Entry tags:
The Return
1. I am back from Pennsic War! I survived!
2. The mosquito problem back home is completely unacceptable. I just spent two weeks living basically entirely out-of-doors, wearing as much or (given the heat, more often) as little clothing as I felt like, and got 0 bug bites. Within five minutes of opening the car door upon getting home, I had 12. (And for me, mosquito bites are a large welt and >10 days of itching. yaye.) I hadn't realized just how much I'm held hostage by the little suckers until I actually lived somewhere in which I wasn't.
3. Much like before, I am having difficulty believing Pennsic War actually exists now that I'm not there any more. Surely the whole idea that such a thing might actually happen is ludicrous.
4. I have brought back with me one mysterious rash, a significant quantity of mud and ants, way too much sewing/fiber arts stuff, a vague idea that I might actually join the SCA this year, the burning desire to immediately go camping again (somewhere with no mosquitoes), a book of camp recipes that came out unexpectedly yummy, zero photographs and 281 mb of audio recordings. (Mostly of ambient/background noise, because the ambiance, the immersion, is part of what makes Pennsic ... what it is, and I feel like static photos can't capture that, so I thought I'd try sound. Also, I've still been listening to too many BBC Radio documentaries. We shall see if I ever get around to editing it into something reasonably short and shareable.)
5. I went two weeks without internet! And loved it! But now I am caught up on my internet stuff...up to, um, Sunday before last. With the help of DW's ability to read your flist by date, which is amazingly awesome but still so poorly documented that I still have to search the newsblog every time I want to remember how to do it.
6. There was another fic writer in my camp! (Well, let's be realistic - probably more than one, but she was the only one I talked about it with.) Only I completely failed to get her LJ name. Oops. I wonder if I can remember her fandoms well enough to find her anyway?
7. I have signed up for
remixduello! And you should too! It is the remix challenge for people who don't have the fannish attention span to qualify for remix proper - you pick which of your stories gets remixed, and your assigned remixer has to do that one. It still has to be a story in one of a short list of large Western media fandoms, but you only have to have written one story like that in your entire career to qualify!
(crossovers still don't count, though. I would qualify so hard for a crossover remix. I dream of one day having it together enough to run a crossover remix challenge. Everybody would put in a list of all the fandoms they can write, and then get assigned a story to remix that contained some subset of fandoms in that list.)
8. I just made myself a linkedin account. I kind of hate myself for it, but apparently some employers want that these days? And in general they want to be able to turn up *something* about you with a web search - "I'm security-conscious and responsible enough to keep my online activities separate from my professional life" apparently doesn't cut it anymore. (ATM the only result for my legal name and town is my Save The Internet testimonial - which is not the worst thing for potential employers to find, I guess, aside from the embarrassing uneditable typos in the first paragraph.)
9. Please tell me someone has written the fanfic where Highlander characters are active SCA members (or regional equivalent)? I've seen fic where they use medieval reenacting as an excuse for carrying swords/duelling/etc., but not where they actually participated. Surely Methos would make an effort to develop a real cover by actually joining and going to events! And Amanda would just think it was all adorable.
10. The thing that is hardest to get used to after my longest-ever camping trip (aside from the mosquitoes)? Artificial lighting and lack of natural light. Yeah, we had a battery-powered lantern and there was some on-sight lighting, but it was always really clear you were surrounded by the dark, and 90% of it was fire. When I go off artificial light (or at least go for red-spectrum, dim as possible lights), I always sleep better and more consistently, am generally happier, eat better and feel better. I should make a greater effort to do that.
2. The mosquito problem back home is completely unacceptable. I just spent two weeks living basically entirely out-of-doors, wearing as much or (given the heat, more often) as little clothing as I felt like, and got 0 bug bites. Within five minutes of opening the car door upon getting home, I had 12. (And for me, mosquito bites are a large welt and >10 days of itching. yaye.) I hadn't realized just how much I'm held hostage by the little suckers until I actually lived somewhere in which I wasn't.
3. Much like before, I am having difficulty believing Pennsic War actually exists now that I'm not there any more. Surely the whole idea that such a thing might actually happen is ludicrous.
4. I have brought back with me one mysterious rash, a significant quantity of mud and ants, way too much sewing/fiber arts stuff, a vague idea that I might actually join the SCA this year, the burning desire to immediately go camping again (somewhere with no mosquitoes), a book of camp recipes that came out unexpectedly yummy, zero photographs and 281 mb of audio recordings. (Mostly of ambient/background noise, because the ambiance, the immersion, is part of what makes Pennsic ... what it is, and I feel like static photos can't capture that, so I thought I'd try sound. Also, I've still been listening to too many BBC Radio documentaries. We shall see if I ever get around to editing it into something reasonably short and shareable.)
5. I went two weeks without internet! And loved it! But now I am caught up on my internet stuff...up to, um, Sunday before last. With the help of DW's ability to read your flist by date, which is amazingly awesome but still so poorly documented that I still have to search the newsblog every time I want to remember how to do it.
6. There was another fic writer in my camp! (Well, let's be realistic - probably more than one, but she was the only one I talked about it with.) Only I completely failed to get her LJ name. Oops. I wonder if I can remember her fandoms well enough to find her anyway?
7. I have signed up for
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
(crossovers still don't count, though. I would qualify so hard for a crossover remix. I dream of one day having it together enough to run a crossover remix challenge. Everybody would put in a list of all the fandoms they can write, and then get assigned a story to remix that contained some subset of fandoms in that list.)
8. I just made myself a linkedin account. I kind of hate myself for it, but apparently some employers want that these days? And in general they want to be able to turn up *something* about you with a web search - "I'm security-conscious and responsible enough to keep my online activities separate from my professional life" apparently doesn't cut it anymore. (ATM the only result for my legal name and town is my Save The Internet testimonial - which is not the worst thing for potential employers to find, I guess, aside from the embarrassing uneditable typos in the first paragraph.)
9. Please tell me someone has written the fanfic where Highlander characters are active SCA members (or regional equivalent)? I've seen fic where they use medieval reenacting as an excuse for carrying swords/duelling/etc., but not where they actually participated. Surely Methos would make an effort to develop a real cover by actually joining and going to events! And Amanda would just think it was all adorable.
10. The thing that is hardest to get used to after my longest-ever camping trip (aside from the mosquitoes)? Artificial lighting and lack of natural light. Yeah, we had a battery-powered lantern and there was some on-sight lighting, but it was always really clear you were surrounded by the dark, and 90% of it was fire. When I go off artificial light (or at least go for red-spectrum, dim as possible lights), I always sleep better and more consistently, am generally happier, eat better and feel better. I should make a greater effort to do that.
no subject
I have seen a fic about Richie doing medieval re-enactment as he thought that it might help give him an edge as to what exactly older immortals are thinking. I have no idea where I read it though.
no subject