February 15, 2017:
So I went to see the Welcome to Night Vale live show, “Ghost Stories.” I wore my Desert Bluffs skirt that I designed and knit myself and it was well appreciated. I enjoyed others’ costumes, the topper tonight was someone who blinged up an umbrella with lights and stuffing and went as the Glow Cloud. People yelled “All hail!” It was a really good show, too. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t as into “The Investigators,” which I saw previously, but this one was good stuff. The weather, played by Erin McKeown, was awesome and fun to listen to both when playing music and without. As for the show, the theme was a ghost story contest, with entries by:
* Deb the sentient patch of haze, telling a story about haze patches being surprised to find out their house was being haunted by humans...who, y’know, owned the place.
* Tamika Flynn (very cute in person and had cat ears on), telling a story about how this awesome girl beat down monster librarians...when called out on how there wasn’t a ghost in it, she was all “well, now it’s dead, so there is.”
* Cecil, telling a long story of the usual sort for about 2/3 of it, before deciding to tell the real ghost story of the time he picked up his sister on the side of the road after their mother’s funeral. It was surprisingly really touching.
I also enjoyed the horoscope section, especially the part where Cecil’s sister is mad at him for giving terrible horoscopes to Steve Carlsberg’s sign.
Whenever they put this out online, I’d recommend picking it up. Good job, all.
On another odd note, I ran into some ex-friends there in the parking lot and I was not expecting that. I didn’t know they even knew what podcasts are, but after finding the parking lot I walked over to the elevator and realized it was them about a few seconds before they realized it was me, and I was thinking, “crap, can I go hit the stairs?” Too late. And they were in costume too, so clearly they were going to the same place. They were polite and nice to me, so that was nice, and they followed me out to the theater since they weren’t sure where it was. But after we all got there I wandered away out of view to make sure they were pleased that I was gone.
You know, it is always going to bother me that they all dropped me and I can’t for the life of me figure what the shit I did wrong. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious, but in this case it’s really not. All I can tell is that one of them suddenly started hating me and while her girlfriend still seems to like me in public, she’s going along with the shunning. What the fuck. I know sometimes people just decide they don’t like you (especially at my job), but after years of acquaintance, when you just can’t think of anything you did wrong...what the hell? It really annoys me that on my deathbed I’m probably still going to be wondering about this and will never know.

February 21, 2017:
I had planned on going to Pantheacon this weekend and arranged for extra time off months ago. But then my friend I was going with had to cancel because her life went to shit, and then I ended up with tons of car repairs and gave up on the idea as well. But I decided to use that time anyway and go to Meg’s in Santa Cruz for the long weekend. She and her husband had been in my town again for a bit, so I rode down with them and took the train back. This was a bit of a challenge since it was another Storm of the Century sort of weekend and Highway 17 had a mudslide at one point and a tree fell down at another point and a rumored second mudslide and on Monday night Highway 17 had been shut down entirely...So it was a good thing I’d already arranged to take Tuesday off work to go home, but I did end up leaving on the bus ridiculously early because SUPPOSEDLY according to what little I could find online, the busses were being rerouted to Highway 101. And then it turned out the bus wasn’t (and they didn’t have too many cars on the way out and almost none on the way in because it was still a little barred off), and I got there like 3 hours before the train left. Ah well. Mom was pretty cheesed off at me for going despite the Dangers of Santa Cruz and ah...was pretty much not talking to me for a few days once she found out I had gone. She convinced herself that since I told her we weren’t leaving on Friday as planned due to the weather, that meant I wasn’t going at all. Oh brother.

Given the aforementioned Storm of the Century going on, this time around I stayed in the house most of the time, either crafting or gaming. We did go out one rainy night when I took them out to dinner at a nearby restaurant...which we walked to in pouring rain, which was a bit crazy. The rest of the time I got Meg into knitting another sweater, she knit me a giant shawl out of various novelty yarns in about four hours, and we played the Transformation Game again. (I don’t feel like giving the rundown, this one took all day and night.) We had a third player, a lady named Jade we met last time I was down that Meg has befriended briefly before Jade moves to England. She gave us some stuff--craft things, gave me a pretty glass egg, yarn, CD’s, etc. since she’s having to purge. It was fun.

February 23, 2017:
On this night I went to a “Fifty Shades of Men” strip night that Katie invited me to. It was awesome and everything I ever wanted and I have finally stuck money down a dude’s pants and it was a delight and I can now check that off my bucket list. (Seriously, living out Magic Mike fantasies was on the bucket list, if I actually had an official one.) Thank you, Katie! She and I were ah, clearly the most into this sort of thing. She had two other friends there, one of whom was having some medical issues and wasn’t super into it due to that, and the other was having a birthday the next day so Katie paid to get her up on the stage for a public show. Heh heh heh. Katie also passed me some money to get a quick dance of my own in the audience, which I eventually got to have happen because they weren’t exactly noticing me until I started dancing up on the dude. It was fun, folks :) I’m not ashamed.
I dunno if I’d say they were the best dancers--not a whole lot of synchronization--but they had some great feats of strength like back flips and at one point a girl was picked up in her chair and flipped upside down and twirled around. Probably not so much fun for her, but I was amazed at the strength moves.
Also: if you ever go to something like this, don’t wear a minidress. Because everyone’s gonna end up seeing your panties if you go on stage. Just saying.

February 25, 2017:
So they had improv auditions again today. I was annoyed at the timing of them because I was planning on spending the entire weekend at Stitches West, and spending most of it shopping. Well, fine, okay, I’ll go to the audition and then drive down to Santa Clara and go shopping for a few hours before the market closes.

Before the audition began, they said it takes them two weeks to come up with teams, they’re trying to develop new things for practice, and they need to expand the program again. If you get rejected, it’s not a personal reflection of you, you’re just not what they are going for at the time. They said they were going to cast six to ten people. Twenty-four were auditioning today, so they did two 7 person teams onstage. One of my old classmates was one of the judges, which is...pretty depressing to think about every time it comes up in my brain.

Here’s what the first group did: The other monologues were about going to work in PJ’s, getting into a fight at a concert and going to a concert without their friend.

First A scene: people going to work while nauseous.
First B scene: working at an Amazon ripoff company that does searches on the customers
First C scene: awkward adult swim.
Overall group scene 1: kids doing chores as the family business.
Second A scene: celebrating your one year anniversary at a family hotel while at Disneyland
Second B scene: spying on your girlfriend
Second C scene: adult swim continues.
Overall group scene 2: neighborhood watch.
Third A scene: vomiting on your wedding day
Third B and C scene (bled together): stalking the Russians at adult swim.

Sometimes I wish I’d written things out more while taking sketchy notes on my old iPod....

In my group, we had monologues on (a) someone’s boyfriend finding out she poops, (b) something about a doula, (c) something about a fancy gym.
First A scene: I initiated, girl who wants boyfriend to hand her toilet paper, he doesn’t want to so she has to pretend it’s for a bloody nose.
First B scene: let’s take steroids to save our relationship!
First C scene: A guy admits he actually eats food.
Overall group scene 1: Candyland real estate
Second A scene: “Where are my feminine supplies?” The puppy slept on them. When he gives me a pack of Always, I propose marriage. (Uh... it made sense in the moment...)
Second B scene: I have down as the notes “road rage rejected Newlywed Game start our own.” I am guessing that that couple got rejected from the Newlywed Game due to their roid rage and decided to start their own show.
Second C scene: Man admits he sleeps.
Overall group scene 2: Going to a doula for farting. Someone lets out a 20 year old fart. I try not to puke.
Third A scene: giving birth while the dude is grossed out
Third B scene: “Roof rage poetry love poem.”
Third C scene: Man admits he is human and has a mom, is not made of stardust.

I think it went pretty well. Still didn’t make a team anyway. They didn’t even bother to notify any of us--some of my old classmates got in though. One of them told me it was pretty hard going.
I haven’t auditioned again since--that was about the point where I realized that there’s a lot of good people out there with more coming in, they don’t really have space to let too many more in, and I’m just not going to be good enough compared to everyone else to make it. Sigh, but there it is.

February 27, 2017: Stitches West!
After the audition, I drove down to Stitches West in Santa Clara, which I hadn’t gone to in a few years due to being broke and/or moving. I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon shopping, and then half of Sunday shopping. I took a class on Sunday afternoon.

I bought:
(a) three balls of fingering weight yarn in pretty shades of blue/purple/pink and rainbow sparkles. I normally don’t do fingering weight yarn (generally known as “sock yarn,” thin stuff to the rest of you), but I swear there really wasn’t a whole lot out there in my usual preferred yarn weight classes. The last time I went to Stitches (three years ago) I got a giant bag of pretty purple/pink/blue yarn that I just finally made a giant sweater tunic dress out of, for a reasonable bulk yarn price. Alas, this year’s selections in bigger yarn in bulk were not as pretty. So I sucked it up and bought thinner yarn and I’ll figure out...something. That isn’t socks, because I don’t even like having to wear socks so I’m not into knitting them. Oh yeah, and I bought a tiny sample of a fourth one they didn’t have a bigger skein of.
(b) yarn accessories--a holder for double pointed needles, an extra cord
(c) jewelry: two shawl pins (one for Mom), two knitting charms, two pairs of earrings made of tiny balls of yarn, a bunny rabbit pin and rainbow buttons.
(d) a teddy bear from the Mother Bear project, which had a delightfully adorable booth in general.

So that was fun. I also showed off my sweaters and people loved them, so that’s a joy.

In the afternoon instead of shopping, I took a class about being a knitting designer done by MarlyBird.com. She asks you to not share the details of the class since it’s based on her life, but I will say that it wasn’t what I expected. I actually wasn’t sure WHAT I was expecting--the description was a bit vague. I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of class about how to design in general--your “homework” was to bring graph paper, pencils, pens, and colored pencils (though we did one black and white drawing on graph paper, so that was kind of it for the art in practice), so I wasn’t sure if it was drawing. I was hoping it would talk about how one finalizes their designs--creates other sizes, does the math, whatever. Nope, that wasn’t it. But apparently one can actually hire someone to do this for you, so GOOD TO KNOW. Anyway, it was focused on how she got into the business, the nature of the business, how to submit patterns, and the economics of having someone else publish you vs. self-publishing vs. offering free patterns--she’s kind of done it all and thinks the people who are all free make more money through advertising. So while I thought it was a little vaguely communicated to me as to what was being covered in this class, the subject matter was very comprehensive on how it worked and how much things cost to pay other people to do things for you when you will need others’ assistance.

I....don’t know if I’m up for designing publicly after all. Because guess what, PIMPING ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS EVERYTHING and since I don’t want to and get the heebie-jeebies at the idea...yeah. Sigh. Oh well. But it was a very good class, even if I once again end up freaking at the idea of actually doing something.

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