14 February 2000

Happy Valentine's Day! Matt and I couldn't stand the wait this morning and exchanged our presents before we even got dressed. Wait, that's not what it sounds like!

I gave him two comedy CDs, and he gave me the Gary Larson book, There's a Hair in My Dirt!, which I've been wanting for a while and never getting around to getting. He's got another present coming later today, too.

We don't have anything special planned for today. Monday is the day we usually do the grocery shopping and get on the MeadeHall, so there isn't much time for anything. We might have a belated dinner out, later this week, when we're less likely to have to stand in line for hours. We thought about meeting for lunch, but I'm starting back on my diet today, which makes it a very bad day to go out to lunch!

We had a pretty good weekend, though. I already wrote about the circus on Friday (the pictures are up in the album, by the way). Saturday evening I picked back up the reins of my game, and as I'd guessed, Mike fit into our group pretty well. We didn't get a whole lot of actual gaming done - since Mike was new to our group, we took the opportunity to tell him all the stories we're tired of telling each other, and so the conversation kept getting sidetracked.

Which was all right, because while I've got the general outline of the current plot set up, I don't have all the intermediate details worked out. Since the next game won't be for another month (due to various conflicts) this will give me some time to plan, now that I know what the party's composition is.

We subjected Mike to trial by fire - we let Greg drive all of us to dinner. Greg's a fairly reasonable driver when he's familiar with the roads he's driving, but when he's unsure of himself, his skill falls by a factor of ten. Of course, I'm sure it doesn't help to have us all in the car, laughing and joking and teasing him. He takes all it in fairly good grace, which I'm not sure I'd be able to do.

Matt did get some humor points in. He's playing a dwarven priest, and when Mike decided to play a dwarf as well, they played off each other. They had a schtick going for a while where they were "snoring" in concert while I rolled the night's random encounters. At one point, K.T.'s character took a long pole, slipped it through the entrance to Matt's character's tent, and poked him with it, trying to stop the snoring.

Matt grunted, wiggled, and muttered (in his deep and gruff dwarf voice), "Rock rats!" and resumed snoring.

For some reason this struck all of us as extremely funny.

And I had to use a fair amount of GM fudge-factor to keep K.T.'s character alive. The party was attacked by stirges while K.T.'s character was on watch, and she failed both perception and surprise rolls, and wound up with two of the little bloodsuckers attached to her. The whole combat was partially fudged at any rate, because stirges, once attached, are supposed to do 1d3 points of damage every round. I decided that they did the 1d3 points when they attached, but that subsequent rounds only did a single point. Which is good, because otherwise the party - all first-level characters - would've been in big trouble.

K.T.'s character was down to a single hit point when she fumbled.

I don't like for characters to collapse on a fumble. If she'd been healthier, I'd have had her take some damage and lose some time recovering. But any damage at all would have knocked her unconscious. I thought about breaking her sword but not having it do any damage, but that would've left her without any weapons at all.

Last night's group didn't include Carl, the power gamer, so I wasn't forced to be the hardass GM. I gave her the choice, and she opted to have her sword break. Probably the best choice - it was taking a while to mop up, and if she'd been an nonmoving target, the remaining stirges would have had a much easier time getting to her.

At any rate, it was a good combat. Everyone was sweating a little, and I think I managed to fudge things just enough to let the party prevail while still keeping it exciting.

Sunday was fairly uneventful; we didn't leave the house all day. I took a stab at doing our taxes, and boy I hope my dad can find something I did wrong, because otherwise we're going to owe the IRS over $500!

Matt insisted that since I'd done the taxes (or at least tried) and put the dishes in the dishwasher in the morning, that he should do the laundry. I figured the fair trade would be to let him sort it and carry it downstairs, and then to take the clean stuff back up the stairs. Moving laundry from the dryer to the basket and from the washer to the dryer isn't especially taxing anyway.

He would come down to check on the laundry, realize I'd already moved it, and come in where I was reading and make little hmph! noises at me, chanting "Sit-and-rest! Sit-and-rest!" After a while, I kept doing it just because he was so funny. (Sorry, sweetie.)

I've got another stupid training meeting tomorrow. Well, two of them, but they're back-to-back, so it might as well be one. At least I know what these two are about. Quality Assurance and Configuration Management. Zzzz. Oh, well, at least we're getting fed again.

Which means I not only have to remember to get something that will taste okay at room temperature, but I have to find something on the menu that at least pretends to stick to my diet. Hmph. Well, I'll do my best.

But the meetings themselves promise to be mind-numbing. I mean, QA and CM are necessary evils in a software company, and I'll agree that we need to follow the procedures. But what's going to drive me crazy is that they're not going to just tell us how to go about testing and saving versions. They're going to tell us details that are completely insignificant to us. All I want to know is, what do you want me to do? and who do I talk to if I have ideas or questions? But that would be too easy. A free lunch isn't worth this much hassle.

Hmm. Maybe this time I'll bring my notepad and work on my game.

12 February 2000

Yeah, we went to the circus last night! It was great! Matt and I wound up being about fifteen minutes late meeting everyone, but we were plenty early for the show. Our seats were almost the same as they had been last year, but slightly closer to the center ring - pretty good, actually! The pre-show entertainment on the floor was fun to watch, though like last year, we didn't bother to pay the no-doubt exhorbitant fee to get in.

I got a laugh from the vendors, too - most of them were walking slowly up and down the stairs yelling loudly: "Popcorn! Fresh hot popcorn!" "Ice-cold soda!" "Cotton candy!" Then a different one came by. He wasn't yelling. He was talking barely loud enough to be heard, actually: "Ben and Jerry's... Ice cream here..." He knew his product would sell, even without loud hawking.

I confess, I teared up several times after the show started. I love watching acrobats. The way they make it all look so effortless, while I know for a fact that I can barely walk from my front door to my car without stumbling. One team on a trampoline had a kid who couldn't have been more than twelve, and he was turning somersaults in the air and landing on someone's shoulders, then jumping back off. The twelve-year-olds who play on our street slouch over their bicycles and scuff their feet on their way to the bus in the morning.

The act that really got to me were a pair of rope dancers. She hung by her hair fifteen and twenty feet off the ground while the rope swung in lazy circles around the ring, and juggled bright pins, sparkling rings, and flaming torches. Her skill choked me, but what had tears literally streaming down my face was her partner in the center ring. He wore plain white tights and no shirt, and he didn't do anything sparkling and flashy - but he was truly poetry in motion. Tied to the end of his rope were two long leads with loops, and he hung from those loops by his hands or his feet and he twisted himself around the ropes and his own body, flowing from position to position with astonishing fluidity. Simply considering the physical effort made me breathless. At one point it occured to me that this man was dancing like the most graceful of ballet dancers - but doing it holding himself taught twenty or thirty feet off the ground. It was fabulous.

The tigers choked me up, too, from their sheer power and beauty. I tried to take pictures, but they turned out too blurry to keep. The trainer didn't have much to show me that was impressive, but the gorgeous animals held me attention anyway.

I was actually slightly disappointed with some of the second half of the show - it seemed like that was where they had put all the less-well-rehearsed acts. Horses that trotted in circles? They were beautiful animals, but after the impressive riding demonstration the show had opened with, tricks that consisted of trotting around the ring in alternating colors wasn't very impressive. The trapeze artists didn't do anything special, especially given the number of them standing on the platform posing. What they did was pretty - and certainly I couldn't do it! - but only their climax hinted at real skill. I was disappointed at first by the seeming ineptness of the tightrope walkers as well, but their climax convinced me that they'd been shamming. (I should have guessed by the fact that they were working without a net.)

The other thing that detracted from the show for me were a duo of clowns. One of them did some impressive pratfalls and balanced a number of intertesting and ill-balancing items on his chin, but his "partner" - of whom much was made - was merely a very small midget who did nothing more than caper. My guess was that they were trying to capitalize on the popularity of the "Mini-Me" character in the second Austin Powers movie. I was slightly irritated that the circus was giving the title of "clown" to a person who would have been in less politically correct times nothing more than a freak-show attraction. (I'm not insulting midgets, here. There was another, slightly taller, midget in the show who actually participated in the clowning - taking falls and throwing pies - and he deserved the title. But this Mini-Me impersonator was resting on the laurels of his odd looks.)

The real clown of the duo, however, provided the show's final climax - helmetless, he climbed into a giant cannon, and was launched across all three rings! It was quite impressive, I must say - a fitting end to the show. And this year, since we weren't at the very last show, they did their final musical number with all the glitzy, glittery costumes that I'd missed last year.

All in all, despite some minor disappointments, I had a fantastic time. I have a few more pictures, and pretty soon, I'll get them posted in the photo album, so keep your eyes open!

11 February 2000

I'm going to the circus tonight! Whee! Yeah, I'm ready for the weekend, why do you ask?

It promises to be a busy weekend, at any rate, with the circus tonight, the game tomorrow (it is really Friday today, isn't it, K.T.?) and some errands that I want to run mixed in. But it'll be fun, so bring it on!

This morning on the radio, as I was driving to work, the disc jockeys were talking to a seven-year-old boy. It was adorable.

"If I gave you ten dollars right now, Jimmy, what would you buy with it?"

"Basketball cards!" No hesitation.

"Do you have a girlfriend, Jimmy?"

(long pause) "Um, there's this... Not really."

"How do you know your parents love each other?"

(with mild distaste) "They kiss a lot."

"Do they ever go out and leave you at home with a babysitter?"

"Yeah."

"What does the babysitter let you do that you're not supposed to do, Jimmy?"

(Jimmy's mom, muffled) "His mom is standing right here!"

I laughed. Kids are so funny sometimes.

We're coming up on spring, which means it's about time for my annual bout of wistfulness about babies. This happens every year: As the flowers begin to bloom, I suddenly find myself wondering if I might not want to change my stance on children. I notice cute kids more readily than obnoxious ones. I imagine the comforting warmth in my arms and the powdery smell...

And then sometime in late spring, when the leaves on the trees have grown to just about their full size, it fades away and the scent of baby powder sours into curdled milk and soiled diapers.

I suppose if it ever sticks with me through summer and autumn, then it might be time to actually think about re-evaluating.

I need to resign myself to wasting an evening working on our taxes, soon. Since I consider myself somewhat more intelligent than the average American, I thought I might attempt to simply follow the directions in the book before I give up and take our forms to my father.

At least I won't be making any trips to the library. I discovered last year that I can download the forms I need from the IRS's website and print them out. (A link? You want a link? Oh, for petesake... Here. You're welcome.)

I've always done our taxes pretty easily in the past, but this year is different. This year, we moved into a new house, and in the four months that we lived in the house, we paid several thousand dollars in interest. Next year, when we've lived in the house for a full year, it will definitely be better for us to itemize our deductions, but this year I'll have to do the math both ways before I know for certain.

But I need to get on with it. I like to have our claims in the mail before March.

So the meeting yesterday was just as boring and pointless as I thought it would be. The point was to tell us how standardized the company's procedure's are, according to this chart. They went through - mercifully quickly - all the various areas that have to be evaluated. The whole time, I was snarling mentally. All I need to know, I thought at the speaker, is what procedures you want me to follow, and where to go in case I need to ask someone about the procedures for some reason. That's all I need. I don't care what heaps of paperwork the managers have to suffer through - that's what managers are for - to keep me away from the paperwork!

But, alas, one of the required procedures turned out to be that all employees have to be trained in the procedures, so I ate the lunch the company bought for me (next time I need to remember not to order food that's meant to be eaten hot) and doodled on my notepad.

First I took notes in an outraged tone about how absurd it was for us to be in the meeting - the speaker even admitted in the first ten minutes that this wasn't information we really needed to know. Then I huffed over the fact that they were eating up valuable time in which I could be working (despite the fact that I hadn't gotten any work done that morning). Then I sketched out a few ideas and some pseudo-code for my project, just so the two-and-a-half hours wouldn't be a total waste of time.

About then, lunch arrived, and I admired the efficiency of the receptionist who brought it in - she'd gone through the bags and bags of food beforehand and wrote our names on each container so it only took about five minutes to parcel out all the food. (I'd been envisioning half an hour of "Okay, who ordered the chicken?" and "Where's the salad I ordered?") Next time, though, I need to remember to order food that isn't meant to be eaten hot. My soup was fine, but the chicken fingers were only lukewarm.

After I'd eaten, I mellowed a lot, and spent half an hour or so doodling designs I could use with henna, testing my free-hand drawing skills. Finally, finally, it was over, and we all piled outside and headed back to our offices. The Two Mikes and I agreed that the meeting had sapped our energy and enthusiasm - we could barely concentrate on our work.

Ah, well, I managed to get through my goal for the day, so that was good.

It has become cool in certain circles lately to deny Valentine's Day, even among those who have the necessary equipment (i.e., a significant other) to celebrate it. Having given it some thought, I deny those people.

The problem is, I agree with them on a number of points. Romance shouldn't come only once a year, on a day mandated by the government and controlled by the merchants. There isn't any rational reason for being any nicer to your lover on February 14th than any other day. Flowers and chocolates and gifts aren't the cornerstones of a good relationship.

On the other hand, the lesson we've been trying to get through for centuries is that lovers shouldn't have to need a reason for giving each other gifts, be they silly tokens of affection and friendship or expensive expressions of passion and regard.

It's been my experience that couples who are secure and happy in their relationships - who have romance all year 'round and are nice to each other because of their love and not an advertising campaign - look upon Valentine's Day as an excuse to indulge in each other rather than an effort on the part of the government and the stores to dictate our feelings. It's been my experience that it's good for a relationship to pull out all the stops occasionally and dedicate some time strictly to romancing each other.

So to the people who poo-poo Valentine's Day, I say:

Fine. Reject the commercialism and timing. But for petesake pick another day when you and your lover will plan to pamper each other. Spontaneity is all very well, but the results of a little bit of planning can't be beat.

10 February 2000

Well. Today I get to spend two hours in a meeting which looks like it will be rife with corporate buzzwords. The title of the meeting, even, is the "Capability Maturity Model Orientation." How many is that? Did anyone score on their Buzzword Bingo cards?

Two hours. And next week, there are two more "Orientation" meetings, an hour and a half each, back-to-back.

My consolation is that my officemates are stuck in these meetings with me, so maybe we can sit together and write rude notes back and forth.

I'm trying to decide what to do about my daily walk in light of this meeting. On the one hand, the meeting is sucking up two hours of time in which I could be working on my project. On the other, after two hours of this nonsense (coupled with a high-fat lunch provided by the company) I'm going to need to take a walk. I guess it'll depend on how productive I am before the meeting.

So it looks like Random will be joining our gaming group. We spent some time yesterday talking about gaming, and I think he'll fit into our group pretty well. I asked him what kind of games he likes, and what he said boiled down to wanting a reasonable amount of combat - one or two encounters per game - and that he liked there to be a point to the adventures - the party is out to accomplish something, rather than just aimlessly wandering around killing monsters and collecting treasure. Which meshes fairly well with what we've got. He's also got a weird, surreal, sarcastic sense of humor that should go over very well with our bunch.

He's even willing to (gasp!) try new things. So I gave him directions to K.T.'s apartment and her phone number, and we'll see how things go. It looks like I'll be GMing tomorrow, barring an unforseen appearance by Richard, so I should probably put together a set of maps and stuff for him so he can decide where he'll be from and everything.

Okay, is it just me, or has everything gone insane?

Matt and I were in the grocery store the other day and we noticed a cereal called "Flakes, Twigs, and Granola."

"Flakes, Twigs, and Granola"

What were these people thinking??? What the heck is their demographic? Flakey twigs and granolas? Sheesh.

I swear, I ought to do a whole journal entry on stupid cereals. Take my notebook to the grocery store and just walk slowly down the cereal aisle a few times, writing down the ones with stupid names, or dumb gimmicks, or whatever. "Flakes, Twigs, and Granola," indeed. Hmph!

Yesterday afternoon, sitting at my desk and attempting to justify my salary, I very badly wanted to go outside and play.

It was a weird sensation. Quite distinctly, I did not want to go for a walk, or sit and enjoy the weather, or do exercises. I wanted to play. I wanted to find some kids and play Tag or Hide-and-Seek. I wanted to grab a handful of friends and play volleyball or netless badminton (which is way more fun than badminton with a net). I wanted to run around shrieking with laughter, duck behind walls to avoid detection, jump out suddenly to yell "Boo!" or have a humongous pillow-and-tickle fight that ended in a big gasping pile of laughter. Like that.

I don't know what caused it, but it was an exhilarating feeling. If only I'd been able to act on it.

9 February 2000

Tired. Tired tired tired. I was asleep by ten last night. I didn't wake up once the whole night, not even when Matt came to bed. The cat was in the garage, and so I slept soundly all the way through until my alarm went off at 6. And then I dozed until it went off again at 6:07. At 6:14, I decided I really ought to get up and take my shower. I wish I knew why I was still tired, though.

Not to mention cold. Yeesh. Somebody turned off the thermostat in the office again last night, and I didn't figure it out until almost 9. Now my fingernails are blue, and it'll be noon before the building is comfortable again.

Wow. I'm feeling amazingly un-talkative today. Maybe it's because I spent most of yesterday in an exhausted stupor, so there's nothing new to talk about.

Actually, I finally found a missing disk with some pictures on it from January. Most of them are from various snowshowers, but there's a sortof amusing one of K.T.'s cat being completely oblivious. I'll get around to posting them eventually.

I ordered some Girl Scout cookies yesterday. Well, to be accurate, I had Matt order some Girl Scout cookies for me yesterday, since the person taking orders is at his office rather than mine. I had trouble restraining myself. I love Girl Scout cookies. (Restraint, mind you, was six boxes of cookies. If I'd ordered all the cookies I wanted, it would've been closer to fifteen.)

I wish they'd bring back the other low-fat cookie, though. The apple-cinnamon cookies are all right, but kindof bland. (I know, I know, I'm one to talk about bland!) But the old cookie, though they called it an oatmeal raisin cookie, was much more like a ginger cookie, and was very good dunked in milk.

What's funny is that I don't really eat cookies most of the rest of the year. I went a little bananas this year, making Christmas cookies, but that was because I was unemployed and had all this extra time on my hands for baking. Usually I assist in one batch of moon cookies, make one or two batches of fudge, and then that's it; there just isn't time for anything more.

But most of the time, I don't eat cookies. Once every couple of months I'll get a yen for something and buy some cookies. (I'm especially vunerable to Nutter Butter cookies, and despite what K.T. and Kevin think, I could easily get addicted to their chocolate variety.) But it's not something that happens very often. When I think, "snack" then I think chips or candy. When I think, "dessert" then I think ice cream or pie or cake. Cookies are just a kindof weird niche for me, I guess; I don't think of them unless I specifically decide that I want a cookie.

Sorry this is so disjointed. I just can't really pull my brain together in order to talk about anything coherently.

8 February 2000

The circus is coming early this year. I usually associate the arrival of the circus with early spring - March-ish. Last year, we went to the show on March 8. This year it was sheer luck that I noticed the circus was in town. My "home" page for my browser at work is a local newspaper, and when the page loads, random articles are selected from various sections to display on the "front" page. Yesterday when I fired up my browser, the section called "Things To Do" had randomly selected the circus, which is in town starting Wednesday and running through Saturday. I could've missed it, not looking for it for several more weeks!

I dropped Matt an e-mail, asking if he wanted to go. He suggested we ask our friends. I asked K.T., but the only night Kevin has off is Thursday, and they're feeling sortof strapped for cash at the moment anyway. Jim and my dad joined Becky and I walking around the circle yesterday, so I asked them. Jim and his wife are going to be out of town this weekend, but Dad thought that Mom would want to go, and I bullied Becky into agreeing. (It didn't take much. "You know you want to!" "Um... Okay!" Like that.)

Becky's friend (boyfriend? Even she doesn't know!) Todd decided that he wants to go, too, and it turned out that the best time for everyone was Friday evening. So, I just logged off from TicketMaster's website, and we have six tickets! (It took the database some time to find six seats all together. I'd been hoping for second-best seats, but had to settle for third-best. Oh, well, at $19 a pop it's probably for the best. But I'm glad I didn't wait any longer to order the tickets!

Karen chided me last night for abusing chocolate by putting it in coffee.

"But!" I protested, "Chocolate is a slut! It'll go with just about anyone!"

K.T. reminded me last night of a brilliant revelation I'd come to last week that I wanted to share with you. No, wait, come back! This is even better than the cat theory!

It started because K.T. and I were talking about cheese. K.T. adores cheese. I like it okay, but consider it just an accessory. (We'd been talking about Mexican food, but our difference becomes clearest when we're eating Italian or pizza: as far as I'm concerned, the cheese is just there as a decorative topping and to keep the tomato sauce - the real reason to eat these foods - from escaping. In K.T.'s mind, the cheese is the primary ingredient, and everything else is secondary.) Anyway, I mentioned that where cheese was concerned, there were about three cheeses that I especially liked, one or two that I knew I disliked, and most of the rest got shuffled into basic categories of color, texture, and sharpness. K.T. immediately listed about twenty different specific types of cheese that she really likes - really, it was like that Monty Python sketch.

"Actually," I realized, "I feel about cheese pretty much the same way I feel about music: There are a few things that I feel passionately about, and the rest of it is just background."

K.T. then realized that she, too, felt about cheese the same way she felt about music, which is to say, she's passionate about the entire category, she likes a wide variety of it and every one is distinct and different in her mind.

And thus was born the Theory of Cheese and Music! Further testing will have to be done, of course, to discover whether the correlation is one of cause and effect (in one direction or the other), or whether they are both caused by an as-yet-undiscovered third parallel.

7 February 2000

I'm back from SheVaCon, and there are pictures! Get ready for the rundown; this is likely to be long...

Friday: Matt and I both left work early and came home around noon. We had some lunch, packed, loaded the car, double-checked all of our things, and swore a lot as I looked for the few Magic cards I'd kept because of the artwork (I wanted to take some for NeNe Thomas to sign) and Matt looked for the first book of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, which had gone missing. I found the cards, but Matt never did find the book.

Around three, we hit the road. Fortunately, I'd been planning on leaving town around three. Unfortunately, I'd only remembered one of the four errands we needed to run before leaving town. So I was somewhat grumpy by the time we'd put gas in the car, ordered some flowers for Ashby's father's funeral, stopped by the Cube for our comics, and stopped at the bank for some cash. (The one I'd remembered was the bank. No, I don't know how I'd thought I'd make it all the way to Roanoke on a quarter-tank of gas.)

But we were on our way out of town by four. I spent two years living in Blacksburg, driving back to Williamsburg to visit at least once a month, so I've done the drive to Roanoke (which is just a bit before Blacksburg if you're driving south on I-81) multiple times. I've only ever been in Roanoke three times, though, so I was a little nervous about being able to find the hotel. The directions from MapQuest were fairly clear, however, and it sounded like the hotel was immediately off Roanoke's beltway, I-581. Matt, remembering that the dome light in my car is burnt out, wisely memorized the directions before the sun went down, and helped scan the radio stations for something - anything - to listen to. (I swear, my next car will have a tape or CD deck in it!)

Luckily, the hotel was immediately off I-581. We could see it as we approached the exit. It's a good thing, too, because MapQuest's directions would've gotten us hopelessly lost. First, though they told us to take the exit onto Hershberger Road, they didn't tell us which direction. Second, they suggested that once we were on Hershberger Road, we'd turn left into the hotel's parking lot. Um. Well, we did turn left into the hotel parking lot, but only after we'd made two right turns onto the side street the hotel is actually on! This is at least the third time that I've had bad directions from internet map services. I think from now on I'll insist on personal directions for at least the last few stages of trips!

I can say without reservation that the hotel was definitely the nicest hotel I've ever been to a con in. It was even one of the nicest hotels I've ever been in at all. The room was fairly standard - narrow entryway, bed, desk, annoyingly un-fitted sheets on the bed, dim lamps - but the public areas were simply lovely, and we had a real, if small, balcony which overlooked a very attractive courtyard. We got checked in and our things deposited in our room, and headed down to the convention area to check in.

Since the whole reason I'd wanted to attend SheVaCon in the first place was that Steve Miller and Sharon Lee would be there, I insisted that my first stop be the dealer's room, where I planned to find their's publisher's table and hope he had some idea of where they might be. Stephe Pagel, co-owner and editor for Meisha Merlin Publishing, turned out to be one of the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet. He chatted with us about his dog, and how he and his partner chose the name for their company (it's named after their two dogs), and some of the other books he's released recently, and half-a-dozen other things. While I was talking with him, Steve and Sharon came in, and I finally got to meet them.

I knew from being on their mailing list that they were friendly and personable and didn't - like so many authors do - look down on their fans as being lesser people. (In fact, I got to sit in on a panel where Steve disparaged authors with this attitude, which was fun.) I was unprepared for their memories, though. I don't post very often to the list, so I'm not one of the more prominent members of the society. But they read the name on my badge and immediately knew who I was. Steve remembered that he'd been the one to send me my copy of Carpe Diem over a year ago when I'd posted a complaint to the list that I couldn't find it anywhere. They introduced me to another list member, Leila, who'd arrived earlier.

Immediate need satisfied, Matt and I gave in to the urgings of a large man with a sword, who suggested that we check out the Festival of Fools. This was a sort of medieval faire, with games, palm-readings, tarot-readings, and body-paintings. You paid for your turn at the stations with tickets bought at the door. I paid two tickets for a henna wristband, and Matt played a ball-tossing game. In the middle of the room was floorspace set aside for a series of gladatorial combats, played with foam-and-duct-tape weapons, which was very entertaining to watch. There were four or so small children who were barely taller than the weapons. Some of them weren't quite sure what was going on, and some jumped right in with admirable ferocity. And some of the older folks obviously had spent some time practicing with these weapons and were quite skilled. It made for a fun show.

Saturday: Matt and I had looked over the schedule on Friday, and each picked out several panels and workshops we were interested in attending, starting as early as 10 on Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the writer's workshop and found that there were no attendance restrictions. Allen Wold ran a wonderful workshop, and I got some very good feedback from the panel (which included Sharon Lee!) on my story.

Matt and I decided to have lunch at the hotel's restaurant. Matt, trying to stick to his diet, ordered what looked like the most healthy thing (short of a salad) on the menu - roasted chicken. The waitress warned us that it would probably take fifteen or twenty minutes to prepare, and left after our reassurance that we weren't in any hurries. A minute later, she was back, apologetically explaining that because the roasted chicken wasn't a very popular item, they didn't have the ingredients in stock! She didn't even have the guts to lie to us and say that they'd just run out! Matt and I were flabbergasted.

After lunch, I agonized. There were two panels I wanted to attend, one by Peter Woodward (who played Galen on the B5 spinoff, Crusade) on the future of Crusade, and one with a panel of guests called "Humor in SF." (I should say here that the writer Guest of Honor, Tad Williams, had been forced to cancel at the last minute due to a family crisis, and so the rest of the guests were working double-time to make up for the holes in panels and shows.) I thought I'd start with the Crusade discussion, and then leave half-way through to go to the humor panel. But Peter Woodward turned out to be such an interesting speaker that I stayed for his entire talk. He spoke briefly about Crusade's future - in short, no one really knows - and moved on to the future of science fiction in television in general. The audience was fairly small (it was a smallish con) and we wound up spending about forty-five minutes asking him questions that may or may not have had anything to do with the topic assigned. It turned out that he's not actually a science-fiction enthusiast himself - his passion is for historical weaponry. He talked to us for a bit about the documentary he's suggesting to the History Channel, and I hope they take it, because it sounds fascinating.

That evening, while Matt participated in a LARP, I went to see the Guest of Honor speeches (which turned into a general discussion with the audience again), Masquerade, and charity auction.

The Masquerade was in general not terribly impressive - mostly "period" costumes of greater or lesser authenticity, a few cute kids, and a couple of embarassingly revealing costumes worn by aging and sagging women who really ought to be taken aside and gently told. There were a couple of costumes of note. To the left, we have the actually well-put-together dress made of hideously ugly metallic pink quilted material (and worn by yet another woman trying to act flirtateous and coquettish and failing miserably). To the right, the Masquerade's winning set - beautifully rendered Phantom Menace costumes made by the children's mother. (Their father, who is cut off in this picture, made a very good Qui-Gon Jin, but since it was the tiny Amidala costume which was the most impressive, that's what I'm showing you here. You can see all three of them in the photo album.)

Sunday: We left relatively early on Sunday, after picking up a few last-minute things from the dealer's room. There weren't any panels on Sunday that we particularly wanted to attend, and while I usually enjoy art auctions, we really couldn't afford to stay quite that late. So we sat in on the tail of a panel so I could say goodbye to Steve and Sharon, and were on our way by 11. The cat was glad to see us, and we even managed to get all of our laundry done before bed!

All in all, it was a very good con: small enough that we actually got to talk to the authors and artists, but not so small that it was boring. They had some really good panel topics (and some really bizarre ones - I went to one panel on "Heretics in SF" just to see what it was about only to discover when I got there that the panelists had no idea, either), good food in the con suite, and a nice variety of dealers in the dealer's room. (Buttons! I haven't seen decent button dealers at cons for years! And I bought some jewelery I can only wear to other cons, and some drape-style shirts that I hope I can get away with wearing to work once in a while. And books, of course.) There were some slow moments when I went back to our room to relax, and that was good too, because I always need to get away from people for a little while at cons. I got to meet some authors I admire, and learned about a book coming out that sounds very interesting.

And I got to swipe some Bath and Body Works shampoo from the hotel.