Chairing next Festival!

So since receiving the okay that I may mention this, there is a reason I'm so interested in figuring out why games didn't fill at the con this year. I intend to put the data to practical use, as it looks like I am going to be the con chair for next year's Festival of the Larps! I was asked the other day by natbudin, and he passed my interest along to current con chair zapf, with whom I discussed the duties last night at BSCF.  It doesn't seem difficult, just planning and making sure that things get done. As I said to Sheena last night, I'm mostly in it for the permissions to see what games everybody is in, and to get to pick the theme for next year's con! ;-) I am taking suggestions for that second one, if anyone has any.

I am also seeking for the con committee over the course of the next year, but of course would prefer to line up as far in advance as possible, a bid chair, a GM liason, a housing coordinator, and a master/mistress of the consuite. If you have any questions as to what those positions do, let me know and I'll explain. There are some other positions, but I've been told there is a good shot that those who currently fill them will be willing to do them again next year.

What I REALLY want for my birthday

It always surprises me just how weird people get when I comment that I think celebrating my birthday is silly. I don't mind if other people do, of course, but I can't get into it. I have considered whether it could be related to my mortal fear of aging, and though I do frequently make jokes along the lines of "Oh, yay, I'm one year farther into my metabolism slowing down!" I don't really think that's it. I think it's just mostly that celebrating me for coming into the world, something with which I had very little to do, and buying me material things is just... silly. But still, people tend to think I'm the one that's silly.

So, to silence those yowling annoyances, here's how I will celebrate. I will ask for exactly the kind of celebration of myself that I want. For my birthday, I want compliments.

Last summer we were having a card game night at my house. For some reason the subject of birthdays came up, and I was going on my typical I-don't-like-celebrating-my-birthday spiel like the one I wrote above. I said I also didn't like the ritual of buying people junk; I hate stuff! Why couldn't I, I mused aloud and loudly to my guests, instead ask for something meaningful to me-- why, like compliments! Compliments are the perfect gift-- they make me feel happy and loved, they don't cost you a thing, and they don't sit in the corner collecting dust. My next birthday, I declared, I would ask people to give me compliments as gifts. Apparently I very much offended a guest present that evening (though I'm fairly certain everything I do offends this person in some way) because to their sensibilities it was significantly ruder to ask for compliments than material things, but to me it's the other way around. Asking someone to spend time and money on you is to my mind much more demanding, and simultaneously much less meaningful.

So I'm doing it. Tomorrow I turn the ripe old age of twenty-three, and in celebration of this event, I want everyone who is feels so inclined to write down three compliments that they genuinely have for me. Your love is worth so much more to me than any other kind of gift, so expressions thereof are what I am seeking. Yeah, perhaps soliciting compliments is tacky. If you think I'm being a self-centered juvenile jerk in throwing this out there, well, sure I am-- I'm celebrating my birthday! ;-) In that case, feel free to not comply.

Happy birthday to me. :-)