This delightful habit of journaling

So I say this every year, but this time I mean it: I'm going to post more. I'm still reading, but just got out of the habit of posting. But now I've got a good reason to post, which will hopefully keep me at it.

Lots of stuff going on since my last post, which if you're following me on Twitter and/or Facebook, you probably already know. My last unmarried sibling (besides me) got married last August, and in May we welcomed her son, Joseph, to the family. He's now 7 months old and freaking adorable. Then in October, my brother's wife finally had a boy after 3 girls, Jack William. He's now 2 months old, and also freaking adorable. With two such cute babies in the family, life is never boring. I'm still working at the State Office of Education in Special Ed, and will be at least until August, when my pension is vested. Then we'll see. My dad was scheduled to have a kidney transplant last October, with my brother donating, but at the last minute they discovered that my brother has a normal sized-kidney and a very small kidney, and since he'd be left with the small one, they called the surgery off. So since I can't donate because I'm overweight (although I have lost 20 lbs this last year!) and no other viable candidate has been idenified, dad's still on the waiting list for a cadaver donor. Luckily his health has stayed about the same in the year since the transplant-that-wasn't, and he hasn't had to start dialysis. We expect at least another year and a half before he reaches the top of the list (because of his age and blood type). In November I tried to do NaNoWriMo and miserably failed, but I'm still trying to write the novel I started. And that's the more exciting things that have been happening lately.

This year, I decided to take the Popsugar Reading Challenge, as well as the Goodreads challenge (trying to read 100 books this year), and one I thought of all on my own-- read all the books Matilda Wormwood is mentioned as having read in Roald Dahl's Matildathat I haven't already read. So I've got a lot of reading to do. For the Popsugar challenge, I'm determined to read only books I haven't read before (except for the "book from your childhood" one), and to read a different book for each of the 50 categories (which means 52 books, since one of the categories is a trilogy) even when a book may count for more than one category. While I'm of course using Goodreads to document my progress, I thought I'd write reviews for the various books here (crossposted to the book blog I started and never did much with, but for which domain I've been paying for for several years). So you can expect at least 52 entries from me this year. What fun, eh? :)

The first book I'm reading is the "book over 500 pages." I chose to read The Well of Ascensionby Brandon Sanderson, which is the second in the Mistborntrilogy. I read the first book ages ago, but got distracted and never finished the trilogy. Since Sanderson's books are LOOOOONG, I figured this is a good excuse.

Hmm. I might have to do a paid account again. Not enough userpics. :P[

A little less than ten years ago, I got on an airplane all by myself and flew to a place full of people I'd never actually met before, but who I felt like I knew better than many in my real life. It was, barring meeting up with one local fan on a book release night, my first experience meeting people in real life that I had only known on the internet. Some I had interacted with for years, through a tiny little message board thread for a fifth-year fic full of the usual fifth-year-fic cliches--new DADA teacher who turns out to be a Weasley cousin, Voldemort fathers a child as part of his evil plan, "I'm serious, Black," etc.--but where some of the best and brightest of fandom gathered. Others I had admired from afar until thrown together by a momentary impulse which launched me into the bloody morass of the shipping wars. Some were only vaguely present to me-- a semi-familiar screen name from a fanfic archive forum. And then there were some that I had never encountered at all before I shook hands with or hugged them that night.

I discovered that weekend, and in the years since, that the line between internet friends and real friends is extremely nebulous, if it exists at all. As I greeted each new-old friend, finally putting faces and voices to screen names, it felt like I was greeting someone who I had seen weeks, if not days before, and we were just catching up. I never would have guessed, though, that ten years later, some of those people would have disappeared from my life, while some I see on a yearly (or more!) basis. Or that I'd be getting on a plane, all by myself, on my way to a place full of people I'd never actually met before. Again.

I'm missing the friends I met ten years ago, and the ones I met in the amazing gatherings that have happened since then. I'm marveling that the friend who slept on a roll-away bed in my hotel room ten years ago is now standing in front of 4,000 people, welcoming them to a convention celebrating all things geeky. I hope I'll be able to talk to her, once, this weekend. I look forward to Saturday when I'll see another friend I haven't been able to have actual face-time with for entirely too many years. But I also hope that this might be the beginning of friendships that will last as long as the ones I forged all those years ago. Because no one can ever tell me that true friendship can't start online.

I have ten years of memories to prove it.

(Yes, this post means I'm at LeakyCon. It's awesome so far, if a tiny bit lonely).

I officially start on Monday! It's still sinking in. I have a job.

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

It went well. Hard to know if I'll get it or not, but overall I think I did a good job of making a case for myself. Should hear in the next few days if I got it. So keep those fingers crossed!

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Huzzah!