Hello, I am back from my Forth Worth/Amarillo vacation. I can tell you that North Main BBQ in Euless is LEGIT, you Texans are really onto something with that whole Bluebell ice cream thing, and that it is as fun as you think it is to cuddle four tiny wiggly puppies simultaneously. My boyfriend’s family and friends are awesome and showed me a great time. He’s still back there getting his mom settled in after an extended hospital stay, while I am catching up with my local friends and planning the upcoming semester. I should be back to some kind of regular blogging schedule here. MASSIVE thanks to alphakitty for her heroic moderation efforts while I was gone.
Some announcements:
- If you’re in the Chicago area, I’ll be speaking & reading some stuff from the blog at Northwestern University on Tuesday, January 22nd from 6-7 pm, in the Norris Student Center. Loose topic is “mental health & stress for college students.” There will be a Q&A afterward.
- The great group blog In Our Words has an advice columnist devoted to answering questions from people in the poly & kink communities. I think this is the resource a lot of you have been wanting, yes?
- The London Awkward Community is planning to make their meetups a monthly thing. Details of the next one below.
Dear Awkward Army,The last two London meetups were so successful that we want to make it a regular monthly thing. Next one is the 26th January, and hopefully the last Saturday of every month after that.
The venue last time worked out well, and they’ve offered us discounts (unspecified so far, but possibly free drinks), so I’m sticking with that.
26th January, 11:00 am onwards, Leon restaurant, 36/38 Old Compton Street, London, W1D 4TT.
Leon have a variety of good food at very reasonable prices – for central London, anyway! Menu here:http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/menu/
This branch has an accessible toilet, and we’ll be on the ground floor in the back (around behind the food service counter).
I have long brown hair and glasses. I will bring my plush Cthulhu to use as a table marker. It looks like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/7cb0/
My email address is kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com
Incidentally, I also intend to weep along with Les Miserables that afternoon/evening, at the O2 or elsewhere by arrangement. Let me know if you want to come too!Cheers,
Kate
CaptainAwkward.com 
If I happen to be in the city on Tuesday, I’ll see if I can swing by Evanston for your talk!
(Doubtful, but the sentiment is still the same 🙂 )
Hey Captain! I’m the person who put your name in as a suggestion to the group that invited you to Northwestern and I’m going to be there! I was wondering how early you’ll be on campus and whether or not you wanted to have a meetup with some of your NU fans. We’d love to have the chance to chat with you!
Also, in case you’re interested, we’re having Amanda Marcotte on campus that same evening, right after you. 🙂
Hi Miriam, thanks for recommending me! I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to talk about (sort of writing the talk as we speak, er, over the weekend, or, um, hopefully by Monday. Monday!), but I’m happy to meet up beforehand and I’d love to see/meet Amanda. What’s a good venue that’s close by? I want to be at the center by 5:30.
Awesome! So, there’s actually a Starbucks right outside of the room you’re speaking in, so if you’d like we could just meet there at 5 and get some coffee before it’s time for you to speak. There’s also a bunch of food one floor down from that.
Amanda’s talk is at 7:30 in a nearby building, so there should be plenty of time to get over there afterwards.
Good luck writing your talk! I’m sure it’ll be amazeballs.
5:00, Starbucks, sounds great.
Woo! Should I DM you my number on Twitter just in case?
Yes, please!
Actually, it won’t let me because I think you aren’t following me. AWKWARD. 😛 I will email it.
I’m a housebound agoraphobic, but if I wasn’t, I would enjoy awkwardly meeting some of the awesome people I’ve seen here (by awkwardly lurking) in London.
Maybe one day!
Can’t wait for your NU visit!
Oh no, this is making me extra wish I had not already made other plans for next weekend! I’m in France, not London, but I could totally come over and absolutely would if not for existing plans & bus tickets (which were already causing problems from a different angle too…). Neither can I come on the last Saturday of February, but if you guys do this again in March I totally wanna be there.
Hey, I’m in France too! Clearly we should have our own Awkward meetup, if there’s more of us here…
I’m hoping that having a regular schedule will mean that everyone can come eventually!
If it works out there’s no reason not to meet every month, except maybe bank holidays.
I’m on the other side of the Atlantic, but in case hanging out with awkwardeers was not reason enough to come to London, that place’s menu is extra motivation.
I just read through Jenn Vicious’s advice, and I wouldn’t really call it kink and poly friendly any more than CA is. She’s focusing on the anarchy and (I think) punk communities. Not all, or even most kinksters or poly folk fall into those.
She doesn’t give bad advice, mind. If I were 10 years younger and living in a squat, I’d love it.
Good to know. I didn’t look into it beyond a few questions, but she seemed solid and kind and direct and also enthusiastic about and experienced with poly stuff (recommending many resources, etc.) in a way that I am not. Nobody will ever answer every kind of question perfectly, so I’m glad there are additional folks out there doing this.
Oh, absolutely. For what it goes, although I’ve often been reminded that CA is focused on mostly vanilla and monogamous relationships (when discussion is limited to romantic relationships at all), the advice usually translates well.
Thank you so much for link love. We too think Jenn is fantastic and tend to publish Ask Jenn every Friday (if y’all want to keep coming back to read it).