hazelchaz | When it's fiesta time in Guadalajara, then I long to be back once again in old Mexico.

Interlude: Mid-January to mid-February.

The other highlight of January was when the Baden clan got together to celebrate Christmas and nephew Nicolas's birthday. (Let's define terms here. My Family = myself, library_lynn and missmea, and we observe Christmas on Boxing Day because that's when Maria wants to do it. Baden Clan = us, my folks, my brother's family, my sisters and their husbands.)

With the new generation coming along, Thomas, Johnna and Nicolas get to decide when "Baden Clan Christmas Observed" is. They can declare it's in December at their house in Wisconsin, and it's up to decide whether to show up, or they can coordinate with the California Badens to work out something. This year we celebrated a month after standard Christmas, which works out to a week before Nicolas's birthday.

As you can see, library_lynn and I believe in wrapping presents for small children in really big boxes, because the box works as a toy all by itself. (rivka, if you're watching this: we've shipped Alex some books in a rather large box.) Also, in this instance, there was a purely practical aspect; we wanted Thomas and Johnna to be able to ship everything home, so they'd need some boxes with some size to them. (right)

We celebrated Christmas and Nico's third birthday. We always tried to make sure that missmea got separate Christmas and birthday gifts, because with her birthday being less than a week from Christmas it can be easy for that to be overlooked. So Nicolas got a book (The Truth about the Three Little Pigs) and multi-colored building blocks and a hippopotamus for Christmas; and a book (Richard Scarry's Best Storyboook Ever) and a nylon tube to crawl through for his birthday.

The collapsible tube was about two feet in diameter, we bought it at Toys-R-Us and gave Johnna the packaging it came in so she could keep an eye out for it -- it's got velcro on the end, so you can buy more of them and hook them together, and there's a little play tent that connects to it as well. A kiddy habitrail system! (left)

Dinner was a Mexican-themed feast. My elder older sister doesn't have a good feel for feeding a multitude of people; my younger older sister and I made snarky comments to each other when we were sent out to buy salsa, limes and a few other things that should have been purchased on one of the two previous shopping trips that day. We also picked up more beer, as Dorothy thought that one six-pack of beer would be enough for the entire party. Elaine and I agreed that ideally, nothing runs out before midnight, because if you run out it usually means you didn't have enough.

Maria talked about her issues with having an unconditionally loving family on her LJ and she predicted "I'll make some excuse to go to the restroom or the kitchen or outside for a few minutes until I can calm down again and go back inside." So I took her with me on another shopping run, to look to see if the local "Smart & Final Extra" had the Mexican Coca-Cola bottles. I tried to make it coincidental, but she figured it out. I guess when I'm trying to be subtle I need to be sneakier.

And they don't have the Mexican Coke! I later learned that the "Extra" stores don't stock a number of things the "Smart & Final Classic" stores have, like the stuff that someone running a snack bar or a convenience store might need that an ordinary household doesn't need -- in the more-recent case, it was an "Open/Closed" sign to replace the one that disappeared during pmx.

Anyhow, dinner had everything split into separate dishes. Some non-marinated chicken was cooked up, so that Lynn could have some; lots of vegan options, so that Thomas wouldn't starve; and so forth. Tortillas to wrap up everyone's customized tacos. And everything was delicious. (right)

We were invited to come back the following day, for some hanging out and socializing and a nice Sunday Brunch. Same deal, lots of dishes -- crispy bacon, fruit salad, and so forth. And an Apple Brown Betty. Which we decided was better nicknamed an Apple Pie Pizza. Yum! I've decided I want the recipe. Many of you already know I'm a fan of the baked apple pancakes at Dinah's; this is like that, only more so.

And then, the following week, I met up with an old friend from middle school. Dan Newman's a genius; after he got his Ph.D. in mathematics, he started a little company that invented the "MIME" standard. (His name's not on the RFC because he didn't want to feel guilty when he ignored people writing to him about it.) If you've sent or received e-mail with attachments, you're using MIME -- you've got my old friend Dan to thank. (right)

Dan lives up on Mt. Baldy, in a small mountain town, and commutes into Claremont. His daughters (7 1/2 and 9 1/2) sometimes have to miss school for snow days, like certain people on my FL.

As some of you know, for the past three years I've helped the doctorwho convention "Gallifrey One" with their publicity postcards. This meant that I ended up being invited to one of their committee meetings. Not long after I got there, Robbie Bourget (the treasurer-chair) said they needed headshots of everyone there, and did anyong bring a camera? (left)

By a remarkable coincidence, I had a camera with me. Well, I'm being disingenuous -- the main reason I bothered with the meeting at all is because I thought it might be a photo opportunity. There are a lot of "usual suspects" on the Gallifrey team, such Martin Young who was Robbie's second for our Ops department, is running Operations for Gallifrey, and is "Otaku Ambassador" for loscon. He's going to be putting together a "Little Loscon" picnic on 2009-04-04 in Anaheim, by the way. Come one, come all, it's free and we'll feed you. (right)

And another well-loved face at the meeting: Joyce Hooper, who does hotel relations for all three conventions. (left)

Joyce explained that the hotel wanted photos of the principal people that they should pay attention to -- they didn't need pictures of everyone on the committee, but would need enough of them that it made sense just to take everyone's pictures; and I also knew that the convention was going to print Staff photo badges for everyone. (Not sure if there was one waiting for me that I was never given...)

Later, when Robbie had a chance to see the pictures, she was exasperated by Martin's wild appearance (above right) -- but when she saw all my other pictures on file for him, realized it was about as good as she was going to get. Well, at least it was a good likeness.

In the intervening week, a couple of things happened: they needed me to look respectable at the office because of some Very Important Visitors touring the building. I decided as long as I was wearing a button-up shirt, I may as well wear a tie too. By the third day (in a different tie each day) some of my cow-orkers were starting to get a little freaked-out, because for anyone outside Sales or Tech Support the dress code doesn't call for shirt and tie, and that goes double for Engineering.

And one day, I figured that as long as I had most of the outfit on, I'd complete my dirt-simple "Prof. Grindlewald of Hogwarts" costume in order to get a good photo or two. I'd worn that for Halloween, on the assumption that for a lot of the more-hysterical fundies a Wizard is fundamentally scary; for some of the homophobes in the audience, a Gay Wizard would ruffle a few feathers; and for the diehart Harry Potter fans, the idea of such a Dark Wizard Teaching at Hogwarts would be the bit that put them over the edge. One costume, three different ways to scare people... (right)

Later that week -- in fact, on Thursday, the set-up day for Gallifrey -- was the Loscon vote at lasfs. The LASFS membership voted on who should run the 2010 Loscon. The contenders, in order of votes received: Greg Bilan (3), Heide Nichols (6), Bill Ellern (12), and Scott Beckstead+Sherri Benoun (40). Sherri and Scott had explained the theme for their convention would be "Urban Fantasy" and cited a number of authors that write about cities with wizards, sparkly vampires, or other fantastic creatures of the night. With two-thirds of the first-place votes, only one round of ballot-counting was required. (left)