C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 36

Worldcon 75: Day Four

The trouble with the first several days of Worldcon was that I was having so much fun I kept lying awake at night grinning like an idiot and keeping myself awake with happiness, which meant that although I technically went to bed about 3:15 on Saturday morning, it was tragically closer to 4 before sleep actually arrived.

I considered showing up to the panel like this but then I remembered I was a Very Serious Author. :)

And I had a 10am panel.

Frankly, my friends, I did not expect it to go we...

Worldcon 75: Day Three

The astute among you may notice that Worldcon is over but I’m only just posting Day Three. This is due to a combination of things, firstly that in a fit of idiocy (fun, but idiocy) I was out until 3am Friday night/Saturday morning and was not prepared to write a blog post at that time, and secondly and far more annoyingly, that I wrote this whole damn post up last night, telling myself all the while that I needed to C&P it because it wasn’t going to post properly, and of course I forgot to co...

Worldcon: Day 2

THIS WAS A VERY BUSY DAY AND IT’S NOT EVEN MY BUSY DAY

I managed to go to TWO panels today, which is two more than I usually manage in my entire convention weekend, so I’m very proud of myself. :)

I went to the guest of honor interview with Nalo Hopkinson, which was tremendously entertaining, and then later went to a panel on writing aout climate change, upon which an Internet Friend was presenting. After that I got to talk to her for a bit, which was lovely, and between those two panel thing...

Worldcon 75: Day One

I am in Helsinki for Worldcon! If I was a more organized person I’d have posted about this earlier, but, well, I’m not, so. I’m in Helsinki for Worldcon!

I will be publically available for chatting at the following times:
1. The Dublin 2019 parties on Thursday & Saturday nights
2. From 2-3:30ish on Friday afternoon–informal kaffeesklatch type thing, the Dublin 2019 table will know where I am if you don’t see me in the seating area around there
3. The Hugos on Friday night
4. Any other time yo...

annual reminder that i don’t do GISHWHES so please don’t ask

Yes, I know, I’m the person in Ireland many of you know, so it ticks that item off the list if you can get me to do it.

Yes, I know, you’re having a wonderful silly time participating and want other people to join in and have fun too.

Yes, I know, it’s just this one thing.

Yes, I know, it’s for a good cause.

The answer is still no.

I am *glad* you’re all having fun with it. It looks like fun! It sounds like fun! I enjoy reading peoples’ adventures with it! And yet I do not want to participate...

one more garden cat!

This afternoon Duchess, the mama cat, was meowling around the trap, either looking for her kittens or food. I wasn’t about to give her the kittens, but on the off chance she might go in and eat, I put food in the trap and set it.

Half an hour later there was a VERY UPSET Duchess in the trap.

I texted the rescue people and they called and said bring her down to the rescue centre, there’s someone there, so we transferred her to the cat carrier (which was easy but impressed the rescue ladies th...

capturing the garden kittens

We got a capture cage and a regular cage from the animal rescue place & to rehabilitate the kittens in. (Habilitate, I guess; they were never habilitated to begin with, so I guess they can’t be REhabilitated….)

The animal rescue people are SWAMPED and they have no easily found place to give the kittens to someone else to teach to be pets. The lady there said every female cat they’ve had brought in in the past 2 months has been heavily pregnant and that she doesn’t remember a year this crazy.

...

to the dentist I went!

So I’ve had this vague awareness of a sensitive place in one of my teeth for a while, and in the past week it’s gotten quite sharp when something cold encounters it, so, grimly irritated about the prospect of a cavity (not so much the dentist; I don’t mind dentists, but I only have 2 cavities and that’s from drinking too much soda 25 years ago and I’m still pissed off about it), I called a local dentist and made an appointment. The sharpness of the pain seemed to fade a bit in the past couple...

my captain’s keyboard has stopped working :(

My captain’s keyboard has stopped working. :}

I’m almost positive I know what the problem is. There are about 8 keys that don’t work, and there’s a pin in the PS/2 connector that got bent a while ago. I was able to nudge it back into place, but it got yanked and bent again and although I’ve nudged it back into place again, I think the base of the pin is no longer connecting.

I’m also almost positive this could be fixed by splicing a new PS/2 connector into place.

The PROBLEM is that the OTHER...

separate hobbies

I saw a thing yesterday that said “Buying fabric and sewing fabric are TWO SEPARATE HOBBIES.”

I actually feel that I understand so much more about the world now.

I’m now up to 6 artist’s figurines (I need to write more reviews) and I was unable (or unwilling) to resist a set of 14 archival color pens, plus all the stuff I already own, but do I actually draw? No, hardly ever. (That said, I’ve done more this year than in many years.)

Anyway, point is I’m back to that “I want to draw some silly...