My dad's wife Linda sent me pictures she took of the wedding, and with her permission I've uploaded some of them to Flickr.

As I type this we're about to have our last night in Berkeley before we return to Houston. We've had five full days here, plus partial days on either end (counting the morning and mid-day tomorrow). I managed to get in re-visits to most of the things I really liked in the Bay Area, and of course there was the celebration.

Tuesday: We got in to Oakland. Our checked bags were to get in a couple of hours later. (This is why we try not to check bags, but we had extra stuff this time.) Katie's family had got in earlier, so we went to Berkeley to see them. I finally got to meet Katie's brother -- this year was the first time in our 13-year relationship that I'd even talked to him, let alone met him; but now I got to verify he was a real person.

Wednesday: Got the programs made, and picked up the xkcd cartoon I had blown up and mounted as a surprise for Katie. Managed to get it out of the copy shop door and into the car without Katie noticing; then we met with randy_smith2 to go over the ceremony. Visited the good people and cats of Comic Relief. Had dinner with my birth mother Peg and her husband at Breads of India (Peg [who is a spice wimp] said "This is hotter than I like but it's so delicious I don't care") and then went with her to games night at Endgame. Katie named her as the Matron of Honor and we gave her a copy of Dominion as a gift; we took the opportunity to take the shrinkwrap off.

Thursday: Katie visited one of her advisors during the day; I delivered some welcome bags to hotels. My mother had a bunch of the people attending over for a dinner at her house. Wine was drunk, superb food was eaten, pleasant conversation was had.

Friday: The rehearsal, expertly managed by Randy; then the rehearsal dinner, featuring more wine, great food, and pleasant conversation.

Saturday: The big day. We were glad we'd had the rehearsals; but most everything went quite smoothly -- even my 6- and 3-year-old niece and nephew (flower girl and ringbearer), after a bit of wrangling. The redwoods stood magnificently, the overcast clouds cleared up just in time, the trio we'd engaged from the UC Berkeley music department played very nicely. Things were read: a passage from Ecclesiastes; some quotes from Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame; Shakespeare's Sonnet 116; a poem that Neil Gaiman wrote for some friends' wedding. We added a little something to the traditional vows: in among "for richer and for poorer" and "in sickness and in health", "in brightest day, in blackest night". Randy got us back for this, by adding a little something to his parting benediction in between the rehearsal and the ceremony -- I don't remember the exact words, it was something like "...go forth in love, and may those who worship evil's might beware your power." Everyone at the reception said what a good job he did on the ceremony.

Then of course the reception, with more excellent food and wine. (My dad, who lives in the Napa Valley, provided the wine. Thank you, Dad.) We were persuaded that the reception needed some music, and I was able to engage a string quartet at somewhat short notice. (Thank you again, UCB Music Department contact list.) It really did enhance the atmosphere. Toasts were had; nobody said anything terribly embarassing. We had two people via webcam and/or cell phone: Katie's main advisor (who had left Cal for a position in Austin), and Mike Chary, whom we really wanted but in the end couldn't make it. I'd never met Katie's advisor before either, and it was interesting to at last find out what he looked like. He said some things I recognized as true. Mike of course told the story of how, 13 years ago, he hit me with a 2000-mile-long clue bat. ("...and for my next trick, I will get two people I've never met, 2000 miles away, to fall in love, and a mere decade later marry!")

We had provided some sets of "Apples to Apples" and some decks of cards, but they turned out to be quite unnecessary.

Sunday: Was cold and gray all day. We really lucked out that the weather on Saturday was typical late-summer weather, and not this winter overcast. We had a brunch with many of our guests, then relaxed in our room. Later on we went to see _Capitalism: A Love Story_, which Katie's brother had helped work on. In between we had Zachary's pizza, which meant a bit of rushing about but (for me at least) was worth it.

Let me not finish this without acknowledging the incredible efforts of my mother and sister, who put together welcome bags for the out-of-town guests, and made silk-and-crystal bouquets and boutonnieres, and knit a shawl that was the perfect accessory for Katie's dress, and in general just outdid themselves in every way to make our event a success.

So: Five days of big fun, and now I finally get to wear the pretty shiny ring I had made a few months back.

I'm trying to think of good songs to play at my wedding, coming up in six weeks. So far I've got:

Every Breath You Take (The Police)
Tainted Love (Gloria Jones, Soft Cell)
I Can See For Miles (The Who)
The World's Address (They Might Be Giants)
They'll Need a Crane (actually TMBG has quite a few songs)
He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss) (The Crystals)
Run For Your Life (The Beatles)

Any other suggestions?

From womzilla:

Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.

Okay, let's see...

( I fear my list isn't nearly as highbrow as Kevin's )

I've finally gotten all the books packed up, into no fewer than 28 banker's boxes. Now I just have to get the games....(That won't take as long or as many boxes, I hope!) It's appalling how few books it takes to fill a box, and how heavy the box is after.

In preparation for the move to Houston, I've now (today was my last day) quit the job I've held for 19 years. I haven't quite seen the store for the last time -- still need to get my paycheck on Monday -- but no more hours on the time card. Feels kind of weird.

I hear there's going to be a print collection of Kazu Kibuishi's wonderful webcomic Copper.

The protagonist is Echo, and there are Alpha, Sierra, and Victor. I'm guessing, however, that Golf and Hotel aren't going to be important to the story.

brooksmoses reflects on page-of-book memes and asks, "What's the closest book to you right now? Why is it there?"

Well, the closest book to me right now is Jo's Lifelode which I ordered from NESFA Press and just came in the mail today. I'm terribly curious how Jo revised the ending from the draft I read, and I really can't allow myself to read it until I'm done with The Wizard Knight, because when you're reading Wolfe you have to pay attention and remember things -- and I'm still about 50 pages from the end of The Knight, let alone The Wizard.

Now, Lifelode might be sitting on my bed near me just because it still has novelty value, although I'd be more likely just to put it on my "to-read" shelf when I got it home. The real reason I want it close by is so that from time to time I can open it up to the dedication and acknowledgements page and read where it says

This one is for David Goldfarb.

(mjlayman posted about getting her copy last week, but she didn't mention that! Perhaps she didn't want to spoil the surprise.)

I am so chuffed that it makes me want to use phrases like "OMG".

So as you all know, Katie got her degree last year and has been looking for a job.

On Friday she called me up at work and asked me, "Do you want to move to Houston?"
I replied, "Not especially, but if that's where you're going I'm coming with you."

Good thing I haven't yet bought plane tickets to Worldcon.

Unfortunately Hlavaty can no longer claim perfection.

Ganked from kouredios
From Joe at RevSF: Since the memes will not stop until morale improves, we at RevolutionSF.com take a stand.

Here's a nerdy one created by Joe Crowe, for you to irritate all who try to make you tell 38 personal tidbits about yourself to everyone and their mama. And appear cool while doing it.

1. Answer these questions using the first letter of your first name. [or the first letter of your LJ handle] (n.b.: In my case of course these are the same.)
B. You can't use the same word twice. (Part of a title is OK, but you can't use "Batman" as every answer. That would be crazy.)
3. Multiple word answers are OK.
4. If the so-called "friend" who sent it to you has the same first letter as you, you have to use different answers than them. Brutal, we know.
5. Snarky comments are encouraged.

Here's mine:

1. Star Wars character: Darth Vader

2. Star Trek character: Dax

3. Cartoon character: Donald Duck

4. Marvel superhero: D-Man

5. DC supervillain: Darkseid (or Deathbolt or Deadshot)

6. Superpower: danger sense

7. SF or fantasy book title: Dzur

8. Sci-fi-ish gadget, device, or weapon: disintegrator ray

9. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror movie: Donnie Darko

10. Sci-fi-ish TV show: Doctor Who

11. Monster, creature or alien race: Daleks

12. Actor from sci-fi stuff: Peter Davison

13. DC superhero: Duo Damsel

14. Marvel villain: Doctor Doom

15. Whedonverse character: Dawn

For the sake of anybody who cares, here's a list of what I read last year.

(I also had subscriptions to The Bridge World, Science News, Chess Life, The ACBL Bulletin, and Asimov's Science Fiction, all of which I read pretty much as they arrived...plus various blogs and newsgroups.)

73 books total (up from 68 in 2007...of course, some were pretty short), of which 49 were SF or fantasy, 15 were non-fiction, and 9 were literary or historical fiction.

( For the sake of anyone who doesn't care, here's a cut. )

On rec.arts.sf.composition, the topic of humor came up. I mentioned a theory I have, that there are at least four different pathways in the brain that trigger the same reward mechanism (i.e., laughter). zeborahnz asked me to expand on this, and I wound up writing a fairly long essay (someone on rasfc said "This isn't your Ph.D thesis?")...which I want to post here so that I have access to it at will. (And who knows, perhaps even someone will read it and find it edifying.)

As I said, it's long...so a cut.

( Read more... )

Katie tells me that she has now received signature pages from all four of her committee members, and plans to submit her thesis tomorrow morning. At which point she will be done.

She tells me that the office where you file a thesis gives out lollipops...with "Ph.D" on the wrapper.

Anyone out there looking to hire a Ph.D in Physics with experience programming in C++?

Got this one from james_nicoll.

I thought it was surprisingly accurate -- accurate enough to post here, which I don't for most of this sort of quiz.

( What My Taste in Art Says About Me )

Here's the list of categories only, for those who don't care about the questions. Thanks again to Tom Galloway. I'll put a few as teasers, then cut:

Tiptree Through the Tulips

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Horror Show

Darth Be Not Proud

Anne Rice-A-Roni: The New Orleans Treat

Spider's From a Writer's Family; He has the Robinson Jeanne
( Read more... )

And here is the post for game 2.
( Read more... )

For those of you who like to play along at home, here are the questions, with answers in ROT13. I'll put the categories in here, but for those who just want to read the category titles, I'll do a separate post for those. Thanks to Tom Galloway for writing these.

This is game 1; I'll do a separate post for game 2.
( Read more... )

The other big trivia contest at Denvention was "Trivia for Chocolate". This was run by Mark Olson, Steven Silver, and a third person whose name has fallen out of my head...it was something like Jim Hall. Anyway, this one was rapid-fire one-liner trivia questions, with correct answers rewarded with Andes Mints. (There were also a bunch of Tim Tams donated by the Australia in 2010 bid.) Whoever had the most uneaten pieces of chocolate at the end was considered the winner.

The moral of this one was: Timeliness FTW! I showed up at the time scheduled, and the other strong competitors didn't. I had about 10 minutes with no serious competition to build up a lead before Tom Galloway and Leo Doroschenko arrived. (Tom Whitmore had a conflict, alas.) I didn't count how many I had at that point, but it was something over a dozen. A guy by the name of Marty Massoglia came in at about the halfway mark, and he hurt me quite a bit by being faster than me in my areas of strength. Tom was having a bit of an off-day, but Leo nearly won: at the end my margin was only 8 pieces, quite a bit less than my lead when he arrived. If he'd gotten there earlier, I think he'd have taken it. What's more, they used some questions that Leo had written, which he obviously couldn't answer, so that let me build up my margin a little too. (Although I don't think I got as many as 8 pieces from his questions.)

So Leo gets the moral victory, but I was the one who got my name at the top of the list in the newszine.