Potlatch, briefly and sleepily
I don't know what I'm doing awake; I should've gone to bed an hour ago. But I want to toss in a quick description of Potlatch first.
I spent the weekend at Potlatch. It was fun. I hung out with various cool people. I missed various cool people who I'd assumed would be there but weren't. I didn't see a couple of people who I'm pretty sure were planning to go. I ate twice at the vegetarian cultish restaurant across the street. I took a fair number of bad photos. I had several good, though mostly somewhat fragmentary, conversations. I met a couple of people I'd previously only encountered online, but unfortunately didn't get a chance to talk with them much.
I attended most of one panel and bits of a couple others. The discussions that I was around for seemed to be largely focused on the real world rather than on works of sf; I can't tell whether that's a trend in convention panels lately or whether it's just coincidence. (Another anecdotal data point being my tendency to turn gender panels that I'm on into discussions of real-world gender rather than sfnal gender.)
This was the first convention I've attended without Mary Anne in quite a while; probably in several years. Odd.
I think I got through the whole weekend without hearing a single Dick joke. (Much of the discussion was about Philip K. Dick, and specifically A Scanner Darkly, which was the Book of Honor.) At least once I restrained myself from saying "I like Dick" or some variant thereof.
I spent much of the weekend in the hotel lobby, chatting with people and using the hotel's $5-a-day wireless Internet system (available only in the lobby). Also did some assorted magazine stuff in evenings and mornings. Now I'm only two weeks behind on reading.
There was a Saturday evening performance called The Complete Works of Philip K. Dick, Abridged. I won't try to describe it, but I did re-learn the term "historicity" during it. (It's been a long time since I read Man in the High Castle.) Best parts: Dick taking a Voight-Kampf test, and the reading of Dick's address to an audience of French fans (?).
There was a fundraiser auction. The bit I attended was fun; they were tossing little packets of M&Ms to anyone who bid a prime number of dollars on anything. It kept the bids moving, and led to much whispering as people worked out what the next prime was. Some people accidentally bid $51. At some point I called out a joke about historicity that made some people laugh.
Speculated about what it would be like if Nick M and Jay L were on a panel together, with Frank W. Perhaps it will happen at BayCon. Sadly, I will miss it. But I suspect it will be entertaining.
Didn't hide out in my room as much as I'd expected, but by the end of the weekend, I was happy to sort of hide in the lobby, by sitting on the floor in the corner next to the couch Debbie N was sitting on, shielded by Guy T's wheelchair and the arm of the couch. I half-listened to conversations while posting this week's Forum threads for SH. Ted found me to ask if I wanted to have dinner with him and Susan L; I was initially interested, but then realized that I was totally burned out on socializing and really just needed to go home. So I got on BART and came home.
Yikes—I just noticed that the number of readers of my LiveJournal feed has suddenly jumped by about 10%. Hi, new people!
And with that, it's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from, uh, me.