The return of the linear dream. Now with musical production numbers.
Oh, brain, you gotta be kidding me. After months and months of relatively peaceful, undisrupted sleep, you decide it's time for the return of the linear dreams? Did I do something to offend you? Was it all that popcorn I ate yesterday? Or maybe you just decided that I was sleeping too restfully. Whatever the case, last night was one long, linear trip to the 2013 Worldcon, in Baltimore, Maryland, where I was over-worked, over-stressed, under-fed and under-slept. And that, as anyone who knows me can attest, means 'Toastmaster'. Because that is just the sort of thing I need to give me a restful night's sleep. Hey, brain? SCREW YOU.
So, yadda yadda, recap. Maybe it's actually important this time, since this 'series' went on such a long hiatus. I'm blaming the writer's strike. Anyway, this set of dreams is set some generally-undefined amount of time in the future; this is one of the few installments with a really firm date, as it posits a 2013 Baltimore WorldCon. (As far as I know, Baltimore does not have a bid in for 2013. I don't even know whether it would be a legal bid under the convention bylaws. As I was asleep when my brain decided to come up with this convention, I don't feel particularly bad about any possible mathematical inaccuracies.) At the time of the dreams, I'm living in an unidentified small town in the Pacific Northwest; prior dreams have indicated that the small town is near, if not actually a part of, Seattle. The relocation was undertaken for purely financial reasons, as, in the setting shared by the linear dreams, I am writing full-time, which makes the California cost of living sort of improbable. I do so love it when my dreams pay attention to the greater world economic situation. No, really. Because knowledge of economics shows you care. Chris, Kate and GP are also living in the Pacific Northwest, as are the people already located there. Kate is employed part-time as my handler, which means she navigates me from place to place and gets paid for it. Chris still does my website, and Vixy, Rebecca and Beth are our primary forum mods.
In the dreams, I'm living alone, save for three Siamese cats (Lilly, Starla and Kylie), a Sharpei cross (Hyacinth), and two iguanas (Cobweb and Moth, thus proving that all that Shakespeare has permanently scarred my brain). Vixy and Fishy live close enough that we're doing that charmingly stereotypical 'somebody is always up in somebody else's living space' routine, although we mostly wind up at my house for hanging out and messing around, and their house for Rock Band. Because that's just the way we like to roll. Although it really didn't feature in this installment of the dream sequence, I feel obligated to note that my little house is almost entirely decorated in orange, green, and weird, which is the best combination I could possibly think of for a house in which I was intending to live. Also, if I ever decided to sell it, we'd pretty much have to call one of those home makeover shows and get mocked on national television, because there's no other way we could possibly afford that much tile.
According to the dream timeline, the Toby Daye books sold several years ago; the first seven have been published, along with the first prequel. (The seventh, Tributes in the Dust, only came out about a month before the most recent dream. So I suppose they really are starting to timeline themselves more exactly.) The Newsflesh trilogy and the Clady books have also sold; at various points during the dream, I was working on copyediting and revising the last of the Clady books, Coyotes Never Say Goodbye. (Y'know what's fun? Going through revisions in your dreams when you're going through revisions in your waking life. Oh, wait. Did I say 'fun'? I meant 'proof that my brain actually hates me'.) The third season of October has just finished airing on the CW, and season four is currently being filmed. (If you're curious about the show, look at earlier recaps. It really didn't have much impact on this week's actual dream, and there's only so much space that I'm willing to dedicate to recapping.)
This installment of the dream series began with Kate, sitting next to me in the Seattle International Airport, proving to Vixy that she could so wake me up by jabbing me repeatedly in the arm with a plush velociraptor. Early morning flight + airport that does not sell DDP + ongoing ban on passengers carrying liquids through security = I pretty much got to the airport, checked in, found my gate, and passed out cold, thus allowing everyone else to use me as an insensate luggage gargoyle while they went for breakfast. Even in my dreams, my friends are all too happy to abuse my comatose form. Vixy, at least, had the compassion and foresight to grab me a Frosty from the Wendy's in the food court, which may well be the only reason no one died when Kate woke me up. That, and I was just plain too disoriented to kill.
These dreams are sneaky about providing me with their 'as you know, Bob...' data-dumps; this one snuck it in while I was waking up and dolefully sucking on my Frosty, using a combination of conversation between Kate and Tony -- AKA, 'the two most organized coherent people in our group' -- and my struggle towards full wakefulness. I determined, with no more than my usual level of early-morning bewilderment, that...
1) We were on our way to Baltimore, for the WorldCon. Hey, awesome. I like WorldCons!
2) We were on our way to Baltimore, for the WorldCon, because I was going to be Toastmistress. Because that's not stressful.
3) And Tony was developing a twitch because he and Vixy had a concert, I had a concert, and he was going to be playing in the musical number to be performed during the opening ceremonies.
4) Also, I had a deadline that fell on the second-to-last day of the convention.
But, y'know, NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
I ate Kate's M&Ms along with my Frosty, and stopped grumbling at her for that whole 'velociraptor wake-up call' thing just about the time they started loading us onto the plane. Where, blessedly, I promptly passed out again. Did the dream include the full length of the flight from Seattle to Baltimore, including airplane food I couldn't eat (I'd packed a lunch), leg cramps from sleeping in a bad position, Vixy waking me up to tell me I was drooling on my scarf, an inflight movie which I totally ignored, and rewrites on three chapters of a book that hasn't even been fully plotted in the waking world? Why, yes. Yes, it did. And that's why I continue to insist that these dreams are my brain's way of torturing me for being naughty.
We landed in Baltimore right on time, and Mary and Wes met us at the airport with their shiny rental van, shiny bright 'I haven't been on a plane for the last six hours' smiles, and, best of all, shiny bright bottles of DDP. They probably brought drinks for everybody else, too, but I was mono-focused with exhaustion by that point; I grabbed the DDP, compressed myself in the back seat of the van, and proceeded to Golem all the way to the hotel, where we got me checked in and Kate ordered me to go take a shower and watch an episode of October before I went looking for the concom. We agreed to meet up and rehearse the opening musical number after dinner, and after I had re-achieved sanity. About half the people we were apparently expecting were already in the lobby -- Brooke, Rob and Larissa, Will, Dave W., Dave R., Judi, Paul, Beckett, ye cast o' thousands -- and everyone else went off to be social while I trekked upstairs to re-sane.
(I really do require a short period of down-time after a lengthy trip. My head gets all snarly, and I need to do predictable things to untangle it. This is why the phrase 'go play in the swamp' is a powerful part of any Seanan-handler's vocabulary.)
After I was clean, fresh, and reasonably sane again, I went looking for Con Ops and the concom. Luckily for me, they were actually reasonably easy to find, and much joy was had by all. By 'much joy', I mean 'they were over-stressed and desperately didn't want to be rude to me, but oh dear lord please go away, blonde woman, and come back when your duties kick in'. Tim Pratt was the Guest of Honor, and he was milling around looking lost; his family had taken over his hotel room to nap. Since he and I actually know each other of old, I snagged him and hauled him down to our impromptu lobby kitchen party, which turned out to have picked up a lot of steam since my departure. Things that are Made Of Win: Kate and Mia in a snark-off regarding the state of modern fantasy. Also Made Of Win: plush rose goblins. Tara had cleverly managed to obtain one, which she proudly presented to me, amidst a great deal of cheering from the floor. Tim promptly decided that all my friends are insane. Tim was not wrong.
Dinner was found at an Indian place two blocks from the convention center, where I ate naan and cauliflower and chicken and complained about the lack of goat, thus causing Vixy to make unhappy faces. Victor and Lara were waiting for us there, as they'd been running late (comparatively speaking) and that was easier than trying to meet up at the lobby. We were also joined by several members of the concom, which was sort of fascinating; I don't know anyone from Baltimore fandom, so they were total strangers who don't actually exist, yet interacted within the dream just as realistically as everyone else. My brain. Do not want.
Following dinner, it was time for rehearsal. Because, you see, the concom had apparently decided that when you have a highly musical Toastmistress, in a city with a lot of local pride, you should totally do something entirely bizarre during your opening ceremonies. And they'd asked me to put something together. Which led, quite naturally, to my recruiting what seemed like half the filkers on the planet for a big ol' performance of 'Good Morning Baltimore' from Hairspray. Ah, guerilla musical theater. You have served me well. Rehearsal went disturbingly well, a fact which we credited in part to us having used YouTube to co-ordinate our relatively simplistic dance routines while sticking as closely as possible to the original music. Mary played a smokin' piano, and having Dave R. on brass really gave it that last bit of crazy-train musical 'zing'. Several people fell down. Several people were flat. I really wish, if I were going to dream multi-hour rehearsals, that my brain would at least pretend to idealize them.
I sat and processed edits when not actively involved in the rehearsal process. Ah, the excitement.
The next day began with me sitting up in bed, processing edits on my laptop, while Kate struggled back to her own state of quasi-awareness in her own bed. (The plan was that we would be joined in our hotel room by Meredith, when she arrived; Vixy and Tony were in the adjoining room.) At nine-thirty, we moved on to getting ready for the day, which included joining Tony, Vixy, Mary and Brooke for breakfast, and then going off to the grocery store with Mary, Mia and Vixy. Really, people kept coming and going as they realized that they had other things to do. It being my dream, you'd think they'd want to stick around, but noooo-oo...
Of course, since I never know I'm dreaming until I wake up, I guess it makes sense. We got back to the hotel, and had just enough time for one more group run-through before the concom cleared us out of the auditorium to start setting up for opening ceremonies. Rob went off to get Meredith from the airport, while Kate and I put groceries away, and various people wandered in and out of our room, being chatty. We were going to be hosting a party Saturday and Sunday night, and had managed to obtain a full-sized fridge; I'm not sure how, since that was entirely Kate's side of the equation. Regardless, it meant we had room for plenty of things which Seanans will actually eat, as well as our leftovers, and two half-sheet cakes. I love refrigeration technology.
The last hour before opening ceremonies consisted of People Getting Ready. People Fixing Their Makeup. People Suddenly Realizing That It's Hard To Run In Heels. In short, the usual pre-performance crazy, magnified by the part where we were about to be performing, en masse, for a WorldCon. Again, no pressure or anything.
After all that build-up...performance went fine. It was one number, and we are, in our weirdly assorted ways, professionals. But the rehearsals ate hours and hours and hours of dream time, so hey. Prior to the performance, during the 'hooray for our guests' part of things, I sat at a long table, waited for my cue, and processed edits. All hail the great god DEADLINE!
My first panel was half an hour after opening ceremonies, giving me just enough time to change from my dress and funny makeup into T-shirt and jeans. The panel topic was 'Editing As Full-Contact Sport: Putting Your Writing In The Penalty Box', and believe me, I really and truly want the shirt I was wearing. Whoever decided to model a T-shirt off the editing icon Rae made for me was a stone genius and I love them. The panel was fun and informative, especially since it combined me with Michael Burstein, Michael Swanwick, and Tara O'Shea, three of my favorite people to be on panels with. And a fabulous time was had by all.
After the panel, we* retreated to Wes and Mary's hotel to meet with Wes, Mary, Rand and Erin, and play ice cream social with the contents of my room's freezer, purchased specifically for this activity. I was complaining about how unprepared I felt for the things I had to do on Friday (four panels, a reading, and a signing) when Erin blinked at me, looking perplexed, and said, "Why? It's not like you'll be there."
"Well, why not?" I asked.
"Because, silly. You're asleep."
"Oh, right," I said...
...and woke up.
(*Now consisting of me, Tara, Vixy, Meredith, Kate.)
So, yadda yadda, recap. Maybe it's actually important this time, since this 'series' went on such a long hiatus. I'm blaming the writer's strike. Anyway, this set of dreams is set some generally-undefined amount of time in the future; this is one of the few installments with a really firm date, as it posits a 2013 Baltimore WorldCon. (As far as I know, Baltimore does not have a bid in for 2013. I don't even know whether it would be a legal bid under the convention bylaws. As I was asleep when my brain decided to come up with this convention, I don't feel particularly bad about any possible mathematical inaccuracies.) At the time of the dreams, I'm living in an unidentified small town in the Pacific Northwest; prior dreams have indicated that the small town is near, if not actually a part of, Seattle. The relocation was undertaken for purely financial reasons, as, in the setting shared by the linear dreams, I am writing full-time, which makes the California cost of living sort of improbable. I do so love it when my dreams pay attention to the greater world economic situation. No, really. Because knowledge of economics shows you care. Chris, Kate and GP are also living in the Pacific Northwest, as are the people already located there. Kate is employed part-time as my handler, which means she navigates me from place to place and gets paid for it. Chris still does my website, and Vixy, Rebecca and Beth are our primary forum mods.
In the dreams, I'm living alone, save for three Siamese cats (Lilly, Starla and Kylie), a Sharpei cross (Hyacinth), and two iguanas (Cobweb and Moth, thus proving that all that Shakespeare has permanently scarred my brain). Vixy and Fishy live close enough that we're doing that charmingly stereotypical 'somebody is always up in somebody else's living space' routine, although we mostly wind up at my house for hanging out and messing around, and their house for Rock Band. Because that's just the way we like to roll. Although it really didn't feature in this installment of the dream sequence, I feel obligated to note that my little house is almost entirely decorated in orange, green, and weird, which is the best combination I could possibly think of for a house in which I was intending to live. Also, if I ever decided to sell it, we'd pretty much have to call one of those home makeover shows and get mocked on national television, because there's no other way we could possibly afford that much tile.
According to the dream timeline, the Toby Daye books sold several years ago; the first seven have been published, along with the first prequel. (The seventh, Tributes in the Dust, only came out about a month before the most recent dream. So I suppose they really are starting to timeline themselves more exactly.) The Newsflesh trilogy and the Clady books have also sold; at various points during the dream, I was working on copyediting and revising the last of the Clady books, Coyotes Never Say Goodbye. (Y'know what's fun? Going through revisions in your dreams when you're going through revisions in your waking life. Oh, wait. Did I say 'fun'? I meant 'proof that my brain actually hates me'.) The third season of October has just finished airing on the CW, and season four is currently being filmed. (If you're curious about the show, look at earlier recaps. It really didn't have much impact on this week's actual dream, and there's only so much space that I'm willing to dedicate to recapping.)
This installment of the dream series began with Kate, sitting next to me in the Seattle International Airport, proving to Vixy that she could so wake me up by jabbing me repeatedly in the arm with a plush velociraptor. Early morning flight + airport that does not sell DDP + ongoing ban on passengers carrying liquids through security = I pretty much got to the airport, checked in, found my gate, and passed out cold, thus allowing everyone else to use me as an insensate luggage gargoyle while they went for breakfast. Even in my dreams, my friends are all too happy to abuse my comatose form. Vixy, at least, had the compassion and foresight to grab me a Frosty from the Wendy's in the food court, which may well be the only reason no one died when Kate woke me up. That, and I was just plain too disoriented to kill.
These dreams are sneaky about providing me with their 'as you know, Bob...' data-dumps; this one snuck it in while I was waking up and dolefully sucking on my Frosty, using a combination of conversation between Kate and Tony -- AKA, 'the two most organized coherent people in our group' -- and my struggle towards full wakefulness. I determined, with no more than my usual level of early-morning bewilderment, that...
1) We were on our way to Baltimore, for the WorldCon. Hey, awesome. I like WorldCons!
2) We were on our way to Baltimore, for the WorldCon, because I was going to be Toastmistress. Because that's not stressful.
3) And Tony was developing a twitch because he and Vixy had a concert, I had a concert, and he was going to be playing in the musical number to be performed during the opening ceremonies.
4) Also, I had a deadline that fell on the second-to-last day of the convention.
But, y'know, NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
I ate Kate's M&Ms along with my Frosty, and stopped grumbling at her for that whole 'velociraptor wake-up call' thing just about the time they started loading us onto the plane. Where, blessedly, I promptly passed out again. Did the dream include the full length of the flight from Seattle to Baltimore, including airplane food I couldn't eat (I'd packed a lunch), leg cramps from sleeping in a bad position, Vixy waking me up to tell me I was drooling on my scarf, an inflight movie which I totally ignored, and rewrites on three chapters of a book that hasn't even been fully plotted in the waking world? Why, yes. Yes, it did. And that's why I continue to insist that these dreams are my brain's way of torturing me for being naughty.
We landed in Baltimore right on time, and Mary and Wes met us at the airport with their shiny rental van, shiny bright 'I haven't been on a plane for the last six hours' smiles, and, best of all, shiny bright bottles of DDP. They probably brought drinks for everybody else, too, but I was mono-focused with exhaustion by that point; I grabbed the DDP, compressed myself in the back seat of the van, and proceeded to Golem all the way to the hotel, where we got me checked in and Kate ordered me to go take a shower and watch an episode of October before I went looking for the concom. We agreed to meet up and rehearse the opening musical number after dinner, and after I had re-achieved sanity. About half the people we were apparently expecting were already in the lobby -- Brooke, Rob and Larissa, Will, Dave W., Dave R., Judi, Paul, Beckett, ye cast o' thousands -- and everyone else went off to be social while I trekked upstairs to re-sane.
(I really do require a short period of down-time after a lengthy trip. My head gets all snarly, and I need to do predictable things to untangle it. This is why the phrase 'go play in the swamp' is a powerful part of any Seanan-handler's vocabulary.)
After I was clean, fresh, and reasonably sane again, I went looking for Con Ops and the concom. Luckily for me, they were actually reasonably easy to find, and much joy was had by all. By 'much joy', I mean 'they were over-stressed and desperately didn't want to be rude to me, but oh dear lord please go away, blonde woman, and come back when your duties kick in'. Tim Pratt was the Guest of Honor, and he was milling around looking lost; his family had taken over his hotel room to nap. Since he and I actually know each other of old, I snagged him and hauled him down to our impromptu lobby kitchen party, which turned out to have picked up a lot of steam since my departure. Things that are Made Of Win: Kate and Mia in a snark-off regarding the state of modern fantasy. Also Made Of Win: plush rose goblins. Tara had cleverly managed to obtain one, which she proudly presented to me, amidst a great deal of cheering from the floor. Tim promptly decided that all my friends are insane. Tim was not wrong.
Dinner was found at an Indian place two blocks from the convention center, where I ate naan and cauliflower and chicken and complained about the lack of goat, thus causing Vixy to make unhappy faces. Victor and Lara were waiting for us there, as they'd been running late (comparatively speaking) and that was easier than trying to meet up at the lobby. We were also joined by several members of the concom, which was sort of fascinating; I don't know anyone from Baltimore fandom, so they were total strangers who don't actually exist, yet interacted within the dream just as realistically as everyone else. My brain. Do not want.
Following dinner, it was time for rehearsal. Because, you see, the concom had apparently decided that when you have a highly musical Toastmistress, in a city with a lot of local pride, you should totally do something entirely bizarre during your opening ceremonies. And they'd asked me to put something together. Which led, quite naturally, to my recruiting what seemed like half the filkers on the planet for a big ol' performance of 'Good Morning Baltimore' from Hairspray. Ah, guerilla musical theater. You have served me well. Rehearsal went disturbingly well, a fact which we credited in part to us having used YouTube to co-ordinate our relatively simplistic dance routines while sticking as closely as possible to the original music. Mary played a smokin' piano, and having Dave R. on brass really gave it that last bit of crazy-train musical 'zing'. Several people fell down. Several people were flat. I really wish, if I were going to dream multi-hour rehearsals, that my brain would at least pretend to idealize them.
I sat and processed edits when not actively involved in the rehearsal process. Ah, the excitement.
The next day began with me sitting up in bed, processing edits on my laptop, while Kate struggled back to her own state of quasi-awareness in her own bed. (The plan was that we would be joined in our hotel room by Meredith, when she arrived; Vixy and Tony were in the adjoining room.) At nine-thirty, we moved on to getting ready for the day, which included joining Tony, Vixy, Mary and Brooke for breakfast, and then going off to the grocery store with Mary, Mia and Vixy. Really, people kept coming and going as they realized that they had other things to do. It being my dream, you'd think they'd want to stick around, but noooo-oo...
Of course, since I never know I'm dreaming until I wake up, I guess it makes sense. We got back to the hotel, and had just enough time for one more group run-through before the concom cleared us out of the auditorium to start setting up for opening ceremonies. Rob went off to get Meredith from the airport, while Kate and I put groceries away, and various people wandered in and out of our room, being chatty. We were going to be hosting a party Saturday and Sunday night, and had managed to obtain a full-sized fridge; I'm not sure how, since that was entirely Kate's side of the equation. Regardless, it meant we had room for plenty of things which Seanans will actually eat, as well as our leftovers, and two half-sheet cakes. I love refrigeration technology.
The last hour before opening ceremonies consisted of People Getting Ready. People Fixing Their Makeup. People Suddenly Realizing That It's Hard To Run In Heels. In short, the usual pre-performance crazy, magnified by the part where we were about to be performing, en masse, for a WorldCon. Again, no pressure or anything.
After all that build-up...performance went fine. It was one number, and we are, in our weirdly assorted ways, professionals. But the rehearsals ate hours and hours and hours of dream time, so hey. Prior to the performance, during the 'hooray for our guests' part of things, I sat at a long table, waited for my cue, and processed edits. All hail the great god DEADLINE!
My first panel was half an hour after opening ceremonies, giving me just enough time to change from my dress and funny makeup into T-shirt and jeans. The panel topic was 'Editing As Full-Contact Sport: Putting Your Writing In The Penalty Box', and believe me, I really and truly want the shirt I was wearing. Whoever decided to model a T-shirt off the editing icon Rae made for me was a stone genius and I love them. The panel was fun and informative, especially since it combined me with Michael Burstein, Michael Swanwick, and Tara O'Shea, three of my favorite people to be on panels with. And a fabulous time was had by all.
After the panel, we* retreated to Wes and Mary's hotel to meet with Wes, Mary, Rand and Erin, and play ice cream social with the contents of my room's freezer, purchased specifically for this activity. I was complaining about how unprepared I felt for the things I had to do on Friday (four panels, a reading, and a signing) when Erin blinked at me, looking perplexed, and said, "Why? It's not like you'll be there."
"Well, why not?" I asked.
"Because, silly. You're asleep."
"Oh, right," I said...
...and woke up.
(*Now consisting of me, Tara, Vixy, Meredith, Kate.)