mariness

1. Regarding NBC's Sunday coverage, I can do no better than to quote Jeff Weiner of the Orlando Sentinel: "Dear @NBC, despite what you think, people will turn in in droves to watch live sports on a Sunday afternoon – Sincerely, the NFL." Yes. That.

2. Despite that and interrupted viewing anyway from various causes, the synchronized diving? Awesome. I am especially in love with the swimsuits from the Chinese diving pair which manage to be gorgeous, flattering and practical and probably one reason they won the gold medal, but also delighted to see two people absolutely thrilled to win a silver medal at the Olympics. Because, yes, that is an amazing accomplishment – just getting to the Olympics is an amazing accomplishment, for that matter – and doing so by spinning after leaping off a diving board, yay.

3. Gymnastics? Continues to terrify me.

4. Tor.com posts? Continue to get done with this in the background. Fiction? Still slow. Very slow. Frozen honey moves faster. But I don't really think I can blame the Olympics for this. (Or so I tell myself.) But I did finish a small piece of flash fiction this morning, quite by accident, which has done wonders for my mood.

5. H and I saw not one, not two, but THREE bald eagles yesterday -- one a juvenile. And a bunny rabbit quickly getting beneath the nearest cover. Today, the lawn was visited by a flock of ibises. We're nowhere near the flocks of birds Audubon described when he made his first visit to Florida, but I keep hoping we are inching back.

5. On a rather less pleasant subject, the Readercon Board of Directors statement is here, the petition protesting that statement is here, and yes, to confirm the multiple emails I have been getting on this, I believe Walling is one of the people referenced here I say "I believe" because it has been three years, I do have a neurological disorder which is playing havoc with my memory, and although Walling is a fellow Tor.com blogger, I did not connect the name with the face until Friday. Nor was he the worst person I encountered at Readercon.

I could say a great deal more, but I think plenty of pixels have been spilled on this already. Moving on!

6. Ben Payne has a few words regarding these sorts of blog pile ups here. (He says he doesn't mean me, but I'm pretty sure he does.)

7. And a more cheerful note, if you think YOU have problems, check out indignities suffered by this poor cat. Oh, the FELINITY.

The internet here is attempting to kill me. Let's see if this works:

Days 2-5, Con:

Completely unexpected moment of awesomeness: singing folk songs with various people, including, if I am remembering correctly, tithenai, sevenravens, csecooney and Ellen Kushner and others at the Goblin Fruit party and launch of wirewalking's new chapbook, Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties. I thought we were just going to eat things. (I also ate things. One very good reason to buy wirewalking's novel, Desideria, is so that she can have the money and time to make more homemade mead.)

Alas, I overdid things Thursday, and I have to be honest here, most of Friday, outside of a highly entertaining dinner and getting to meet a couple new people, pretty much sucked; I felt horrible for most of the day, even with a nap, and unfortunately, watching other people have a marvelous time when you're feeling like crap is not as cheery as you might think, which left me, post the Meet the Pros party that night, feeling pretty low, unloved, and sick, and regretting coming.

So I almost stayed in bed the next morning, which would have been a great pity, since things improved.

More enjoyable than most of the panels: Readercon's Kaffeeklasches, where basically you sit around and chat with various writers in a nice small round group, which lets you and everyone else get into a spirited discussion with Samuel Delany about grammar and the Elizabethan poet Wyatt.

Less enjoyable than most of the panels: the diversity panel, which started out amusingly and then, well…disintegrated, but I think I'll let kate_nepveu chat about this for me. This led into an overly interesting conversation with Kate, which led to me standing too long, which led to fall one, which led to fall two, which led to fall three. Much thanks to the numerous people that helped me here, and luckily, a long nap and getting to meet new people at dinner revived me.

Most enjoyable part of the con: the impromptu Goblin Fruit and others singing thingy Saturday night (yes, MORE singing); much thanks to Ellen Kushner for bringing me and to everyone there for tolerating my voice.

The Sunday morning panels on short fiction deserve their own separate post.

Most how did I end up doing this moment: singing Lillibulero, and badly, to Gene and Margaret Wolfe. How…yeah. This was NOT at the above mentioned singing thing and naturally my voice cracked everywhere and I sounded awful. Oh well. Incidentally I was delighted to find that Gene Wolfe is another huge fan of the often underlooked and forgotten Ruth Plumly Thompson, who continued to write Oz books after Baum did. Thanks to csecooney for helping this otherwise awesome (except the singing) conversation to happen.

Most expectedly popular item: Everybody loved my teddy bear backpack (ha, ha, to certain central Florida critics!), large enough to hold a netbook, my wallet, a brush, my iPod, and an actual book book all all once, even those who wanted to know if it came with a netbook. For the curious, I purchased the backpack at the Canada Pavillion at Epcot; I have no idea if it's available elsewhere.

Proof that memory fails us all: Editor, to me: Wait, your name is familiar. Don't I know you?

Me: Yes, you're publishing me in the fall.

Editor: (pause) Do you remember the title? I'm better with titles.

Me: (pause) Er. No.

Editor: I feel better.

Me: I'm really bad with titles.

Best part of the con: the bookstore. It just gave me a warm feeling all over.

Worst bit of the con: the bookstore. I found 23 books that I wanted and couldn't afford. (I counted.) It was awful. Some people, and I am looking directly at you, Small Beer Press, made it even worse by dazzling little books on amazing sale prices that I still couldn't afford. Clearly I need to win the lottery and buy a huge mansion with eight bedrooms, seven of which can be turned into libraries. Well. Maybe six, to accommodate the occasional guest. Who could bring more books. Works for everyone.

Related: finding the utterly perfect birthday gift for my father, an antique Mongolian sideboard for the reduced price of $19,999, plus free shipping. (Actually shipping wasn't mentioned and I may have needed to add several hundred to that price, given the weight of the thing.) That didn't actually happen at the con but it just popped into my mind.

Most irritating moments: every time I attempted to connect to the internet, or lack thereof, particularly odd since this was a) a business hotel and b) a business hotel charging the insane rate of $12.95 PER DAY for internet access. At that price I expect a zippy connection, which wasn't there.

Most disappointing part of the con: I gotta say, the tracks. Admittedly, I didn't hit many of them, but those I did were mostly meh, with the exception of the future of short fiction panels, about which, more later.

Day 5, post Con

Harrison Ford is pretty.

That is all.

*********

Much thanks to the many, many people who helped me navigate the con this weekend. I am probably going to write something fairly negative about disability issues later, but I did want to thank the many people who did NOT fall into the disability fail category, particularly the people after the bad fall on Saturday afternoon - I did not get your names and I meant to thank you publicly. If you are one of those people, please comment so you can get your deserved kudos.