Steampunk Contest

This looks neat! SF/F book publisher Tor is holding a steampunk costume photography contest.  (Can I have the watch? Even though I don't do costuming?)  Full details at:

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58075

Prize 1 starts off with a $50 gift certificate to Clockwork Couture, the first and best clothier devoted exclusively to steampunk fashion, where you can purchase countless gorgeous costuming elements for ladies and gents.

The first prize also comes with one bottle of a perfume oil blend from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Phoenix Steamworks collection, a series of scents designed to represent the steampunker within us even when we’re in jeans and a t-shirt. The crucial question: do you want to smell more like The Antikythera Mechanism or The Obsidian Widow?

Prize 2 is two passes to the The Steampunk World’s Fair, which will be held on the weekend of May 14th, 2010, in Piscataway, New Jersey. The World’s Fair is the first major steampunk convention in the Northeast and promises an absurd array of retrofuturistic delights, including a Chrononaut’s Jubilee Ball, the Cup of Brown Joy Tea Party, a Murder Mystery Dinner, a Cabaret, a Gentleman’s Duel, a Mad Science Fair, and maybe even a Steampunk Rock Opera.

The winner of Prize 2 will also get a 5ml bottle of Phoenix Steamworks perfume.

Prize 3 is a ridiculously gorgeous “gold” Victorian/Steampunk-style watch. It has a filigree front; a clear back, so you can see the gears at work; and a glow-in-the-dark face to illuminate your nefarious business.

And—you guessed it—the winner of Prize 3 will also get a bottle of Phoenix Steamworks perfume.

And what about us honorable mentions? Each person who receives an honorable mention will also get a scent of their choice from the Phoenix Steamworks perfume line.

Haunted Houses

Sasha had never been to a Halloween haunted house before.  Last year I'd intended to take him to one, but never got to it.  This year, I took him.  Wiard's Orchard, which is part farm, part year-round county fair and market, always does a haunted house thing, with five houses and a haunted hay ride.  You can pay one price for one thing, or a bundle price for the whole shebang.

 

Mackie agitated heavily to go.  Ha!  This is the kid who can't look at a SIMPONS Halloween special because of the "scary" zombies in it.  Still, he got upset when I told him he had to stay home.  Them's the breaks, kid.

 

Sasha and I drove out of town to Wiard's in the darkness.  There was a large crowd in front of the ticket windows, but I noticed that, for some reason, there was one window off to one side where no was in line.  I headed over there and got tickets right away.  No waiting.  Weird.

 

We headed into the orchard proper.  The workers had set up the various barns and outbuildings as haunted houses--a haunted barn, an insane asylum, a zoo for alien clowns, a little labyrinth, and a haunted mine.  There was also a hayride.  The night was blustery and a bit rainy.  Crowds of people, mostly teenagers, roved among the apple trees.  We went to the hayride first.

 

Once enough people had piled onto a straw-filled wagon, the tractor driver took everyone deep into the orchard proper.  At one point, the driver took his hands off the steering wheel and put them behind his head, to the consternation of several wagon riders--you want real fear?--and eventually Things Happened.  It was the usual haunted house sort of fare--an darkened area abruptly bursts into illumination, and something monstrous appears.  Someone would leap out at the wagon, howling or yelling.  At one point, an actor zipped overhead on a wire.  Sasha thought it was pretty creepy and cool.  I was unimpressed.  But they gave us free cider and donuts afterward.

 

Next we went into the alien clown zoo.  That was way cooler.  To get in, you crossed a bridge, and a psychedelic projection spun around on the walls, throwing off your sense of balance and making it feel like the bridge was spinning.  The zoo itself was filled with fog and weird lights and, of course, weirdo clowns that faded in and out of the mist.  I liked it rather better, but it was really, really short.  Sasha coughed on the fog.

 

Okay, not bad, but overpriced.

 

Then we went into the asylum.  Oh, yeah!  This was a haunted house!  Freaky rooms, bizzare passages, scary scenes.  One room was entirely black with green glowing comedy/tragedy masks hanging on the walls.  Abruptly, one of the masks lunged toward us, and I realized that ONE mask was attached to a person all in black.  Great illusion!  Sasha just about wet himself.  Another room was filled with rack after rack of abandoned old clothes.  It was weird and freaky.  A few passages were filled with inflated material similar to those big bounce castle things, and you had to push your way through an actual palpable darkness.

 

The mine and the barn were similarly freak-ay.  Sasha clung to me like a barnacle, but he wouldn't hear of going home, either.  At one point, we ended up in front of four teens in Planet of the Apes costumes, and they played off the zombies and aliens who were working the lines.  Sasha was getting a little creeped out by the time we got to the haunted barn, but the apes behind us reassured him.  "We got your back, dude!" one said.

 

Such a good thing we didn't bring Mackie.  He would have been traumatized for life!  Sasha was freaked out but loving every moment.

--
Steven
http://www.sff.net/people/spiziks

The IEP

It was a long, long meeting.  It was me, the school psychologist, Sasha's English and math teachers, the Teacher Consultant, the English and the Language Learner program teacher.

The short version is, the school claims Sasha's inability to add two and four without counting on his fingers and his inability to understand time (he doesn't understand the difference between a month and a year or between a week and ten days) is a cultural or language problem.  This is patently absurd.  His younger brother, who's had the exact same amount of schooling, can add and subtract perfectly well.  But no, they said, it's because he didn't go to school when he was younger and his English isn't fluent.

We went round and round on this for quite some time.  It was all of them against me, and none of them would move.

They =did= say Sasha qualified for help under Title I as an ELL student.  It would give him a certain amount of time per week with a tutor, probably twice per week, and he could take tests and do other things.  I'm not happy with this resolution because as a special education student, he'd get help daily, not just twice a week, and we could set conditions such as "gets extra time on tests," which we can't do with Title I.

Everyone said things like, "Oh, we're happy to make sure he gets extra time, if he needs it."

Uh huh. My long, long experience with schools and teaching tells me that verbal assurances mean absolutely nothing.  It must be written down, and it must be something the teachers are required to accommodate.  I'm aware that most teachers want to help.  Sasha has a couple right now.  But eventually you'll run into that teacher who believes that the kid is faking it or the teacher who doesn't care or the one who refuses to make exceptions because it makes things more complicated, and then you need that piece of paper that says, "You MUST do this."  (One of Sasha's teachers refused to contact me until I called the prinicpal and said, "I've e-mailed Teacher X to contact me three times about Sasha's grade, and I've gotten no response. I hate to be a tale-bearer, but I really need to talk to him.  Could you mention
this?"  I got a phone call within an hour, but I shouldn't have had to even go that far.) You also need someone on site to run interference, who can catch problems before they become disasters.

In the end, I was presented with The Form.  The Form basically says all these people met, we talked, and we all agree that Sasha isn't entitled to special services.  (Title I is on another form.)  There's a line for all present to sign, including the parent or parents.  But here's another trick most people don't know.  At the bottom of the form is another blank, almost hidden.  It basically says, "I disagree with the above assessment."

If I sign there, there are other repercussions.  I think I can force another assessment, by another group of people.  But I'm not sure if that's the case.  I have to find out.

I signed on that line because I =don't= agree with the assessment (and my signature doesn't change Sasha's eligibility for Title I aid) and to give me time to find out exactly what can happen.  I can change my mind later.

I'm very tired of dealing with this.  I want to be a normal parent who spot-checks their kid's homework and who has the very occasional phone call from a teacher.  I want to be the parent who only shows up once a year at conferences, if that often.  But tomorrow I have to research the ramifications of Sasha's meeting, and then Kala and I have the meeting with Mackie's teachers and the school social worker about his behavior, and then it's back to Sasha's school for cleanup on his thing.

Samhain 2009

Happy birthday to Sam the Dog!

 

Sasha and Maksim decorated the front porch two weeks ago, but we didn't get pumpkins for carving, for whatever reason, until Halloween day itself.  Sasha didn't want to participate, and Kala doesn't like pumpkin carving--it's a goop thing--so Aran and Mackie and I did it ourselves.  We finished and set them on the porch.  It was chilly day, with a stiff breeze that finished knocking the leaves off the trees.

 

Then I baked an apple pie for the Samhain ritual later.  It came out perfectly.

 

After a supper of hamburgers, Mackie asked about 10,000 times when he could go trick or treat.  At last I told him he could.  He wanted Daddy to take him around.  He was dressed as a soldier, and Aran wore a leprechaun costume, complete with pointy ears and green hat.

 

There was much running about, as usual, and the two houses that do the haunted front yard every year continued their tradition.  Mackie freaked out at one of them--zombies in the yard!--and huddled against me whimpering until the monster pulled up his mask to reveal a perfectly ordinary human who said, "We have good candy."  This was the kid who begged to do the haunted house thing with me and Sasha!

 

One of the neighbors dropped a packet into Aran and Mackie's bags and said, "God bless you!"  Once we left her yard, I fished the packets out.  Cards to a local church, bible verses, and a ceramic coaster with a cross imprinted on it.  And a piece of candy.  I gave back the piece of candy and pocketed the rest for disposal later.

 

Eventually, the boys announced they'd had enough and we headed home.  There was still an enormous lot of candy left.  Kala said only a few visitors had come while we were gone.  The rest of the evening, we only got about eight or ten more, total.  More for us!

 

Sasha, who'd gone out on his own, came back with about twice the amount Aran and Mackie did.

 

A bit later, we had the Samhain ritual.  We lit the candles and ate pie and pomegranate seeds and headed outside to bring all the altar materials indoors.  We put the God statues away and extinguished the flames.  Darkness until Yule.  Then I went outside to say a final good-bye to my grandmother.

Doctors Who

How cruel can I be . . . ?



The one in the red coat.  Yeah, that one.  Did you recognize sazettel ?