I'm sure WisCOnline is a great thing, and I hope people enjoy it, and I did actually pony up for a supporting membership, because I support it -
But.
It's not an accumulation of things that have become personal traditions over the years, even if one or two of them were things I was already thinking of altering this year because some things do not ( Read more... )

Perhaps everybody's poetic mojo had been all used up on war-poetry? Just that I have been thinking of earlier time of pestilence poems, or maybe that was just that the whole thing seemed generally closer? Or maybe poetry is not the genre, I note that people having been name-checking prose-fiction, whether it's Boccacio, let's go out of the city and ( Read more... )

I am coming around to a consideration that I am officially An Old and in a risk group, though only by reason of age and not for any concomitant reason of health, and therefore that international travel is probably not going to be the most sensible of ideas in the foreseeable future.
I note that An Institution with which I have some association has ( Read more... )

Well, that was a rather successful Wiscon in terms of seeing people and catching up with them and not feeling myself a lorn lone hedjog that time had passed by.
At the moment I am experiencing problems in registering for next year, but at least I have pre-reserved a room at the Concourse.
Another bit of good news is that the alternate, sim-free ( Read more... )

The panel I went to this afternoon, the Vonda McIntyre Memorial, alerted me to an artform that she worked in that I had not known of -
Beaded Crochet Sea Creatures - exquisite and scientifically accurate.
And I was very much reminded of Mrs Delany and her botanically accurate flower collages.
While McIntyre was not quite as old as Delany when she ( Read more... )

In which I saw people and had good conversations* with old friends and with some people that I know less well from online.
Also some nice food - had a BLT sandwich at lunch which was a very superior specimen accompanied by a plethora of sweet potato fries, and Taiwan Little Eats is becoming somewhat of A Thing.
Did fail to attend one panel this pm ( Read more... )

That is, my mobile service providers have credited my account with the enormous sum (it literally ran up to 3 figures) drained off by sneaky apps in the fairly short space of time before I realised this was going on and blocked them.
WIN.
Also got A Good Night's Sleep: a bit restless around 6-7 am or so, and then woke up to my phone alarm at 9, ( Read more... )

Okay, it started as looking like that thing that happened last year when my provider kept telling me I needed to top up even though I had plenty of saved credit, which eventually popped up, but not until I had faffed around topping up -
- but no, this was a new and different thing, whereby I thought I had turned off Data Roaming, but the system ( Read more... )

I'm sure in previous years I've been more beforehand about 'yay, coming to Wiscon', and seeing who else will be there, and talking about arrangements to meet up, and what panels I and others are being on and so on.
Partly this is (probably) down to having had a stack of things I wanted to get off my desk before departure-time, quite apart from, you ( Read more... )

Apparently I am not on any Wiscon panels (miff). At least, I haven't been notified that I am, and looking at the draft programme suggests no, I'm not on any panels. It does not help that I put in my proposals in a bit of a rush way back when feeling pressured by other things but wanting to put down some kind of marker, and, among other things, ( Read more... )