The
alarm went off at 8:00 AM this morning, right on schedule. Of
course, my CST-orientated body thought it was 10:00 AM, so getting
out of bed wasn't nearly the chore I thought it was going to be.
I sat down to put the finishing touches on the web-based program
schedule I was going to download to my Palm, and promptly got
swamped in a coding problem with Saturday (I still don't know
what was wrong -- I think Dreamweaver was just horking on the
line length).
By
the time all that was done, it was going on 10:30 AM, Lyndon was
up, dressed and on his way out the door to have lunch with a local
friend, and I still had to download the program to my Palm. Whereupon
I realized to my horror that my Wall Street Powerbook only had
one serial port, and it was being taken up by the external modem
line (the internal went hinky many months ago), which meant that
I couldn't plug in my serial Palm cradle and actually download
the program.
Well,
crap.
It
was a solvable problem, admittedly, since the hotel offered high-speed
internet for $9 a day, but I was already running late and knew
the panels I wanted to see today. In the end I just threw on some
clothes, gulped down a low-carb bar and headed over to the convention
center to register.
The
layout of ConJosé, by the way, is eminently sensible -- the San
José Convention Center is the main base of events, and the connected
Hilton is hosting some events while the Fairmont (where I'm staying)
is about a block away and will be the site of other events. I
got to the convention center and picked up my badge, which is
another brilliant innovation of ConJosé -- the badge is a printed
piece of paper (with your name large and easy enough to read from
a distance, thank Cthulu), that is slipped into the clear pocket
of a flat nylon bag like the type you can keep a passport in.
The bag has not one but two pouches on the back side for money,
room keys, etc., and we could choose between purple, blue, red
and green. Since I was already wearing tons of green, I went with
a purple bag -- I'm stylish that way.
After
that, I wandered around the dealer's room for a bit, drooling
over all the gorgeous clothes that I couldn't afford and running
into Terry Pratchett, who I know from Con*Cept in Montreal and
who was kind enough to take me to the kiosk where he'd just bought
a history of corsetry after I expressed my interest in the subject.
"Dunno why you'd need a corset, though," he said. What a lovely
man.
I
then demonstrated that fandom is truly a small world when I stopped
two belly dancers to take their picture and discovered that they
were from Plano, of all places, and knew my belly dance teacher.
We had a nice time nattering on about the big belly dancing convention
a couple of weeks ago, and I promised to put them in touch with
the organizers of ConDFW so that they could offer to do demos
next year.
Afterwards,
it was time to attend a panel on fandom (mainly because Lee Martindale
was on it), and then I wandered back out to the main concourse
where I ran into four members of the Musketeer crowd -- Julia
Kosatka, Bill Seney, Kristine Smith and Notre Captaine Elizabeth
Moon. Elizabeth had to head off to her room, but Julia and Kristine
escorted me back into the dealer's room for some browsing and
distribution of Kris's bookmarks advertising her new book "Law
of Survival." I don't necessarily pick up a lot of books when
I go to Worldcon, mainly because shipping them home is always
a pain in the ass, but there are so many gorgeous dresses, corsets,
jewelry and other things here -- there's even a belly dancing
booth with some luscious skirts. Oooer. . .
Around
that time, however, I realized that I hadn't had anything to eat
all day except my low-carb bar, so I skipped the "Stanley Kubrick
vs. 2001" panel (sorry, Steve) in search of food. Turns out there's
a Johnny Rocket's right behind the Fairmont -- a cherry Coke and
a chili dog never tasted so good. I dropped off my shopping at
the hotel and went back to the convention center, just in time
to meet up with Derek.
As
we chatted and worked on our relative projects (Derek was critiquing
a story for the con story workshop and I was working on this entry),
a con member strolled up and commented on my Palm m505 and portable
keyboard. This turned into a conversation about the Apple [] and
the good old days of computing; Derek, bless his heart, managed
to extricate us in time for the panel on YA books and what goes
into writing them (with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Susie McKee Charnas,
Terry Bisson, Tad Williams and Pterry). Good panel, although I
thought Pterry was going to reach over and punch Williams when
he described the Harry Potter books as "Terry Pratchett meets
Enid Blyton."
What
else? Dinner was at the cheap Chinese place across the street
(with Selina Rosen, Julia and Scott Zrubek), then we repaired
to Notre Captaine's room for weapons inspection and a review of
the script for Saturday morning's demo, along with much oohing
and aahing over a beautiful edged sword one of the Aux members
brought for show.
And
now it's almost 10:00 PM, and we're going to go out and do some
room parties. Later, taters!
