WorldCon

Aug. 31st, 2013 06:57 pm
rowanf: (Purple hair)

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Yesterday Martha and Katie came down from Austin and we had a really great day just hanging out and visiting. I'm really lucky to have such a wonderful family, down through the generations. I'm looking forward to being a great aunt to Katie's son.

So today I headed over to the WorldCon. Spike had evidently comped me the day. <3 I admit that the $75 one day price had been a bit daunting and I am very grateful. In the morning I mostly did the academic track and heard a couple of really interesting papers, the most interesting by Mary Anne Mohanraj on Rewritings of the Women of the Ramayana and of the Matter of Britain. It was part of a session on using folklore in your work. I missed the first speaker who was talking about Brazilian folklore. I asked them both for their papers and have gotten Ms. Mohanraj's back already. Then there was a session on "finding ourselves and our aliens" which was a paper on Will Eisner (creator of early graphic novels) and one on Jack Arnold (director Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc) that was much less interesting to me.

Then I wandered over to the dealers room and met Tiller's partner, Marilyn. Tiller had gotten horrible food poisoning and missed most of the Con today. I touched base with her and then wandered around checking out the dealers and the art show. Lots of nice stuff.

In the afternoon I went to sessions on censorship and on ebooks. Both were quite interesting (and had librarians among the panelists). Then Tiller pinged me and said he was feeling well enough to wander out and we met at Fogo de Chau and watched me each lots of amazing Brazilian bbq whilst he drank tea. It was a really nice visit... but I realize I didn't stop by the art show to pick up my quick sale piece. Ooops. Hopefully they will let Spike pick it up for me. But boy, do I feel like an idiot!

Other than that though, it was an awesome day!!!
rowanf: (anime reader)

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Originally uploaded by rowanf.
Since the EDD cut off my unemployment and I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone about looking for work... I decided to head off to Texas to see my family and help Spike with a WorldCon event and hopefully get to WorldCon.

Upon arrival, I found out that my dad has a pleural effusion and would need to get it drained the next day. A liter and a half of fluid has been making him rather short of breath. He thinks he had an embolism or something when they were in Brazil last October. They had at the time suspected and ruled out a heart attack but didn't check his lungs. Gah. People kept telling him of his shortness of breath that it "is just old age" and I think he is feeling justified to know that there really was a problem. OTOH, he is also wondering about cancer or a recurrence of TB (which he got as a medical resident) and other things that are kinda scary. I had really hoped to drag him off to WorldCon since he is First Fandom and it would be fun to show him a modern Con, but he isn't feeling up to it.

Yesterday we had the kick-off events at the San Antonio Public Library. There were panels and readings by authors at 1 and 4 and a panel of editors at 2:30. My job was to shuttle them back and forth from the Convention Center to the Library. It is about a mile but the temperature got up to 101F and we really weren't going to ask them to walk it.

1:00 - 2:30 pm Kathleen Goonan, Tanya Huff and Walter Jon Williams
2:30 - 4:00 pm Liz Gorinsky, Lee Harris and James Patrick Kelly
4:00 - 5:30 pm Robin Hobb, Catherine Asaro and Elizabeth Bear

I had been wanting to get Tanya Huff to sign my lending copy of _Enchantment Emporium_ which Song had returned to me just a couple of weeks ago... but I couldn't find it anywhere. I got her to sign my ipad cover instead. How cool is that?!

It was actually really fun to be their driver and I enjoyed chatting with various of the authors and eavesdropping on their conversations between themselves. And the panels and readings that I caught were really good.

Then at 6:30-8:00 pm we celebrated the publication a new anthology, _Rayguns Over Texas_. About 16 of the 25 authors in the anthology where there to talk about their work. I got them to sign a copy of the book for Dad. It looks like it will be a fun read.

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