hazelchaz: (Default)

Lynn Baden. Photos online:
Chaz's birthday dinner with Lynn and Maria (26/28-Aug-2009)
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 366: Coral Cafe (27-Aug-2009) et seq.
The photo of [livejournal.com profile] library_lynn is from dinner.

My birthday was fairly quiet, this year. Lynn and [livejournal.com profile] missmea took me out to dinner at Hans's Homemade Ice Cream, which has various deli sandwiches. (Some quite good.) They're in an old Swensen's Ice Cream location, not far from Bristol and MacArthur, and it looks just like the old place. (Pretty sure I went here with Cytnhia, two and a half decades ago, although most of my Swensen's Ice Cream custom was at the Costa Mesa location which now has a Rite-Aid drugstore.)

They gave me lots of hugs, and a wristwatch, and Torchwood first series, and a book called Candy Freak which I've been enjoying immensely.

Maria stayed over at the house for a night or two, and they and [livejournal.com profile] ladymaxstarr worked on getting all of my stuff out of the spare room (which was once my office/store room).

Bethany Hulten and Jeffrey Hulten. On Thursday night, I went to Coral Cafe, and ran into some out of towners including Jeffrey and Bethany Hulten. I've mostly known Jeffrey as one of the Angelwear Minions, so I've usually just seen him in his capacity as one of Angela's employees. He's married, now, and of course brought his bride to see [livejournal.com profile] lasfs. At least, I assume that's why they were in town, I never heard differently... (left)

Lynn and Maria Rodriguez are sorting through some of the stuff from the spare room. When I got home that night, I saw the results of the massive excavation effort. Which means that I now have a metric blortload of kipple and keepers to classify. (right)

So don't expect me to get out much, most nights. And weekends that I haven't already committed to something should find me here in the dining room, dealing with all this.

hazelchaz: (Default)

Joyce and Cathy. Photos now online:
Shirt and Tie (Feb-2009)
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 325: Loscon 37 Vote (12-Feb-2009) et seq.
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 332: Coral Cafe (12-Feb-2009) et seq.
The picture of Joyce Hooper and [livejournal.com profile] nitroace hiding behind their ballots is from the night at LASFS last week when we voted on who would chair Loscon in 2011. (Answer: Scott Beckstead and Sherri Benoun; their theme is "Urban Fantasy.")

Interlude: Catching up with the rest of December - Boxing Day to New Year's Eve

My Christmas week was full of ramping-up to [livejournal.com profile] animelosangeles. And my camera curled up and died. Fortunately, I got a Canon Powershot S5 IS for Christmas. I also purchased a Nikon Coolpix P50 as an emergency backup camera when I bought the backdrop stand for our Fan Guest of Honor's dealer table. The Nikon's an easy point-and-shoot, and it's [livejournal.com profile] library_lynn's preferred camera at this point.

With Saltine being full to the brim with program books, I had a logistical problem on my hands. And did I mention the beanbags and beer? )

Lesson learned: transportation for materials from Chairman's House should be planned ahead of time. And probably should not hinge on everything being transported in Saltine.

Bertha, the HP DesignJet 500 that printed most of our posters, banners and signs. [livejournal.com profile] tenkuudragon was in charge of the Decorating Committee for Animé Los Angeles. I mentioned that we could use Bertha (right) to print poster blow-ups of some of our Guests of Honor's work -- that is, some of the cartoons from VG Cats! and photos from A Fan's View. The trick, of course, is picking which ones to print, and getting the high-resolution images.

We had all of the pictures picked out, but we didn't get the original images until very late. So Sunday, Monday and Tuesday that week was full of me printing late at night, after Evan had come over and done the printing he needed. At the end of a few long nights of printing, I had a lot of rolled-up posters to transport and hand off to the decorating crew.

Lesson learned: buy extra rolls of paper, and print posters earlier in the month. In fact, I've got four rolls of paper on hand right now, and I'm hoping that the decorating crew can get an early start on picking photos to print for next year. It'll be the convention's 5th anniversary (the sixth convention, which is five years after the first one) and we can print photos from all five years of Animé Los Angeles. We just need to pick which ones to print, and get the photographers' permission.

Carolyn Ayton, someone, Patty Engel, Matt Tsang, somebody in foreground, and Tiffany. Party. What can I say about the party? I don't host that many New Year's Eve parties. But of the ones I've been to so far, it was certainly one of my favorites. We had some of the decorations that we bought for [livejournal.com profile] loscon, and a sign that said "Happy New Year 2009." We had peanut butter and jelly, and hot cider, and lots of other snacks, but more importantly we had a whole bunch of people having a wonderful time. (right)

Maria Rodriguez. I was pleased that [livejournal.com profile] missmea had decided to join us. Sure, she's my s'daughter, but she has no shortage of invitations for New Year's Eve. One of the things that swayed her was the prospect of having a bed waiting for her on the property... Anyhow, she looked fabulous, and she explained that she doesn't have many opportunities to wear her fur. (left)

Evan James. We had strawberries, and beer and sparkling wine and soft drinks, and Evan James (right) brought some pear cider, but Christian said we didn't have enough variety of alcoholic beverages. He volunteered to toddle off to the local liquor store. What he brought back was Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, which was very nice in the hot cider; and some orange vodka. Christian played bartender for the evening, guarding the beer and whatnot from underage drinkers.

Crowd at New Year's Eve party. I learned that one of the new traditions going around is texting your friends at midnight to wish them a happy new year. It turns out that many people hadn't heard of the older tradition of kissing someone at midnight, but there was a lot of enthusiasm for that idea. The trick, of course, is lining up a willing participant. The game of "Spin the Bottle" hinges on that sort of consensual participation, but it's a lot more clearcut -- if you're sitting in the circle, you've signed on for the game. The dance of picking your partner, and negotiating via body language, at a New Year's Eve party is a lot more ambiguous. I'm thinking maybe New Year's Eve parties need to come with warning labels... But Lynn had gone to bed by this point, and there wasn't anyone else I felt an urgent need to kiss that night.

Romy Meyerson, Wendy Newton and Maria Rodriguez. One of the more amusing incidents of the night was when two young ladies were snogging on the couch. I don't have any pictures -- as I've said before, "it's not that kind of website" -- but the funniest part of the situation was seeing three or four grown men standing around watching them, committing it to memory.

New Year's Eve parties are a little like Mardi Gras, or Las Vegas year-round; things are a little looser, and nobody's taking careful notes on who slips away with whom during the course of the evening. (And that's all I'm going to say on that subject.) I enjoyed having the party, and I'm thinking I'll do this again next year. Although it won't be New Year's Eve, the night before the convention set-up Day Zero. (It'll be Twelfth Night, though.)

The party broke up about 1:00 am or so. After all, we all had things we needed to do the next day, as the convention's "Day Zero" would commence with Registration opening up in that room about noon, Con Suite load-in would continue when we got that room, and we'd get the first of the ballrooms at about 6 pm. We cleaned up the room as best as we could, leaving some of it for the next day, and went to bed.

Lesson learned: have a party next year, but bring more crockpots and start them earlier.

Next: Chaz's observations on Animé Los Angeles 5.

hazelchaz: (ears)

Did anyone leave some kind of crocheted baby dress (or something) in our car during [livejournal.com profile] animelosangeles? [livejournal.com profile] library_lynn and I can't figure out where it came from...

Tadao Tomomatsu. Photos now online:
Mom leaves the convalescent hospital (03-Feb-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Our wedding quilt Dorothy made (14-Sep-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Benches part 4: The Box Instructions (04-Oct-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Cooler parts needed (12-Oct-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Maria tries to sit in a chair (31-Oct-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Jim stops by (04-Nov-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 303: Coral Cafe (27-Dec-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Ribbon rosettes received (27-Dec-2007) New 10-Feb-2009
Candy and Soda portraits part 1 (28-Feb-2008) et seq. New 10-Feb-2009
Anime Los Angeles 5 meetings part 11: Newsletter Computer (08-Jun-2008) New 10-Feb-2009
Anime Los Angeles 5 meetings part 40: Picking up Lindsay (09-Jan-2009) New 10-Feb-2009
Christmas 2008 part 3: Dinner and Gifts at Dorothy and Bob's (24-Jan-2009) et seq. New 10-Feb-2009
Christmas 2008 part 10: Sunday Brunch (25-Jan-2009) et seq. New 10-Feb-2009
Dinner with Dan (29-Jan-2009) New 10-Feb-2009
Gallifrey 2009: Pre-convention Meeting (08-Feb-2009) New 10-Feb-2009

As you can see, I've been posting a lot of flotsam and miscellaneous short batches... The picture of [livejournal.com profile] friendlypinet is from the committee meeting last weekend for the [livejournal.com profile] doctorwho convention Gallifrey One next weekend.

Trying to catch up with November. We went to [livejournal.com profile] loscon. Here's part 1 of my Loscon 35 report. (Other sections: part 2, part 3.)

Scalzi - Bacon - Cats - YUM! You don't have to have been paying attention that much to know that "we" means myself, [livejournal.com profile] library_lynn and [livejournal.com profile] missmea. Not counting [livejournal.com profile] animelosangeles, Loscon is our "home convention." If we only go to one convention a year, it'll be Loscon. Some people can't go to Loscon because it's on a big family-holiday weekend and they've got family they need to be with; some people like going to Loscon because it lets them get away from the family they don't want to spend the whole weekend with; some people (like myself) bring their families; and for some people, the "family" they care about are their large circle of friends who also make Loscon their home convention.

While I've been to five Animé Los Angeles conventions, and nine or ten Worldcons, and an assortment of others, Loscon is the one I've been attending consistently the longest.

From the profound to the absurd I used to be a productive staff person at Loscon, a department head running something or other. Lately, I've just been coasting -- I'm an ordinary member, and some years I'll pull enough of my weight to get a pass-on to the next year. Of course, this year I had a ready excuse: I was representing Animé Los Angeles.

The co-chairs (Cathy Beckstead and Joyce Hooper) and I had worked out an arrangement... )

To be continued. Next: More about badge ribbons.

hazelchaz: (Default)

Austin Anime Los Angeles 4 meeting at hotel (06-Jul-2007); LASFS Aftermeetings part 292: Coral Cafe (12-Jul-2007); Sac-Anime (13-15-Jul-2007); and Orange County Fair/Weird Al Yankovic concert (21-Jul-2007) photos now online. Pick on the picture of [livejournal.com profile] adrenailine at the [livejournal.com profile] animelosangeles table to see the pictures from Sac-Anime.

Well, I finished the book on Sunday. Took me two days. So I don't have to worry about spoilers in your LJs.

And we went and saw the 501st Legion in concert Saturday night at the Orange County Fair -- they were dancing on stage, along with Weird Al Yankovic's band... )

I posted recently about my experience at Anime Expo with the instant-photo printing project. I've proposed the same kind of thing for the Costume College Gala; we'll see if it gets approved by them who approve these things in time. I'm optimistic that it'll work out well. If anyone graphically inclined wants to design a picture frame for the project, please contact me right away! I need a PNG with a transparent window in it -- or you can just pick a color to be "transparent" where the photo will go. The overall size should be 775 pixels wide by 1025 pixels high, with the window for the photo no larger than a 600x800 pixel rectangle. Preference would be for the photo's position to be centered, but that's not an absolute requirement. (If there's a good photographer attending, I'll cheerfully set aside my ego in favor of the costumers getting better pictures, and run their photos on my computer equipment and save my own photos just for the website.)

colleency has been helpful in getting me hooked up with the Costume College volunteers coordinator, so I can put in some useful work... )

Anyhow, that's a bit of a tangent -- I was starting to talk about Anime Expo. I saw a few things, I've heard a few things about the convention, and I went to the gripe session. Whoo boy, were people unhappy. (And that's before the announcement that the con was moving to Los Angeles Convention Center next year.) I passed up a note to the panel as they were ending the session, or more correctly, moving the discussion outside, and the chair (Joyce Lim) asked me to send her an e-mail message with some of my ideas. So here's a piece of what I sent her. If there's any interest, I'll post more... )

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Chaz Boston Baden

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