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How pleasant is Saturday night, |
Monday, November 10, 1997
I went to dinner at my sister's tonight, and gave the kids a very strange item I bought at Orycon: A leopard print Christmas stocking with an assortment of weird candy and toys, made by Eileen Gunn's friend Leslie What. My nephew J-- and I got in a contest to see who could keep the superhot cherry candy in their mouth the longest. My younger nephew B--- was quite taken with the slime dog.
* * * * * * * *
Saturday: I met Tami, Randy, Luke and Jane down at breakfast (all the cool people stay at the Oxford Suites). I had left some messages for Cera, but I don't think she ever got them.
What a range of possibilities when one looks at the program book for a convention! I tend to favor program items where a friend is a panelist, or that relate to a topic I'm interested in. But sometimes I go for something far afield, costuming or comics.
E-zines: just fanzines gone wild on the web, or a new form?
This was a rather informal discussion in the fanzine lounge. In such a setting, wouldn't you think it would deal mostly with the intersection of electronic publishing and traditional fanzines? That's what I thought, too, and one of the panelists, Loren Macgregor, seemed to be of a like mind. But the other panelist just wanted to go on and on in a general way about web authoring techniqes and to pontificate in a very wrong-headed way about E-design. He responded to almost any comment from any one with "Wrong!" "I disagree!" etc. Bummer.
Then a quiet session making balloon shapes in the Quiet Bar.
I ran into Cera on the way into Ask Dr. Genius in the Klamath room. Turns out she is connected to Jon Singer through Liralen, and since he was a panelist I was able to introduce her to him afterwards. The format of the panel is, we ask questions, and they extemporize silly answers. Good fun, with the right panelists, and the ones we had were good.
From there we were able to track down Luke, and we went over to the brew pub across the way. We ate a late lunch along with another online friend of Cera's (but not an online journaler). We exchanged lots of journal gossip. I found out that Cera's friend Chuck can swing dance! so we agreed to visit the dance that evening.
My next item was the Susan Petrey Fund Auction. This memorializes a Portland fan who wanted to attend Clarion West (a workshop for aspiring science fiction writers) but who died before she got the chance. The auction benefits the workshop. Lots of rarities, manuscripts, galleys and rare editions for the book collectors, art and jewelry, and odd things that people donate. That's when I bought the leopard print Xmas stocking with monster claw that I gave to my nephews tonight.
I retired to my room for a while, to rest and recuperate. I changed to my shortish black crushed velvet dress, and added the earrings I had bought in the dealers room, made from recycled CDs.
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The evening began with a trip to the grocery store to get my contribution for Art Widner's (a long-time fan) eightieth birthday: a torta of cheese, pesto and sundried tomatoes, a loaf of good bread, and white-chocolate-covered Oreos. Very tasty! but I needn't have worried, there was plenty of food. The beverage of choice for the evening was single malt scotch, dispensed by Tom Whitmore in very tiny glasses. Tom loves ritual, and insisted that you sniff the scotch, then hand it back to him so he could add one drop (no more!) of water, then you sniffed it again. Because of my sneezing problems when ingesting alcohol, I didn't partake of this sacrament.
The party reached critical mass very quickly. Cera, Chuck and Kirby (a neighbor of Cera's) joined the party, and I was able to introduce her to Tom (she is on a mailing list with him) and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
At ten we headed upstairs for "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" This is derived from a British game show of the variety that exists only for the purpose of witty remarks by the contestants. So funny! They get the best crew to participate in this: Mark Bourne, David Levine, Ed Vick, Anthony Pryor-Brown, and Ellen Kleges. Cera wanted to meet Ellen, just to tell her that Cera had laughed until she couldn't breathe!
From there we went to the dance. Chuck is a fun dancer! but when the floor filled up, there wasn't enough room for the swing dancing we wanted to do.
At the end of the evening, it was back to Jane, Luke, Tami, Randy, and Alan Bostick, standing and chatting in the glass hallway till we were too tired for any more.
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