eruthros

1. Sometimes I cook all fancy! I'm home visiting my folks, and my dad wanted to grill because he's been watching this grilling cooking show. But I basically don't eat meat except for fish, so we settled on tuna, because it doesn't stick to the grill. So this was yesterday's dinner:

( grilled marinated tuna and mango salsa taco-ish things for the noms )

2. Speaking of California, I often find staying with my parents somewhat frustrating (and helping my mom out with her work can be exceptionally frustrating).

But! Here are some of the things that California has in addition to fruit: It's-Its. Blue Bottle Coffee (<3<3<3). Tacos. Breakfast pastries at the Ferry Building. Boogaloo's amazing grilled plantain cakes. Persimmons from the tree in the backyard. Some friends I haven't seen in a while. Fan peoples. Thrift stores. An ocean.

3. There is going to be another Avatar: The Last Airbender (and Avatar: Legend of Korra) fanwork exchange over at white_lotus! I plan to ask for Korra/Chief Bei Fong, among other things, so it is basically guaranteed to include great things.

Anyway, if you are interested, there's a draft signup post to poke at (to make sure all your favorite characters are on the list!) and tomorrow there will be a draft rules post that take people's suggests from last year into account. And signups will start later this week!

As part of making it work this year, we've also made an AO3 collection for the challenge, so that people who want to play in an anon-slow-reveal challenge but also want to be able to edit their fanworks can play that way. People will still be able to just send us their fanworks and have them posted straight to the comm, but the AO3 thing should make it easier for people who are already using the AO3. (Plus we belatedly made a collection for last year, so if you want to you can submit your fanworks to the collection.)

4. Remember that top one hundred specfic works thing? I haven't forgotten it, I promise, I just got cranky when I organized everything for Condorcet voting on a website that said it would do it ... and then couldn't deal with 250 things in a list, Grr. And then I tried a bunch of other places, and they all would only do ten items or allow 50 voters or blahblah. I might end up just doing it in comments and uploading the data flat to a Condorcet calculator. (The short version of condorcet: it's sometimes called ranked-choice or instant-runnoff voting [though a lot of different methods end up being called these things, since the terms are used confusingly in news stories], and it's usually done for single-winner issues. It can be done for a multiple-winner issue, though, and I thought it would be fun because it would let people rank as many things as they wanted. It's a kind of neat alternative since it lets you rank things you hate low, and not have to do careful vote manipulation to make your vote "count." But APPARENTLY the javascript version of the Condorcet page crashes liek whoah.)

5. ( some stuff about the OTW )

I'm at the Madison airport waiting for my flight. (I have just learned that visibility is below minimum takeoff levels, whee.) And so I was poking around looking for more information on when I found the airport's page on "Special Needs." Ready?

Skycaps can transport passengers both to the ticket desk and through security to the gate. It is best to contact your airline in advance if you will need special assistance at the airport, whether departing or arriving.

If you prefer to transport a person with disabilities into the terminal yourself, wheelchairs are generally available for use inside Door 2.

And the whole page is like that: I am a person with disabilities. I am not "you."

Park in short term parking, close by on the ramp, pick up a wheelchair (or ask for Skycap assistance) and transport the passenger from short term parking into the terminal.

At no point on the page does it indicate that PWD might, in fact, have their own wheelchairs. That they might prefer to use. In order to, you know, transport themselves.

A thing that really bothers me about all the recent air security talk is the assumption of certain kinds of "normal" bodies -- air security is merely an inconvenience to everyone, not an impossibility, because all bodies can do the things we ask.

So ( here are some problems with proposed air security rules, some people who are left out )

I'm back home! Over the last few days I have been:

1. sleeping in my comfy bed (well, as much as the jet lag will let me)

2. eating many meals made with lots of protein (how I ended up working somewhere with a cuisine that doesn't include tofu or tempeh or black beans or lentils or vegetarian protein I do not know)
2a. eating chocolate (I ran out of chocolate-from-home two and a half weeks ago)
2b. ESPRESSO.

3. wearing different clothes (they are ... different! it's exciting.)

4. chatting with thingswithwings IRL! (Having IRL conversations with someone about fandom! \o/)

5. hugging the internet close (I finally caught up on dw)

6. watching Leverage (oh OT3)

7. playing Super Mario Galaxy nostalgically (guys, there is going to be Super Mario Galaxy 2! In January! OMG AWESOME.)

8. working on a kink_bingo story (begun in the middle of nowhere; turns out that when you write in hundred word increments in your five minutes of free time, you need to go back and put in a whole bunch of transitions)

So, in short, I am very happy to be home. And to see read all you guys! And to be able to comment on your posts and stuff! It is thrilling.

This is why I hate international travel:

As I checked in, I noted that the boarding time up on the screen was later than the flight was supposed to, you know, LEAVE. "Oh," I said. "Is the flight delayed?" "Yes," said the gate agent, hustling me through so fast I couldn't see the screens, "about forty minutes."

"Ah," I said, realizing that this would make my (hour-and-a-half) connection tight, and resolving to check the scheduling online.

Then I looked at my boarding pass, and discovered they'd already done the rescheduling for me. Automatically. Now they've got me making an extra stop (Charles de Gaulle, wtf) and now I get in after the last metro. Srsly.

And then I checked my flight status online, and discovered that "forty minutes" was more "an hour and forty minutes."

And then I called Northwest. And I got, seriously, the best phone customer service person ever (thank you so much Roberta) and I spent an hour on the phone with her trying to work something out. (Let me just say, I have never had someone try to help me out that much over a delay that is under twelve hours. Amazing.)

Now? Well, I still have an extra stop (Milan, wtf) but I'm getting in while the metro is still running and, if I book and passport control isn't too bad, I might even make the overnight bus.