In the last couple of months, we’ve been adopted by a new social circle. And, I’ll be honest, it’s mostly pretty great. There’s almost always something to do, and it’s nice having like-minded, interesting adults to talk to who I seem to have something in common with beyond sharing an employer or a kid’s extracurricular. In just the last month, we’ve done a couple of dinner parties, a garden party, and a bicycle outing (and that’s just the stuff I’ve done; my loving spouse, who is generally more available, has been out and about a bit more). Overall, I am having quite a lot of fun, and learning all kinds of new things from these great people. Also, I hope I’m bringing at least a little bit of interest to the party (since I’ve traditionally not always been good at that sort of thing).

I really am glad that after more than a decade in this particular town, I’ve finally got some nice connections forming. while I’m the first to admit that, even at my mildly advanced age, I haven’t found a place where I’m totally comfortable calling “home”; this place, which according to the math I just did, is where I have lived longer than I have anywhere else, is perhaps maybe starting to take on a few home-like attributes.

The peril of being a social butterfly while also being of the textbook introvert personality type*, is that all this social interaction and engagement, while remaining totally entertaining and supremely enjoyable, can be really, really exhausting.

I’ve written a little bit about these tendencies before, though this idea has been on my mind more often lately, as it’s become a bit more personally relevant, given my much more heavily-populated social calendar and fewer opportunities for the rejuvenating solitude that people of my particular stripe need in order to be pleasant the rest of the time.

I suppose this post has ended up being written as a bit of an explanation then, for some of my new friends as they happen upon this little space of mine, that when I occasionally wander off by myself or excuse myself from the crowd for a little while, it’s not that I don’t I don’t enjoy your company, it’s just that I need a little time to recharge before jumping back into the practice of being an engaging and hopefully interesting social companion.

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* – according to the classifications on the linked page, I’m pretty sure I straddle the line between the idealist and rationalist categories.

Dads are the original hipsters.

My dad used to own a baseball tee with a screen printed unicorn on it, and wore it with with total confidence in his masculinity. Beat that!

Only a few more hours of the office grind before I take a few days off for spring break, the annual descent into a hedonistic bacchinalia of promiscuity and alcohol poisoning daring to sleep in until 8am, putting a few more miles on the bike, and maybe hitting an amusement park with the kids.

Yeah, life isn’t a college stereotype anymore, but then, college was never a college stereotype for me. Still, it’s a welcome time away from the usual routine.

In any case, that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week. In the meantime, here are a couple of interesting things to keep you occupied:

♦- this post on whatever starts with a cute dog picture, but the comments become a surprisingly enlightening discussion on the relative benefits of over-the-counter allergy medication. (if you want my Zyrtec, you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead, pollen stained hands).

♦- As I suspected would eventually happen, the smartphone novelty has worn off. Today, I totally forgot to pick it up on the way out the door. My amazing portal to limitless information has now become completely routine enough for me to forget it.

♦- this kind of thing makes me really angry. Bullying is a serious problem for almost every kid who might be perceived as different (just ask this former fat shy bespectacled kid). The religous right could be a powerful force for promoting tolerance and “loving thy neighbor” here, but instead, are actively making things worse, especially for GLBT kids. Thankfully, there are great things like It Gets Better out there to counter this kind of thing.

♦ – I don’t watch a lot of reality television; but I’ve seen just enough to find a lot of humor in the AV club’s latest inventory of reality show clichés. I’m not here to make friends.

♦ –Oh. Dear. God. (though to be perfectly honest, I love the idea that someone else decided that Jennifer Walters deserved to be immortalized in Underoo form; it’s about time She-Hulk got some licencing love).

♦ – Of course, the best thing about Easter weekend? New Who.

♦ – Damnit, Carrie, stop releasing books! I’m two behind now, and can’t keep up!

♦ – I took the younger members of my brood to see the CG bird movie Rio on Saturday afternoon. The film itself I would characterize as aggressively mediocre (though to be fair, the licenced Angry Birds game is better than the original). What struck me most was the trailers beforehand – The sheer volume of CG animal movies being released that I’ve been totally unaware of is staggering. Once again, I realize cutting the cable was was one of the best decisions I ever made.

And with that, dear friends, I’m out.

The #philosophymovies hashtag on twitter today made my lunch hour way more fun than it had any right to be.

If you don’t find Raising Aristotle and White Emmanuel Kant Jump funny, then I’m not sure I want to know you.

(my most popular contribution seems to be Kierkegaarden Cop, though my sentimental favorite is The Life Aquinas with Steve Sun-Tzu).

Yes, today is my cat’s birthday. She is 14. Please give her a thought while you rush out to get your taxes mailed off (though you’ve probably done them already).

Today is going to be a quiet day, because honestly I feel like crap, thanks to allergies that aren’t actually allergies and are a virus I picked up while playing cards at the con last week.

Ack. tunes:

1. “The Riddler” – Nightwish
2. “Friday I’m In Love (acoustic)” – The Cure
3. “Passing Strangers” – Ultravox
4. “One Voice” – The Wailin’ Jennys
5. “Someday, Sweetheart” – Chet Atkins & Les Paul
6. “Cannonball” – The Breeders
7. “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” – Public Enemy
8. “Say You’ll Be There” – Spice Girls
9. “Never Gonna Give You Up” – Rick Astley
10. “Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu” – Jonathan Coulton

As I’ve been perusing the social networking sites this week, I’ve noticed an interesting pattern beginning to emerge. In the last couple of days since the resolution of all that budget and potential shutdown theater we saw last week, a lot of people are starting to realize that all these proposed cuts to the federal budget are actually going to affect them or those they love. People are noticing that haphazard cuts to the social safety net mean that grandma might not be able to afford her heart medicine, or that those cute kids from church might have to eat cat food because their underemployed single mother might not qualify for day care assistance or food stamps anymore.

And most of these people have been vocally of, shall we say, the steeped leaf beverage soirre persuasion, and have been generally supportive of exactly these kinds of policies by supporting candidates who hit all the right social conservative/casually racist buttons for them by questioning the legitimacy of the guy currently sitting in the White House.*

Now, of course, they’re noticing that the policies of the guys they swept into Congress last year are affecting “them,” rather than just those “other” people their wingnut congressperson blew those dog whistles about. I feel honest sympathy for these folks, I really do – many of them simply didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision. It’s tough, when you’re working two retail jobs and trying to raise a couple of kids, to find the time to do the research.

Here’s the thing: That’s what the candidates they’re voting for are counting on. The folks struggling to make ends meet aren’t the people these politicians are really looking out for, though they know that if they say the right words in the right forums, they can count on the rabble to support them unconditionally, and take as articles of faith the talking points that folksy lady from up north with the Bump-it and the weepy guy with the chalk board tell them from the TV that’s always on in the background**.

And those talking heads on TV aren’t looking out for them either, they just want to reinforce internalized beliefs of viewers so they’ll feel good about supporting advertizers.

I hope these people I see talking on the internet, in many cases friends and family, are starting realize what’s going on now, and consider it carefully the next time they go to the voting booth, and look for candidates whose positions align more closely with their economic interests instead of those who best reinforce social and emotional prejudices. Because honestly, by the time the internet petitions hit facebook opposing specific bills or policies, it’s usually too late to do anything about them.

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* – Their problem with him is primarily that his complexion doesn’t match the exterior paint scheme of his home/office.

** – Having Fox News on in the background everywhere is part of the problem too. The solution is to look somewhere else, but probably the best somewhere else with decently balanced coverage*** available to most people (even those without cable) is being targeted as one of the biggest cash sinks in the federal budget, never mind that public broadcasting funding makes up something like less than one percent of one percent of total government spending.

*** – You know NPR has to be at least somewhat middle of the road when the right wing calls it a shameless liberal mouthpiece and the serious hardcore lefties joke that it stands for Nice Polite Republicans. Also, yay for nested footnotes!

Even when you’re trying to pay close attention on a conference call, it’s inevitable that your mind is going to wander. Today, mine’s wandering in some alternately amusing and depressing directions.

One, I actually went ahead and solved the physics problem presented as humor in the last post (seriously, here’s my scratch pad); turns out that given the information in the problem, Rebecca should be (b) sittin’ rather than (a) kickin’, if my research led me to the proper formulas.

If that’s not sad enough, I did some more quick calculations in my head and figured out that if the projected schedule holds, by Thursday afternoon, I will have spent almost twenty-six hours on conference calls this week.

That, right there, is about enough to make somebody want to just give up.

Submitted for your approval, definitive proof that scientists (or at least physics teachers) are funny, funny people:

I bet this class is, in it’s own particular way, “fun fun fun fun.”

I promise, I’ll stop now.

It takes a bit of work to shake off the effects of a convention weekend. I’m not sure if it’s euphoria, stress, exhaustion, or just dust on the social interaction muscles of a misanthropic introvert, but it always makes starting the week back in the mundane world a less than appetizing proposition.

Those who read my Friday post might be curious to know that my anxiety expressed there was, for the most part, not much of an issue, but I’m still feeling the stress of having to continually maintain a low level threat posture in case something went awry (even though it didn’t).

Beyond that, (and the relatively minor personal crash on Saturday afternoon), this year’s RavenCon was a great experience, full of games, spirited discussion, and communion with the like-minded. A couple of weekends a year, I get to spend time with “my” sort of people, and in its own way, it’s glorious.

In my post-con stupor on Sunday, I neglected to take a photo of the goodies we brought home (and there are some nice goodies), and I honestly probably won’t get there before I take some stuff to the framing shop (edit: see below!), but I did take this photo on Saturday evening of some glorious graffiti that one will only see at an event like this:

It’s funny, because it’s true, and if you can’t read it, click it to make it bigger.

I didn’t get to Many panels this year, spending most of my time in the game room slinging cards and rolling dice (thanks, MIBS from Steve Jackson games, including his holiness, the pope of france), though I did catch a presentation on “Sci-Fi vs. Space opera” on my way to the screening of Browncoats: Redemption, the semi-authorized Firefly/Serenity fan film making the rounds of the convention circuit and raising money for charity (for those of you that care, it’s really quite good. I plan on catching it again -and picking up a copy from the filmmakers- at Balticon; consider it highly recommended for fans of the ‘verse.).

Otherwise, we picked up a bunch of books from nice folks like Pamela Kinney (who it was nice to finally meet after several near misses) and Leona Wisoker, sat in on a couple of crafting workshops with jewelrymaker Loren Damewood (who was terribly gracious in going above and beyond the call of duty with his essentially non-stop roving workshop which entertained many of the younger attendees), and, of course, the traditional Sunday morning knitting panel where Colleen talked shop with lots of nice folks like Debra and Diana.

I also ought to mention the folks at Pickle Man Productions who entertained Catherine, B & V Traders for (perhaps dangerously) re-introducing me to Battletech, and fellow fan Lady Ozma for the amusing twitter exchanges.

And those would be the highlights; time to go back, reluctantly, to the real world for at least a little while.

edit: look what my wife sent me! An artfully arranged still life:

It’s been a soul-sucking week, no question, for both me and the rest of the household. Hoping it gets better starting this afternoon, what with RavenCon in town and all.

I just hope I can find some time to enjoy myself, and not spend the whole time on guard to make sure my kids aren’t harshing everyone else’s mellow. Not being a total cynic, I just have a feeling that, given recent events, such circumstances aren’t outside the realm of possibility.

Oh, how I hope I’m wrong.

Anyway, here’s a playlist out of pandora; it’s at least 8/10 cool.

1. “Did You Ever” – That Dog
2. “Why Can’t This Be Love” – Van Halen
3. “Goodnight Elizabeth (live)” – Counting Crows
4. “Arlington (live) – The Wailin’ Jennys
5. “Left of the Dial” – The Replacements
6. “Hallelujah” – Rufus Wainwright
7. “Brand New Sucker” – Jonathan Coulton
8. “Exhuming McCarthy” – R.E.M.
9. “What You Want/What You Got” – The Unlovables
10. “My Best Friend’s Girl” -The Cars