Laughter Through Tears

The needs must post is a brilliant idea and I've already gotten a bunch of useful responses. :D I only wish I'd managed to help someone else, but that's not yet happened.

I'm back to classes today after Passover. Yesterday I did most of my holiday work, which I had been planning on getting out of the way early HAHAHAHA OF COURSE. Then I ordered pizza for dinner. :D Anyway school's boring I don't want to talk about that. I especially don't want to talk about being forced to buy an amazingly expensive textbook in order to avoid logistical entanglements with the library's awfully strict lending policy. But, I promised myself I'd be good about doing the reading this semester.

I want to write about DAO and strategy, but it looks like I'm running out of time before I have to leave for class, so maybe I should wait so I can make the post as long as I want.

Funny, I got sucked into DAO so fast and so hard, I forgot to write anything about "the Dragon*Con book", the post-apocalyptic novel that I finished reading, finally, on the way back from the Pesach con.

Looks like I have a lot to write about.

I suspect that going to an Israeli comics convention might be a little anticlimactic after Dragon*Con. Or, then again, it might be comfortingly familiar. At any rate, the food will be better. Too bad I fell asleep at 3 AM last night and then woke up at 8 AM this morning.

My brother still wants TPBs to catch up on the latest Green Lantern events. IDK, I think he'll probably end up being disappointed.

My flight leaves tonight. I am taking my laptop with me, but of course I'll be doing a lot of stuff all day and spending very little time online. The hotel has paid wireless, so hopefully I'll at least check my e-mail most evenings.

Anyway, the con starts Friday and so Thursday will probably be a low-key day to recover from plane travel etc.

Dragon*Con gives us the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of stuff that doesn't usually get exported. Things like indie comic books are sometimes hard to come by in Israel, unless there's a source I'm not aware of. Shipping costs are also an issue. If you can think of something I might enjoy that I'll be able to find in the D*C dealers' room, please drop me a note. I am frequently frustrated by seeing these little projects that I can't quite support.

Anyway, I need to finish packing and stocking up my MP3 player with music for the airport. There's no sure way to know how long the security procedures will take, and so we might spend quite a lot of time being bored silly.

Whoops I forgot to update my journal in almost two weeks. No idea why. I've still been checking my DW basically every day.

Stuff that happened in that time:

Got a Twitter (here), at the behest of a couple of Israeli friends. There are massive fiscal-related protests in Israel right now and Twitter is one of the online epicenters of news and discussion. A bunch of my tweets and retweets are in Hebrew, just so you know.

Finished my very last piece of work for the semester, which was a mock research proposal that turned out more complicated than I'd anticipated.

Watched Green Lantern a couple of weeks ago and found it fairly dull, having not enough aliens and not nearly enough shiny explody green stuff -- too much talking and ~character drama~. Watched Captain America last night and found it much more enjoyable.

The new light rail in Jerusalem opened. I was on it yesterday to get to the movie and so far it is pretty terrible.

Wrote a bunch of anonymous fic, and also made a bit of progress on my absurdly late help_japan fic. It will be sad, I think, but perhaps bittersweet. It is also getting my mind on perhaps writing some more VM fic, after I finish it. Right now, though, finishing it is my top writing priority, and then getting a good beta.

Things that are still to happen:

In a week I'm flying to Atlanta with my brother for DragonCon. Eep.

Finishing an anonymous WIP that I've been working on all summer and spring and posting it to AO3, possibly after extensive editing/beta. This is a thing that is going to happen.

When offices at uni open again, calling the life sciences secretaries and figuring out whether my lab request was approved. This has to happen before I sign up for classes. Then I have to sign up for classes when, yet again, I will take more courses on my first semester than I am comfortable with, due to 'constraints' (had to look that up on morfix).

So the theme for this year's sci-fi con, starting tomorrow, is time. The schedule looks pretty cool, my brother and I will probably be there all day tomorrow and most of Thursday.

These comics and SFF conventions have become a reliable touchpoint for me with Israeli SFF fandom, which is pretty cool. I still have no idea when the third book of the Whale of Babylon series is coming out, though. For all I know, it may never come out. D:D:D:

Anyway, if I ever get around to writing one of my ridiculous Hebrew fantasy ideas, it's good to know that I'll have someone to talk to about it. Specter Valley can't lie dormant forever, it would be so wrong.

Associating holidays with new comics is nice, even though I'm horribly behind on my comics reading.