teddywolf

Last weekend was Arisia for Mystery House. Arisia holds a very special significance for our area. Ever since Arisia was moved from February to January, Arisia Weekend has come to mean either bitter cold we'd normally expect around Minnesota or a heavy snowfall. This year the weather decided to give us both, starting with bitter cold Friday night and some snow, two and a half feet, give or take a foot, all around the house. The snow was not only intense, it blew around all over the place. As a result, our usual entrance was blocked by snow that drifeted even taller than Tigerlily, a peak I dubbed Mount Mystery, while within sight of our entrance was a patch of yard where we could see blades of grass poking out through the snow. I for one rather wished it was the other way around, but as that would have meant grass growing on our porch I decided it's not necessarily bad the way it is.

The intense cold broke a pipe that led from the hot water heater in the basement to our kitchen. We had much colder weather last winter without this happening, but I guess it just paved the way for this year. Initially we had no water to the kitchen at all, but that got fixed yesterday by our better-than-Tool-Tyme-landlord providing us with cold water yesterday evening. The plumber was supposed to come by either last night or today to fix the hot water, but so far we've had a dearth of plumber.

Andromeda has not been happy with the cold weather. She's been very careful about her perches the past few weeks, staying on top of radiators and in the bedrooms with independant heat sources. The rare exceptions have been the laps of clothed humans or to the side of humans who sit in the Comfy Chair. The Cat Chair is all but abandoned, with tumbleweeds taking the place of the dustbunnies. Still, all remain un-chased by the Mighty Black Huntress of the Two White Whiskers.

Arisia is now the official burn-out convention of Mystery House. As cons go it's a very busy con, with lots of things to do from dances to panels to games to movies to art to dealers to parties to Those Kinds Of Parties. I've been to all but the last category and have my decided preferences as to what I like, although I admit sometime I'd like to find out about the last category. At any rate, every single one of us has things we like to do around the convention, and now every single one of us is burned out on volunteering for the con in any significant capacity.

Tigerlily, you see, worked for the con for several years. One year she even tried, unsuccessfully, to be con-chair. However, she burnt out on certain of the people there, and also does many of the things required of a con in her current work at the school. The combination makes her unwilling to get stressed out about something she otherwise enjoyes.

Ayesha worked for the con as the Filk Czarina for a year, bringing our favorite harper Gwen to the con. Gwen was a wonderful filk guest and a joy to spend time with and listen to. However, the stress of otherwise running the filk track made her quite unwilling to ever run it again.

Jadasc has, for the past couple of years, run one aspect of Gaming at the con. The first year he basically filled in last minute, as the person who had run that part had gone missing and hadn't treported back to anybody about doing such. So Jadasc took it over and did fairly well. He decided that he'd do even better this year, with experience and no last-minute takeover. He went to many of the meetings, got things done, and decided that he'd had enough of it.

I was Filk Czar for the past two years myself. The first year I did a moderately good job of it, getting several filk and filk-related items on the schedule and, with massive help from Vettecat and Sdavido, managed to bring Tom Smith to the con. Tom was funny and opinionated and generally a good egg to deal with. Most of the panels happened the way I hoped they would, and people had a good time. So I decided to run with it for this year's con.

I decided this year, however, that the constant fight to shake out some money for a Filk Guest and the inevitable scheduling conflicts have put it beyond what I want to deal with. We had a married pair as Guest this year, but only because the local filk music organization paid the bulk of the costs associated with bringing them to the con. The local filk organization, which puts on a con every three to four years itself albeit a much smaller con, is not a very big organization and does not have a large treasury. The idea that this much smaller, much less cash-enabled organization was subsidizing this fairly large organization was like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul. I was glad to have the guests, but I was not happy with what had to happen to get them.

As such, we are now officially a Not-Working-For-Arisia household. For those of you still working for the convention, I salute you, I respect you, and I ask that you not ask us to work for the con again. If any of us want to return we'll tell somebody. We'll still attend, those of us who want to; but we're feeling allergic to being staff. Not allergic to staff members, fortunately, or else we wouldn't be able to spend time with some of our favorite people. We didn't get quite enough time this year, but we have hopes for next year.

Now, some of you know that for a very long time, Tigerlily and I have had hopes and expectations about a new arrival. I am pleased to report that this Monday, a bit before either of us were expecting it to be sure, we had a successful delivery of our newest. She's a sweet girl, too - lovely complexion, all bright and shiny; makes appropriate pleased noises when handled, with no problems whatsoever; extremely responsive; and very low maintenance so far, which both Tigerlily and I appreciate. We've argued, gently, about what to call her. She wants to name her Kesef; I want to name her Lovely Beast. We compromised - we'll each have our own name for her. She's a real beaut. She stands about four and a half feet tall, fifteen feet long, weighs in at perhaps 1200 pounds, 4 ounces, and her sign is Saturn.

Well, of course I'm talking about a car. What else would you expect from a couple wanting a new car, a baby?

My parents helped us buy it. Specifically, they put forward the money with the proviso that we pay them back when we're able. As I am starting new work soon, and am in training now, I have hopes that they will be paid back very soon. This, of course, means I should do my work studying for the job.

Speaking of new work, Tigerlily has an interview with a start-up a few towns over next week. The duties would be similar but smaller in scope than her current job, which has been quite stressful for the past two years. The initial commute would be hellish, which is something we'd need to look into; but the work would be more at least marginally more enjoyable and she would no longer have to deal with bosses declaring everything a priority until they hand her a last minute emergency on a regular basis. She would enjoy this, I think. Since it's a start-up we have no idea what the payscale would be like, but as it's a private employer as opposed to the university we figure it can't be lower than she currently makes, and she'd likely have stock options if the pay was that low.

We have hopes, here. Hope for my new work to go well. Hope for new work. Hopes for our newest member of the family in August. If our hopes are realized we will be a very happy cat-and-wolf-and-sprog. Best wishes, as always, are appreciated.

And that's the news from Mystery House, my home, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the felines are above you.