One Half Buddhist, One Half Christian, One Half Pagan

Body: I can't seem to get warm the last few days, except when I'm way too warm. It's getting annoying.

Stress Level: 2

Reading: I'm almost done with The Born Queen. I'm enjoying it, but I agree with many of the reviewers on Amazon that it is flawed. I'll give a slightly more detailed review once I actually finish it.

Hearing: At this exact moment, "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin

Etsy Find: Silver Skeleton Key Necklace.

Tonight's Project: I need a new purse, so I'll probably make a stop or two on the way home from work. Other than that, just making dinner, and maybe some knitting.

Randomness: Arisia was so much fun! I didn't make it to as many panels as I would have liked, but the ones I did get to were pretty much all great. I did make it to two different readings, and discovered a few new (to me) authors to check out. Lots of window shopping, but very little actual buying of stuff. A couple of parties Saturday night, which were fun. The Barfleet one was best, but so crowded that you could barely turn around. The friends Tom & I brought with us also had fun, so overall I'm calling the con a success.

Arisia was a great con this year.

I made it to several good panels, my favorite of which was "Humor and Fandom." The discussion there was about what makes geek/fan humor different from mainstream humor. The conclusion we eventually came to was that fan humor tends to depend more on references than other types of humor do and that word-play, absurdities, and context are also more important. Another great panel was "The Undefended Borders of SF," talking about books that blur (or completely erase) the line between science fiction and fantasy. I don't remember many of the specific things discussed, but I got a great list of titles and authors to look into out of it.

This was the first time that I used my Kindle to take notes on panels rather than pen and paper. I think it will work better eventually, but I still need to work some bugs out of the system.

I made to two of S.J. Tucker's shows. They were both good, but I liked the Saturday show, which was mostly songs related to myth and legend, better than Sunday's pirate themed show.

I did a lot of browsing on Dealer's Row, but relatively little buying. My big purchase was twenty dollars worth of beautiful silk embroidery floss from some folks sharing a room with Poison Pen Press. I think it was Terra Incognita, but they don't seem to have a website for me to link to. I was lusting after the beautiful hand dyed silk clothing from this dealer, but I decided that I shouldn't spend that much money right now. I also bought another pin from Nancy's Buttons. This one says "Intelligent Design?" my knees say *not*. That one is not going on my con bag. It will get pinned to my shirt at each and every con I go to.

Speaking of my con bag, I was told by a couple of people that they remember me by my bag rather than my face. This gave me the idea of using a picture of it for the icon on fandom and con related posts. onyxhawke took a picture of my bag, which I'll post after he does. I made the icon on this post from that picture, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep using this version or if I'll make a new one from a better lit picture.

I spent time at two parties on Saturday night. The first was the Carl Brandon Society's party, where I chatted with onyxhawke (and he took the picture of my bag), yendi, and shadesong. I didn't stay very long there, since it was a lot of people in a fairly small room and I reached my noise & body heat tolerance fairly quickly. After that I went up to the LunaCon party, which was fewer people in a bigger room. I spent a couple of hours there sitting at a table and talking to a bunch of people, most of who's names I never caught. The only name I did learn was Esther Friesner. She, and everybody else I hung out with at the Lunacon party, was a pleasure to talk with.

Sunday was much like Saturday. Panels, people watching, and browsing the dealers. Tom & I hit the road for home a little after 9pm. The weather kept going back and forth between rain and snow, and the roads were awful, so what should have been a three hour drive ended up taking closer to 4.5 hours. However, nothing exciting happened on the drive, so I'm going to call it a win.

I am home!

Lunacon was fun, with good panels and good hanging out with friends both old and new.

I spent a large chunk of the weekend at Albacon. It's a nice enough con, but very small. I don't think I'm going to bother with it next year unless the guest of honor is a must see.

My favorite panel was on Saturday, discussing the question of whether real science is a requirement of science fiction. The consensus was that if the science is the focus it had better be right, but if it's more of a background element you can get away with fudging it. My least favorite was on Sunday. It was listed as Urban Fantasy 101, but it slid into a discussion of Paranormal Romance fairly quickly. There were interesting moments, but half the panelists didn't seem to have a good reason for being there and the other half were all Paranormal Romance authors who didn't want to talk about other types of Urban Fantasy.

I mostly had fun.

Went to a few good panels, a bunch of so-so ones, and a few awful ones.

Spent a lot of time in the game room playing Set with anyone who was interested.

Got some bad family news, and spent time worrying about that. (Part of why I spent so much time playing Set. The game uses my whole brain, without actually requiring me to think. Useful when trying not to worry too much about something.)

Spent part of the drive home brainstorming with Jaime about the Pennsic Podcast he's thinking about doing.

Very, very, very tired.

Went to a lot of panels that were very good, in spite of the fact that they did an awful job of staying on topic (or at least what I had thought the topic would be.)

Did some shopping; bought 5 fun pins and two books, one of which I bought while the author was browsing the same dealer and who signed it for me.

Met several nice people, and since arriving home have friended many of them here on LJ. Re-met and had actual conversations with several other nice people.

Danced a little on Saturday night, but got pooped early and went back to the hotel room.

In the course of my wanderings I collected lists of bunches of movies, authors, books, and LJs to check out.

Overall a good week-end.

It was mostly pretty good. The panels were great, and the "Game Show" Saturday night was hysterical. My room was nice, with a truly decadent number of pillows, and the restaurant in the hotel was good.

However, the times when I wasn't at a panel, sleeping, or eating were... a little lonely. I'm still very new to science fiction conventions and don't really know anybody in "the scene." There are a few people who's LJ's I read who were there, but I didn't really feel comfortable approaching them because as far as I know they don't read my LJ and therefore they have no idea who I am.

I think next time I go to a con I'm going to bring Set, and whenever I start to feel the need to talk to someone I'll start playing in a public place. The game makes a great icebreaker.

The next con (that I've heard of) that sounds interesting is Philcon, in Philidelphia in November.

So Tom and I just got home from Arisia. It was the first Science Fiction Convention either of us had ever been to, and it was a lot of fun.

The panels were very interesting, and most of them managed to stay more or less on topic. The dealers had some very fun stuff, most of which was out of our price range at the moment, but it was still cool to look.

I made it to a few meet and greets, one for LJ and the other for BPAL (a very interesting line of perfume oils), and a bunch of panels. My panels were mostly on building plausible worlds to set a science fiction or fantasy story in. Tom went to several on different aspects of science fiction as a subculture and we both went to some on the science behind the fiction.

The Rocky Horror screening Friday night was a bit disappointing (too much pre-show and so much floor show that it drowned out the movie), but the club dance on Saturday night was a blast. I actually danced!

Cons are absolutely something Tom & I will be doing more of.

Off to read the flist.