(no subject)
Home from Reno and getting the apartment cleaned up for my Capclave committee meeting on Sunday.
Enjoyed the tail end of Worldcon. Converted my pre-support and site selction voting into a membership for LoneStarCon3. Went to a couple panels on Joanna Russ. The first featured Theresa Neilsen Hayden, Eileen Gunn and David Hartwell talking about their personal rememberances of Joanna Russ the person and the second was a discussion of her work and featured Farah Mendelsohn. There was some interesting discussion of And Chaos Died as a closeted novel. And of course there was also discussion of the Alyx stories, We Who Are About Too..., and of course The Female Man.
Went to Michael Swanwick's literary beer/kaffeeklatsch which covered an interesting range of topics about his work and travels as well as a bit about Avram Davidson (e.g. Davidson had a very strict "no germans" policy which lead to him ceasing to submit to Asimov's when the parent corporation of the company that bought it was Bertelsman). Also was able to go to Carrie Vaughn's kaffeeklatsch Sunday morning. Went to the closing ceremonies, which featured an amusing presentation by Chicon 7.
Hugos should probably get their own entry. Enjoyed the ceremony, although I didn't think all the comedy bits worked. Was amusing watching Chris Garcia totally lose it when The Drink Tank won for best fanzine.
Only sold 1 membership and 2 books while at Reno, but we did hand out a lot of flyers, bookmarks and business cards. I think we were the only east coast con with a fan table. Talked with a number of people who were relocating to VA and PA and several people picked up flyers and bookmarks for friends and relatives they thought might be interested. Also, I suspect that several people who didn't feel they could make it to the east coast for the con are likely to buy the books we are producing after the con when they become available to the general public. It took some effort, but everyone did end up going home with the dodos they came with.
Atlantis shuttle to the airport showed up on time. Everyone else was flying Southwest. I was the only one taking United. I ended up leaving the hotel earlier than I needed because I'd been told security was a real bottleneck, but there was no one there when I got there, so i breezed through. I ened up not hitting the blackjack tables at the Atlantis to kill time because the tables I was interested in were never open when I was in the casino. given my complete lack of blackjack skills (hold at 17 and double down (whatever that mean) with 11 is all I know), I only wanted to play the $3 or $5 minimum $500 maximum tables and no surprise that they weren't open often. On the plus side, I was up $15 on the slot machines, so on Sunday I cashed in, spent part of it on a snow globe/bottle opener/magnet (because as tacky tourist souvenirs go, it's pretty awesome) and part on steamed pork buns from the hole in the wall chinese restaurant in the strip mall across the street from the hotel (i'd had a decent congee with pork and preserved egg there the day before).
It looked like my flight to SFO might be delayed resulting in missing my connection, but the pilot got the go ahead from air traffic control at both airports to go to the head of the queue and burn fuel to cut the length of the trip in half. The flight attendant did a fabulous job in getting through the mandatory safety information in under 5 minutes complete with comedy bits. She also explained that the reason for the possible delay was due to fog because when SFO was "upgraded" the runways were put closer together in a way requiring visual approach on landing in fog conditions, which effectively cuts inbound capacity by 60% during said fog conditions. I'd like to know wtf sort of genius civil engineer thought that was a good idea at SFO. Fortunately, we landed 20 minutes early and I had no problem making my connection. I even managed to sleep a bit on the plane. We landed on time at BWI. The signage for directions to the B30 bus was pretty crappy (when the corridors fork, that would be a good place to indicate which things are down each corridor, not 20 yards after you've chosen a corridor), but information/travelers aid pointed me in the right direction and then I only had a 10 minute wait for the first bus of the day to the greenbelt metro station. I was able to get a seat on both the green and red lines, which made me happy.
Enjoyed the tail end of Worldcon. Converted my pre-support and site selction voting into a membership for LoneStarCon3. Went to a couple panels on Joanna Russ. The first featured Theresa Neilsen Hayden, Eileen Gunn and David Hartwell talking about their personal rememberances of Joanna Russ the person and the second was a discussion of her work and featured Farah Mendelsohn. There was some interesting discussion of And Chaos Died as a closeted novel. And of course there was also discussion of the Alyx stories, We Who Are About Too..., and of course The Female Man.
Went to Michael Swanwick's literary beer/kaffeeklatsch which covered an interesting range of topics about his work and travels as well as a bit about Avram Davidson (e.g. Davidson had a very strict "no germans" policy which lead to him ceasing to submit to Asimov's when the parent corporation of the company that bought it was Bertelsman). Also was able to go to Carrie Vaughn's kaffeeklatsch Sunday morning. Went to the closing ceremonies, which featured an amusing presentation by Chicon 7.
Hugos should probably get their own entry. Enjoyed the ceremony, although I didn't think all the comedy bits worked. Was amusing watching Chris Garcia totally lose it when The Drink Tank won for best fanzine.
Only sold 1 membership and 2 books while at Reno, but we did hand out a lot of flyers, bookmarks and business cards. I think we were the only east coast con with a fan table. Talked with a number of people who were relocating to VA and PA and several people picked up flyers and bookmarks for friends and relatives they thought might be interested. Also, I suspect that several people who didn't feel they could make it to the east coast for the con are likely to buy the books we are producing after the con when they become available to the general public. It took some effort, but everyone did end up going home with the dodos they came with.
Atlantis shuttle to the airport showed up on time. Everyone else was flying Southwest. I was the only one taking United. I ended up leaving the hotel earlier than I needed because I'd been told security was a real bottleneck, but there was no one there when I got there, so i breezed through. I ened up not hitting the blackjack tables at the Atlantis to kill time because the tables I was interested in were never open when I was in the casino. given my complete lack of blackjack skills (hold at 17 and double down (whatever that mean) with 11 is all I know), I only wanted to play the $3 or $5 minimum $500 maximum tables and no surprise that they weren't open often. On the plus side, I was up $15 on the slot machines, so on Sunday I cashed in, spent part of it on a snow globe/bottle opener/magnet (because as tacky tourist souvenirs go, it's pretty awesome) and part on steamed pork buns from the hole in the wall chinese restaurant in the strip mall across the street from the hotel (i'd had a decent congee with pork and preserved egg there the day before).
It looked like my flight to SFO might be delayed resulting in missing my connection, but the pilot got the go ahead from air traffic control at both airports to go to the head of the queue and burn fuel to cut the length of the trip in half. The flight attendant did a fabulous job in getting through the mandatory safety information in under 5 minutes complete with comedy bits. She also explained that the reason for the possible delay was due to fog because when SFO was "upgraded" the runways were put closer together in a way requiring visual approach on landing in fog conditions, which effectively cuts inbound capacity by 60% during said fog conditions. I'd like to know wtf sort of genius civil engineer thought that was a good idea at SFO. Fortunately, we landed 20 minutes early and I had no problem making my connection. I even managed to sleep a bit on the plane. We landed on time at BWI. The signage for directions to the B30 bus was pretty crappy (when the corridors fork, that would be a good place to indicate which things are down each corridor, not 20 yards after you've chosen a corridor), but information/travelers aid pointed me in the right direction and then I only had a 10 minute wait for the first bus of the day to the greenbelt metro station. I was able to get a seat on both the green and red lines, which made me happy.