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Laurel Krahn's weblog since August 1998.

Woohoo! Minicon 37 is already off to a great start. Hope to see some of you there! (Do introduce yourself if I don't know you. I'm shy and sometimes taken aback when people do, but I really do like meeting folks who read this site!)

the Very Secret Diary of Sauron.

See the rest at VerySecretDiaries.com.

Where does the time go?

I've now been doing TV Picks for more than three years. I've posted a bit about that today at ye olde picks, I've been meaning to do something all week and only just now got around to it. It's mostly a big Thank you to all of you fine people for taking the time to read my stuff and to write to me sometimes and like that.

Here's the weblog where I first announced the picks were moving onto a separate page. March 15-20, 1999. Huh. Of course there were picks scattered throughout my weblog all the time before I started the separate picks page.

I just put the Picks archive back online. I'm missing months worth of stuff, but it's nice to have what I have back online again (technical difficulties had left that page offline for a few months).

The list of performers for the 2002 Winnipeg Folk Festival has been posted. Folk festival is July 11-14, 2002 at Bird's Hill Park outside of Winnipeg. I'll almost certainly be going again this year.

Wow! I'll get to see Oyster Band (finally!), Nick Lowe, DeDanann, Richie Havens, Ron Sexsmith, Dervish, and all sorts of other cool performers (some probably yet to be listed, I'd wager).

Boiled in Lead is playing a St. Patrick's Day show at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota tonight. It's their 19th annual St. Patrick's Day show. Wow And I've been to more than half of 'em. Doors open at 4pm, someone gave me a free ticket, I may be a little fashionably late (i.e. miss some of the opening acts) 'cuz I've got a lot of stuff to do at home.

You can watch (and listen to) a webcast of the Boiled in Lead portion of the show online, as well as find an archive of last year's show. BiL is scheduled to take the stage around 7:30pm tonight. I'll be the happy girl bouncing around somewhere right in front of the stage.

Cool article about Chan Poling from the Star Tribune at the end of January. I somehow missed it 'til now. (If you're wondering "who?," I'll give you a hint: he was in the Suburbs. The band, that is). And cooler still, news of the first three Suburbs CDs to finally come out on CD (and then maybe a reunion show or tour? Wow!). Ah, here's an article from City Pages, too.

I really want his solo album. And if you don't already own Viva! Suburbs! Live at First Avenue and/or Ladies and Gentlemen, the Suburbs Have Left the Building, you're missing some great, fun music.

(When people talk about Minneapolis music, they usually talk about Prince, the Replacements, Husker Du, Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks and while I love those guys, I've a particular fondness for the Suburbs, the Gear Daddies, and Trip Shakespeare . . . those are the albums and shows I remember best. Well, and Boiled in Lead. Their 19th annual St. Patrick's Day show is at First Avenue this Sunday!).

LunchBoxShop.com, for all your food carrying needs. Or if you just like lunchboxes. I've been known to carry 'em as purses, but I'm like that (adverse to carrying purses in general, so if I do I want them to either be UberCute and make some sort of statement or EspeciallyPractical). (link via Felix Strates)

It's been six months.

Every month I try to write up something for my journal, about my thoughts then and now, about . . . it all. And I still end up stopping when I can't find the words. I'm not sure I'll ever have the words.

I keep thinking I should get things down, for posterity, to remind myself what it was like.

Today I realized I don't need to, I'm not going to forget.

New York Times slideshow.

Details about the second season Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD set are now online and you can pre-order it from amazon.com and elsewhere.

Friday Five for this week:

1. What makes you homesick? Being away from home, silly. Er. I'm not away from home much, but when I am I tend to worry a bit about my cats. When I was living somewhere other than Minnesota, I got homesick for lakes and rivers, bodies of water in general. As well as for woody tree-filled areas. Sioux Falls and Sioux City just weren't quite home because of that lack. I'd also get homesick when I was there for certain stores and for friends.

2. Where is "home" for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad's house, particular state/city)? Minnesota is home to me, when I'm away from it I miss it. When I was younger, I often considered my Grandma and Grandpa Olson's place in Mitchell, South Dakota to be more my true home because I just felt so loved and safe there. Sometimes I feel like my true home is actually found in science fiction fandom or at least at certain conventions and parties. Minicon, for example, is like home to me.

3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? Both people and things can make a place seem like home. Minicon can seem like home because I'm surrounded by friends and acquaintances (some of whom I've known for a lot of years now) and there's a certain kind of music I like and a certain kind of silliness and because it's very familiar to me. Minnesota is home to me because I was born and raised here and have an affinity and love for the place (as well as lots of friends and family live here). It has to do with familiarity, with things (or people) that make me happy and bring back fond memories. Places where I feel safe and liked, too.

4. Where is the furthest you've been from home, miles-wise? Honolulu, Hawaii (3964 miles away from Minneapolis, Minnesota). When I was in fifth grade, my Dad had some business conference in Hawaii and decided to make a family trip of it. He, my Mom, my brother, and I stayed in a condo in Honolulu for a week and saw lots of sites on Oahu. It was in the fall, near Thanksgiving, if I recall correctly, and I loved it there.

5. What are your plans for this weekend? I don't have any plans at all. Beyond doing the usual (watching TV, updating websites, sleeping). Might try to catch a matinee or something. Should work on cleaning up around the apartment.

Ooooh, pretty: Star Wars guitars.

Hey! Today Google is Mondrian-tastic. Cute. I love all the holiday Google logos.

Years ago, the second time I was away at college, I got hooked on a MUD. Wow, that never happens, right? Heh. I used to hang out on eotl a.k.a. End of the Line.

I didn't really play the game, even though it seemed like most of the people on eotl were into the game, darnit. I mostly just wanted to hang out. I got killed occasionally (oops), but mostly I chatted with a handful of people who I've lost touch with over the years. I remember one guy and I had a special fondness for Casablanca so we had aliases set up to quote long passages from it and my aliases were called "sam" and "sam2" and like that. One of which would make me say "Play it, Sam; you played it for her, you can play it for me!" Ah, good times.

My handle was Sethra and I remember a wizard or two recognizing the reference and giving me appropriate weaponry and attributes. That was a kick. (Much like how when I used to hang out on IRC a lot as Sethra, it was cute when someone called Loiosh would message me just to say, well, very Loiosh-like things).

(So in a fit of boredom this morning, I logged into eotl and was surprised how familiar it was, all these years later. Can anyone recommend a good Windows MUD client? I used to use TinyFugue back in the day on UNIX systems).

Dorothy Parker's poetry always makes me happy.

Two weblogs I like that I'm not sure I've mentioned before: footprints and scrubbles.net.

Goth paper dolls. But on the net, natch.

Get me, I'm a weblog pioneer (or old skooler or whatever you want to call those of us who had weblogs way back when) who can't seem to find time to read many weblogs. Or update hers. Sigh. Sometimes I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer number of weblogs out there.

Back in the day, I always tried to post links that no other weblogs had linked to, I think that's part of why I don't post so often. I can't help but figure that everyone has beaten me to the good links. (And yet when I see someone is linking to something I linked to way back in '98 or '99, I roll my eyes and think "geez, don't they read my weblog" which I know is just crazy).

A friend of mine paid me a big compliment when he said that he sometimes kinda wished I hadn't spun off the TV Picks and didn't spend so much time on them, 'cuz it's meant I haven't updated Windowseat all that much. And a lot more of my personality comes through at Windowseat than at ye olde TV Picks. He has a point, at that. Though on good days I still feel that the Picks are valuable and a little bit unique, whereas weblogs are a dime a dozen.

I still sometimes wonder if I shouldn't just channel all of my energy into one website and make it great, rather than doing a little bit with a lot of different sites.

I hope there are still some people out there who enjoy this old site. If you haven't been here since the beginning, perhaps the next time when you visit and notice I haven't updated, you can find some cool stuff to read in the archive.

Windowseat Weblog: 3 years ago | 2 years ago | 1 year ago

Peter Gammons:

Their owner tried to disown them. The commissioner tried to bury them. The players didn’t know until a week before spring training who they would be training for. But they’re back. The Minnesota Twins are back. And, in what could be the ultimate in-your-face, they begin the 2002 season with a legitimate chance to be the darlings of October. Root, root, root for your home team, but every baseball fan across the land has a twin allegiance this year. Start spreading the news: The Minnesota Twins are America’s Team.

The thing is, regardless of whether you give a hoot about baseball or sports in general, I think you can't help but root a little for the Twins. Talk about the ultimate underdogs, talk about down-to-earth folks. Read the rest of Gammons' piece. You may think "America's team" is a dorky phrase (or you may think of the Atlanta Braves, if you watched too much TBS back in the day), but I can't argue with the sentiment behind it.

Lots more coverage of the Twins can be found via the links in the sidebar of this weblog. The Twins have been my team all my life, I hope they're adopted by some more people this year.

You know you want an incredible rubberband machine gun. Well, I do.

Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer have a cool official website at HouseOfFun.com.

Hope y'all caught the pilot episode of Welcome to Eltingville (as mentioned at TVPicks.net). There's already a fan page for the show. If you liked the show, contact Cartoon Network.

Still more Very Secret Lord of the Rings diary stuff:

VerySecretDiaries.com is where you'll find groovy T-shirts and other merchandise.

This page links to all the diaries (and they add links as new diaries are posted).

If you enjoy the diaries, you'll probably laugh at this and this.

My entry where I link to all the different diaries (in order).

I really love the mixes posted at brilliantine.org.

That is all.

This week's Friday Five:

1. What's your favorite vacation spot? Of the places I've been, probably the north shore of Lake Superior. Duluth and points further north along the lake (Schroeder, Grand Marais . . . ). Especially fond of Lamb's Resort (I've been going there since I was a year old when my folks first took me up there) and Superior Shores (a more recent discovery, I've never actually stayed there).

2. Where do you consider to be the biggest hell-hole on earth? South Sioux City, Nebraska. Okay, that's not fair. It's just the one place, of the places I've lived, that I liked the least. Wasn't all that bad.

3. What would be your dream vacation? I could really use a week or two of vacation up on the North Shore. Or in Hawaii. Or down in Florida for spring training. Those are the first things that spring to mind. Or in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (I really haven't spent any amount of time there since I moved away, and I miss the place). I haven't given the whole "dream vacation" thing a ton of thought. Well, I guess I've always kinda had the desire to show a friend or three around some of my favorite places either up north or in South Dakota.

4. If you could go on a road-trip with anyone, who would it be and why? Karen Cooper. Because she's hilarious and cool and we've already had plenty of fun road trips together. Though there are other folks I've had enjoyable road trips with or I can imagine I'd have fun road-tripping with, she's the obvious choice. Or was I supposed to pick someone fictional or far fetched? Oops.

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Going to help a friend host a room party at an area science fiction convention (Minn-stf/Minicon party @ MarsCon). So will be commuting to that con this weekend.

Another example of why I've been linking to James Lileks' website for as long as he's had one:

More cell phones means less pay phones, and as much as we all hate people shouting into their little pieces of face-lego, I like having my own personal phone. It’s one of those Star Trek predictions that became true without you noticing it, until one day you realized - hey, I have a communicator. (I built my own as a kid out of household detritus - a little sewing kit box with a hinge on the side, a coaster for the mouthpiece, etc. I was ten. We did not have officially licensed merchandise in those days. You wanted a phaser, you stole a brick from a construction project and carved one out. You wanted to make your mom a Yeoman Rand hairpiece, you got a lampshade, braided some boiled spaghetti, put it on the lampshade with glue, spray painted it canary yellow, and then insisted she wore it to church. We were hardy then. )

I like this whole Bleat actually. People may link like crazy to his screeds, but I seem to be fondest of the warm or especially geeky Bleats.