Speculative Fiction and Other Journeys

[tcpip]

Prior to flying to the Cairns caseopaya and I caught up with some Perth and local friends who were over for Continuum, specifically ariaflame, darklion, kremmen, and kbpenguin. Whilst much of our discussion was on adult education experiences, it did sit in the back of my mind how little I have to do with science fiction/fantasy conventions these days, whereas a couple of decades ago I was a very regular attendee. My interest in this field is more now orientated towards predictive social theory and historical fantasy, the latter which leads to my latest RPG design notes on Magic in the Mimesis RPG (some of which derives from discussions from almost ten years ago).

Whilst technically on holiday, the first two days of leave have had their own degrees of business. Organising an overseas money transfer, meeting and discussing finances with the ALP candidate for Kew, taking the elderly Prankster rat to the vet for her third tumor surgery (she's come out well), sending out notifications for a course on R and Octave (booked out by the end of the day), writing an abstract and biography for an presentation to the Open Source Industry Association, mailing out almost ten kilograms of orders from the RPG Review store, finally joining the local library & etc. It seems that I am as busy on 'holiday' as I am on work, just with (mostly) different issues.

This is not to say the past few days have not had their share of social activities. On Saturday went to visit hathhalla and ser_pounce for another cheesquest, where we finished off all the remaining cheeses of the sketch except for Austrian smoked and the notorious beaver cheese. We also played Runebound which is a reasonably good beer-and-pretzels (or wine-and-cheese in our case) game. On Sunday played Spaced 1889 where we continued our campaign against the wicked German Imperialists on Venus with aid of an airship and a Maxim Gun. Finally spent a few hours tonight playing Ingress with Ric dF., taking the opportunity to farm a local gardens whilst chatting about various game designs of the computerised and tabletop variety.

Comments

[iris]

While working, I always feel like I am just as busy on off days as I am on work days. There's always things to catch up on and do.

[tcpip]

It's particularly true in this case, and I think part of the problem is that I planned things to do in advance in terms of my extra-work life and I planned work things to do as well. I should have booked a week in Fiji or something and turned off my Internet connection!