Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

We've had a spell of spring weather — enough to where Lisa and I have been trying to get out and do some walking. It's only been walking around our block, albeit usually several times, but it's better than staying inside all the time.

However, the current weather forecast suggests we may get snow again over the weekend, so perhaps we'll have to hunker down some more.

Lisa is patiently putting up with the tiny little apartment here and the fact that we can't really do much until mid-day Friday, at which point we can shut everything down and disassemble the desk. (I'll be working from the apartment that morning rather than taking the entire day off as I'd originally planned.) She'd rather be at home until she's needed on Friday, but the logistics of getting her down here don't work very well, particularly because, to our mutual annoyance, there is no officially sanctioned long-term parking near the Amtrak station in Reno. (We haven't yet decided whether we can risk leaving a vehicle in one of the surrounding casino's garaged for a week or more.) The only other way to get to Amtrak from Fernley is a $100 taxi ride. There's no Greyhound stop (buses pass right through on their way from Reno to Salt Lake City) nor local public transit (this is one reason our property taxes are so low).

Mind you, we did stack errands on this trip; I took Lisa to have an eye exam yesterday, the first in her life. She has a prescription for reading glasses now and the bad news of a small cataract in her right eye that will probably need to be operated upon in a few years.

When I got back to the apartment after work, I was so fried that I took a nap for 45 minutes or so, after which we had dinner and went for a walk around the area. I put in a lot of road work today: 15K steps including a long walk after lunch. No wonder my feet hurt.

After the frantic activities of the past four weeks and of the two ahead of me, this is the only "quiet" weekend I've had in a long time. I mostly took yesterday off except for co-hosting the Locus Award coverage, which I enjoyed. But I can't stay sedentary for long; it's bad for my health. So today I got out for a little while. I took my van to the self-service car wash and gave it the works, much to the amusement of the attendant who was surprised that someone who drove such an old vehicle would work so hard on cleaning it. Well, this coming Thursday morning, I have to collect Phil & Kaja Foglio and their children from the San José Amtrak station and drive them over to the hotel, and I currently also have to drive them to San Francisco on the day after the convention. My van may be old, but it's going to be clean when I do my GoH liaison duties. The one thing I couldn't do was vacuum it, because all of the vacuum stations were occupied by Serious Car People of the sort the attendant seemed to approve of. I'll find another place where I can to the vacuuming soon.

After going home, I headed out for a walk around Quarry Lakes with Giants Baseball on the radio to make the walk more pleasant. I like those 5 km walks, but haven't taken one in quite a while. I used to do it almost every evening, and I weighed ten pounds less than I do now. I expect these things were related.

Finally, I packed six "bankers boxes" full of books. I won't be moving immediately, but I'm trying to pack things that I'm not using into easily-movable boxes so that I can move them into storage when I get an opportunity. That way, when I move for real, it will only be the large/odd-shaped/currently-used things that have to go.

I worked from home today and went for a walk after lunch. One of the park trails that had been flooded for a while has finally reopened because the water subsided, so I went that way for a change of pace. I disturbed a turkey vulture having its lunch — a big fat fish that it had hauled onto the shore. The vulture took wing and looped around, making low passes over me until I moved off far enough for it to resume eating.

Looping around the lake, I came upon a solitary goose standing in the path. It hissed at me but didn't want to give way. I told the goose I didn't care what it thought — I was coming through. As I passed, I spotted a turtle perched on a half-submerged tree branch in the pond. I didn't know we had turtles in that lake. The turtle lurched into the lake and swam off, and I continued down the trail. Continuing to take paths I normally don't use, I looped past the largest of the Quarry Lakes, the water in which is very high. I was astonished to hear and see fish noisily splashing around in the shallow water near the shore. I guess the feeding must be good in that area. If you wanted to fish there, you wouldn't need a hook and line — just a net and a long pole.

I thought of travelswithkuma and all of the fish as I completed my loop and headed back to work. It's nice being able to get away from the computers for a while every day.

As you may recall, I absent-mindedly went for a soak in the hotel hot tub a few days ago while still wearing my pedometer. Not surprisingly, when I realized this, there was nothing on the display. I decided to give the thing a chance, removed and discarded the battery, dried off the pedometer, and left it to dry for several days. This afternoon after work, I went and picked up a new battery and installed it. Lo and behold, it works!

I should celebrate by going and walking a mile on the treadmill in the hotel gym, but I've been up since 4:45 AM having not got to sleep until about 12:45 AM, so I think maybe tomorrow.