Saturday started with bagels again, and later some excellent coffee from Schachat’s enourmous thermos, winky face. First order of business was dropping off a sspare Glasgow Worldcon volunteer tee shirt I had acquired somehow at the tee shirt swap. This was a great idea: you got tokens for each shirt dropped off, and later after volunteers sort all the items out the room opens as a scheduled item for everyone to redeem their tokens. I of course forgot to ever come back, but I think leftover shirts maybe went to the freebies table. In fact this was a great year …
LAcon V: Day Two
Friday! I had to be up early to do my art show tour (link available for members, I have not watched this because I’m too chicken, but presumably it isn’t so terrible they couldn’t post it). I ended up enjoying myself a great deal doing it, but I went in with some trepidation, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when I’d initially agreed to do it I’d assumed it would be a streaming item, with interaction from the Discord audience, so virtual members could visit the art show in real time. A recording was a different proposition, the future audience …
LAcon V: Day One
Yes, finally and actually the first day of the convention. John and I headed over for breafast with Lori and Kevin to Huckleberry’s, a chain which serves “Southern food with a California twist”. Not sure what the twist is, and I’m no expert in southern cooking, but it was a pretty good breakfast and there was a mechanical motion activated alligator, so as you can imagine I was delighted. Back at the convention John ran off to his first panel, and I went to the art show to prepare for my docent tour the next day. Now that all the …
LAcon V: Day Minus One
(I’ve realized I was counting days from when we checked into the hotel, rather than when the convention started – whoops.) Wednesday! What happened on Wednesday? Well, this is where note-taking or the old days of excessive social media would simplify life. Instead, from here on out I will be forensically reconstructing my timeline from photos, credit card receipts, and group chat messages – but if I get something mixed up please blame the fog of con. I’d made the incomprehensible last-minute decision to not pack sandals. Logic being, I’d want comfy sneakers for the extensive indoor walking during the …
LAcon V Podcast Roundup
There were a lot of podcasters at the convention, some of them recorded episodes while there and others did con reports. Here are a few to help with the post-con blues – if I run across any others I’ll add them to the list. Octothorpe 168: It’s a Very Little Cat Hugo, Girl!: Worlcon Report: LAcon V Eating the Fantastic: Worldcon Donut Divertissment! The Incomplete Worldcon Podcast Episode 4: LIVE from LAcon V A Meal of Thorns 58: LACON V
LACon V: Day Minus Two
We landed at LAX Tuesday evening before the convention. The flight was less than half full, so although I did watch all of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms plus two movies, I also was able to stretch out across three empty seats and get a few hours of sleep. It also meant the lines were quick, and our suitcases didn’t take too long – we were on the Metro to Anaheim less than an hour after landing! We took the Metro from the shiny new transit center, which was still being built when we were there in 2024 for …
Back home from Worldcon
A week of Worldcon and a week of visting family and traipsing around LA is fun but exhausting, for now I’ll summarise: I did not win a Hugo, I did eat Mexican food almost every day, I beat my step goal consistently, admired art and bought some, attended panels, saw a bunch of friends old and new, danced, drank, and was merry. What I did not do is take any notes, so a trip report will follow over the next few days, but don’t expect coherence.
Gijón/Xixón!
Last weeke we visited my brother and his wife in Aller, an area in the mountains of Asturias. I had visited for the first time last year, when I met up with some of my siblings in the nearest city, which si Gijón, but I had not seen the countriside, and it was John’s first time in the region. We ate fabada, cachopo, picadillo, drank sidra, and hung out while trying to keep cool, and on the last day had a nice wander along the beach in Gijón itself and stumbled across a Roman thermal baths museum. We chose the …
HUGO CLAXON!
Last hours to get your vote in! Did I finish reading everything? I did not! No matter how good my early intentions, this happens every year – whoops. Anyway, please vote in the fan categories – obviously that the ones I have the most conflicts of interest, so I won’t do recommendations, but the packet makes it pretty easy to get a nice overview pretty quickly, compared to the fiction categories. Last category that I will share my top vote in, Pro Artist… always soooooo hard to decide in this category, and my rankings can easily change from one vote …
Walking the Wall, Part II
Yesterday we did another section of the Hardian’s Wall Path, just over a year from our first walk. We started in Newburn, where we left off last time, and walked around 22km again. This section had a lot less on it, passing through a lot of fields and farmland and with only one significant section of wall. We stopped at the Robin Hood Inn about 17km along and had a little sit down and a nice half pint along with our second passport stamp. The next section was all fields, with some admitedly lovely views but no real bits of …