Leaving for London

You leave your home thrice.

First, you pause and savor the moment, that strangely-quotidian, strangely-charged moment where you totter out over liminal space, knowing it won't be the same after this. Then you get to the car to start that first journey, realize you need one more thing, and race back. The second leaving is exasperated at your own sentimentality as you lock the door again. The third time involves discovering that in your attempt to stop most of the "power vampire" appliances from sitting there sucking power while you're gone, you've turned off one thing too many. Another dash back, and some troubleshooting, and you close and lock the door a third time, getting in the car for good this time.

It's not always like this, I'm told. But I do this for just about every costumed event, so it makes sense that leaving for this adventure would be little different.

It begins to rain as you leave. Precious rain that hasn't fallen on California nearly at all this winter, and it lends an eerie melancholy to things that you hadn't expected. That last lunch with your folks, their hugging you goodbye where you realize they're (inexplicably?) worried this might be the last time they see you.

As you taxi toward the north-west pointing departure strip, you get misty-eyed looking out the window at all the landmarks you can name. The Dumbarton Bridge, ugliest of all the bridges, is making you cry. Some part of you worries, like your parents did, that you'll never see this again.

You try not to think about it too hard, and this is helped by the pre-flight mimosa (sorry, Buck's Fizz - they're only allowed to call it a Mimosa if it's got honest-to-God French champagne in it, rather than the sparkling white wine in mine). The in-flight entertainment helps. The four drinks with the rather elaborate meal you get as part of your upgrade package helps.

 You catch a few fretful hours of half-sleep, finally shaking the nightmares of the last few days. You promise yourself you won't be as jetlagged and confused as you were last time. You arrive.


The next hour passes in a state of half-waking deja-vu. The habitrail of the outer Heathrow walkways, the long line of Immigration (this time sadly absent the smoking-hot Olympians who'd preceded you in line last time). The unexpected grilling of the immigration officer wakes you, and you are suddenly incredibly glad that you spent the time to print a bank statement, the address you'll be staying at, and the names and numbers of various friends in the area. The guardedly friendly immigration officer spends a long time asking you where you live normally, who you worked for, what you do, who you're here with, what they do, how much money you have, why you're here, what you'll be doing, and writes (as far as you can tell) every last answer on the back of your immigration card.

He then stamps your passport, admonishes you to always travel with an updated bank statement, and welcomes you to the country.

You reunite with your partner on the other side of immigration, sweaty and shaken, but relieved. The post-adrenaline sag hits you an hour later as you're starting to explore the rented corporate housing flat that's your new home. The bed calls urgently to you, but you're persuaded to go explore on the glorious spring day outside.

London is not the dreary, rainy fog bank you were promised. It's grape hyacinths and exotic ducks sunning themselves in St. James' Park, it's geometric modernist architecture next to two-hundred year old brick façades. It's tourists in chunky thick winter tights buying ice cream and staring at the mounted Horse Guards. It's the cheerful red terra cotta of the ubiquitous chimney-pots, and the bronze horse skeleton sculpture stark against the warm blue sky. It's the cold stiff breeze on the tide-swollen Thames. It's the delirium of seeing sixteen different monuments you cannot name and eight important ones you had no idea where so close together, while still so exhausted that you're pretty sure you couldn't retrace your route, and all with the faint tinge of panic that having a non-working mobile and inconsistently working credit cards gives you.

Eventually you are so tired you cannot read things put in front of you anymore and the constant cheerful voice of the train station announcements makes you want to hide under something and you go home to take a nap. Half an hour later you wake refreshed, and try again. Money converted to pounds, oyster card in hand, and a new sim in its packet in your pocket you go shopping, and begin to feel better.

You only peek at your Dropcam back at home once.  You're officially in London.

On Rebranding

I'm a fairly private person, for various reasons. Part of it is an inherent paranoia instilled by waaay more knowledge about what goes on on the internet than I'd really like to have. Part is that I've done some things that people would consider questionable in the past, and with the current climate of doxxing and garubergroot jackassery, I don't really want to make a target of myself.

Part of it is that I don't have a good pseudonym anymore.

There's a point at which you've lived in a pseudonym so long it becomes more you than your legal name (especially if you have a nice generic one like I do), and thus it becomes easier to find and easier to hurt you because of it. The internet is forever, and the internet is also eternally publishing everything regardless of how you feel about it. (See also: the reasons I don't post videos to fetlife.)

So here I am, with a well-worn pseudonym that is more who I was than who I am, looking to rebrand myself for... for what exactly? So I can write under my own name without fear? So I can write fiction without fear of people trying to doxx me? So I can participate in activism? So I can be "out" about the things I do and the things I'm into?

And once you're into things that are *not* specifically porn - how do you choose a new name?

New Beginnings

In December, I left the company that I'd worked at for five and some change years. It was both my decision and not my decision, and while it was bitterly disappointing in some ways, in many others it was an incredible relief. In the five years since I took refuge in that company from the market crash and attendant recession, the Silicon Valley has changed immensely, and the job I'd found myself doing did not satisfactorily allow me to partake in all the new and exciting things.

I went home and cried.  And the next day had lunch with a friend at Facebook. And the day after, spent an hour and 45 minutes discussing office culture and communications with the director of the San Francisco office of a company that I will coyly decline to name. I've spent the last month reconnecting with people I care about and who are doing really interesting things, and I reminded me of something that you forget during any struggle where you feel like you're fighting for your job:

I'm pretty darn awesome.

To be honest, regardless of cashflow, of shipped product, of office perks and culture and growth, the reason I'd stayed as long and as loyally as I did was the people. My now-former colleagues are also pretty darn awesome. At some point in the midst of a long-ago project I remember having a moment where I said to someone else "even if we were digging ditches, I would still want to be working with these folks". And that's still true. When some of those who'd left before me found out that I'd gone, I started getting texts and emails and offers of support, of interview opportunities, of coffee or lunch or dinner or whatnot.

But I'm not sure how aggressively I want to look for a job right now.

For starters, I'm tired. I've had five years of wanting to do lots and lots of things and never having the time to get to them, and quite frankly the backlog of sleep I've missed out on is pretty long too. I've spent the last month catching up on cleaning, and mending, cooking things I've been meaning to try out, sorting through my sewing stuff, and my ephemera and just generally cleaning out the cobwebs.

But the real reason is that M is going to London for six months for work, and I'm intending to go with him. We're not 100% sure of the dates at this point, but it seems like it'll be in March. This means cleaning and packing will be helpful in case the landlord decides she'd rather have someone else in here while I'm gone and kicks me out. Or to prevent me feeling trapped in my own junk if I come home after six months to a huge mess.

It's big and scary and exciting, and I've been slowly telling people not-in-writing, because I'm afraid that it could still fall through if I don't carefully guard its half-formed shape.  But I'm so excited! And that makes it hard to think about anything other than spending six months immersed in museums and visiting country houses and hanging out with reenactors and eating Eton Mess.

But we'll see. :)

Burning Man 2014

This year definitely ended better than last one - no traumatic eye injuries, short Exodus, good fire, minimal drama (handled mostly like adults). But there was certainly a lot that was minorly disappointing. I won't dwell on that however.

There's something that I've been realizing though - some years back I stopped taking pictures, trusting to the world that they'd get better ones than I could hope to capture. And ever since, I've been basically absent from the online world, existing as a ghost or a silhouette in the periphery of other people's photos. Some part of me decided back then that anyone else would have more interesting and important things to say (we're talking years ago now) and, again, I've basically stopped existing for a lot of my friends. Out of sight, out of mind. Time to stop doing that.

So part of that is blogging again.
SO!  I'm writing about Burning Man, because it stands as a coherent quantum of time I should memorialize.

We left Friday. I'd packed the car late the night before, so I'd had plenty of time to remember things I'd forgotten, and I headed out to pick up Mike at a reasonable hour of the morning. We made our way up to Reno and bought a day's worth of water, since we'd expected our water to arrive on the Truck only a little after us.  We hit Gate road at dusk (siiiigh), and only spent two hours waiting in line to get in. Apparently, that was an amazingly short period compared to what was to come. As last year, I dropped a basic tent setup (draggable) since nobody in camp gets placed after dark.

OMG WE JUST GOT TO GATE ROAD

Saturday morning we placed ourselves, though the tent was totally overstuffed with our gear since the shade structure was also on the Truck. Camp setup was mostly done, except for other stuff that was also on the Truck, so Mike spent some time exploring the nascent city while I hung out at camp. Honestly, that was most of Sunday too, though the Truck arrived Sunday afternoon.  By that time we were on our last jug of water, I was awfully dehydrated, and we were borrowing from other folks - so my stress levels went through the floor when the truck arrived.

We set up the shade, and got to work on the camp bar, then all took off to work a late-night opening show at Gate. At 11:45, the shift changed and we set out our product, then at 12:01, comets and gas mines lit the night.  Apparently we were on the list of art projects. Lovely stuff, and nearly zero cleanup.

As we returned to camp, Jack told me that there'd been a weather report predicting hail and rain at 4am, so I piled as much of our gear away from the edges of our shade as possible, and went to bed. Waking up to the sound of hail on the tent while safe and warm snuggled up with Mike, is probably my favorite memory of this year. There were lightning flashes so bright that they woke and re-woke me through my eyelids, through the tent, and through the shade structure.  The thunder was loud enough to shake the bed. I'm told that the City was struck twice; once in DPW camp where some poor soul got zapped but didn't die of it thankfully, and once on the main comm tower. I don't know that I believe that it was only twice.

Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

As we woke in the lovely cool and dim of the morning, the mud was a Thing and the portas were so far away, and the reports from the Gate line were horrifying. The camp wifi allowed me to check and confirm that the BMorg had in fact closed the City.  Good thing the Truck had gotten there when it did. So Monday was also mostly spent hoping to see things, but with the entire playa a few days behind schedule.  At the same time, we *did* do BurnIt! again on Monday, even though the city was ostensibly closed. By that time the playa was dry enough.

And here we lapse into "stories not mine to tell" land.  Sorry about that, all.

I'd put aside time to do pyro on Wednesday, but ended up building the roman candle guns for TASM on Friday for most of the day, and then not having a shoot in the evening.  TASM was a huge success, but not without some logistical and theatrical hurdles. Trying to organize a crew of 26 across playa with changing conditions and meeting times was just fucking ridiculous. But we managed that, plus two "main dudes" in the show, plus drive-bys of two volleys of art cars - one with hand-held boards of comets, and another with propane flamethrower effects.  It was a bit slow between cues, but it went well and we got props from lots of folks for the show.

Burn Night was interesting. The same glue-lam stuff that they'd used in the Temple last year, that caused so much strife and work to burn, was used in *massive* main structural members on the Man, and consequently it took him an hour and a half to fall.  I was happy to be watching it from the tower in camp, and to have the ability to climb down and do things like, oh, I dunno, go to the bathroom.  We heard lots of stories about people not having that option over the course of the evening - and I pity the Ranger Sandmen. That must've been a hellish shift.

Sunday, it turned out we weren't needed for the Temple after all, since the crew who built it this year knew what they were doing and didn't use glue-lam. I honestly don't recall much of what we did during the day except that we visited Chef and Pollen in Nectar Village.  The Temple burn itself was beautiful, with mostly quiet burners in respectful (sniffly) silence. The Temple's descent was probably the most beautiful thing I can imagine: the domed vault's intricately carved plywood flapping in the breeze like fabric to reveal the bones beneath, and the structure's final graceful spiraling collapse into a bed of coals.  After that, we took a tour of the remaining art cars, marveled at how much saner the City felt without the sound camps blaring and fighting each other, and wandered around looking at the few remaining pieces of art. There was someone putting a refractor (?) in front of the giant searchlights at one sound camp, producing amazing shifting rainbows spreading out across the playa. There was also a lovely set of electronic sound and visualization toys at Illumination Village, one using iPads to select and create viz using the touchscreens, and another using a Kinect to create both sound and viz by waving your hands around in a cutout frame.  Lovely stuff.

Monday was teardown, and it went surprisingly fast. The truck was loaded by 3. We left at 3:15. We were off-playa a scant hour and a half later (hour-and-forty-five if you count the transit from 4:30 and A to the Gate road). We took a shortish detour to try the acclaimed Indian Tacos on our way out to Reno - it wasn't great, but maybe that was a function of the one we stopped at more than anything else.  Nevertheless, food that I didn't have to cook was a nice change. We drove south from Reno to the Carson Valley, and rolled into David Walley's Hot Springs resort looking like some kinda refugees. (Mom had gifted us an overnight reservation - which was one of the nicest things...)  We took probably the longest showers in years, scrubbing and scrubbing and soaping and scrubbing some more.  Then we did the same thing again in the morning before hitting breakfast.

Civilization!

Because of road closures, we ended up taking a rather longer and circuitous route home, which took us through some lovely country. We also ended up at a place called Lockford, which I recalled from Cherylynn's tales of their Hawaiian sausage - so we made a sausage stop. I need to grill those up soonish and see if they're as good as everyone says...

Beautiful country (click to enlarge)

I dropped Mike off and headed home to start a flurry of unpacking. I got it.. mostly done in one day. Two loads of laundry down, most of the camping gear stowed in the shed, the clothes unpacked and the tubs stowed. All that remains is a load of bleachables, and a trip to the laundromat to handle the sleeping bags (which are just too big for my apartment complex's washer).

Last night I took out my braids. This morning I washed the sticky, waxy goop out of my hair. This evening I put quarters into the air machine at the gas station and blew the playa out of my sideview mirrors and engine compartment. I'll take it to the car wash tomorrow, and soon this year's event will be just a memory.

Not Much

Happy New Year! Hopefully this will be a better one than the last.

Christmas was a Thing, as it always is. This year I didn't have Dickens Fair to prop up my mood through the season though, and I never realized how much I hope that maybe this year my family will buy thoughtful gifts. Or how much I'm disappointed every year by the parade of cheap fancy tights and random "Gift for Her" mall-section presents. My little brother, bless him, got me the backup drive I wanted for Christmas though, so it's not a 100% miss this year.  Unfortunately, part of this hope-disappointment cycle involves overspending on gifts for the folks every. year. And because we've delayed our performance/bonus cycle this year at work, things are a little tighter than I'd expected.

Post-Christmas was pretty bad. I survived, but it was bad. Everyone else was gone, or invited to fun things out of town, and I sat paralyzed by indecision and loneliness at home for much of it.  I need to Not Do That Ever Again.

We bungled the NYE planning this year, so since we couldn't find tickets to that thing we liked, we headed up to Calistoga to go soak in some hot springs. Or, well, mineral water jacuzzi, but close enough, right?  It was pleasantly low-key, though a bit anti-climactic. We did have what I maintain was the BEST roast chicken evar at The Kitchen Door in Napa on the way up though.  I feel gluttonous for mostly blogging about the foods I eat nowadays, but hey.

I got some sewing done last night. I got some cleaning done this morning.  I have a spiced cider jelly project starting to set in the 'fridge, and I'm going to do some more sewing. Baby steps to feeling better.

Pre-Christmas Pyro

In the absence of a Dickens Fair in my life this year, I've been feeling extremely, ridiculously lonely. It's really hard because I'd sort of decided to take the thing off this year partly because I needed a break, but also partly because I'd intended to spend it with certain people who abruptly left my life.

So when I got an email late last week about possibly doing pyro the night before Christmas Eve, I jumped on it.  Today, (excuse me, by the time stamp it'll be yesterday) I got up nearly at the normal workaday time, ate something vaguely resembling breakfast, puttered a bit, packed my pyro gear into the car, went to PT, realized I was there 45 minutes early, got lunch at Town and Country (there's an Asian box there? huh), then went back to PT,  then got back in the car to drive to Candlestick.

Oh, did I mention that this was at the final game of the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park? Right. Because it was. They'd decided last minute to add two extra pyro positions to the lineup, so I was on the South point, as opposed to the inside-the-stadium part, or the East position. And because of it being the last hurrah, even though I left Palo Alto at 1:15 or so, it took me until 2:45 to get to the site. (The last 45 minutes or so I was literally *looking out across the lagoon at the pyro truck* and wishing I had a rowboat.)

I pull into one of the driveways that has caution tape across it, put on my blinkers, hop out of the car, leaving it running, and go to unfasten the caution tape. That done, I turn back to the car and realize... I locked the door. I locked the door, and the car is running.  I locked the door, the car is running, the hazards are on and the rear end is sticking out into the lane.  Oh, I locked the door, the car is running, the rear is in the lane, and my phone is on the front seat.

Cue panic attack.  Thankfully a nice man who was walking in let me borrow his phone to call AAA. And while this did literally nothing for my cause, it did give me the sense of having done *something*, so I was able to get out of my panic state.  I was literally shaking, and stuttering and dizzy. Wow.  Having at least set in motion the theoretically helpful wheels of roadside assistance, I ran out to the site to let them know what was going on. Then ran back and... sat on my bumper.

Eventually one of the Candlestick Point park rangers came over and asked if I needed help. He offered to get the slim jim that they apparently have for emergencies. When he came back with it, we spent a good fifteen fruitless minutes attempting to get the door unlocked, and he finally had to go back to his duties. He left the thing in my hands, so I idly continued trying to work at it - which was like trying to pick up something in an opaque narrow jar using chopsticks.  All this while the semi-legal ticket scalper guys are wandering around buying and selling and grifting their various grifts.

A pair of plainclothes cops roll by in an unmarked car and stop to hassle me - I tell them what's up and the laugh before leaving. (Thanks guys.) A giant stretch SUV limo goes by and some oddly-familiar looking black dude leans head and shoulders out of the back window and yells "THIEF! THIEF!" a few times while laughing as he goes by. I guess the sight of a woman in work clothes trying to slim jim a beat up 15 year old sub compact car *is* pretty comedic. And then a homeless dude in a bright yellow shirt comes up and sets his bag down near me. "You need some help?" I nod.  He takes the slim jim from me, and five minutes later, my door is open. AAA is nowhere in sight.  I thank him, he asks for money, I give him the entire contents of my wallet which sadly total $8, and proceed to the parking lot.

I figure, what's the worst that could happen if the best part of the day so far is having a homeless dude break into my car?  When I got to the site the racks were already built, it was nice and warm out, and there was a message from the AAA towing associate who basically said they weren't allowed on site until two hours after the game was done. Right. Useful.  I unloaded my gear and we loaded product, working in teams to help drop and wire the charges.

The ill-fated Candlestick behind me

Then we waited. And waited. And the sun went down, and I put on literally all of the layers I brought: base layer, then t shirt, then hoodie, wool hat under the hood, then eventually my turnout coat on top of it all, with the corduroy collar folded up to keep my neck and cheeks warm.  It wasn't that it was all that cold, really, but damp and sitting around just make you freeze.  I was really glad I'd thought to put on snowboarding socks this morning.

The shoot went well. Three low-breaks, but all of the charges lifted and we didn't have to re-placard the truck. Cleanup was a hassle, but I've been lucky to have so many shoots on golf greens and parking lots where they can bring the vacuum truck.

Home before midnight. But now it's rather past it - so a Happy Christmas Eve to you all.

Quiet Night

Tonight, it's supposed to get down into the upper 20s. I've brought as many of the carnivore garden pots in close to the building as I can, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be. Inside, I'm drinking hot herbal tea, and hot mulled cider, burning Christmas tree scented candles, and trying not to think of the coworker who I found out just died last night. Trying not to feel like the weight of four years of stagnation is weighing down on me, pressing down while panic bubbles up from the floor. Trying not to feel weight of the upcoming weeks in which I have but few evenings to myself, followed by the panic of one long gap in which I have nothing but lonliness.

This is hard.

(And now I recall why I'm not blogging much.)