Somewhere OVFF the beaten track: welcome to SUNDAY!
Ah, Sunday, Sunday. The sweetest of days -- there's rarely anything major that needs to be done, which means all my time is my own, and I can spend it as I see fit, frittering it on friends and fripperies and con suite conversations. The sourest of days -- the convention is sliding towards an end, and the weekend that once seemed to be filled with limitless possibilities is now so very limited, so very constrained by its own mortality. People begin to vanish, slipping out of the hotel and back onto the road like ghosts. People start saying things like 'next con' and 'next year'. And the con suite is almost invariably out of Diet Dr Pepper.
Sunday at OVFF always makes me feel like Timothy at the end of Ray Bradbury's Homecoming -- the short story, and not the book that it eventually became. Just one very small person, watching the world dismantle itself around me, hearing people talk about a next time that's so far in the future that it might as well be a fairy tale. (And yes, I love this story beyond all sense or reason, and yes, I read it young enough that it's got hooks all the way to the back of my brain. Why do you ask? Don't you know these things by now?)
But the thing about Sunday -- for all its sadness and all its sweetness and all the misty nostalgia that we start wrapping around the day as soon as it's over, forgetting the sniffles and the short tempers and the exhaustion that starts fraying the entire convention somewhere around midnight on Saturday -- the thing about Sunday is that the convention isn't over. Maybe you're tired, and maybe you're grumpy, and maybe you're planning to beat somebody to death with your songbook (a real threat, coming from me), but the convention is still going on. Yippee!
I woke slow, I woke easy, and, as is often the case when I'm not rooming with either Larissa or Alex W., I woke up first. Such is the life of an early riser in the filk world: you can pretty reliably expect to be the only living person in a world of the dead.
Maybe that's why I like it so much.
Having arisen when most sensible filkers were still abed, I went wandering down to the one spot guaranteed to have someone in it that I could talk to: the con suite. (I will now take a moment to digress, as if this con report weren't chock-a-block full of digressions. For the past several years, if I woke up early on Sunday, I have then proceeded to burn off excess energy by going jogging up and down the halls, or, if I was feeling really masochistic, going running around the outside of the hotel. Because nothing says 'keeping energy levels low enough that no one kills you' like senseless energy. So this sudden, forced retreat to con suite was a little disconcerting, and I can't say it particularly pleased me.) The walk to the con suite also allowed me to perform my currently standard systems check for pain levels and overall physical functionality. All systems seemed, blessedly, to be remaining in a state of 'go'. No clue why, sure as heck not gonna argue. Thank you, body, for electing to work for once.
No matter how early a riser you happen to be, someone else will almost certainly be up before you, either because they're an even earlier riser, or because they haven't been to bed yet. If you're lucky, this person will be someone you know, like, and don't mind spending time with before anyone's had enough coffee/caffeinated drink of choice to really get their filters up and into place. I got lucky this year, as my arrival in the con suite rewarded me with not one, but two people who fit that description: Jordan and Will. Hurrah!
(For those of you playing the home version of this game, Jordan, aka mannoftalent, used to be a California filker and has since tranformed himself into a Chicago filker. This is because Jordan is insane, although Merav will point out that he started in New York, so California really doesn't have any rights to him. Pah. California has rights to whatever I say it has rights to. Jordan has also adopted the fascinating technique of petting me whenever I smack him, believing that this will bemuse me into wandering off. In point of fact, it encourages me to hit him in order to get pettins. Never let this man train your dog.
Will, on the other hand, is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of my existence, having been 'acquired' this past summer, when Interfilk sent me to Maryland. While he didn't accompany us on any of the walking tours of the local area -- the ones where we learned that a) roadside berries taste like burning, and b) this won't actually stop me from continuing to eat them -- he did have dinner with the entire tour group, and has since proven to be an entertaining, intelligent, endlessly engaging addition to the long-distance social circle. So yay for Will.)
We proceeded to have one of those sprawling, totally disconnected discussions that really only work when all parties involved are totally sleep-deprived and running on fumes. I don't remember a damn thing we talked about, except that we didn't talk about Heroes at all, which I found deeply soothing. (I don't watch Heroes. I keep meaning to, and then people refuse to stop telling me about it, and I decide to do something that doesn't irritate me, like scrubbing out my bathtub. I managed to get trapped -- literally trapped -- in no fewer than four Heroes discussions over the course of the convention. This is the part where Seanan weeps for Babylon, yo.) Eventually, other people began appearing, and we talked to them as well, being very liberal in our early morning amusement-seeking behaviours.
As I had an apple left over from an earlier Whole Foods run, I was able to eat enough to keep me from making anyone dead, and when I eventually tired of standing around the con suite talking, I wandered down to the dealer's room, accompanied by Will, to see who needed to have refills of what CDs. Juanita had placed her order before the con, largely because she didn't have any Stars Fall Home at all; the Ropers hadn't needed a pre-con order, but by the time we hit Sunday, both tables were starting to look a little bit sparse. Since I really didn't want to take any CDs home if I could help it, I greeted this circumstance with a great deal of joy. Yay for restocking dealers! Yay for suddenly having more space in my luggage! Yay all the live-long way around!
Restocking dealers, of course, meant needing to have CDs in hand; I determined how many were needed by all parties concerned, and promised to bring them by later, before raiding the Ropers for the pile of 'I need to buy this' CDs that I'd been slowly assembling over the course of the weekend (and yes, the final size of the pile was partially determined by how many of my own CDs I was able to sell, why do you ask?). I got some goodies, because I am a good blonde, and good blondes get to get goodies. So there. Will also got a large number of goodies, and was one of several people using my list of ten filk albums as something of a checklist. Hee. Since I've heard no real complaints about my recommendations, as yet, I'm pretty much okay with this.
And now: retreat to room, to put things away, and because I was getting really, really, eat the flesh of the living if they refuse to feed me, really hungry. We found Merav along the way, and I expressed my hunger unto her, following it with a pointed reminder that Jon had the keys to the rental car. I am not a subtle blonde, especially when unfed. Will trailed along in our wake, content to accompany, until it became clear to him that I was fully intending to wake the still-sleeping Jon to make him take me to the Baja Fresh, where I could be properly fed. Folks, Will is a gentleman and a scholar, because his response to this realization wasn't 'sucker', but was, instead, 'you realize that I have a car?'. And thus were the last sweet bits of Jon's sleep saved, because someone else was willing to take me to food.
Columbus, Ohio is awesome for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons -- at least if you happen to be me -- is its possession of a Baja Fresh Mexican Grill. I am a simple soul and I like simple things. Like chain restaurants that always serve me exactly what I'm expecting when I place my order. (Yes, I know that I have little sense of adventure where food is concerned, unless you're talking about something I found growing by the side of the road. At the end of the day? I just don't care. I'm a picky eater, and I deal.) Baja Fresh is one of my favourite restaurant chains, and although they fell out of grace for a little while when they changed their menu in ways I didn't approve of, they have restored themselves to glory in my eyes by bringing back the shrimp-based menu options. Yay, Baja Fresh.
The Columbus Baja Fresh is made extra-special-awesome by being located right next to a Starbucks. When it came into view, I squealed with delight. Will looked disconcerted. Don't worry, honey. You'll learn.
Lunch was a shrimp salad and a Pumpkin Spice Frappochino light, no whip, with an extra pump of pumpkin for me, and a Baja taco for Will. Merav, who had accompanied us for the sake of the conversation, did not eat, but did have a lovely time chatting about this, that, and the other thing until the time of eating was done, and the time of returning to the hotel had at last come upon us. Whee.
Back at the hotel, we all split up, and I was delighted to finally catch up with Peggi, who had placed a CD order several weeks prior to the convention. Being a dealer, she wanted quite a few CDs; being Canadian, I was terrified that if I mailed them, they'd fall into the black hole that seems to have devoured so many of the international orders. OVFF seemed like the perfect compromise, as it both saved her the cost of postage, and meant we'd both know when those CDs were delivered. (The CDs were in my luggage. The luggage that went missing initially. In retrospect, I have to wonder if whatever curse is hitting my orders might not have tried to stop them from getting to Peggi. But they got there, so maybe the curse is broken now! Right? Right? Guys?) Jon was awake by that point, which was good, as the hand-off happened in our hotel room.
With Peggi's order finally fulfilled, I was able to determine how many I had left of each CD, and fill my requests from the Ropers and Juanita. Ironically, it turned out that I didn't have enough copies of PLDG, while I had about ten more copies of SFH than I actually needed. Oh, well. It's a difficult sort of math, one largely determined by supply, demand, and who happens to show up at any given con, and the fact that I've managed to get it good enough that I'm carrying less than a box of CDs home (on average) means I'm doing pretty well.
The day was getting older, and people were disappearing. In our hotel room, Batya was packing up to head off for the airport, having been unable to stay for the Dead Dog. Erin was already long-gone, having vanished before most of us were even awake. That's the real sorrow of Sunday at a convention; not the fact that the con is going to end, but the people who have to leave before it's even over. No matter how hard we try, we never get to say goodbye to everyone we care about. That's just the way it is. That doesn't make it any easier.
Sunday, for me, passed from there in a haze of milling around, hugging people, and confirming that so-and-so was going to be at the Dinner Run, or at the Dead Dog afterwards. The closing jam eventually started, led brilliantly by the fabulous Barry Childs-Helton, and I went in and sat with Vixy, Batya and Will on the floor, singing along, holding on to the last official moments of OVFF just as tightly as I could. Everything after that jam, no matter how much a part of the convention it seems, isn't real in the same way.
During the closing jam, I managed to get snuggles from Jan's ball python, Spot, whom I adore beyond all reason -- and if I didn't mention this earlier, I should mention now that Jan, who is wonderful and awesome and amazing, repaired my clone necklace, which was beginning to fray from all the love that it's received. Spider made it for me (Mars has a matching one), and it's one of my most beloved, most-frequently-worn pieces of jewelry. Jan is made of win, yo.
All good things must come to an end, and that includes the OVFF closing jam. Sad. On the plus side, after the jam comes the Dead Dog Dinner Run, when we all pile into a variety of vehicles and descend like locusts on BD's Mongolian Barbeque to eat and laugh and be happy. Joyous! And also, this year, funny, because, well...
I didn't realize that the timing of Batya's flight meant that Merav and Jon would be taking her to the airport as the dinner run was getting started. Vixy didn't realize that when the dinner run actually gets underway, it moves quickly, so failure to be in the con suite at something close to light-speed may strand you at the hotel. I didn't realize that she and Tony thought we were waiting in the lobby. Comedy of errors, table for three. Rob, Amy, Larissa and I were almost to the restaurant when I got a plaintive phone call from Vixy, asking where their ride was. Ooops.
Attempts to juggle cars finally resulted in Rob and I dropping everybody else off at BD's, while he and I returned to the hotel and nabbed our missing folks, who were waiting in the lobby, looking sad. Don't be sad, emo Vixy, it's time for the world's best Mongolian BBQ. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
At the restaurant, the table nabbed by Larissa and Amy proved to have other people at it, so I heartlessly abandoned my ride back to the hotel to sit with Vixy, Tony, Leslie and Tom. Sorry, sweeties. If it helps, y'know, I went home with you. Tony was super-cute during dinner; at one point we were just sitting there going "You have a Pegasus" to one another and giggling like loons. Home is where your hysterical laughter is. Conversation was good, and covered a lot of topics that I think about a lot; food was better, because that is the way of BD's Mongolian Barbeque, the Mongolian place so good that it's made me stop eating at any other Mongolian places. Which is probably for the best, calorie-count-wise.
After dinner, Rob, Larissa, Amy and I detoured to the Whole Foods to get water, apples, and the all-important, last-time-before-leaving-Ohio pumpkin parfait. I am a predictable blonde, but that means I spend a lot of time getting what I want. Finding the apples (Honeycrisp for me, Gala for Vixy) was easy. Finding me a pumpkin parfait was hard, as we arrived at the bakery to find them entirely absent. I became the saddest of all sad blondes, dismaying the bakery rep on-duty considerably, as she wasn't accustomed to me. So sad. But my sadness caused me to duck my head just so, and there, shining like a star at the back of the bakery freezer, was the last pumpkin parfait. Happy blonde! So happy! Yay and joy and pumpkin parfaits for all.
(I have been informed that watching me eat a pumpkin parfait borders on pornographic. I am not arguing with this assessment, because damn, I love the things.)
We returned to the hotel, and joined the Dead Dog circle already in progress. It would swell and shrink and swell again over the course of the evening, gradually expanding to fill all available space. I heard fabulous music. Tom Smith damn near killed me with 'The Undead Happy Trees'. Tony, Vixy, Amy and I performed 'Tanglewood Tree' for Melissa Glasser, after Daniel had serenaded us with 'Close Your Eyes'. Debbie did 'Phantom Doll'. Ben Newman did his reworked 'Starseed'. Will sang a lovely new parody about going on 'Beauty and the Geek'. Vixy, thanks to technological wizardry and Rob Balder, actually performed her Gorey song for the first time. Big, big love. And me, I sat and drew, and I sang, and I was surrounded by people I adore, and I was happy.
At one point, I went out into the hall and called Alisa and Luis, to give them the Pegasus results. Shrieking and congratulations followed, until I passed the phone to Rand for a different sort of shrieking. Giggle.
Will and I went wandering to talk for a while, and when we came back to the circle, it had turned into a poker chip bardic. Not being a big fan of that type of circle, I wandered again, this time up to my room, to spend about an hour packing and repacking and generally forcing all my things into the available suitcase space. My Pegasus trophy went into the carry-on bags, thanks very muchly. Merav and Jon came with me, to keep me from stealing their stuff by mistake, and Amy joined us for a bit, to talk about album production and how recording works. And then it was time to sleep, and let the last bits of the day slide through our hands, like stars.
It was a good con, and a good year, and I loved it very much.
I already bought my membership for 2008.
Next up: Monday, and getting the hell home.
Sunday at OVFF always makes me feel like Timothy at the end of Ray Bradbury's Homecoming -- the short story, and not the book that it eventually became. Just one very small person, watching the world dismantle itself around me, hearing people talk about a next time that's so far in the future that it might as well be a fairy tale. (And yes, I love this story beyond all sense or reason, and yes, I read it young enough that it's got hooks all the way to the back of my brain. Why do you ask? Don't you know these things by now?)
But the thing about Sunday -- for all its sadness and all its sweetness and all the misty nostalgia that we start wrapping around the day as soon as it's over, forgetting the sniffles and the short tempers and the exhaustion that starts fraying the entire convention somewhere around midnight on Saturday -- the thing about Sunday is that the convention isn't over. Maybe you're tired, and maybe you're grumpy, and maybe you're planning to beat somebody to death with your songbook (a real threat, coming from me), but the convention is still going on. Yippee!
I woke slow, I woke easy, and, as is often the case when I'm not rooming with either Larissa or Alex W., I woke up first. Such is the life of an early riser in the filk world: you can pretty reliably expect to be the only living person in a world of the dead.
Maybe that's why I like it so much.
Having arisen when most sensible filkers were still abed, I went wandering down to the one spot guaranteed to have someone in it that I could talk to: the con suite. (I will now take a moment to digress, as if this con report weren't chock-a-block full of digressions. For the past several years, if I woke up early on Sunday, I have then proceeded to burn off excess energy by going jogging up and down the halls, or, if I was feeling really masochistic, going running around the outside of the hotel. Because nothing says 'keeping energy levels low enough that no one kills you' like senseless energy. So this sudden, forced retreat to con suite was a little disconcerting, and I can't say it particularly pleased me.) The walk to the con suite also allowed me to perform my currently standard systems check for pain levels and overall physical functionality. All systems seemed, blessedly, to be remaining in a state of 'go'. No clue why, sure as heck not gonna argue. Thank you, body, for electing to work for once.
No matter how early a riser you happen to be, someone else will almost certainly be up before you, either because they're an even earlier riser, or because they haven't been to bed yet. If you're lucky, this person will be someone you know, like, and don't mind spending time with before anyone's had enough coffee/caffeinated drink of choice to really get their filters up and into place. I got lucky this year, as my arrival in the con suite rewarded me with not one, but two people who fit that description: Jordan and Will. Hurrah!
(For those of you playing the home version of this game, Jordan, aka mannoftalent, used to be a California filker and has since tranformed himself into a Chicago filker. This is because Jordan is insane, although Merav will point out that he started in New York, so California really doesn't have any rights to him. Pah. California has rights to whatever I say it has rights to. Jordan has also adopted the fascinating technique of petting me whenever I smack him, believing that this will bemuse me into wandering off. In point of fact, it encourages me to hit him in order to get pettins. Never let this man train your dog.
Will, on the other hand, is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of my existence, having been 'acquired' this past summer, when Interfilk sent me to Maryland. While he didn't accompany us on any of the walking tours of the local area -- the ones where we learned that a) roadside berries taste like burning, and b) this won't actually stop me from continuing to eat them -- he did have dinner with the entire tour group, and has since proven to be an entertaining, intelligent, endlessly engaging addition to the long-distance social circle. So yay for Will.)
We proceeded to have one of those sprawling, totally disconnected discussions that really only work when all parties involved are totally sleep-deprived and running on fumes. I don't remember a damn thing we talked about, except that we didn't talk about Heroes at all, which I found deeply soothing. (I don't watch Heroes. I keep meaning to, and then people refuse to stop telling me about it, and I decide to do something that doesn't irritate me, like scrubbing out my bathtub. I managed to get trapped -- literally trapped -- in no fewer than four Heroes discussions over the course of the convention. This is the part where Seanan weeps for Babylon, yo.) Eventually, other people began appearing, and we talked to them as well, being very liberal in our early morning amusement-seeking behaviours.
As I had an apple left over from an earlier Whole Foods run, I was able to eat enough to keep me from making anyone dead, and when I eventually tired of standing around the con suite talking, I wandered down to the dealer's room, accompanied by Will, to see who needed to have refills of what CDs. Juanita had placed her order before the con, largely because she didn't have any Stars Fall Home at all; the Ropers hadn't needed a pre-con order, but by the time we hit Sunday, both tables were starting to look a little bit sparse. Since I really didn't want to take any CDs home if I could help it, I greeted this circumstance with a great deal of joy. Yay for restocking dealers! Yay for suddenly having more space in my luggage! Yay all the live-long way around!
Restocking dealers, of course, meant needing to have CDs in hand; I determined how many were needed by all parties concerned, and promised to bring them by later, before raiding the Ropers for the pile of 'I need to buy this' CDs that I'd been slowly assembling over the course of the weekend (and yes, the final size of the pile was partially determined by how many of my own CDs I was able to sell, why do you ask?). I got some goodies, because I am a good blonde, and good blondes get to get goodies. So there. Will also got a large number of goodies, and was one of several people using my list of ten filk albums as something of a checklist. Hee. Since I've heard no real complaints about my recommendations, as yet, I'm pretty much okay with this.
And now: retreat to room, to put things away, and because I was getting really, really, eat the flesh of the living if they refuse to feed me, really hungry. We found Merav along the way, and I expressed my hunger unto her, following it with a pointed reminder that Jon had the keys to the rental car. I am not a subtle blonde, especially when unfed. Will trailed along in our wake, content to accompany, until it became clear to him that I was fully intending to wake the still-sleeping Jon to make him take me to the Baja Fresh, where I could be properly fed. Folks, Will is a gentleman and a scholar, because his response to this realization wasn't 'sucker', but was, instead, 'you realize that I have a car?'. And thus were the last sweet bits of Jon's sleep saved, because someone else was willing to take me to food.
Columbus, Ohio is awesome for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons -- at least if you happen to be me -- is its possession of a Baja Fresh Mexican Grill. I am a simple soul and I like simple things. Like chain restaurants that always serve me exactly what I'm expecting when I place my order. (Yes, I know that I have little sense of adventure where food is concerned, unless you're talking about something I found growing by the side of the road. At the end of the day? I just don't care. I'm a picky eater, and I deal.) Baja Fresh is one of my favourite restaurant chains, and although they fell out of grace for a little while when they changed their menu in ways I didn't approve of, they have restored themselves to glory in my eyes by bringing back the shrimp-based menu options. Yay, Baja Fresh.
The Columbus Baja Fresh is made extra-special-awesome by being located right next to a Starbucks. When it came into view, I squealed with delight. Will looked disconcerted. Don't worry, honey. You'll learn.
Lunch was a shrimp salad and a Pumpkin Spice Frappochino light, no whip, with an extra pump of pumpkin for me, and a Baja taco for Will. Merav, who had accompanied us for the sake of the conversation, did not eat, but did have a lovely time chatting about this, that, and the other thing until the time of eating was done, and the time of returning to the hotel had at last come upon us. Whee.
Back at the hotel, we all split up, and I was delighted to finally catch up with Peggi, who had placed a CD order several weeks prior to the convention. Being a dealer, she wanted quite a few CDs; being Canadian, I was terrified that if I mailed them, they'd fall into the black hole that seems to have devoured so many of the international orders. OVFF seemed like the perfect compromise, as it both saved her the cost of postage, and meant we'd both know when those CDs were delivered. (The CDs were in my luggage. The luggage that went missing initially. In retrospect, I have to wonder if whatever curse is hitting my orders might not have tried to stop them from getting to Peggi. But they got there, so maybe the curse is broken now! Right? Right? Guys?) Jon was awake by that point, which was good, as the hand-off happened in our hotel room.
With Peggi's order finally fulfilled, I was able to determine how many I had left of each CD, and fill my requests from the Ropers and Juanita. Ironically, it turned out that I didn't have enough copies of PLDG, while I had about ten more copies of SFH than I actually needed. Oh, well. It's a difficult sort of math, one largely determined by supply, demand, and who happens to show up at any given con, and the fact that I've managed to get it good enough that I'm carrying less than a box of CDs home (on average) means I'm doing pretty well.
The day was getting older, and people were disappearing. In our hotel room, Batya was packing up to head off for the airport, having been unable to stay for the Dead Dog. Erin was already long-gone, having vanished before most of us were even awake. That's the real sorrow of Sunday at a convention; not the fact that the con is going to end, but the people who have to leave before it's even over. No matter how hard we try, we never get to say goodbye to everyone we care about. That's just the way it is. That doesn't make it any easier.
Sunday, for me, passed from there in a haze of milling around, hugging people, and confirming that so-and-so was going to be at the Dinner Run, or at the Dead Dog afterwards. The closing jam eventually started, led brilliantly by the fabulous Barry Childs-Helton, and I went in and sat with Vixy, Batya and Will on the floor, singing along, holding on to the last official moments of OVFF just as tightly as I could. Everything after that jam, no matter how much a part of the convention it seems, isn't real in the same way.
During the closing jam, I managed to get snuggles from Jan's ball python, Spot, whom I adore beyond all reason -- and if I didn't mention this earlier, I should mention now that Jan, who is wonderful and awesome and amazing, repaired my clone necklace, which was beginning to fray from all the love that it's received. Spider made it for me (Mars has a matching one), and it's one of my most beloved, most-frequently-worn pieces of jewelry. Jan is made of win, yo.
All good things must come to an end, and that includes the OVFF closing jam. Sad. On the plus side, after the jam comes the Dead Dog Dinner Run, when we all pile into a variety of vehicles and descend like locusts on BD's Mongolian Barbeque to eat and laugh and be happy. Joyous! And also, this year, funny, because, well...
I didn't realize that the timing of Batya's flight meant that Merav and Jon would be taking her to the airport as the dinner run was getting started. Vixy didn't realize that when the dinner run actually gets underway, it moves quickly, so failure to be in the con suite at something close to light-speed may strand you at the hotel. I didn't realize that she and Tony thought we were waiting in the lobby. Comedy of errors, table for three. Rob, Amy, Larissa and I were almost to the restaurant when I got a plaintive phone call from Vixy, asking where their ride was. Ooops.
Attempts to juggle cars finally resulted in Rob and I dropping everybody else off at BD's, while he and I returned to the hotel and nabbed our missing folks, who were waiting in the lobby, looking sad. Don't be sad, emo Vixy, it's time for the world's best Mongolian BBQ. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
At the restaurant, the table nabbed by Larissa and Amy proved to have other people at it, so I heartlessly abandoned my ride back to the hotel to sit with Vixy, Tony, Leslie and Tom. Sorry, sweeties. If it helps, y'know, I went home with you. Tony was super-cute during dinner; at one point we were just sitting there going "You have a Pegasus" to one another and giggling like loons. Home is where your hysterical laughter is. Conversation was good, and covered a lot of topics that I think about a lot; food was better, because that is the way of BD's Mongolian Barbeque, the Mongolian place so good that it's made me stop eating at any other Mongolian places. Which is probably for the best, calorie-count-wise.
After dinner, Rob, Larissa, Amy and I detoured to the Whole Foods to get water, apples, and the all-important, last-time-before-leaving-Ohio pumpkin parfait. I am a predictable blonde, but that means I spend a lot of time getting what I want. Finding the apples (Honeycrisp for me, Gala for Vixy) was easy. Finding me a pumpkin parfait was hard, as we arrived at the bakery to find them entirely absent. I became the saddest of all sad blondes, dismaying the bakery rep on-duty considerably, as she wasn't accustomed to me. So sad. But my sadness caused me to duck my head just so, and there, shining like a star at the back of the bakery freezer, was the last pumpkin parfait. Happy blonde! So happy! Yay and joy and pumpkin parfaits for all.
(I have been informed that watching me eat a pumpkin parfait borders on pornographic. I am not arguing with this assessment, because damn, I love the things.)
We returned to the hotel, and joined the Dead Dog circle already in progress. It would swell and shrink and swell again over the course of the evening, gradually expanding to fill all available space. I heard fabulous music. Tom Smith damn near killed me with 'The Undead Happy Trees'. Tony, Vixy, Amy and I performed 'Tanglewood Tree' for Melissa Glasser, after Daniel had serenaded us with 'Close Your Eyes'. Debbie did 'Phantom Doll'. Ben Newman did his reworked 'Starseed'. Will sang a lovely new parody about going on 'Beauty and the Geek'. Vixy, thanks to technological wizardry and Rob Balder, actually performed her Gorey song for the first time. Big, big love. And me, I sat and drew, and I sang, and I was surrounded by people I adore, and I was happy.
At one point, I went out into the hall and called Alisa and Luis, to give them the Pegasus results. Shrieking and congratulations followed, until I passed the phone to Rand for a different sort of shrieking. Giggle.
Will and I went wandering to talk for a while, and when we came back to the circle, it had turned into a poker chip bardic. Not being a big fan of that type of circle, I wandered again, this time up to my room, to spend about an hour packing and repacking and generally forcing all my things into the available suitcase space. My Pegasus trophy went into the carry-on bags, thanks very muchly. Merav and Jon came with me, to keep me from stealing their stuff by mistake, and Amy joined us for a bit, to talk about album production and how recording works. And then it was time to sleep, and let the last bits of the day slide through our hands, like stars.
It was a good con, and a good year, and I loved it very much.
I already bought my membership for 2008.
Next up: Monday, and getting the hell home.