Where Dustbunnies Go To Die

I got home from Montreal about 40 or so minutes ago. Came in, quickly checked to see whether there was a new Desperate Housewives tonight that I was missing (there wasn't - my memory says that in past seasons, though, they'd run a new episode opposite the Super Bowl so I thought I better make sure), unpacked my backpack, popped over to the subway to buy my February Metropass (the machines were both sold out, meaning I had to go to the bank machine so that I'd have enough cash on me for my Viva pass tomorrow), and came back home.

Today wasn't terribly productive. There was a division heads meeting this morning which technically, I didn't need to attend as Events falls within the Programming And Events division, and that's Terry's job. However, I stopped by the room anyway just in case - and it was empty. Turns out that everyone had decided to go down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. So I went down to the concourse level to check out the rest of the function space, then found an outlet and sat down with my laptop to catch up a bit on TrekBBS.

Cliff and dlacey showed up and asked if I wanted to come along for lunch. It was going to be a working lunch as dlacey was meeting with foms to discuss Con Suite stuff, but I needed to eat, and I had been invited, after all, so I went. We went to a rather busy dim sum place near the Palais des congrès. The food was tasty, but don't ask me what I ate - I can rarely identify anything at dim sum. I know that some of it had shrimp, and there was rice, and there were peanut dumplings.

After lunch, we went back to Cliff's car and started the trip home. Again, I dozed off a few times, but I don't think it was ever for more than a minute or two. So I may end up going to bed earlier than usual tonight.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to make the trip down to Boston. I probably should, but whether or not I can afford it, I don't know...

I'm sitting in the departure area of Chattanooga Airport, waiting for my flight to start boarding (which it should very soon, as its scheduled departure time is 3:50). Eric drove me to the airport, waited while I checked in and dropped off my suitcase, and then sat with me until it was time to go through security.

This is likely to be a bit disjointed as I'm rushing to mention some of the highlights of the weekend before my flight boards...

I had a fantastic time. We apparently made a bit of an impression, and not just on the half-dozen or so people I already knew who were here (mostly Outworlders people from Atlanta). We got several comments of approval from various people whom we met over the course of the weekend, including one guy whom we met at a party last night - every time he saw us today he hooted at us and gave us a thumbs-up. There was a woman who recognized us from when we were having dinner Friday night in the pizzeria (which is in a converted antique train car). There was the guy who was working the door at another party last night, who let us in despite the fact that I didn`t have my ID on me. The conversation went something like this:

Him: Okay, how old are you?
Me: 41.
Him: What year were you born?
Me: 1967.
Him: Who was the President?
Me: I'm Canadian. Lester B. Pearson was my Prime Minister.
Him: You're a god. You can come in.

(I actually did know that LBJ was President at the time, but I would have had to think about it for a second...)

He later came over to where Eric and I were dancing and told us, "Have fun." We said, "We are." He replied, "No, I mean right now. Hot sweaty fun."

I guess there aren't that many gay couples in Chattanooga fandom? *shrug*

I think one of the highlights of the weekend was seeing the ArcAttack concert. They're a group who perform synthesizer music, with the speakers hooked up to Tesla coils and so it's basically a musically coordinated electricity show. (They were at Dragon*Con this year too - here's part of their show. It's not the best video, but there are others.)

We went through the dealers' room today, where I picked up a couple of books and a t-shirt (like I needed more t-shirts, but I couldn't resist "Salvador Dalek"). I looked for a One Ring to replace the one I lost, but the jeweler here didn't have any. Eric got a ring very similar to my Celtic knot ring, though his was gold and silver (mine is just silver).

And, of course, the company was the best part. Eric has a huge romantic streak in him. The tub in our room wasn't really big enough for the two of us to have a bubble bath, but we did our best... :)

Anyhow, I wish the weekend wasn't over. It went by far too quickly. *sigh*

I just walked in the door from a weekend in Montreal at Con*Cept. It was a weekend full of Anticipation-related meetings and tours, some Gaylaxicon discussion with Montreal folks (and at least two attempts to have some discussion with Montreal folks which failed because I could never find them), and a few panels. (I now have a fuller appreciation of the comments people sometimes make about how hard it is to get a word in edgewise when one is on a panel with Dr. David Stephenson - throw David Brin into the mix, and it was nearly impossible. Fortunately I'm persistent. :) )

Naming everyone I spent time with this weekend would take far too long, but suffice to say that I had a great time, and it was nice to see some folks whom I don't get to see nearly often enough, including noeltheone, con_girl, foms and northbard. I also got to spend some time with Liana K., who is taking on the job of running the Aurora Awards at Anticipation, so I'll be spending more time with her over the next few months (and making all the straight guys jealous, no doubt). And, of course, there were several people whom I see regularly in Toronto, but it's nice to be able to actually socialize with them without one of us having to look at the time every five minutes and say, "Oops, I have to be elsewhere now."

It was also nice to have a couple of (albeit brief) phone conversations with Eric over the course of the weekend. :)

I think this was my last convention for 2008. I say "I think" because I need to double-check the schedule of Anticipation meetings, but I think the next one might be in February, in Boston.

It might be nice to get caught up on laundry and housework for a change. :)

I'm posting this from the airport in Atlanta. My flight was originally scheduled to depart at 8:50, was delayed to 9:28, and has now been delayed again until 10:48 - which means that it may arrive in Toronto after the aiport curfew. Though considering that I landed around 1:30 in the morning on an earlier trip this year (coming back from Boskone, I think?), that shouldn't be a problem. I hope.

Anyhow, I had a great time this weekend. I'll try to post more a more detailed summary later (I have less than an hour's battery life left - this battery doesn't seem to last very long, and that's something I'll need to check into when I get home), but I got to spend time with a lot of folks whom I only see once or twice a year. Which is the whole point of coming here every year, no?

I know I'll leave some people out, but I got to hang out a fair bit with evil_admiral, his bf Ken and his roommate (or ex-roommate - I'm not quite clear on that) Eric, saw ashoemaker and cplpunishment, rasiler, terri_osborne and kradical, omahastar, cartierobert, and some folks from back home, including aprilsnark, whitesangria, kairi_kiss, kaelsu2, assetic and briankit, neoengel, and psubrat (who isn't really "from back home", but she's a Polaris person so she counts for that purpose :) ), as well as a bunch of LJ-less people (as far as I know, anyway). I shared a room a few blocks from the main hotels with Chris and Lee Knight, who were fantastic to room with. Every night, as well as this afternoon when I came back to collect my stuff to come to the airport, Lee greeted me with "What were you doing out so late, young man?" *grin* Plus, they were very good at not waking me in the mornings - since I don't think I ever got back to the room before 3 in the morning, that's a good thing. (And since they were both still up whenever I got back, I'm not sure how they got up so early...)

And believe it or not, despite being out so late, I never overdid it once. I had a few drinks at the Outworlders party last night, but was fairly sober (if tired) when I left.

Autograph-wise, I didn't get too many - just Dominic Keating, Robert Englund, Robert Picardo and Walter Koenig. Since Keating, Picardo and Koenig have all been past guests at TT, I'm not sure how I managed not to get them before (I was probably too busy). Picardo was wearing his t-shirt from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's "Music Of Star Trek" event when I went to his table, and when he discovered that I was from Toronto (I mentioned that I was one of the Polaris people who bumped into him at Starbucks a few months ago), he made a point of showing me that that was what he was wearing. :) Robert Englund was pleased to learn that I was a fan of his work on "V" - the photo I chose was from that show. He said that he hadn't used it for years, but decided to take it down from the wall in his home and have reprints made for Dragon*Con. (I don't know if "V: The Next Generation" ever got made - I've seen the book, but I've never heard of the miniseries or film - whichever it is - actually being finished or aired. I want to see it, though.)

I'd wanted to get Avery Brooks' autograph, but he'd already left the con when I went by his table Sunday afternoon. :( I did get to see him on stage with Michael Dorn, however. I was surprised at how many one-word answers he gave to questions, and that he actually tried to avoid the topic when he was asked for his feelings about Barack Obama running for President. Perhaps he's toned down his intensity when asked about political topics.

Dominic Keating was asked about the rumour that Malcolm Reed was supposed to be gay, and he responded, "Wasn't he? I played him gay!" But then he refused to talk any further about the subject, citing the fact that there were children present. He then proceeded to drop about 8 f-bombs and six "shits" into his talk. I pointed this out when I got his autograph, and he said, "I said 'fuck'? No. You're imagining things!" and then grinned at me.

I also saw Gareth David-Lloyd at his table. I happened to be wearing my Polaris concom t-shirt that day, so I went over and said hi. He shook my hand and then winked at me (which he was doing all throughout Polaris this year... *sigh*)

I also picked up a few books, including the Doctor Who short story anthology that kradical edited that terri_osborne is in, called "The Quality Of Leadership" (at least, I think that's the title... it's packed in my checked luggage). I'm looking forward to reading it. There were also a couple of free books, including one by Sherilyn Kenyon. I've never read her stuff, and I don't even know that I'd like it, but free books? Hello!

Funnily enough, I also got a few questions about next year's Worldcon, since I was wearing the badge I was given at this year's that identified me as the Events Director for Anticipation. I was supposed to put out flyers, but when I last checked my email, I hadn't been sent the PDF to print. :( I did hand out some business cards, however, and managed to recruit a few potential volunteers.

I'll post more when I get home about panels and such. Suffice it to say that I had a really good time this weekend and am already looking forward to next year, when I get to see my Atlanta-and-area friends again. (I'll see some of them at Gaylaxicon in October, of course, but not all of them, alas...)

I'm back from Boston, and it was okay, though I didn't get to see as much of the con as I would have liked. I only made it to two panels (autopope was on one of them, but I never actually got a chance to say hello, not that he would have known me from Adam), but I did a fair bit of Anticipation-related business, meeting our head of Tech and the guys who are going to be running the Hugos. I also had brunch with thespian on Sunday. I was unable to meet up with qvamp, however, as we kept playing phone tag. :(

Actually, one of the panels was kind of amusing, on the unexpected uses of technology (that was the one autopope was on). The immediate suggestion from the panelists was that everything ends up being used in pornography, whether it was intended to or not. I'm not sure if that was the most amusing part, or that Karl Schroeder - who was raised a Mennonite - was the moderator (and the one who first proposed the porn connection). Though I think it's safe to say that Karl no longer follows the tenets of the religion. (I've never actually discussed the topic with him, but at the very least, the idea of a Mennonite SF author is a bit of a contradiction, I should think.)

The trip itself was much more eventful than the con, however. On the way there, the Toronto-Montreal leg was fine. However, I had been told when I checked in that I would have to retrieve my luggage in Montreal and go through US Customs there. So I got off the plane and followed everyone to the luggage carousel, where I waited for 45 minutes (until 15 minutes before my Boston flight was supposed to board) before I heard an announcement - something about US connections, which I couldn't quite make out. So I went to find a security guard and asked him what the announcement had been. He said, "If you're connecting to a US-bound flight, you have to pick up your luggage in the departure area."

WTF? So I raced up there, grabbed my suitcase, took it to where it needed to be, found Customs, went through, and raced the length of the terminal to my gate... only to find that not only had they not yet started boarding, they were delayed because they were combining two Boston-bound flights into one. *headdesk*

The trip back was nearly as much fun. I arrived at the airport at 6 or so (having discovered that they had lied to me upon arrival, and that there actually was a subway station practically right across the street from the hotel... I suspect that the information booth people at Logan are getting kickbacks from the taxi drivers to tell people that they can't get to the hotel from the airport by subway). When I went to check in, they told me that my flight had been cancelled due to poor weather in Montreal. However, they were able to find me a direct flight to Toronto leaving at 9:20 (my original flight was for 8:35). Since I had an extra hour or so, I decided not to bother going through security just yet.

When I did go to security, I was informed that I had been selected for secondary screening (for the second time in two years, the first time being my return from Gallifrey two years ago). So they went through all of my carry-on luggage and patted me down. Fun. NOT.

However, the security people seemed to have a good sense of humour about the whole thing. When they told me I had to stand about 15 feet away from them and that they would let me know if they had any questions, I said, "I can't really see from over here, though, so if you ask me about something I might not know what you're referring to." The woman at the X-ray machine said, "I can confirm, his glasses are in his backpack." Then she asked, "What's the vinyl?" (I was carrying a record album I'd picked up for Murray which contains the Guest of Honour speeches for the 1971 Worldcon.) When I explained, it turned out that the guard who had been going through my luggage was a fan. So I gave her one of my Anticipation business cards (I didn't have any Polaris cards to give her, unfortunately).

After all that, my flight was delayed until 10:40 - apparently there was bad weather in Calgary preventing the plane from getting to Toronto before it continued on to Boston. So I landed at Pearson at 1:15 this morning.

I managed to clear Customs pretty quickly again and met another SF fan - this time it was the guy who was collecting the Customs declaration cards at the exit from the luggage pickup area. He was also curious about the record, and when I told him what it was, he said, "Wow, I've always wanted to go to one of those." Actually, the woman to whom I had to show my passport was also kind of curious...

Funny, I remember years ago, going to Shore Leave with friends, they were paranoid about admitting that they were SF fans and would insist on telling Customs officers that they were going to a "literary conference". OTOH, I keep meeting fellow geeks on my travels. :)

Anyhow... the bus from the airport arrived at Kipling station just after the last train left, so I got to take the all-night bus along Bloor and up Yonge to get home. It was about 2:30 when I got to my apartment, and I slept until 1:45 this afternoon (good thing it was a holiday :) ).

I guess my next planned trip isn't until August, when I go to Denver. I wonder if I'll get pulled aside and searched then as well...

Catching up after a weekend away...

Con*Cept was a lot of fun. I know that there was a lot going on behind the scenes that I wasn't fully aware of, as there is with any con (though probably moreso with this one, given the extremely small size of the concom), but from what I could see, things went relatively well and there were lots of people there whom I don't recall seeing at past Con*Cepts, which is a good thing.

I understand that assetic and gurudata won Best In Show at the Masquerade for their Doctor/Rose/Dalek body swap - congratulations! (Though there isn't enough brain soap in the world to scrub the image of gurudata with Dalek bumps out of my memory. :P )

Declan picked me up around 12:30 and we made our way out to the east end to pick up aprilsnark. The trip out was uneventful, and upon arriving, we met up with gurudata, kanecool, troystar and Chris, and some other folks (I know there were a couple of others, but my memory is failing me) to grab a quick bite at the Faubourg, which is a mall on Ste. Catherine Street. We went to the SAQ (liquor store) afterwards to try to pick up the ingredients for Tequila Mockingbirds - a drink that we created when I turned to Declan after a TT meeting one day and said, "Hey, something's bothering me, and you've worked as a bartender - how come there's no drink called a Tequila Mockingbird?" Well, there is now. However, they didn't have any Tequila Rose at that SAQ, so we had to put off the great experiment until Saturday, and we were actually in bed at a decent hour Friday night. (For "decent," read "two in the morning.")

Saturday I had a noon panel, so I got up and made my way up the street to find a Tim Horton's so that I could have some solid food in my stomach to take my antibiotics (this was a recurring theme during the weekend) and then got back to the hotel just before my panel was to start. My first panel was called "Fanzines Vs. Blogs" - and while I'm not a huge fanzine person, I think I know a thing or two about blogging. ;)

I was on a total of four panels during the weekend, all of them on Saturday; in addition to the fanzines-vs.-blogs panel, I was on "Star Trek 40th Anniversary", "Clash Of The Titans" (about whether "literary" and "genre" are natural enemies) and "Sex And The Believable Alien".

That last panel was on opposite the beginning of the dance (with DJs troystar and gurudata), so I had to miss the first hour, but I made my way there after the panel ended. I was talking to Chris when troystar put on a PSB song, so of course, I had to dance. ;) I ended up staying out on the dance floor for most of the evening until it ended around 2 or so. foms wandered in as it was ending and remarked that it was the first time in a long time that the dance was still going after he had shut down his room party.

Following the dance, I returned to our room, followed shortly thereafter by iangurudata and his entourage. Declan had been able to find some Tequila Rose at some point on Saturday, so we were able to try our inaugural Tequila Mockingbirds. I know I shouldn't have been drinking because of the antibiotics, but aprilsnark (whose mother is a nurse) assured me that one wouldn't kill me. And may I say... they're brilliant. The recipe is simplicity itself: equal amounts of Tequila Rose and Southern Comfort. (Well, it had to be something Southern; "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes place in the American South, after all.)

Mind you, while one drink didn't kill me, having to stop at one meant that the evening wasn't nearly as much fun as it could have been. Don't get me wrong - I don't have to drink to have a good time - but when you're the only one in the room not drinking, and everyone else is doing so to excess, conversations and events that would make perfect sense if you were able to join in seem shallow, pointless, and not nearly as funny as they seem when you've had a few.

Though that didn't stop me from becoming the butt of one of Declan's jokes. He was keeping track of everyone I'd flirted with and writing their names on my discarded styrofoam cup. I'm pretty sure I wasn't that flirty, though hilarity did ensue at one point when our new friend Brian was in the bathroom and yelled something like "Blow me!" through the door. (That wasn't exactly it, but that was the sentiment.) So I stood outside the door until he came out, at which point I said, "Was that a request?" He grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me into the bathroom and slammed the door shut for a few seconds, long enough for everyone to realize what had just happened. (However, it was all a joke - he was straight, though he did grab my ass while hugging me goodnight when he left.)

Sunday was relaxing despite aprilsnark's particular approach to waking me up. (She's discovered that singing Good Morning from Singin' In The Rain to me at high volume when I've only gotten five hours of sleep provides a humourous response involving a particular finger.) I went to gurudata's panel on the remastered TOS; I haven't seen any of it because I don't get any CW channels on my cable system. I was impressed with the changes to "The Naked Time," but I think that the matte painting of the mining facility in the teaser of "The Devil In The Dark" was already a classic and didn't need to be replaced with a CGI background.

Declan and aprilsnark had decided to stay over Sunday night as well, but since I had a class tonight I decided that I didn't want to stay. aprilsnark was able to ascertain for me that gurudata and kanecool had space for a passenger, so they drove me home. For some reason I was having trouble staying awake - I blame the extremely smooth ride that the Andrewmobile provides. I probably dozed off about ten times for five minutes each time.

When I got home, there were three days' worth of newspapers piled up and so I decided to stay up and read them, and so I didn't actually get to bed until 5. I got up around 1:30 today, which meant that I didn't have time to do much before leaving for tonight's class.

Speaking of which, tonight was the first class in the Internet Scripting Languages course. The instructor arrived 15 minutes late and then couldn't get the projector to work, but eventually he got things started. I didn't really learn much that I didn't already know, since tonight was taken up with a discussion of HTML. About the only thing discussed that I had never worked with before was frames. The instructor said up front that nobody uses frames any more, or (perhaps more accurately) that nobody should use frames, but the cirriculum requires him to teach them. Argh. And as a result of the late start, he kicked us all out before we'd had time to finish the exercises, so when I got home (after watching Doctor Who), I completed them and uploaded the pages to my webspace for now (to make sure that I had done them correctly). One of the exercises involved style sheets, but he didn't get that far in the lecture (and it's an area that I'm not comfortable with yet, so I need to read the text - and yes, the text for this one was mandatory, and $160 - ouch - before I can do that part of the exercise).

And no, I'm not giving you a link to the pages that I created. Frames are ugly.

Oh, and I officially hate the CBC - on most normal channels, when I set my VCR to start recording at one minute to the hour and stop at three minutes after the hour, I get the entire show. I got too much of the end of Royal Canadian Air Farce and missed the last few minutes of tonight's Doctor Who episode. *headdesk* Fortunately I didn't miss any of the climax - just a bit of the denouement. I see that the running mentions of Torchwood are well under way.

Anyhow, I have about 300 friendslist entries to read now... I may not make it to TrekBBS for a few more days.

Wow, there were a lot of posts to get through today. Over 500 since I last logged on. Of course, it was probably largely due to both lizblackdog and omahastar participating in Blogathon. Entertaining as it was, why did it have to be while I was away? :P

Okay, so here's what happened this weekend...

( Thursday, July 27 )

( Friday, July 28 )

( Sunday, July 30 )

( Monday, July 31 )

So, that was the weekend.

Today, I got up around noon and called a headhunter who had left a message on my machine while I was gone - not the same one I'd been dealing with previously. This is for a position at Honda - they're looking for someone with experience in COBOL, CICS, various mainframe utilities, MQ Series and J2EE. Good luck finding someone with all of those. I told the headhunter that while I don't have J2EE, I do own a textbook that I bought about a year ago just for kicks so that I could learn it. She found that amusing.

Apart from that, today has been filled with reading all of the weekend's emails (365 of them in total) and reading everything you folks had been up to all weekend. That, and staying inside for the most part, though I did have to go to the drug store for toothpaste, soap and anti-perspirant. Somehow I managed to run out of all three at the same time. According to what I've been reading, today's humidex hit 48C (118F) - no wonder I felt like a drowned rat the second I stepped outside. I may pop over to Dominion and pick up some ice cream. Fortunately I have plenty of Lactaid to go with it. Hm, the more I think about it, the better that idea sounds.

Oh, and some memeage, gakked from yellow_freshia:

My Gay Fairy Name is Star Dancer. How Gay.What's Yours?

Apparently my special fairy skills are:

• Drinking dew drops


• Dancing in the mushroom patch.


• Over the rainbow tourguide

Uh-huh. Could have been worse - yellow_freshia's fairy name is "Lance the Gay Fairy".