My Arisia 2013 Panel Schedule

Arisia--an awesome science-fiction and related interests convention--is sneaking up. Two weeks away, give or take a day. I've been a panelist here for several years. Last year I had a large number of gender-related panels. I decided to mix it up this year and expressed interest in other panel topics. Here's my schedule:

FRIDAY

The Mind of the Nerd: Psychology and Fandom

A Hero Like Me

Worldbuilding with the Soft Sciences

SATURDAY

Being a Sex-Positive Parent

Zombies: Victims of Parasites?

SUNDAY

When Faith and Science Meet

Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading

The Psychology of Villainy  ** I've asked them to take this off my schedule, because my Sunday is crazy.**

Have We Arrived?

Why Zombies? Why Now?

MONDAY

How Fans Hurt and Help Public Faces of Fandom

The Undead and the People That Love Them

The above should be linked to the descriptions. I know the formatting is a bit wonky, because I cut-and-pasted from the site. If the panel titles are NOT linked, go to http://2013.arisia.org/Bios and scroll down until you get to me.

Who's going to Arisia? What are your thoughts on the above panels?

Why I Miss My e-Mail Client

I've been contemplating why I have so much more difficulty keeping track of my "to-do" list now that I'm not working an office job.

I haven't worked for a year and a half, and for a while I figured it was simply that I am better about "getting stuff done" when there is an outside influence providing structure to my days. And that is part of it.

But there is so much disparate stuff to keep track of now... Stuff related to the kids. Bills to be paid. When I have library duty. Medical appointments. And all the stuff related to being a writer: Subscriptions, periodic searches for markets, keeping up with Facebook lists and emails, etc.

For the past year and a half, my ability to stay on top of everything has declined. I am constantly "losing" emails, or not responding to things, or letting balls drop.

I have finally figured out I MISS MICROSOFT OUTLOOK.

My primary email is gmail. It does not provide the ability to color code items to categorize them. (I work best when I can categorize things visually.) Also, I can't follow an entire conversation, because gmail treats every new email--even it's part of a longer discussion--as a discrete email. I WANT TO SEE THE CONVERSATION FFS!

So, I'm trying to use the "Tasks" feature in gmail and I may just have to go back to always having a notebook or something with me to keep notes/to-do's. Because I just can't keep track of it all.

What do you do?