watching the AWFUL movie Land of the Lost on cable. It sucks beyond belief.  How could anybody take what had been a decent Saturday morning live action show from decades ago and turn it into this... drivel.

Been busy doing programming for MediaWest*Con. It's basically done. A bunch of typing/organizing to do, but that's on the weekend. I hope.

Gardening may just be one tomato plant this year. Don't think I'll have time to do a real garden what with all the rest of the outside work to do. I need to win Powerball...

The panel suggestions are now up at http://www.geocities.com/mwcprogram/program.htm - feel free to volunteer away. There is Stargate Atlantis programming :)

A list of program topics received so far is now up at http://www.geocities.com/mwcprogram/program.htm and we're extending the deadline to March 15th. Also, the party suite forms will not be sent out until the 15th as well. Details at site.

Feel free to repost anywhere you'd like!

 And here's the rest!

Was at a panel on Stargate Atlantis and we were discussing 'crackfic' and I happened to mention this crazy fun story about Sheppard and team being attacked by alien kitchen appliances.

Well, found it, and it's at

http://community.livejournal.com/sga_genficathon/15873.html

Very fun read!

It's like a relaxacon as haven't seen too many folk yet, but we did the jacuzzi at 11 at night. Got the 'whump' door decoration up and have had decent response so far. THe litlte 'killer black dog' is back. He's soooo adorable. Little black dog that barks and growls at me :) Well, does that to lots of folk. Saw the tiniest ferret last night too. And someone's little poodle escaped from their room and was very merrily running into rooms. This is the kind of con where many people prop their doors open and let people walk in and talk as basically, we have the entire hotel to ourselves.

Oh, and Stargate Atlantis action figures do just fine in jacuzzis ;)

So, anybody else going to this con (this coming Memorial Day weekend in Lansing, MI)? Looking forward to meeting fellow SGA fans there :)