Today I finished watching For All Mankind, then headed out to the powwow for the afternoon. I restrained myself from buying anything, but got a lot of knitting done and finished reading a book in between dances. Watching the people/outfits was as entertaining to me as it always is, as I appreciate seeing hand crafted rainbow beaded/fancy garb (regalia) any time. It's a lovely weather day and I managed to find shade and remembered to bring a portable chair, so go me there.

On the way home, I was so hungry I got takeout at this place across the street from work that I've thought about trying for years. The drink was great, the egg rolls were great, but the popcorn chicken I'd been eyeing other people eating for years turned out to be distractingly spicy and not really my thing, oh well. I'm starting to wonder if I ordered the wrong chicken because I was always eyeing other people eating something that wasn't what I got? Oh well.

TnT rehearsals are being moved to the Opera House for most of them, until the end of the rehearsal season, anyway. She said that might put a buzzkill on pre-rehearsal karaoke (since I did get around to sending an invite email for that), I said nah, we can just leave 10 minutes earlier to move cars.

After that, I went to the Stories on Stage show, where Jan and Laura from the Craft Center were in my row and Jan said she saw me at the powwow earlier. I spotted Donna from the CC in front of us, but she didn't see me. I started looking around for who else I recognized at that point and eventually spotted Evan a few rows away in another section, wearing a colorful striped sweater that went with my own outfit, so I noticed it. I was all, do I try to get his attention or no....?

I note this is the event that Evan used to run (and apparently this was his idea, they did one online and then the current co-directors put it on IRL), with local author Kim Stanley Robinson in attendance and local celebrity Dr. Andy as emcee. KSR judged a high school sci-fi writing contest, so the winner had his story performed by high school students, then a pro actor from the local Shakespeare company reading one of KSR's Mars stories--the one about playing baseball on Mars and how the visiting Terran narrator coaches a guy into doing a curve ball and suddenly their team starts to win.

I note that one of the high school performers was Dr. Andy's son, and he was reading the computer text and the other two actors were reading the lines, and they had some text and graphics going on behind them for the story about creating a better afterlife, which I found funny and once again, everybody heard.

I did go up to Evan afterwards to give my compliments, and he told me about the one they did before, asked if I was going to get an autograph (I said no, you remember what it's like at David Sedaris, I just feel weird...), and apologized for not coming to Easter but he couldn't swing going to the olde hometowne and the other place he was going was in Modesto, and I was all, "I totally understand," having been. He did take me out to introduce me to Dr. Andy's family (Dr. Andy was hanging out elsewhere so I still haven't met him!), so I met his wife and the aforementioned son--and Evan was all, "she really enjoyed it," and I was all, yeah, that was me, SIGH.... He introduced me as "Gretchen's daughter." I don't think (?) Mom's met the family but presumably they've heard of her, and he did liken them to family and when Kate asked if I was, he said yeah. So, that's sweet.

Back to KSR (who I guess goes by "Stan"), I had to scrounge around for a pen and something to write on (an old program I was using as a bookmark) to attempt to take notes on the Q&A.

* "Memoir is kind of a crappy genre anyway."

* He's done a lot of various sports, his current one is frisbee golf, which he likened to living a doggy life.

* "Plot is when something goes wrong."

* He writes long books because he finds a lot of things interesting.

* About having writer's block/exhaustion after one book: "I don't have any excuses compared to Galileo."

* He got over writer's block by writing outside, even in the cold. He doesn't write when it's too hot.

* He's been a house husband here for 40 years (they went into his history of working in a bookstore).

* "Some of my characters write poetry better than I do."

* Once people get to a place (the moon, Everest, wherever), they lose interest in it..

* It will be "very reasonable coincidence" if aliens ever show up, but he won't 100% rule it out.

* "Yosemite is strange."

* He said that since he wrote the Mars trilogy, we've found out more things about it that make his book not work out so well, such as the soil of Mars being poisonous. "It's still a good novel, it's just not a good plan."

* This turned into a whole polite razzing by Dr. Andy about the time when a fan sent him a chunk of Mars that made it to Earth and Stan ate it to finish the book in style. He did not die.

* To finish off, Dr. Andy was going to ask a "gotcha" question. "I thought eating Mars was the gotcha question." Nope, it was.... * "Did you catch covid from the Dalai Lama?" "I hope not." Apparently he came down with it after meeting him, but he didn't mind spending more time in India. They moved him from the "best" room to the "worst" room, but apparently they weren't very different.... Dr. Andy said this was the best covid story he ever heard,

* He got complimented on his TED talk by several people (including Dr. Andy/son) and he said he hates TED talks, hates their style of memorizing and walking around instead of being free, and said his was the worst ever.

* He suggested writing a haiku a day, which sounds fun. Let's try it!

Went to the powwow
Love all the regalia
Colors are the best

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