FenCon report, with pictures.

[celticdragonfly]

Okay, attempt at FenCon report. I still have not had a good night's sleep since the con, so I'm pretty badly in sleep debt. With pictures. I still suck at remembering to get out the camera and take pictures - you'd think I could have at least gotten everyone at the room party, but I know I missed at least six or seven people entirely.

We had a lovely room party Friday evening, for the Bujold listees and assorted friends and others. We had a babysitter for most of the weekend, which made the party and the whole con a lot more fun for us. We had connecting rooms, one of which was a corner room that was way larger than we expected, and worked out really well for the room party.




I had met a gentleman going by the name of "Nebbish" earlier, wearing a Vorkosigan shirt, so promptly invited him up to the party. A Bujold fan we hadn't known yet, what fun. We told him about the list, and where to go to find out more about it, and hopefully we'll see him onlist. It would have been good to get a picture of him, yes, oh well. He was carrying a motorcycle helmet, and both Brendan and Maggie wanted to try it on, and there was a picture of that.






Our friend kd5mdk(Andrew) has started dating jazz007who he brought to the con. Heh, generally "bringing her home to meet the family" isn't quite such a production! We were glad to meet her, she's marvelous.



I met this lady during check-in, and got to talking to her, and invited her to the party. And I'm betting if I wasn't so sleep deprived, I could remember her name. How embarrassing. I'd asked for it multiple times, too, since I'm so bad with such things, I remember asking. Here she is at the party, with Jamie socializing with her. He was wearing his new "Thumper the Tank Baby (Warning - I Bite)" shirt for the party.


We had two decorated cookies done up for the party -




Tom Vinson brought lots of lovely fresh veggies, and interesting cheeses. The French sheep's cheese was yummy, I actually never got around to trying the other one. Jerrie brought banana bread. Dawn Benton brought cookies. I know Andrew brought dip and sodas and hard cider. I forget who brought what else. Mark Woolsey was there, and a couple of other fen whose names I have forgotten.


kd5mdk showed up with the "Feminist Chicks Dig Me" shirt, which in our crowd requires that he gets endorsements to prove it. So many of us signed the shirt for him. This seemed to embarrass jazz007. But then, we saw her in this look frequently, often while hearing her say "Oh, Andrew!" in an embarrassed voice. Clearly nobody warned her sufficiently.


There's Jerrie Adkins, and Dawn Benton's just out of the picture. I believe that's the back of the lady whose name I can't recall, and of course more Andrew.



The Lanterfolk, Joy(joyeuse13) and Aaron, arrived from the airport, and were settled into their room, and then came to the party. Then I went downstairs with them to get their room moved into their name, and then get them a room that had not been recently smoked in.



Later we even had door prizes, for the fun of it. There's Aaron reading through his - the brown-paper-wrapped, over-18-only naughty comics.




Karl (selenite) had been giving backrubs - I can't recall who said what to get that look on Joy's face.




There's our babysitter with Jamie. The babies were enjoying mingling with people at the party.





Clearly part of the purpose of the evening was to document what a cute couple kd5mdk and jazz007 are.




At one point in the evening, someone - I think it was Aaron - commented on having a practice of typically leaving a condom tucked into the hotel bible, usually in the Song of Solomon. It turned out that jazz007 had never read it. We figured this must be immediately fixed. So we had kd5mdk read it out loud. With various of the rest of us hecking and kibbitzing and discussing the metaphors. (Teeth like sheep, and such.)




Quotes from the party:

"Hey, somebody ate the Hugo!"

"While we're discussing interesting mutations..."

"I want to see the breasts again!"

"Once you get the first thing in..."

The party went until midnight. I got up and started wandering into panels Saturday, dealer's room, many fun conversations, etc.

At some points on Saturday, Amanda Bohnhoff, daughter of filker guests, and about Maggie's age, came by to play with her and watch videos with our kids under our babysitter's aegis. I'm glad we could help out for that.

I went to Elizabeth Moon's talk, and then met back up with selenite at filker Carla Ulbrich's concert. Both of those pictures came out dark enough that brightening them up is hopelessly grainy.


For lunch, selenite and I joined Joy, Aaron, kd5mdk, and jazz007 in the hotel restaurant. Louann Miller came by to take our picture, so I took a picture of her.






Then I gave her my camera and she took a shot of us.






During lunch Joy told the story of her amazing puppeteer experiences to jazz007, who had never heard the story. The rest of us had read it on her journal, but we agree it's much more fun to hear and watch her tell it in person. Here's jazz007 being, as she put it "highly entertained".





Joy telling the story with appropriate illustrative gestures. Heh.





selenite is highly amused.




That afternoon selenite and I got to play Fluxx with kd5mdk and jazz007, which was a lot of fun.

We got to hear Michael Longcor's filk concert. I hadn't heard him before, I liked his voice and his music. I also braided up Joy's hair for her, which was fun, I miss braiding now that I have short hair, and it's easier to do some things on someone else anyway. I heard part of the Larry Niven GOH talk, and then got to help play dresser/lady's maid for Joy for the masquerade.

selenite and I dressed up in our fancy outfits for the evening, but didn't get any pictures of it. I think Aaron may have one of us in the background of one of Joy's outfit shots.




Here's Jim Meyers, the MC for the cabaret/masquerade.



The cabaret had bellydancers, dancing to rock music. The one where they were carrying these burning votive candles was especially nice. I bet lots of people got better pictures than I did, and will hopefully put it up. At the end they went into the aisles and got people to stand up and dance with them, including Guest of Honor Larry Niven. I know they will be putting pictures of that up on the Fencon website.



There was a magic act with loud music, preceded by the guy doing card tricks with Louann Miller as his from-the-audience participant while they got his music for his main act up and going. There was the masquerade costume contest. There were filkers doing rotating music while the judges conferred and they got the prize certificates ready.

My pictures of the rest of the cabaret and the masquerade are really too dark - that camera is just not up to those demands. But I will post this one picture - Joy winning the masquerade as The Elizerator. Aaron set up a lovely voiceover recording to go with it. Yay, for our grand prize winner! She won a pair of memberships for FenCon next year.



Saturday night some of us had a room service late dinner in our room, since the restaurant was closed. Ended up missing the other room parties, but oh well, it got late so fast. Open filking was considered, but most everybody was collapsing. Jamie didn't want to sleep yet, and sometimes selenite can get him down to sleep easier if he can't see Mama, so I wandered down and sat in the video room for part of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that was fun. Got to hang out with some of the ORAC nightowls watching it.

Got up Sunday, and rushed to get the kids ready so selenite could take them in the van - the older two were going to spend the day with their babysitter, who's the childcare coordinator at the Unitarian church, so he was dropping them off at the church. After I'd rushed to get them out the door, and then later at almost 10 called jazz007 and Andrew to please come pick up the books I had to return to him, and help me take the playpen down, I put on my watch and discovered Maggie had gotten to our alarm clock the previous night - it was an hour and 10 minutes fast. Oops.

Had a nice chat with kd5mdk and jazz007 after they helped me take the playpen down, discussing books and authors and listees and other such things. Andrew came up with the idea of ListCon, and we ran with it for a while - I got refinements from several people and posted the idea on the list.

Hm, what all DID I do on Sunday. Had a chance to have a chat with Elizabeth Moon about The Speed of Dark and about being a parent to an autistic child. Got together with Louann, who got a beaded necklace for Maggie from her long-ago Baby Blessing put together properly. Spent money in the dealer's room. Looked at cute fuzzy toy germs with selenite, kd5mdk, and jazz007 including the Flu, which of course caused kd5mdk and I to break into singing "The Flupandemic". I hope he's played the whole song for her by now. Sat in on the panel on what went right and what to change for next year - overall, damn fine convention for a first time. We want a dance next year! It is possible I may end up running that. I know there was more, but I am too tired to remember. Eventually went off to lunch with Joy, Aaron, kd5mdk, and jazz007, which was again great fun. kd5mdk, and jazz007 headed back to Austin while the rest of us went back to register for next year, then headed to Saginaw.

We took Joy and Aaron to the airport Monday to go back to Atlanta. I saw a TV on the way out, displaying hurricane info, right over Georgia, and was a bit worried about them having a rough flight. Then hours later I got a call back that they'd never taken off, and Atlanta was closed down, so went back to get them and have them crash at our place another night. So we got two extra nights of having people around to have conversations and games and filk music with and such. Their rescheduled flight went out this afternoon.

Comments

[joyslin.livejournal.com]

The lady whose name you don't remember is Carol Miller. She lives in the Dallas Area. She doesn't have a computer at home. I was trying to sell her my ancient laptop, cheap.

The party was very nice.

Joyslin, who was also there.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thanks for posting. You're one of the names I was trying to remember - now that I see it, it's all clear. Right, and she's Carol Miller, I was asking her if she was part of the other Millers that Louann had mentioned, and she wasn't.

See, if I want to remember something clearly, I write it down. Which does not help a BIT in a con party situation.

Thanks so much!