Wednesday, September 08
Lack of posts until today can be blamed upon my replacement, for most of the last week, by ZOMBIE KAT. How do you get a ZOMBIE KAT? Simple: take Kat, and send her to WorldCon.
The majority of WorldCon, from my point of view, is a blur of panels, readings, meeting people, parties, meeting people, kaffeklatches, seemingly logical statements like "It's okay, we can sleep on the bus", and meeting people, in a continuing loop, briefly interrupted by things like meals and sleep in barely adequate quantities.
Good fun, in other words.
I am not even going to try and list all the people I met over the five days of con: suffice to say that when you have a boyfriend who appears to know half of fandom, and are surrounded by people who are naturally friendly anyway, and have a really cool tattoo (amusing moment of the con: being identified for audience questions as "You with the tattoos" by Simon R. Green), it doesn't matter much if you aren't naturally outgoing: you're going to be introduced to a lot of people, most of whom you will then be unable to remember important details about, like names and where the hell you know them from. Nor will I attempt to list the panels, because damn, there were a lot of them. I got to do kaffeklatch (organized small groups of people) with a surprising number of cool author types, like John Clute, Connie Willis, Sarah Zettel, Karl Schroeder, Cory Doctorow, and Josepha Sherman. Definition of a good boyfriend: one who, having stood patiently in line for the Connie Willis klatch for half an hour, and who then finds that there is only one slot left, signs you up instead of him. Damn, I love this boy.
I won't regale you all with the thousands of stories that the con produced, like the Saga of Dan's Misappropriated Sandals (aka Why Youth Hostels, While Mostly Good, Can Be Bad) or the Tale of the Lost Email, or, Half An Hour's Serious Panic Before Finding a Bed (many, many, many thanks to the friends who doubled up in a bed so that we wouldn't be sleeping on a park bench somewhere, we love you very very much). Neil Gaiman was very good as the Hugo toastmaster, and the lack of black leather jacket (apparently he was forbidden) made him look adorably geeky, especially when he smiled; and as for Terry Pratchett as Guest of Honor, well. The man can make his own open-heart surgery sound funny. Although, after seeing him at the end of Monday's signing, I have officially sworn off of autograph lines. The pretty writing doesn't mean that much to me.
I had a sip of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but declined more: they'd used Scotch in. Bad Scotch, too.
But I'm home now, after a sixteen-hour bus ride which more or less finished off the last of my energy. I slept like the dead last night, and will probably spend the next two days picking up the scraps of my life, health, and immune system and patching them together until I'm a solid enough monster to lurch off to my scuba dive on Friday. I feel like crap, there's insane amounts of stuff to do, half of my life is still in bags strewn around the bedroom floor, and the milk went off while we were away.
But damn, was it worth it.
The majority of WorldCon, from my point of view, is a blur of panels, readings, meeting people, parties, meeting people, kaffeklatches, seemingly logical statements like "It's okay, we can sleep on the bus", and meeting people, in a continuing loop, briefly interrupted by things like meals and sleep in barely adequate quantities.
Good fun, in other words.
I am not even going to try and list all the people I met over the five days of con: suffice to say that when you have a boyfriend who appears to know half of fandom, and are surrounded by people who are naturally friendly anyway, and have a really cool tattoo (amusing moment of the con: being identified for audience questions as "You with the tattoos" by Simon R. Green), it doesn't matter much if you aren't naturally outgoing: you're going to be introduced to a lot of people, most of whom you will then be unable to remember important details about, like names and where the hell you know them from. Nor will I attempt to list the panels, because damn, there were a lot of them. I got to do kaffeklatch (organized small groups of people) with a surprising number of cool author types, like John Clute, Connie Willis, Sarah Zettel, Karl Schroeder, Cory Doctorow, and Josepha Sherman. Definition of a good boyfriend: one who, having stood patiently in line for the Connie Willis klatch for half an hour, and who then finds that there is only one slot left, signs you up instead of him. Damn, I love this boy.
I won't regale you all with the thousands of stories that the con produced, like the Saga of Dan's Misappropriated Sandals (aka Why Youth Hostels, While Mostly Good, Can Be Bad) or the Tale of the Lost Email, or, Half An Hour's Serious Panic Before Finding a Bed (many, many, many thanks to the friends who doubled up in a bed so that we wouldn't be sleeping on a park bench somewhere, we love you very very much). Neil Gaiman was very good as the Hugo toastmaster, and the lack of black leather jacket (apparently he was forbidden) made him look adorably geeky, especially when he smiled; and as for Terry Pratchett as Guest of Honor, well. The man can make his own open-heart surgery sound funny. Although, after seeing him at the end of Monday's signing, I have officially sworn off of autograph lines. The pretty writing doesn't mean that much to me.
I had a sip of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but declined more: they'd used Scotch in. Bad Scotch, too.
But I'm home now, after a sixteen-hour bus ride which more or less finished off the last of my energy. I slept like the dead last night, and will probably spend the next two days picking up the scraps of my life, health, and immune system and patching them together until I'm a solid enough monster to lurch off to my scuba dive on Friday. I feel like crap, there's insane amounts of stuff to do, half of my life is still in bags strewn around the bedroom floor, and the milk went off while we were away.
But damn, was it worth it.
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