KJ

Although I was born in the Midwest, spent much of my childhood in Iowa, and have lived in San Francisco for nearly 18 years now, I consider my hometown to be Santa Rosa, California, where my family moved when I was 13. It's where I went to junior high and high school, the city where my parents still live, and the place both my brothers went back to when it was time to go home.

And I've spent the last three days watching it burn.

( This got a little long. )

My latest TBR book review for ladybusiness went up last night, for Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling. I enjoyed it, although I also feel like the last thing I need is another series to read. Why don't people write good standalone books anymore?

Also, sick. :P Just in time for the holidays, yay!

A vacation that's just for fun, sightseeing, and relaxation, not tied to an event (such as a con, wedding, or reunion) or someone else's travel plans or visiting family or a staycation. A vacation with a completely open itinerary. I'm trying to remember the last time I did that, and I literally can't. Going back through my travel tag, I think it was when T and I went to New York in 2011. Five years. Wow.

I don't know when, or to where, or with whom. I can't really think about it until after WorldCon, anyway, but I want to put the thought out there, for myself as much as anything.

With ladybusiness being named a Hugo finalist, a potential change -- one I'd been thinking about anyway -- comes to the forefront of my mind: is it time to take down the wall around my fandom identity?

Not long after I started writing and posting fic, I decided to decouple my fandom activities from my legal name. I wasn't super paranoid about it; there are plenty of people who follow my fandom accounts and know my "real" name, and I've always talked about work and other real life issues in my journals (although I've always taken care not to name my employers or the people in my life). My pseudonym is based on my legal name, and not in a subtle way. I've never minded my offline friends knowing that I write fic and am active in fandom. I've left enough breadcrumbs over the years that a really determined person could probably follow the trail. My goal was to keep the name "owlmoose" and my fandom accounts out of a casual Google search for my legal name, and in that I was successful. (It helps that my name is so common that I'm essentially unfindable on Google unless you know my middle initial, and even then I'm pretty buried.)

In practice, what this means is that I've never shared my writing or anything connected to it on Facebook. That's the space demarcated by the online wall: Facebook and LinkedIn on one side; DW/LJ, Tumblr, and Twitter on the other. I had originally meant Twitter to be on the open side (that's why my Twitter handle isn't owlmoose), but I found that many more fandom people were active there, and I decided to give up that pretense. There are a number of people on both sides of the wall -- although very few non-fandom friends read my LJ anymore -- and I have always been open to inviting individual people to cross the boundary. But the thought of throwing the floodgates open and allowing anyone through, including family, former coworkers, and potential professional connections, is a bit daunting.

On the other hand, the Internet landscape is very different from when I first started doing fandom over ten years ago. Fanfic has become more acceptable as a mainstream hobby. (If I'm being honest, the fact that I don't write much porn, and almost no slash, probably helps here. Still, I have some porny stuff out there. And I don't think I want my mother to read it.) I'm not as serious about building a librarian career as I was then. I no longer work with students, and even if I did, I doubt most of them would bat an eye. And "editor for a Hugo-award finalist website" is a pretty nice thing to put on a resume, especially if I'm serious about getting into freelance writing. This news is exciting, and I'd like to share it with people. And as I mentioned above, I've been thinking about lowering the wall for awhile now. It's more work to keep things separate, and as fannish writing becomes a bigger part of my life, it starts feeling kind of weird to hide it from people.

So that's where I am right now. This is not a small decision -- if I decide to do it, there's no unringing the bell -- so I'm thinking it through pretty seriously before I make any moves. If anyone has thoughts, or experience with making this same choice for themselves, I'd be interested to hear it.

Something I have been dealing with for the last month, but not posting about: we have a sick kitty. ( Cut for length and details of pet illness. )

It's a little odd for Lexi to be sick. Tori was always the cat with the chronic health problems, and it's weird to think of her as the healthy, stable one. (But she is -- the vet has been very happy with her status at her last two check-ups, and we're cutting back to every six months instead of every three. So that's good news, anyway.) I'll keep you all posted, of course. He's a good boy, and I hope it all comes out for the best.

I can't quite believe that it's upon me so quickly. My next two weeks look something like this...

Tomorrow: Work, dinner with friends.
Friday: Write (two stories -- one final, one draft -- due before I leave), last-minute travel shopping, pack.
Saturday morning: Fly to Las Vegas.
Sunday night: Fly home from Las Vegas.
Monday afternoon: Fly to Nice.
Tuesday afternoon - Sunday 6/28: Cruise!
Sunday afternoon: Fly from Barcelona to Amsterdam.
Wednesday morning: Fly home from Amsterdam.
Wednesday night: Sleep forever.
Thursday-Friday: Continue sleeping forever.
July 4th weekend: Family stuff, probably.
Monday, July 6th: Back to work.

And I thought May was busy!

I expect to have extremely limited Internet access in Europe, since I don't have an international data plan on my phone, and we only get 100 minutes of free wi-fi on the cruise (you read that right: 100 minutes total, for five days, for both of us, which is purely terrifying). I'm sure we'll be able to find cafes and such with wireless from time to time, but for the most part I'm steeling myself to be offline, particularly before we get to Amsterdam. I do want to do at least a bit of travel blogging; most likely I'll post to Tumblr, because it's so much easier to post pictures there. I'll let you all know what the tag is, in case you want to follow along. :)

I am actually home for the weekend and have no plans at all for today. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. (Except laundry, which as you might expect piles up when you have travel and/or events literally every weekend day for a month.)

The whirlwind starts again in two weeks, so I suppose the most important answer is to enjoy it while it lasts.

Like most San Franciscans, I get a summons for jury service once every couple of years or so. (I don't know why the SF Bay Area counties are more efficient about this than most other regions, but they do seem to be.) This week was my week, and I was called in on Monday morning, pulled in with a few other groups, and told to return for jury selection on Tuesday afternoon.

I guess someone has to be Juror #1, and this time around it was me. I've sat through voir dire once before (a first degree murder trial, back in 2010), but I never made it into the box. At least this time there was no suspense as to when or if I would be called up. So I listened to the questions, I answered the questions, I had a conversation with the judge and another with the prosecuting attorney. At the end of the session, I was among four people to be dismissed and thanked for my service, thereby ending a very weird couple of days where I could say almost nothing to anyone about what was going on. (T was a juror for a murder trial a couple of years ago, and that was a strange enough experience for me, knowing that he was dealing with this major thing that he could tell me nothing about.)

I don't really want to get into the case details here (it's a sensitive topic, possibly triggery for some -- maybe in comments), but I was interested in the wide variety of reactions the people on the jury had. One thing I found a little bit disturbing, particularly in the wake of current events relating to police, was just how much trust people were willing to have in law enforcement. A few people flat-out said that they couldn't presume innocence: if a defendant is sitting in the courtroom, they must be guilty. Meanwhile, here I am, with my faith in the system eroding a little more every day. I can envision a thousand scenarios that would bring an innocent, or at least not guilty, person into a courtroom, and I'm surprised that no one -- in San Francisco! home of free love and social justice -- said anything along those lines. Most of the people who expressed their inability to apply the fundamental principle of our justice system were dismissed in an earlier round, not surprisingly. At least they were honest about it; I wonder how many other people in the box agree, deep down?

Some interesting aspects of presumption of innocence came up in the judge's questioning. One that I'd never thought of is in the role of the defense attorney, who legally doesn't have to do anything to prove their case. They don't have to answer the prosecutor's evidence, they don't have to call witnesses, they don't have to ask any questions. All they have to do is sit and watch, and then make a closing statement. In practice, of course, I can't imagine this would ever happen, except for a case so weak that a prosecutor would never take it to court, but it was interesting to consider a situation where that might happen, and how it might affect a jury if it did. Some people said that it would make them wonder why the defense didn't fight harder for their client, and I agree with that, although I would also look harder at the prosecution's case -- is it so thin that the defense feels no need to attack it? It makes me wonder how often something like that actually happens.

I always appreciate getting to look at our criminal justice system, such as it is, from a new angle. I would like to serve on a jury someday -- I think it would be a valuable life experience, and I do believe in it as a civic duty. But all in all, I'm pretty relieved that it's not this case. Next time, maybe.

I worked all day, which pretty much used up my typing points (it wears out my other fingers, my ring finger especially because it takes the bulk of the extra load. Try touch-typing without your middle finger; you'll see). Darn you, paying work! (I'll probably feel better about it when my first paycheck comes in.) I also went out to tasty dinner and split a nice bottle of prosecco with a couple of friends, so overall I'll call it a win.

I see all your great comments on my election post and I will endeavor to reply to all of them tomorrow. :)

Tori is home! And eating, and walking around, and much more alert. She's a little wobbly on her feet still, but already better today than she was yesterday. I hope the road to recovery continues to be smooth.

Thank you, again, for the kind and supportive comments and hugs and good thoughts and vibes and such. Sorry I wasn't up for replying to everyone individually, but I really really do appreciate all of it. And I'm sure if she knew, Tori would appreciate it too. :)