drwex | A weekend with thought and sunshine

Like most of my weekends this one contained mostly good, low-key things. We cut because we care.

J. Michael Straczynski gave the Second Annual Julius Schwartz lecture on Friday night at MIT. I'm too lazy to link all that, but you should look these things up if you don't know who JMS is, or who Julius Schwartz was. I'll also point out that you can get a DVD of last year's lecture, given by Neil Gaiman, from Million Year Picnic.

JMS's talk was weaker than Neil's - JMS isn't a very good public speaker, self-admitted, and mostly he thrives in the Q&A part of things and the telling of anecdotes. Nevertheless, he tried to urge people to take risks in pursuit of their dreams, and particularly not to let fear of failure hold them back. He is himself an up-by-his-bootlaces kind of guy, someone who works hard at everything he tries and who believes that if you can't not write then you probably won't ever make it as a writer. In a way he's a writer's writer.

He did have several interesting points to make, not least of which was admitting that Crusade and the various made-for-DVD Babylon 5 movies were mistakes on his part, at least considered in retrospect. He also talked about writing for movies and for comics, again within the framework of taking risks, not being held back by fear of failure, and a personal dedication to pursuing his life/career happiness rather than taking an easier (and probably more lucrative) route.

I think if you want to be a writer then there are a lot worse models than JMS to go from. I liked how he acknowledges his influences and inspirations and goes off from there.

I'd expected the weather to be crappy on Saturday. We had an adult errand to run (no, not the fun kind, sadly) so we shipped the kids off to playdates and did our thing. Then some sitting outside. I think I need to get one of those mass mosquito-extermination devices.

Sunday continued the fine weather so we all went out to Horn Pond for a walk. Or rather, Pygment and I went for a walk. We saw baby ducks, baby geese and even baby swans. The kids were more interested in their scooters, throwing rocks into the lake, and bugging every fisherman in sight for a chance to try fishing. Excuse me, whose kids are these? We had a minor exercise in "kids get separate from parents, dad acts blase' while mommy panics" and then we went home for showers and dinners.

Dinner was Pygment's 40th birthday outing to Sei Bar. The fact that we had 40 people confirm for dinner was wholly an amusing coincidence. We had at first thought there would be only a couple people. Then a bunch more RSVPs came in. Then a WHOLE LOT MORE. The restaurant dealt pretty well and we both managed to have some good social interactions with guests, as well as time to drink sake and snuggle with each other. There will, eventually, be pictures. At my present production rate that'll probably happen around November.

I'm not a fan of big gatherings, but I have to say this came off WAY better than any other dinner-for-40 I've been to. And the birthday girl had a blast, which is really what counts, right?

Yay for extra holiday weekend days. Still more sunshine. After getting through the standard weekend chores (lawn cut and edged, five loads of laundry done, some semblance of order restored to kitchen) we got the kids outside and took the training wheels off L's new bike. Which turns out to be somewhat too big for him. Fortunately, K's bike is a better size. Between the two he managed some riding back and forth under his own power, only one minor mishap, and decided he was done before mastering the art of turning the bicycle. Straight lines here we go! The kids also did some planting with Pygment of green things they'd received as gifts here and there - a couple flowers, a bean or two. I expect they'll all be dead within the week, but you gotta start somewhere.

The kids made a project of... well, making various sorts of slime. K got a "plasma" production kit as a birthday present. The thing appears to be an apparatus for mixing powders and water to produce various kinds of slime. It will be interesting to see the results - the kit comes with simple stepwise directions for different experiments and we're letting the kids run with it. There's already been one call for the vacuum cleaner and one for various paper towels; I expect more of those.