Con and Spam

 

Friday, went to the con. It's an easy 90 minute drive, so I was there about 3:30pm. I checked into my hotel room and spread my postcards all over the place. (the ones with the tubi link to my flicks)

Wandered around and chatted with people I knew. Friday was fairly dead, as they sometimes are. I went to the commentary for NOES2, which was fun. The director and the actor were a little cold to each other--I mean, they were okay, and maybe if you weren't good at reading people, you might not have even noticed.

But I did. That was amusing. The movie looked freaking great though. I honestly wasn't sure if it was a 35mm print or the blu ray, so I asked the director afterward when he walked by me. I just wanted a simple answer(cuz I was on the phone with my wife, just told her to hold on a sec), and man, he just started talking for five minutes. 

I felt bad for my wife, having to listen to it, as he went on, but the guy's friendly. Any other time I'd be like, let me buy you a drink and chat. He walked away(after saying he's pretty sure it was blu ray, but he agreed it looked very good), and apparently it's been a LONG time since he saw it on a real movie screen. I think most cons just play it on a small screen in the hotel or something.

My wife was laughing on the phone when I said "You still there?". She said "Well, you had to ask, didn't you?"

I hung out with the O'Brock and some other people he knew. Met a lot of new people, but the night life was quiet again. Didn't go to bed until about 4am though.

Saturday was busy. I didn't go down until around 1pm--slept in, cuz why not?--and there was quite a crowd. I got a lunch from the food trucks--turned out to be very good. Ended up eating dinner from the same truck.

Lot of wandering, chatting, back and forth to the room. An elevator kept breaking, which was annoying. Doubly-annoying, cuz the ice machine on my floor didn't work, so I had to go to floor 2 or 4 to get ice, and when the elevators were busy, it was a wait. 

I would have just walked down a flight of stairs, except the stairs are WAY down the end of the hall, so I'd have to walk down the hall, down the steps, back up the steps and all the way back down the hall to my room. Just for ice.

Saturday night was also light on the night life. A buddy I only see at cons showed up, so hung with him most of the night. Saw the sax guy again from Lost Boys. Again, lot of fun. That dude puts it all out there for his fans.

Didn't go to sleep until about 4am again. Sunday I wanted to go to a bookstore that wasn't too far away, but my stomach was feeling weird so I didn't. Just went straight home.

Fun con again. They're apparently going to do ANOTHER con in March now, which might be too much, especially since it's a week earlier than the author convention I'm doing the week after.

===

Got ANOTHER email from my hosting company that basically said, "One of your email accounts is spamming, and if it doesn't stop we'll be forced to shut down your account."

Now, understandable, except it's not coming from my account.

They could actually LOOK in the Sent folder, and also in the message details of all the return-error messages, and see that someone's simply using that email account as the Return Sender, but none of it is coming from my account. You'd think they've never heard of spoof emails.

Fucking irritating. I sent them an irate message back. (they changed my password without asking me so I'd be forced to change my password, even though nobody has my password or logged in using my password)

 

 

Night Photography

 

Got out Saturday night and shot some photos with my brother Mike. Hadn't been out in a long time doing that. We just figured we'd get some sunset, maybe some night shots depending on how long we'd stay.

We headed out to Blackwater and set up(after a quick BK and Slurpee stop). I set up the iphone for a time lapse, and then my real camera.

The weather was decent. It was windy, which is good to keep mosquitos off of us, but bad for time lapses because the grass and trees move erratically.

We were quickly surprised because we started seeing a lot of shooting stars. Normally we're aware when there's going to be a meteor shower, but turns out there was one that night, and we ended up seeing around 20 of them, and one that was probably the best one I've ever seen. (didn't get it on camera, cuz they always fall where your camera isn't pointing...well, I got a piece of one of them)

Here's some of the better ones(this is two locations):

We stayed to try to get the moonrise. We hadn't checked, but it was a crescent moon, so not all that spectacular(you can't really tell in that pic since the starburst effect it's getting is sort of expanding it).

I haven't put any of the time lapses together yet--turns out I don't even have that program on my new edit laptop, so I either have to install it or take the photos to my old edit computer and do it there. (I'll prolly do that, cuz it's faster)

--

Another convention coming up this weekend. Hopefully it's fun with a bit of night life, cuz last year was not a lot going on after 11pm.

It's weird, I've been going to cons since I was around 19 years old. That is well over 30 years, and I was thinking of the many people I used to go to cons with, and how many of them are either dead now or not going anymore.

Am I getting to that point? 

--

The puppies are still awesome. They're a handful, now that they're comfortable. They want to chew on everything. The little girl still has issues needing to pee every 90 minutes or so, but the boy hasn't messed inside in weeks, and at one point he was inside for 7 hours without going out.

The wife is thinking about buying a new couch today. Well, with my money, but you know...

I'm wondering if we shouldn't wait. They haven't chewed on our old couch, but if they chew on the new couch I'll be pretty pissed...

Story Time

 

Been a while since I told any stories from the past, right? I couldn't remember if I'd told this one, so I went and searched the blog and didn't see it, so here ya go.

I don't know why this popped into my head the other morning, but I hadn't thought of this story in a while.

In high school I hung out with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. We'd play kickball and basketball and smear the queer and kick the can, and other stupid shit. One night we'd been playing basketball and I made fun of this big guy, can't remember why.

He started chasing me, so I was running around and jumping bushes to dodge him. All of a sudden I jumped a bush and didn't clear it. My knee went right into it, and I went down hard.

The chasing stopped, because we could all see I was bleeding, and it hurt pretty bad. (I wasn't much of a cryer, so was more just wailing in pain)

I limped home and took a look. There was a stick stuck INTO me right below my kneecap. I can't get it out.

So I go to my dad and tell him. He takes a look, and here's the great part of the story. He's like..."I can get that out."

Takes me down to the basement and pulls out, I swear to god, a fucking dull exacto knife. I didn't know it was dull at first. He sterilizes it with a match, then starts digging the stick out with what I THEN know is a dull knife, because holy shit did it hurt.

He's like, "Hold still", and no way is that happening. He spends five minutes trying to get it out, with not much success. He's managed to break off some of the stick at the edge, but can't get any more.

Finally he decides to take me to the emergency room, where the doctor thinks it's pretty funny that my dad tried to cut it out himself. The doctor injects me with some shit to numb my knee, then uses actual surgical equipment to pull out a 2.5 inch piece of stick from me. I didn't know that much had gone in.

I still tell this story about my dad, and he says he doesn't remember it all, but I think he's just embarrassed.

 

Life Has Become A Blur

 

 Man, people are really into this Velma cosplay, and I'm here for it even though I was a Daphne guy when I watched the cartoon as a kid.

Anyway, life is speeding past me. I can remember a time when the days and months trickled by, and now I can't keep track of what month it is. Like, my mom hit me up and said "What are you doing for your anniversary?"

And I'm like...Huh? My anniversary? And I realized it was this week. I had very little idea of what the date was. I only vaguely was aware it was August. 

Funny thing is, this is the 2nd year in a row the wife is down at the beach for our anniversary. I don't think either of us gives a shit about exact dates. She's off this week, so she went to the beach with her mom and the kid, and whines to me every night when I facetime her that she needs a puppy hug. I tease her by playing with them in front of her.

She wanted to take them, or at least one, down there but the house there isn't puppy-proofed. If they left to go out, that place would be demolished. Also, her brother is coming down Friday and bringing his 3 big dogs, and we don't want these pups subjected to that until they're bigger.

--

Man, does Fedex suck as a company or what? Quick story. Looks like T3 is definitely off the plate for now, maybe forever if that one actress never gets back to me. I think I can live with it now that the script is done, because at least the story is finished. My mind can let it go.

But I'm always thinking, like, maybe I'll do something else. And there's this cool designer on FB that makes badass scarecrow masks.

Quick tangent: Have always been obsessed with scarecrows. They go hand in hand with Halloween, and Dark Night of the Scarecrow was an amazing TV movie I loved as a teen. I've written a screenplay that's sort of a Pumpkinhead with a scarecrow, and that book I've been working on for like 15 years is about a scarecrow. (and hell, S Jack from Ttory is basically a murderous scarecrow...)

Anyway, he put a couple of masks on sale last week. These are not cheap masks, averaging around $500 apiece. I saw one that was pretty cool and distinct, and thought: "I can make a backstory for that one. Maybe shoot a short, or even a feature. Fuck it, let's buy it."

I bought it. Turns out the guy lives in Canada. He ships Fedex. I get updates from them that the package will arrive Wednesday. (this is last week) 

Wednesday comes. I'm outside a couple of times that day with the pups and see Fedex trucks go by a couple of times, but they never stop. I'm wondering if my package is on the trucks and will come by later.

At 5pm I check the tracking number. It says it was delivered at 2:38. Now, this was shipped with signature required. The person who signed for it was not me or anyone with my last name. I'm like...WTF?

I call fedex. They say they'll send someone out tomorrow to try to retrieve it from wherever it got delivered. I ask for details. They can give none. 

I start thinking, hey, maybe they accidentally delivered it to someone else on my street. I'll go looking for that last name from the signature on mailboxes, maybe knock on some doors that have similar number addresses and see if the fedex idiot was dyslexic. 

No dice, but I sweated a lot. It was hot.

The seller is fucking LIVID. He says he's had issues no matter what shipper he's used. He looks at the tracking thing, and I hadn't noticed but the tracking info actually says it was delivered somewhere in CANADA.

So not only can they not get it to the correct address, they can't get it to the correct country. They want the seller to fill out a loss form. This is a one-of-a-kind item.

Long story short(too late), the package surprises all of us by arrive on Monday. No explanation. No sorry. But hey, it got here.

Now...what to do with it...I don't know anybody who lives on a farm, but that would be helpful...

 

Expensive Week

 

 So first off, these puppies are pretty amazing. The girl is a little troublemaker, always stealing stuff from her bigger brother. He's mellow though, and just looks at her like, "whatever". She chases him around and they rough house.

They've been getting pretty comfortable lately. They're mostly potty-trained already. They woke me up the other morning, whining outside my bedroom door, so I took them out and they both immediately pooped at the same time.

The girl has peed a few times inside if you don't take her out every two or three hours, but considering they're only like 14 weeks old, it's a major bonus that they're this good.

The wife has been in much higher spirits, I can tell ya that.

---

Anyway, after the 14 hour drive ordeal, I took a 3.5 hour drive to a horror convention with the Malf. It rained so took a little while longer than usual.

We got there and a drunken friend of Malf's was waiting for us. We got our shit out of the car and checked into a room about 2 miles down a hallway. I started clocking how many steps I walked each day because it was so far. (my phone does it automatically)

On Friday I'd walked 6900ish steps. To put it in perspective, when I mow my lawn, walking back and forth from front yard to back yard, I log like 4500 steps. On Saturday it was over 7000 steps.

Saw a lot of people I knew, had good chats and fun. Friday we got pretty messed up, but went to bed relatively early. (3ish) Saturday was a blur. We went out to dinner at the same place as last time--had me, Malf, a guy we'd met from hdna web site, the three girls who we knew that came from Michigan, plus three authors. Malf even picked up the check at the end, surprising us all.

There was plenty of drama at this year's con, and to cap it off they just announced last night that they're not doing the con any more.

I'm not too sad to hear it, because after this one I wasn't going to do the next regular one anyway. (I plan on going to the author one if Malf goes)

See, when this show started they made it a point with the hotel to keep prices reasonable. You could get a burger, chips and soda for like $5. The hotel treated us great.

This year, $8 hot dogs. A tiny bag of chips is like $2.50. The bar doesn't serve Coors Light, which is what I drink. I tried to order a toasted almond, but they were out of amaretto. (How do you run out of that at a bar?) So I ordered white russians that came full of ice in very small cups, and they turned out to be $12 apiece.

Strip-club prices without the strippers. On top of that I asked for a late check-out because I was going to bed Saturday night at 5am. (okay, it was really Sunday morning). I was told, "Sorry, we're not doing late checkouts". I'm a rewards member with this hotel chain.

I was going to sleep in anyway, and just lie that I'd gotten one, but at like 9:30am the housekeeping staff started banging on doors, shouting "housekeeping", which woke me up. So fuck this hotel.

Then it took about 5 hours to get home, which should have been 3 hours. Bad traffic nearly the whole way. 

All in, between putting our dog down, getting the new pups, and doing this con, I think I spent nearly $5K this week. 

Gotta slow that shit down. I don't have THAT kind of money.