Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

We had a very quiet Christmas Day.

( Bearing Presents )

I did not take a picture of our meal, as it's mostly the same as Thanksgiving: ham, stuffing, mushrooms, corn biscuits, and deviled eggs. (Lisa made the eggs for Thanksgiving dinner but forgot about them so we ate them later.) I very much enjoyed what I did eat, but I find that the Ozempic that I've started taking for my diabetes is acting as an appetite suppressant, so I could only have a little bit of everything. We'll have leftovers for many days, but that is not a problem, as we like all of this.

After dinner, we went out for a walk. We can only walk around the block, because Lisa still isn't sure about her knee that she sprained when I was in Seattle, and I find that I need to stay relatively close to a restroom most of the time these days. But after making multiple laps, we were able to each have a slice of the pumpkin pie Lisa made, including the whipped topping she made from the heavy cream we bought on our last grocery trip.

With all of the food and exercise, we were all pretty tired and went to bed early. Good food and peace and quiet makes for a nice Christmas for me.

On account of having used so much of my PTO for the Worldcon trip and needing to let it accumulate back up for Westercon and Worldcon next year and maybe a few other trips, we are not going to Loscon this year, so we'll miss the big Loscon 50 celebration. Neither Lisa nor I travel to family gatherings the way we did when we were younger, so once again we had Thanksgiving at home. Some of you who have followed me for as long time will recognize our little Thanksgiving Day feast. As usual, Kuma Bear was impatiently waiting for me to finish taking pictures so we could start our meal.

( Hamming It Up )

Not pictured was a pumpkin pie, which we had a few hours later after getting out for a walk in the clear-but-cold sunshine and then clearing the table and playing a game of Empire Builder. I bought my copy from Darwin Bromley, the designer of the game, many years ago. We definitely have gotten our money's worth, as we've now played it 157 times, with me leading our series by a single game.

We have a lot to be thankful for. We have a home that we own, and we are decently secure in it. So we're trying to be happy with things the way they are now, even though it does look like the next few years may be much more uncertain.

Tomorrow is not a direct holiday at my Day Jobbe, and I'm saving my floating holiday to use next weekend as part of my trip to SMOFCon, so I'll be working tomorrow. But more about that tomorrow, but it's likely to be behind a friends lock on DW for reasons that will be clear then.

There were no travel crises today with Team Kuma Bear (and Lisa) other than the neighboring hotel room included a baby that cried a lot, night and day, and another pair of rooms across the hall that seemed to contain several older children who spent the day running back and forth between the rooms yelling a lot. Fortunately, after Lisa came back from running errands and photographing trains during the day, the lack of noise suggested that the people involved had checked out. Working from a flyer in the hotel lobby, Lisa asked me to order her a pizza from a nearby place. It turns out that their version of a Chicago deep dish pizza makes Giordano's look like a thin-and-crispy pie, and it was much bigger than expected. Fortunately, her room has a refrigerator and there is a microwave oven available in the lobby, so she tells me she thinks she now has enough room to last for the rest of her stay.

Because next weekend I expect to be busy, I went to the Wigwam a second time this weekend, going in shortly after they opened at 6 AM and I was only the third customer of the day. It's much more pleasant then than when they are busy. Otherwise, I tried to relax today, because things are apt to get busier soon.

I started tidying up the living room in anticipation of Lisa being home on Thursday morning. I finally took the box of Westercon material back upstairs. It had been sitting in the living room since we came back from Salt Lake City.

Lisa and I were married on a Vintage Trolley on the Portland light rail system on this date in 1996. This year we are obviously far apart from each other, as Lisa is at sea in transit from Denmark to Iceland. We have been able to stay in contact, and I see that Kuma Bear is watching the ocean for fishes.

I've been doing cleaning. Bissell has merged Rug Doctor, so I rented a Bissell Big Green Machine, which is in practice the same as a Rug Doctor. Our last carpet cleaning attempt went awry when all of the Rug Doctor machines in Fernley broke. This time things went smoothly, and indeed, I learned that I needn't have bothered renting the machine for two days, as I could have got everything done in one had I tried. Boy, a lot dirt came out of those carpets! Now I have the machine all cleaned up and will return it later today.

We stayed closer to "home" at the King's Cross Crowne Plaza today, as we visited the London Transport Museum. This is the second time we've been here.

( To Covent Garden )

Lisa and I found the museum stiflingly hot, and it was very crowded, including a bunch of families with children that mostly didn't seem all that interested in doing anything other than running around shrieking. An exception was one young man who I observed while waiting for Lisa at one point. He was asking his father if they could take a different tube or train route home than they had come to the museum so they could see different lines.

We made a small lunch outside in Covent Garden with frankfurters and bratwurst from a stand in the Garden. There are few places to sit, but we found one. We were so thirsty that we went to a nearby Tesco Express and got some sodas, and while Lisa had a second hot dog, I got a Mocha Frappuccino from a nearby Starbucks. After lunch, we re-entered the museum and looked at the rest of the exhibits. However, Lisa and I were not feeling all that well (our legs were giving out), so rather than walk or take the Tube back to the hotel, I sprung for a taxi.

A few hours rest at the hotel left us both feeling better, so we ventured out again to go out to dinner for the first time in London. We had an initial idea of where to go, but we ended up somewhere else.

( To Trafalgar Square )

On the way back to the hotel, we searched for a larger Boots than the ones in the train stations, as there were a few things that both Lisa and I were looking for, one of which was potentially covered by my healthcare savings account. I tried using my HSA account card, and to my surprise, it worked.

Getting back "home" was made more difficult by our increasing difficulty we're having climbing stairs due to our sore legs. (My pedometer registered 21,500 steps today.) I ended up routing us through the Underground to stations that were not step-free, and while we didn't have to do something like climb the spiral staircase at Camden Town, it still was challenging. And we still had the roughly 1 km from King's Cross, which was mostly level, but turned out to be at least twice as long as it should have been when I took us down the wrong road out of the KX roundabout.

Thanks to my navigation error, we missed picking up some groceries where mean to do so. Lisa instead returned to the tiny little convenience store across from our hotel where she bought things on our first night here. While the store has an extremely limited selection, Lisa liked the store because the proprietor was so nice and friendly, and she told him so as we made our purchases. Lisa told me that she was doing her part to maybe make the world a slightly happier place.

Eventually we made it back to the hotel. They have very helpfully given us a 2 PM checkout, so we can get breakfast relatively late, and spend time repacking for Tuesday night's trip on the Caledonian Sleeper, store our bags with the hotel, and figure something to do before heading to Euston on Tuesday evening for our sleeper train to Glasgow. I don't expect to post an entry on Tuesday night, but I'll probably put up a back-dated entry once we get to Glasgow and get moved in to the Crowne Plaza.

Today was our final full day in Reykjavik, as we fly out on Friday afternoon. Because of our Saga class upgrade, I rebooked our SkyBus trip to Keflavik airport for an hour earlier than originally planned, on account of we'll have access to the Saga lounge, so we might as well head out earlier. Today was also Inauguration Day for Iceland's new president, and we had a box seat of the event from our balcony. But first, we needed to do some laundry and have breakfast, and thanks to a restaurant near our hotel, we could do both things at the same time.

( The Laundromat Cafe and More Exploration of Reykjavik )

We started the first part of our packing for the next leg of our trip, that being the flight from KEF to LHR tomorrow. Because we have an extra luggage allowance and I packed an extra soft-sided bag (a Montreal World Fantasy Convention bag), I can move some stuff into that bag so that we aren't living so close to the edge of the 23 kg weight limit.

Unlike the other days we've been here, I've set an alarm for Friday morning, because we need to get going, have breakfast, finish packing, and be out of the hotel by 10:15 in order to catch the bus to the airport.

I logged more than 20,000 steps on my pedometer today, and wow are my feet sore. Being able to sit most of tomorrow should be welcome.

We definitely didn't sleep on the flight. Later in the flight, we bought a couple of ham sandwiches off the IcelandAir in-flight menu. I started to watch Dune, Part 2, but only got about halfway through it before realizing I wouldn't have time to finish it. If the same in-flight entertainment is available on the shorter flight to London in a few days, maybe I'll get a chance to see that last half of it.

( This Time, There are Pictures )

After moving into the hotel room and unpacking, we walked down the street to a 24-hour small grocery store where we got a few drinks and other supplies. Lisa was able to get the high-fiber Wasa crackers that she'd been trying to get for the past few days but that are more difficult to find at smaller stores in the USA.

It was early afternoon local time, but we'd been up for about 24 subjective hours. Lisa took a bath, I made sure all three of my computers worked, and we both were in bed by 2 PM, sleeping until after 11 PM. It was still light outside. I understand that there is a prospect for auroras, but it's too light in the city, and besides, it's cloudy. Both Lisa and I are happy with the cool weather and have kept the windows open. It's regrettable that the room doesn't have "blackout" curtains, but they do supply effective eyemasks, and I used mine to good effect this afternoon.

Yeah, we are jet lagged, but we expect to be back on track by the time we leave on Friday.

Our unexpected free day in Denver was useful. We didn't have to set any alarms, and we still managed to wake up after eight hours of sleep with plenty of time to get the included breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Denver. The staff at the hotel have been very helpful, even though they are having to work with a hotel whose HVAC system is set at a single temperature and cannot be changed. We heard that they don't expect this to be fixed until next spring. They gave us a room fan to help. Apparently the whole hotel is set to 22°C/71°F, although the actual temperature varies from place to place. But it's acceptable.

I dealt with the back-to-back reservations after breakfast. The woman who checked us in last night was still at the front desk, nearing the end of her "day," which helped because she remembered our issue. Reprogramming our keys was routine. One advantage of the back-to-back reservation is that each night counts as a new arrival, so I get an extra 500 IHG points in the bargain. I talked with her about our travel plans and she expressed her envy and asked if we could take her with us.

After breakfast and after I got a shower, we walked down to Target, were we were looking for a computer mouse. I'd set one of mine aside when packing on Thursday and apparently left it on the desk. We would have preferred a USB mouse, but the only ones they had were wireless ones, so we did get one.

Another thing I left behind were my handkerchiefs. The only ones we found at Target were made in China, so I'll improvise. It shouldn't be a huge problem.

A few other things we think we can put off until we get to Iceland or to the UK.

I worked on getting all three of my computers working. Each of them (one personal, two work-related) had different challenges, all of which I overcame. In contrast, Lisa plugged her very old machine into the Ethernet port and everything worked without a problem. Even though I won't need the work machines until after Worldcon, when I will work remotely for a while, I've discovered that it's important to get those machines online regularly; otherwise, they "forget" me and it's a whole lot of work to get them working again. Unfortunately, this also means that I'm apt to get a message asking for me to do something while I'm on vacation. OTOH, I'm also given a significant amount of flexibility from my employer, so I feel some obligation to flexibility of my own. It only took about an hour to sort out the computers and answer the work-related email. I expect to do this in Iceland, London, and Glasgow as well.

In the afternoon, we went out for a walk around downtown Denver. We had nothing specific in mind; we were just getting a walk and looking around. Downtown is all torn up for rebuilding of the 16th Street Transit Mall, so there was plenty of construction to dodge.

( Looking for Bear )

We had been scouting out places to get lunch or dinner during our walk. Initially we planned on getting Hawaiian BBQ from a stand in a park along 16th Street, but by the time we got there, they were sold out for the day. We'd stopped at Walgreens and bought more drinks on the way, so we took those back to the room. With no refrigerator, we can only get stuff that we'll drink right away or that does not require refrigeration.

It was warm and we thought humid (compared to Fernley), and we decided to get pizza from Giordano's downtown Denver and make an early dinner of it. The pizza and pasta was ready on time, and we took it back to the hotel and had a decently comfortable early dinner.

About the time we were done with dinner, an email popped up from IcelandAir. Unfortunately, it was not the news we wanted to hear: our bid to upgrade to Saga class on our flight from Denver to Iceland tomorrow was not accepted. Now we can only hope that the third seat doesn't fill in the row where our original reservation is. This is a pity, as their Saga class is pretty nice, and we've managed to "Class Up" on most of our previous trips.

There's still Worldcon/WSFS stuff chasing after me. This afternoon, I deleted some hoax bids from the Worldcon.org website whose sites have evaporated, and there is some late news from Glasgow to add to the News section there. Everything else will have to wait until we get to Iceland.

We plan to get some good rest tonight, and to check out around Noon tomorrow (hotel permitting), get a taxi to Union Station, and catch a train out to Denver International Airport to get there well before our 4:40 PM flight. Because we didn't get the class-up bid, we need to carefully pack everything so we only have one checked bag each; however, this looks doable based on our initial packing. Still, it would have been nice to get those better seats.

Because we will be traveling on Wednesday-Thursday, Lisa cooked a Thanksgiving meal that we had for lunch on Monday.

( Why a Duck )

I was so content after our meal that I spaced that I had a chiropractor appointment at 3 PM. Fortunately, they were able to squeeze me back in at 4:15.

Here is the posting that I would have made had Flickr not gone down earlier.

( Welcome to Churchill )

Theoretically, each of the four rooms in the Beluga Beach House can be rented individually. We had only six people, but we went ahead and rented the entire house, which saved a lot of bother since we all know each other. It still was less expensive than hotel rooms. With the self-catering facilities, we all went to the grocery store and got various food to suit ourselves. Groceries are expensive here, and due to that derailment, the stores were under-stocked. (This would be corrected by flying in some things.)

( Back to the Station )

While walking between the station and the Beach House, we walked past Hudson Bay Helicopters, which does helicopter tours. I'd tried to contact them without success before our trip, but apparently they hadn't been able to hear my telephone number. We inquired about availability and costs. A 30 minute tour for two people would cost CA$880. That's a lot, but not impossibly expensive. We made a reservation for 5 PM.

That price included the cash discount and would be more expensive by credit card. Putting our heads (and bank accounts) together, we determined that we could get enough cash to pay for it by taking close to our maximum daily limits from both accounts. We walked to the RBC banking center and pulled enough cash to pay for the trip.

We arrived early in order to watch the safety briefing and then it was time to go.

( Lisa's Bucket List Item )

Lisa was absolutely delighted to get this trip. She did take fixed-wing pilot training when she was younger, but had never been in a helicopter and has always wanted to ride in one.

Click through the various photos to see the others, including one that includes the cost of the rides for various group sizes and ride durations.

Later, we did a little train chasing.

( Via Rail Leaving Town )

Returning to the Beach House, we made dinner from some of the material we bought earlier today and turned in to sleep in our (regrettably stuffy) room.

Thursday was a banner day and Lisa was very happy to have achieved a major bucket list item. The rest of the weekend is expected to be very busy as we try to squeeze a lot of activity into very little time. This house is nice enough, and to some extent I wish we could stay a week instead of only two nights; it would make the stay a little bit pressured.