at the end of the galaxy

too lazy to retype so this is a C/P from my lj.

So after X amount of years I finally write the words that most people have been holding their breath over.  It was hard. It is hard. I struggled with this chapter for a very very very long time. I don't know that I have fretted so hard over any other chapter the way I did this one. Now I wade through aftermath and grief. And oddly enough I find myself also grieving.

It's hard to write emotional stuff without getting emotionally invested in it as well. The sense of loss is remarkable.

It's probably a goodly part of why I don't want to go camping for a week, I want to finish the book, out over and done. I really need to write the words "The End" and walk away from it but I'm not quite there yet.

Need to tie up the loose ends and leave everyone in a place where they can move onwards with no cliffhangers ( I hate cliff hangers , don't you?)

So instead of sitting in front of the computer as I have been for the last few weeks now, fretting and wrestling with words, reading, re-reading and rere-reading the same page over and over just to GET IT RIGHT I will head off to Sweden , throw on some medieval-ish clothing and step backwards in time. But my head is full of words so I will be doing the old fashioned thing and have a paper notebook with a pen at the ready.

And I will be taking this strange sorrow with me and it will probably make me seem pensive and peevish and I wouldn't even know how to begin to explain that I am grieving with a fictional character for the loss of another fictional character.  When I started this journey I knew how it would end, I just didn't get how it would make me feel.

So in case anyone wondered, this was a hard chapter to write and the rest that follows isn't any easier.

just sayin'.
hankies nearby might be a good thing.

and mass panic ensues...

Time to deal with the tent from hell.

Deciding that we needed to be more "period" with our camping we made this thing. At the time we didn't have a lot of money so we used the materials we had on hand or could get for a decent price.  The canvas duck ( tks Terafan) was sewn on my Pfaff 360 at home ( I swear to go never again) and the metal hold it all together bits were done by Skarf ( they are iron so tehy are heavy).

This pavillion takes at least 3 people to raise because the middle pole and the hub are so frigging heavy. If this should ever fall on anyone, I'm pretty sure it will kill them.

anyway, the hell that is packing for double wars will commence today and it's making me bitchy so the leave Bridget alone until at least 2 hours after we arrive on site will be in effect. And in difference to that disasterous Nibelungen there had better bloody be tent space for us.

The mad world at large.

It's a wild and windy day. Green and dancing against dark and scuttling. It's a royally gorgeous dance and I never tire of being able to watch it from the computer room window.  We've desperately needed the rain so these past two stormy days have been a welcome gift. The garden has exploded into greens and blues, yellows and reds with a lot more to come when we plant the new plants we bought in the ground. The lighting today is stunning. My head feels as though the storms outside have gotten inside of it and are whirling around my brains.

The wash of emotions that have returned in the absence of the hormone treatments that I no longer take are overwhelming. It's awesome , terrifying, and utterly wonderful. I feel as though I am whole again. It is however tiring.

My life is an adventure. Every day brings its own surprises and the ups and downs of dealing with a non life threatening, incurable disease that plays havoc with my being.

So now I am winding up my DOTE books, still working on everything, short stories and some fun Thrawn related projects. I too am having some problems letting go of all of this. I love these characters, I've lived with them for a really long time, how do you say goodbye to that easily? Thrawn is a dream to write, I hear his voice in my head clear, crisp, a little too correct yet with a hint of wildness, a hit of alieness. Merly dances through my brain like a second me. Yet we, as people, are very different. There are things about her I wish I could be and there are things she is that I am glad I am not. The rest of the crazy cast of characters are all in their own ways are beloved.  Like any book where I fell deeply in love with the world, the characters, and all they had to give me it's hard to let go. But the nice thing about the world of words is that we can go back into them and we can re-dance with our beloved other worlds and all their inhabitants and occasionally we even uncover some previously undiscovered secret they had to offer.

I love writing. I may not be a professional or even paying-book published but I love the craft with a passion and as much as I am an artist in many other areas of the arts, words will always be my first love, perhaps because I learned to read later as a child than most and had difficulties.  But my parents read to us as kids, my mother shared poetry and my dad, stories like the jungle book,  I was weaned on words.

My journey with Merlyn and Thrawn has produced an intriguing side effect and that is the love of editing. How to make it better. How to slice it all up and tear it all down so that it's more powerful and easier to access. Unclutter it. Something I wish I could as easily in the real world with my stuff as I can with words. I don't know if I am any good at this but I really enjoy the process and since I do it for me alone it doesn't matter about good, or approval from anyone else does it?

So here I am. On the edge. Feeling dangerous and full of wild wild energy. I know it's the adrenaline going from an over active hormone system just waking up form a really long nap but it's fabulous. I'm exhausted, and a tad frantic, and I am not eating properly but right in this singular moment I don't care because right now in this singular moment I feel like that storm outside and it's a wild ride. Ask me again later on when I crash on the couch.

ps. I don't tend to edit this blog since it's my brain talking to the keyboard and I kind of like that sometimes it's also a bit wild.

slacker

I worked from wed- friday this week so I didn't sit at the computer at home much.

Just for fun.

Happy Birthday to The Boy!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!

Fedcon: part the third

Saturday was star wars day all day pretty much. We dressed in our crew costumes and went to hang out , be a part of the parade and photo shoot and generally get to know people. Since we had paid for tickets we weren't on any work plan so we spent a great deal of time getting to know new people, hanging out with Maya and watching the trekkies beat the world record.

Best thing the husband over heard was someone saying that the 30 odd Star Wars guys who went on parade looked way better than the 600 odd trekkies who milled about aimlessly.  This is because the 501st has standards. There were some amazing trek outfits though and the one that comes to mind first is the Jem Hadar and his Vorta.

The late afternoon saw us in some panels and watching some of the sea shepherd auction. It was pretty relaxed and at some point we went out to the car ( parked nearby) and changed into civvies. So that we'd be comfy for the costume show and party afterwards.

Kudos to all the people who participated in the costume show thing but I have to say that last year was better. Unfortunately it seems as though the show can't decide what it wants to be, a costume contest or a talent show and really there isn't enough time for both in one go so it ended up being a weird mix which I found odd.  There were a couple of amazing entries and the funniest award of the evening goes to the two klingons who stole the whole show.

It takes a lot of guts to get up on stage and do stuff. I know I've done this many times. But I do wish there had been more emphasis on costumes and descriptions of costumes rather than long skits that didn't really have a purpose. I've seen some amazing costume contests in my time and this wasn't one of them.

After the costume thingy and the band that played we escaped to go and sit up at the bar where we spent most of the time socializing, making fun of the DJ who looked like he had walked out of grade school and the bad music. ( he had 1 billy Idol song on his list 1) and at around 12:30 Marcus decided he was tired and we went back to the hotel. It was a nice time. We met the Brians and a Dave from the UK , Joseph and Sonja and a bunch of others whose names I don't remember. It felt good tho, like we'd found a niche and made new friends.

Sunday we packed up our stuff, packed the car and went to the con for the last panels and the good bye round. We left around 2:30 om and we managed to get home at a reasonable time. Con-blues set in and so we sat down and spent the evening watching last year's fedcon video.

All in all this year was a lot of fun, though I found the hotel room prices for double rooms to be incredibly expensive and please don't tell me this is normal in Germany it isn't we've booked at this hotel before and a double room with breakfast still came in under 180 a night not over 200-. Plus there's the Maritim breakfast at 26, euro a day come on, seriously I don't eat 26, euros worth of breakfast ion a week let alone a day. I don't like price gauging much so we stayed "off campus" and it worked out okay. 10 minutes to the con by bus, easy access to banks etc... and a decent breakfast to boot ( damned great coffee).

We ended up spending very little money this year at the convention, the dealers were not so fantastic and, they too, were over priced. A sonic screwdriver with real screwdriver feature for 60, euros , the same thing I can buy on amazon.co.uk for 7 pounds... We did buy a few things ( stargate combat vest thing, couple of nice books and a hallmark Christmas ornament ( shuttle) but it was limited mainly because the selection was limited. I hope next year the dealer room is better with more selection and less over priced t.-shirts.

I don't like the layout for this convention at this hotel, it's awkward and scattered. There's not enough seats at the bar area and the bar itself is too damned small. Ever see several hundred people trying to dance on a space the size of a bathroom? The Bonn hotel's bar was way better suited for a party. The DJ was terrible and his music needed work. The pre mixed drinks were nice and the wait staff were pretty damned cool ( thanks for all your hard work)

Over all we had a lot of fun but mainly because the panel guests were amazing, Garrett Wang was really fun and the friends we have are just awesome.  Next year i don't know what we will do. I guess we will wait and see.

Fedcon XX part deux

Fedcon XX

Day 0: Wednesday.

So all packed and ready to go we drove to Düsseldorf. The traffic was CRAP and people were idiots on the road. This is not usually the case but there are exceptions to everything. We get to our hotel which is in a small village outside of Düsseldorf and check it. My first reaction was well it's not quite as nice as it's pictured on the webpage. The room was a kind of dingy and the bathroom smelled. It was clean-ish but I've seen better. Still it was only 75- euro a night with breakfast included and when compared to the 220- euro a night we would have paid for a room at the Maritim one can't complain too much.

I nested and Marcus brought luggage up. By his 3rd journey the woman at the front desk thought we were moving in. We got settled and then decided to head to the con hotel to get our passes and stuff since there as early registration open till 21:30 according to the info page on the forum.

We walked from our hotel to the Maritim and it took us half an hour give or take so by the time we got to the registration desk we were kinda hot, a bit foot sore and tired. It was a long drive and a longer walk than we expected. So you can imagine how we felt at 20:00 hrs being told oh sorry we closed the ticket pick up. Grrrrrrr

We ended up going to the info/help desk and the guy who Marcus talked to was also very surprised they had closed the ticket pick up desk and seeing our faces and the fact that we had come especially to pick up the tickets stuff, he rescued us there is no other word for it.

My Hero on Wednesday!

 
After this we decided to find food, and learn how the train system worked which ended up with walking all over the airport and then taking the S-bahn into the city late , not finding food and being cranky by the time we'd gotten a little lost and sorted out how things worked. It was 11pm by the time we made it back to the hotel room and we still hadn't eaten. Needless to say the 1st day in Düsseldorf was not a good one. I was tired, cranky, not feeling so hot, hungry and over all kind of annoyed.

We set up the notebook and watched an episode of Castle. Castle makes everything better then went to sleep.


FedconXX Day 1: Thursday

Woke up at 6 am to this:

At breakfast we saw other fellow con goers. We are a breed apart and you can spot us instantly because we're the ones wearing geeky t-shirts with something sci-fi related on them. The hotel breakfast was minimal but okay the hotel coffee was surprisingly excellent.

Thursday saw us rested and awake. There wasn't lots going on at the Convention so Marcus took me shopping. We explored Düsseldorf which, it turns out, is a lovely city with a lot to see. We mainly toured the main shopping center area and I found a pair of shoes ( yeah laugh) that I had been wanting for ages. Skechers- shape ups mary janes in black. the shop had 1 pair, in my size and we got money off due to a clever sales pitch from the cashier.

We ate a very nice Indian lunch from the food court in the Schadow Arkaden ( I swear I am using this as a character name in a book) and poodled a whole lot. Eventually though Marcus use dup all of his shopping XP and it was time to head back to the hotel then explore the bus system from there to the airport. the 760 stopped at the street perpendicular to the hotel and it took aprox 10 minutes to get to the Maritim. bonus points for this. 

Thursday the con area was relatively quiet. We were in mundane dress or civies as the 501st guys call it, so we poodled the dealer's but I had the feeling there wasn't as many this year as last and they were kind of spread out all over the place. One stand was selling great t-shirts but at 26,95 a t-shirt I'm afraid that's beyond my budget. We looked but didn't buy.

We went to see Garrett Wang who was really great to listen to and fun to watch, and sat through part of some of the fan films which were also very enjoyable.  The opening ceremonies was hilarious due to the whole flag muddle up ( Austria???)  and I have to admit that Garrett handled the hurdles presented to him with grace and humour. He is an excellent host / mc. I laughed so hard I cried and that doesn't happen with me all that often. While my bitch bone is huge my funny bone isn't.

After that we sat through Lance Henriksen's panel. He was jet lagged and low key. It was really intriguing to hear him speak and learn a little more about him as a person. He's an actor I've loved since I saw him in Near dark. After that we left ( sorry WW) we were just so tired and still autobahn lagged  I think.



FedconXX day 2: Friday

The first really BIG day of full convention going with most of it being for the autograph sessions so since we could care less about autographs we went back into Düsseldorf and explored the Altstadt. It was gorgeous and sunny and warm and we had a very nice time. I however developed headache form hell so we went back to the hotel and rested  before getting togged out in Stargate costumes and off we went. We met up with some friends and spent a lot of time chatting, then off on our own again we meandered down the corridor to get waylaid by the German Stargate club and drafted to be in the group going on stage to pay tribute to Richard Dean Anderson who had a panel. ( for the record I didn't want to get dresed up but Marcus insisted...)

The way it ended up happening I and the girl next to me were front and center stage so RDA ended up standing between us and slung his arms around us for the big photo ops. It was an unexpected fun and cool thing. One of those magic moments that occur when you wear a costume and are in the right place at the right time.

You can see Marcus and me here, we're actually looking at each other as if to say wow. So thanks to those who organized this, it was a highlight for us. We're pretty big stargate fans and I like Richard Dean Anderson, I think he's quite funny and very cool. And thanks to John for giving me his old BDU's. Dude bet you had no idea this would happen to them did you?


End of Part 1.

fedcon XX

So much to tell so you'll have to forgive me It will take a day to sort it all out.

Con highlight. (photo by KT )This needs no explanation does it? KT's pictures