I Can Has Wiscon

Dear Penthouse Forum:

You'll never believe what happened to me this weekend! I found myself at a science fiction convention in Wisconsin, surrounded by hot feminists...and everybody was talking about penises!

(I did, in fact, promise that I would start my con report like that. The remainder will be in the style of msisolak.)

GOOD!

Madison? Still a lovely town.

I got to see people! I saw people I hadn't for a year or two or three, met people in person that I've known online for a while, and met all new people, and they were all interesting and witty and fun individuals. Which in a 1000-person convention is batting pretty good indeed.

(Really, that is the best good thing. I spent most of the con sitting in the bar and talking to people. Or the lobby. Or wandering around the dealer's room, talking to people. The more I do these things, the more I prefer a medium-sized group and a good chat to a formal panel environment.)

I has a lovely photograph by annafdd from the art show. It is in the mail to me as we speak and will reside with my Provence photo in connubial bliss on the wall.

Foooooood. So much food. I hope to god nobody in Wisconsin makes their kid clean their plate, because then there would be a rash of exploding children. I may not eat for a week.

Baaaaaaaacon. No really, we did the big breakfast thing on Sunday with the omelette guy and the giant pieces of meat and the tiny waffles, and there was this...tower of bacon on a table. We bowed down and paid homage to its might.

Both the panel I was on and my reading group seemed to go over well.

I am now a fully tee-shirted member of the Nightshade Books Posse.

We rewrote enough of "The Wasteland" while waiting for the Strange Horizons tea party to open (chanting "teaaaa" every time someone opened the door, like zombies) that I want to do the rest.

(between the panel and the party
lies the hallway
the con is very long

this is how the con ends
this is how the con ends
this is how the con ends
not with a bang, but with bacon)

Only one drink exploded on us, and it did so amusingly.

There was in fact no puking in the champagne room, as set down by law at the beginning of the weekend.

We can't sing karaoke, but we don't care.

Hanne makes incredible saltwater taffy.

My friends are hilarious and I love them.

Governor's Club next year, baby!


BAD!

Getting only three hours of sleep the night before leaving, which meant I was crashing out at 5pm and having migraines/dizzies for two days until I made up the sleep. This made me miss The Gathering. Wah.

Various airplane mishaps, although none of them did actually result in losing stuff or missing flights, just came damn close and stressed me some.

Odour of Hot Dog, Area Effect 6th Floor: effects include nausea, weakness, and fear.

When you are four long-haired women sharing a hotel room, there are never enough towels.

Due to more communication mishaps, not all of them involving me, I didn't actually make the impromptu Speculative Poetry reading that I was supposed to be participating in. This makes me sad.

I spent waaaaay too much money, and I didn't even get any sparklies.

Cheese curds are good, but stop at splitting one bowl. Really. You do not want to learn that one the hard way.

I am still humming Suffragette City.

I wussed out of the self-mutilation brigade on Saturday (being the excursion to a nearby tattoo parlor), which I am now regretting a little even though it was probably for the best (I was still doing the dizzy-nausea thing, and getting a tummy piercing might not be the best idea under those circumstances.)

I missed mrissa due to the flight times thing. Boooo.

PERPLEXING and/or INTERESTING!

As we did not attend the Good Touch/Bad Touch panel, we spent the weekend in a state of confusion as to what was appropriate or inappropriate touching at Wiscon and had to poll the populace.

Also, we did not attend the Let's You and Her Fight panel, so we were equally unaware of how to have fights at Wiscon and may have performed this operation incorrectly.

Somehow stillsostrange, matociquala and I became Lovely (Corseted) Assistants at the Tiptree Auction on Saturday night. Where "somehow" = matociquala tends to get us into this shit. *g* It was actually pretty damn fun helping out, but we have running bets now over whether our boobs will be in Locus again. I am not yet sure how I feel about that. :p

Boxes of G.I. Joe dolls, standing in formation, all naked and in their rows are...yeah. Yes. Moving on. *ahem*

Apparently we all fly across country at great expense for the express purpose of...talking about things on the internet. No, seriously.


I will add other things if I remember them! But now, I must fall down.

Goodnight, internets. Wiscon salutes you.