Capricornucopia Day

The last few days have been really hectic. I already wrote about Friday, so I should write about yesterday next, I suppose.

It started with having to get up to go to the LJ Meet up. It was a bit of a mad scramble since I was so tired from the day before that I slept in, and then there was a bunch of preparation to do for Capricornucopia, as I wouldn't be home between the two events. The upshot of it was that we were about 20 minutes late for the meetup. taxlady and I sat around for an hour with our signs up, drinking coffee, but no one showed. I don't know if anyone had shown up on time, couldn't find us and left, or (as I think is more likely) simply no one showed, despite us having some RSVPs. Oh well. Better luck next time.

After taxlady had to head home to get back to work on a whole bunch of stuff she is trying to finish off ASAP, I found myself with quite a few hours to kill downtown. I had sort-of hoped the LJ meetup would go to 5:00 or 5:30, but here it was only 3:30 and I was on my own.  I did the Sodoku in the paper, and then sat down with some bus routes, a map and a time table and figured out where and when I needed to catch a bus or metro to get to Cafe Paradox for the 2nd Annual Capricornucopia (which is a combined birthday party for miseri, foi_nefaste, mousme and sorceror).

I discovered that there was a bus I should take from Guy and St. Mathieu, so I wandered in that direction. Having lots of time, and it being unseasonably warm, I window shopped and even stopped at the Faubourg for some Chicken Tikka and salad. (They were a bit bemused at me insisting on no bread, rice, potatoes, potato salad, sweet coleslaw, etc, but I persevered). I read the rest of the Saturday paper after my meal, and then headed back out.

When I finally arrived at the bus stop I was still an hour early, so I walked to the nearby Tim Hortons for a Coffee. They informed me that they don't have Decaf, despite the fact I had some there two weeks previously. *shrug*.

So, I crossed the street to Java U where I had a large bowl of Decaf coffee and did some crosswords while an art student surreptitiously sketched me. (At least I assume thats what she was doing. She kept looking at me and scribbling in a sketch book, and pretended she wasn't doing anything when I happened to glance in her direction.) I was pleased at the idea someone wanted to sketch me. I wonder how it came out?

Then I caught my bus and headed off to Pointe St. Charles for Capriconucopia. I was greeted at the door by miseri who expressed his regrets that taxlady was unable to be there. There was a much smaller crowd this time than at the last Capricornucopia. The previous event had been a Murder Mystery Evening where many of the attendees had been given character synopses and had to play a part. One of them was a murderer, and it was up to everyone else to figure out who had done it. It had been a lot of fun, despite taxlady and I showing up 2 hours late due to a miscommunication about the time it was to start.

This year, they had planned to write and present a murder mystery play in four acts, with each of the four birthday celebrants to write an act. There was no collaboration other than the rule that each person who wrote an act must have a definite idea on who did it, and that they had to be consistent with the information that was provided by the writer(s) of the previous act(s). The only hitch in this plan was that sorceror ended up unable to write his part due to being called out of town (although he was able to make the event itself) so mousme wrote the last two acts.

As I sat waiting for the expected chaos and last-minute problems to get sorted out (these kinds of things never seem to start on time, and I hadn't expected any different), miseri came over and asked if anything was the matter. I was a bit taken aback, because azrhey had asked me the exact same thing the day before. If I've been putting out vibes of gloom or something, I haven't been aware of it, but I have noticed feeling a bit distant lately, as if not much going on around me is able to affect me, for good or ill. I shall have to think more about that. It may be related to the strange mood swing I noticed on Thursday after I ate a huge salad. I hadn't noticed I'd felt bad before, but I felt much better afterwards.

Anyway, the play eventually commenced and I thought it was marvelous. As I later remarked to [Bad username or unknown identity: t!], I am always surprised and delighted with the immense amount of talent shown by the various folks who attend these events. It also fills me with pride that the vast majority of them are hardcore geeks as well. It makes me proud of my subspecies.

After the play, I chatted with a number of folks and finally ended up putting faces to such lj names as toughlovemuse, karine and montrealais. Folks who I've heard of for some time, but never before met.

Finally, as things were breaking up, a lovely lady who says she will soon be on LJ with the name serpilla gave a lift to several of us, including sorceror, miseri  and I. It was a very fun evening and my only disappointment of the day was realizing that I had brought a digital camera and never though to use it during the play. It would have been nice to capture it for posterity.

My Today.

Thursday evening I suddenly felt inspired to get stuff done, but it was already past 10:00 pm and I had to get up early the next day. So, I put it off. The next day I was super busy and got home after midnight and collapsed. The next day was the exact same story. Today then, I had hopes of finallly doing things.

I got up around noon, because I sorely needed to catch up on sleep, and was soon busily dealing with a bunch of old emails that I had been putting off dealing with. Some of them were possible job leads, which I looked into. I then spent several hours applying for jobs, entering my resume details on stupid automated systems that kept mangling them, and having to write cover letter after cover letter.

I was something like 3/4 of the way through that process when taxlady asked me to help her as she is snowed under with work. Something like four hours of filing and data entry tasks later, I am just getting the hang of how to enter data for her, but I am no where near finished, although I need to stop for the day, as I'm gong to need to sleep soon.

It looks like tomorrow I'll be helping her again, so I'm not sure when I'll ever get around to the writing and stuff that I was suddenly inspired to do. Hopefully, I shall still feel so inspired by then, but I somehow doubt it.

I'm not complaining mind you, it just seems a bit ... unfair of the universe to be like this right now.

Upon Awakening.

I have to wonder where my brain goes and what it gets up to when I sleep. Today when I woke up I had the plans for a stock-manipulation scheme of dubious legality, but of some sociological interest, fully formed in my head.

Now I'm off to check if certain domain names are already taken, just in case.

Viral Obesity.

Here is a pointer to an article about an interesting study that seems to implicate certain human adenoviri in obesity. Chickens exposed to one of the viruses soon showed more fat than unexposed chickens, given the exact same food and living conditions.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are infectious agents out there that affect humans in such ways, but I'm sure its not the last word on what causes obesity.