Today, it is my birthday. Happy Birthday to Me! I am stepping down this day from the arbitrarily distinctive age of exactly half a Century.
This birthday could not be more diametrically opposed to last year’s while still remaining a good day. I’ve had a lot of different kinds of birthdays over these 51 years, most of them pleasant, some of them fantastic, many unmemorable, a couple terrible. This year I’m doing what I most wanted to: I’m puttering around aimlessly doing whatever I feel like. I’ve already finished a sculpture I've been working on for a while ("Bird Escaping from a Rock", pictured), which makes me happy because the preceding several days have been entirely consumed with an illustration for a friend, which ultimately failed very badly and I feel terrible for him about it. It is what it is, but sometimes what it is isn’t nice.
Today I’ve also taken receipt of a present and card from some friends of my kid (and mine!) who decided that I would appreciate a sort of cupcake set: they brought
me a basic cupcake mix, a box of cupcake papers, butter, heart-shaped sprinkles and so on. I’m overcome – what an incredibly sweet thing to do! And they couldn’t have known that I got myself some
poppy seeds today with the intention of making some lemon-poppyseed muffins soon, and this mix will do just fine as a base. Other than that I’ve been farting around with this text, occasionally
looking up to watch choice bits of my background entertainment. So far today I’m hitting the Deadpool movies; I’m a bit jaded on [these and] everything right now, as far as stuff so familiar that
I don’t have to pay attention to it goes; I just re-finished Ash vs. Evil Dead and Adventure Time again so I’m not sure what to pick up next. Final Space? Star Trek ToS? I dunno. (Oh boo hoo,
right?) This will probably be one of those days I just leave things off most of the day and listen to the neighborhood.
Last year was utterly different. I had been home for health reasons for a couple of months at the time but had planned for literally years for two events, and there
was no power on or off this planet that was going to stop me achieving both, health or no health. The second event was my birthday party. I don’t usually hold one but come on, I was turning 50!
This time I was having a party. We’d been prepping for it for a long time so as to keep it as close to what passes for a budget as possible – buying in early on drinks and so on – and I was
wracking my brains about what I could serve people for food, it being a half-the-day-and-into-the-night kind of affair, that wouldn’t require someone to hover over a deep fryer all day or
constantly slice cold meats for a party in January when I wanted to feed people hearty, rib-sticking hot stuff. A friend who is much smarter than I am reminded me about pies and the day was
saved. I made a hunter’s pie (pictured) and a caramelized root vegetables pie and a bacon-and-feta pie and a something-or-other pie… You know, it’s only been a year but darned if I remember the
whole list just off the top of my head right now. Anyway, the point is they were big and they were savory and they were piping hot and, if I may say this myself, they were pretty darned good
too.
We surrounded these with the usual array of salamis and crisps and cheeses and crackers and fruits and candies and breads. A wonderful friend of ours, who
entertains like nobody’s business, had brought along an incredible coffee machine, which he provides for his friends’ parties, all the way from another country. One of my closest friends had
managed to sneak across the Atlantic ocean all the way to my front door before I noticed; she blew my mind. It turned out to be the best party I’ve ever thrown, and the gifts were rich enough to
satisfy me for the rest of my life, really, as far as getting presents goes: nerdy clothes and money and gift certificates for same, money for the tattoo I'm trying to design for myself
representing my family, the fantastic camera with which I take almost all of my pictures, that coffee maker itself (I kid you not)! So much love that day, so much warm feeling.
The day before this had been very intense. I had been waiting two years for it; mere illness, disability, and an immediately-impending very ambitious party were no
obstacles. It was a very small science fiction and fantasy convention. It was so very tiny that nobody more than locally famous was there and precious few of them, and the location was so far out
of the way that nobody would pick it for a random day out. The thing is, though, is that it was a small con. You get me? It wasn’t a giant mass of competing show-offs struggling to view
the best merch before cramming into a big-name seminar they got tickets to three years ago. It was a small con. The authors in the writers’ room had time to meet their fans. The
filmmakers could be present to answer questions that didn’t have to be screened for brevity with the answers fired as from a repeating crossbow. Cosplay could be sincere without having to look
like it’s all one ever does with one’s money and time. Seminars could really get into it. Attendees had the breathing room to group and meet and mingle, and the sofas and chairs to do
that at. Vendors were able to keep an eye on their wares and talk to the customers, who had time to ask questions. It wasn't worth an artist's life to appear on one of the public
floors.
I was working this con. I love working conventions of almost any type. I had worked the previous edition, the second ever held, and it turned out that sadly, this
one would be the last – but nobody knew that yet. Nobody knew that the amazing woman who founded and ran it would pass on very suddenly only a few days later. The heart-shaped stone upon which is
inscribed “BE HAPPY” which she gave me for my birthday last year at the con was on our holiday card this year; you can see that here.
I’ll report on that con, and others (like the one at which I found myself sitting on a panel with Larry Niven himself), some other time. I was just contrasting last
year's intense fracas with this year’s one-day oasis of self-engineered calm.
I do believe I will go make myself a stupendous cup of coffee now.
