Alarums and Excursions…
After the pressure and excitement of getting the virtual ICG Annual Meeting together (including approval of our new governing documents) I have been head down dealing with work and life issues, and managing a little bit of costuming.
So here we are again, with another 5 months gap since I wrote a post for y’all. Oops. There are reasons, detailed below.
First of all, on the ICG business side, it was brought to my attention that I don’t actually know the status of the reissue of our governing docs. That is a tremendous oversight on my part and I will remedy it and report to y’all as soon as possible.
Chaos, Chaos Everywhere
One major thing going on is I discovered not long after our annual meeting that my research lab in San Jose would be shutting down. Details and reasons for that shutdown, however, were not forthcoming until July when I had to join a meeting remotely while on vacation in Sweden.
Essentially, my work site is being consolidated with another IBM lab a few miles south, except for a few hardware/physics labs like mine which can’t be relocated there. That work will be shifting to the labs in New York, and it makes zero sense for Andy and I to try and maintain two households on opposite coasts when I was already considering retirement in a couple years. My research projects will be among the last to shut down, so my position is coming to an end next summer. There has been (and will be) a lot of scurrying about to get all my ducks in a row financially to prepare for that. This has certainly not helped my performance as ICG President, and frankly it validates many of my reasons for making this my final term.
Dancing Through the Mayhem; Costumes Required
Despite all the aforementioned confusion, I’ve managed a fair amount of costume-related activity through the summer.
Andy and I took a 3-1/2 week trip to Sweden and Åland in late June/early July. This included a wonderful visit with costuming friends in Uppsala, including a private Midsommarafton (Misummer’s eve) gathering at a lake house where we built and raised a Midsummarstång (like a maypole) and singing a very silly song about little frogs as we danced around it. We swam (briefly) in the lake, played at dumb athletics and toasted the shortest night of the year (we weren’t far enough north that the sun stayed above the horizon, but it never got darker than twilight).
We then took the bus-ferry-bus to Mariehamn on Åland, where we attended Archipelacon 2, the 2025 Eurocon. I was privileged to MC the masquerade and it was a wonderful laid back time. Our little group reunited our “Scandinavia and the World” hall costumes for a photo=op.
Andy and I then had a week to ourselves in Stockholm to explore a bit and go to some queer events, and I’m happy to say our Swedish has progressed to the point that we successfully ordered all our meals in Swedish. We plan to return next summer on a tour that will include Stockholm Pride. [And even better: nobody caught Covid on this trip!]
We returned to final preparations for the PenWAG ArtWear! runway show where I had also been invited to be MC, then on to Worldcon in Seattle where I installed the TIki Dalek in Exhibits, ran a Single Pattern Contest and judged the masquerade (op-ed about that experience pending),
And just two weeks ago we were working the Bay Area Gay Rodeo again, where Andy, our friend Cooper, and I were honored to be the Grand Marshals.In a week and a half we’ll be on our way to Reno for the World Gay Rodeo Finals, where, I’m happy to say, we are *not* working but are just sponsoring awards and can sit back and enjoy the show.
Finally, I’ve kept updating my twistedimage.com build diaries, including progress on my new Qubit fursuit project with a Nov 7 deadline for Pac Anthro Weekend (aka PawCon). It’s going to be tight, but this is a “partial” fursuit build (head and paws, to be worn with street clothes. The actual Australian shepherd on whom its coloration is based has given a paws up to the head design (in particular, the ears have the correct flop), as has his owner.
That’s it for this mostly fluffy column. I may have a couple other items in this issue, too, but they deserve their own column inches
Kevin Roche
President, International Costumers Guild
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