Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I have tickets to BASFA's group outing to the San Jose Giants on Saturday, and elected to take Friday off from work to drive to the Bay Area without having to stress about it too much. This also allowed me to stack some errands along the way that have been accumulating. In the long run, as you'll see, it's also best that I did it this way due to a a mechanical problem with the Astro.

Lisa decided to not make the trip with me, but yesterday she packed the SFSFC stuff that other people brought to Tonopah for Westercon, plus the other things we bought for the convention that we are giving back to our parent organization. This way I can get them back to our next SFSFC convention, CostumeCon 39.

( Nine Hours on the Road )

While collecting my luggage from the minivan, I discovered a problem.

( Uh, Oh )

After I got back to the hotel, I called Lisa to fill her in on the events of today. She was disappointed that the leak happened when it did, for if it had happened at home, she figures she probably could have repaired it. Pep Boys called me back just before 5 PM and said it would cost about $275 and that they should be able to get the damaged pipes (I said to replace both of them since if one had corroded through, the other one was probably on the point of failure, too) replaced by mid-day Saturday. They'll call me when it's ready. Fingers crossed that everything still goes to plan for tomorrow.

So today was not a total success, but the things that went wrong could have been far worse. I'm thinking about what would have happened if that pipe had failed while we were traveling to or from Tonopah, for example. And on the bright side, I have no commitments tomorrow morning and can leave the alarm turned off so I can sleep in. I definitely need it.

Saturday evening, I joined a bunch of the members of BASFA at Star Wars Night at the San Jose Giants (A-league affiliate of the San Francisco team), where Ken Patterson had once again organized a section of the Martinelli's VIP deck for us.

( The Forth Was With Us, but Not With the Giants )

A splendid time was had by all BASFAn, but unfortunately not by the Giants. The Quakes pitchers had a combined no-hitter through seven innings until the Giants' bats finally came to life in the eighth. With the bases loaded and the Giants trailing 7-2, the Quakes pitcher hit the batter, forcing in another run and bringing the tying run to the plate. The batter hit a soaring fly ball that unfortunately didn't quite have the legs to find the fence and thus the game-tying grand slam didn't happen. The Quakes went on the win 7-3.

I invited any curious BASFAns willing to make the trip out to the back corner of the parking lot (where I carefully had triple-checked that the headlights were out before I parked there) who wanted to see where I live when I'm doing these extended stints in the Bay Area, and three took me up on it. After giving them the Cook's tour of the Rolling Stone, they headed off shivering (after sundown, the overcast moved in and it got chilly) and I set off for my usual overnight layup spot. I was very tired and it was not difficult to get to sleep.

One thing that still puzzles me, though, is why so many people I meet in the Bay Area think I live so close. I tell people I live 30 miles east of Reno, and they say, "That's a four hour drive, right." I tell them, "You can drive 300 miles in four hours? Remind me not to ever ride with you!" While if you could average 75 miles an hour, you could do it, I don't see how one could ever do that. While I was passed by a few people out on I-5 this afternoon who seemed to trying to do that, not only do I generally not drive that much over the speed limit, but the RV isn't even capable of going that fast, save downhill with a tailwind.

For the first time in months (and several weeks after having to scrub a trip due to snow), I'm taking the Rolling Stone down to the Bay Area and working from the offices down there. I have a couple of medical appointments during the week, BASFA has their outing to the San Jose Giants next Saturday, and I also hope to get to see A Spoonful of Sherman next Friday night at 3Below Theatre. And I'll also be at BASFA this Monday night.

Lisa plugged the RV in yesterday to top off the batteries, and this afternoon I pulled it around to the front of the house and started loading it with everything that can be done today. (My toiletries, computer, and other personal items have to wait until tomorrow morning.) Based on past experience and because I've seen the darn stingers buzzing around as the weather warms up, I checked for wasp nests, and sure enough there were a couple in the RV, which Lisa and I dealt with and did not get zapped.

I'm glad we have the RV, but I'm also glad I don't have to do this every other week or every third week the way I once did.

I had a fantastic time attending Who's Holiday last night at 3Below Theatre. This is a one-woman show starring Shannon Guggenheim as no-longer-so-young Cindy Lou Who, delivered (mostly) in rhyming couplets a la Doctor Seuss.

( Terrible Photo Night )

It's been a good weekend. I'm glad, though, that I have tomorrow to recover from it before going back to work on Monday. This coming week is the only full five-day week I'll have in the entire stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.

I wasn't that good about taking pictures at the BASFA San Jose Giants game, but here are some of those that I did take.

( Take Us Out to the Ball Game )

I had an excellent time at the game, even including the annoying extra hour-plus at the end caused by the dead battery on my RV. I hope we get to do it again next year.

This evening, BASFA members (including me) have a section of the VIP Deck at the San Jose Giants for tonight's 7 PM ball game. After the week I've had here at work, I'm very much looking forward to spending an evening with friends enjoying the game (and the BBQ included in our VIP deck tickets). I'm not looking forward to fighting my way from my office down to Municipal Stadium, which will probably take between 1 and 2 hours to go the roughly 30 miles.

Yesterday's medical appointments went well. I took light rail to Mountain View and then Caltrain up to Palo Alto, which saves trying to wrestle the Rolling Stone into limited parking at the clinic (or run afoul of Security at the shopping center down the road). Also, I hate driving with my eyes dilated.

( Minor Diabetes TMI )

Now it's time to pack up and head for San Jose. Tomorrow morning I can sleep in a little but, but not too long because I have some banking business to do where my Bank of America account is kept, in the Yuba City branch, and it can't be done remotely, so I need to be up there before they close.

I'm not making any Hugo Award recommendations this year. As one of the members of this year's Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee, I don't want my own personal preferences being seen as trying to influence anything. But BASFA continues with its practice of meeting to discuss works/people they think are Award-worthy. I don't get to many meetings anymore because I don't have to go to the Bay Area that often, but member Diane Osborne collated this year's recommendations for the 2018 Hugo Award/YA Award/Campbell Award and the 1943 Retrospective Hugo Awards and sent them to me because I'm the club's (more or less) webmaster. Therefore, if you go to BASFA's web site, you should see a link to this year's recommendations. Or you can just download the 2018 BASFA Hugo recommendations PDF directly.

Other than formatting and sorting the lists, I generally took no editorial actions with them; however, I did strike my own name from the Best Fan Writer recommendations, because as one of this year's Hugo Administrators, I'm one of the handful of people who are explicitly ineligible this year. I am, however, flattered by the kind thoughts, even as I tell people not to waste their nominations on an ineligible writer.

In a few minutes, I'm heading off to San José to attend tonight's San Jose Giants game with other members of BASFA during the Giants' "Star Wars Night." While costumes are encouraged, I have nothing appropriate, so it's just going to be my usual orange-and-black Giants gear. It looks to be a fun.

Tomorrow I head for home, but something has come up that means I have to make a detour up to Yuba City as well, so it's likely to be a very long day for me. I sort of hope that I wake up early and get a fast start. Don't know if I'll be online much more between now and getting home, and by the time I get home, I may well just want to fall into bed because I still start work at 6 AM on Monday.

The Bay Area Science Fiction Association, after weeks of discussion, adopted at club member Code of Conduct last month. I finally managed to find time yesterday to post it to the BASFA web site. Click on Rules on the left menu bar and then see the newly-adopted Rule 15, which will lead you to the Code of Conduct and details of enforcement.

Tonight is one of the last "trial" meetings of BASFA, as we wind up the evaluation meetings at very locations around the Bay Area and in a few weeks make a decision about a new permanent home for the club's meetings. Because tonight's trial is in Milpitas, I arranged to work at the Fremont office today so I didn't have to fight my way across CA-237. I'm still trying to decide whether I should even cast a vote in the poll to pick a new place, because while I'll be in the Bay Area a little more than usual for the next few months, in generally I can only expect to be here one week in three.