Words are inadequate

My normal travel plan for the Gathering (a small-to-medium boardgame convention in Niagara Falls NY): take a red-eye flight to Toronto, catch the Via/Amtrak train from Toronto to Niagara, taxi from the train station to the hotel, and get Joe C-- to take me on a grocery run.

Joe C-- isn't going to be there this year, alas. More worryingly, there's no Via/Amtrak service. Flights to Buffalo (the nearest airport to Niagara) are stupid expensive and badly timed. So I figured I'd fly into Toronto and figure out the rest of it later. Worst case scenario, I buy more plane tickets from Toronto to Pittsburgh and Sarah picks me up on her way out of town.

In the event, travel to the Gathering required no fewer than seven separate steps in the transportation process:

• Driving from Fort to the Prince George airport (YXS), stopped for a plague test on the way.
  
• Flight YXS-YVR.
  
• Flight YVR-YYZ. This was the first time I've flown first-class, on the grounds that a) I wasn't going to sleep well anyway without my CPAP so I might as well be comfortable in my discomfort, and b) it was relatively cheap since WestJet is desperately trying to get people to give them money. Verdict: very nice seats, they fed me (TED: "What's the deal with airplane food? Why don't they serve it any more?"), and when I managed to get about an hour and a half of sleep they kindly left a snack box on the empty seat next to me. Not really worth it in the normal course of things but I'm glad I did it once.
  
• Commuter train from YYZ to Union Station in Toronto. One of the nicer commuter trains I've ever been on.
  
• GO train from Union Station to Burlington. Also a perfectly serviceable commuter train. Took me forever to find a) breakfast and b) the train, which I attribute partly to the aforementioned 1.5 hrs sleep and partly to Union Station being a poorly-signed hub for four different train lines (Via/Amtrak, GO regional, Toronto subway, and the airport thing). Plus I'd bought my ticket on the Via website so I figured that was where I was supposed to go, but no.
  
• Regional bus from Burlington to Niagara Falls ON. Uneventful except for having to lug my full suitcase to the second floor of the bus. I think I slept some.
  
• And finally, a half-hour walk from the bus stop down to the land crossing at the Rainbow Bridge, a typically unpleasant encounter with US border guards (ignored for ten minutes, then had my passport taken away for five minutes, then had it given back and told "go through that door over there." No "welcome to the US" or anything, and no request to see a negative plague test. Bah), and a fifteen-minute walk to the hotel, all in 30-degree heat.

But I got here, around twoish, after not quite twenty-four hours in transit, and checked in and dozed for a bit.

And then Sarah got here around 5:30, and left today around noon, and the inbetween time was almost entirely lovely.

Tomorrow I'll go down to the Gathering. Tonight is for talking to Erin and introverting and journaling and such.

At some point I should figure out how I'm getting home, too.

*squints at textfile of half-finished entries*

I don't know if this is a stress response or what, but: lately I'm getting plot-anxious when reading books I've not read before. I've only consciously noticed it recently, with Fonda Lee's Green Bone trilogy (which is /great/ for lots of reasons). There came a bit, maybe a third of the way through the first book, where it looked like a major character might die, and I caught myself flipping towards the back of the book looking for dialog tags with their name. (They did /not/ die, which I ascertained quickly. It's an open question what I would have done if they had died, since that's not something that can be trivially established with a random sample.) It's weird.

I'm managing it by alternating new-book with reread, which is also good in that I retain books that I've read twice substantially better than books I've only read once. (This leads to the problem of "I remember disliking that book but I no longer remember why.")

This past weekend Erin and I saw a Canadian-themed boylesque performance, including a suggestive Newfie (the people not the dog) and a very raunchy rendition of what I am told is a French-Canadian children's classic. The show was not precisely sexy, but then the only other burlesque I've seen wasn't exactly sexy either. It /was/, both were, an awful lot of fun, and I got to smile a lot and laugh out loud a few times.

( description of injury )

( par-tay / sarah )

I used to get annoyed at my counselor for being of the sit-with-it-and-see-what-comes-up school of sorting through difficult brain-stuff. And it's entirely possible that a more proactive approach might have gotten me somewhere faster: I am really good at avoiding thinking about / being aware of things that might be difficult to process. However, I will admit that when this method works, it's a) effective and b) non-traumatic, both of which are nice. I may even be getting towards some sort of resolution / accommodation for some of my increasingly misnamed abandonment stuff.

Best brain-breaky limerick I have ever seen. [via prog]

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy, well, you know.

Bear explains Where the Wild Things Are. "We don't want to want to be scared and lonely, and when we are scared and lonely, it makes us feral and mean. Such a simple thing, and so hard, so very hard, to show, to accept, to explain." Yes. This.

---

Much music lately. Caught a small Girlyman show in Bellingham two weekends ago (about which trip there's more to say but I don't know that I have words), at a venue with the least comfortable seats ever. Good times. Not as much from the new album as I'd hoped or feared. (I love the new album and think it's the best thing they've done; songs like "Trees Still Bend" and "The House Song" are likely to make me more than a little sniffly.)

Then Wednesday was Richard Shindell at Jammin' Java, which has now been downgraded to having only the second least comfortable seats ever. Richard didn't play "Happy Now" but he did do the mule song, and several others that I recognised, and several that I didn't. He got progressively less grumpy as the night went on, which helped. Antje Duvekot, his opening act, has a lovely voice and a good way with lyrics, and may be the best opener I've ever seen, next to Girlyman opening for Indigo Girls a few years ago. I picked up one of her CDs after the show and regret not getting the other as well.

And finally Dar on Friday at the Birchmere, where the seats are reasonably comfortable. She played about half stuff off the latest album, which I'm pretty underwhelmed by, and half older stuff. I think this is a better ratio that last time. She also introduced "Spring Street" in a way that had jude and me worried that it was going to be "February," and gave a stunning performance of "Mercy of the Fallen." Nothing at all from her first two albums. Oh well. Perhaps someday I'll get to hear "Mark Rothko Song" or "Alleluia" or "The Great Unknown" live.

Antje and Natalia Zukerman (who opened for Richard the first time I saw him, two years ago) and two other people I've never heard of have put together a winter album, and will be at Jammin' Java in mid-December. Seems worth catching.

So, I guess I can take a break from Ico to write up my Area:2 report.
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