My hectic work schedule didn't leave me much time for anything else. Short version:
What I did not do at Arisia:
See the art show
Visit the dealer's room
Go to any program item I wasn't on
Talk to most of my friends there
Take any pictures
Get enough sleep
What I did do:
Eye of Argon reading
One costume panel
Masquerade with lengthy rehearsal
Four dance workshops
Martian croquet
Attend a few parties
Longer version:
Friday night
Bus trip worked perfectly. Arrived 5:30ish. Surprisingly lengthy pre-reg line. Crashed reg system. Took an hour to get my con badge and program packet. Separate ribbons and packets for events and program; v. stupid. Schedule sticker too large to fit on back of badge. Duh. Emergency surgery with scissors mostly fixed this.
Beef stew in green room, hurrah. Wifi not functioning there for me, despite the fact that the person next to me had no trouble. Weird.
The Eye of Argon reading went well. Once again I was pretty much champion reader -- only one error, and I ended up reading against about a dozen audience members -- while Hildy, Mike, and Dan acted out the story. I am getting too good at reading this thing. Fun was had by all. Next tour stop: Lunacon!
London in 2014 party. Familiar decor -- tube map on the walls. Peculiar flying saucers; sort of like edible styrofoam packing pellets with fizzy things inside. A U.K. sweet. Wifi works perfectly here, so I could google them. Remedied missed experience from London party at worldcon, heh.
Strange encounter: someone who overheard me discussing how much I loved Eifelheim with David Hartwell at the Reno airport before worldcon this year read the book and liked it so much that she came to Arisia specifically to find me and see if I had any more book recomendations. I am both flattered and stunned. I recommended The Proteus Operation for good SF/history mix, The High Crusade because I remain convinced that Eifelheim is the very highbrow and non-comic version of the same concept, and Contested Will for general historical goodness and because that is the book I am recommending to everyone lately.
Saturday
Costume panel. Five panelists, only one audience member for most of the panel, but he was quite enthusiastic and we ended up doing the entire 1 1/4 hour panel just answering his questions.
Brief chat with Merav at filkcon table. No luck convincing her to see Max Raabe. Delivered midwinter gift.
Long masquerade rehearsal was long. Read very bad novel for review between entries. Way insufficient time between rehearsal and masquerade for necessary turnaround of food (more beef stew!), changing clothes, and doing hair/makeup.
Went with the black velvet evening gown with the dramatic back and puffy 1940s/1980s-ish shoulders and vaguely Edwardian Big Hair, using Much Hairspray instead of a rat.
Masquerade perked along nicely. Thirty-six entries plus regular Pats-Broncs football updates and mooing audience. Co-director Sharon Sbarsky possibly sorry she asked me to avoid sheep references now. Started off with two screwups -- one of the Kamikaze kids was out of order, arrrgh, and I was given mixed-up entry numbers for #1 and #4, resulting in mis-announcing the first contestant. Double arrrgh. Overall it went fairly well, though. Some problems with determining whether entries were ready after complex pre-sets -- I want my blinky box back!
Favorite costume: "Charlie's Fallen Angels", with brilliant silhouette effect at end. Second: "Welcome to the Jungle", with fabulous lion masks. Judges mostly agreed with me.
Too fried after masquerade to do anything but go to Terri & Matthew's post-wedding celebration party, where I mostly sat quietly in a corner.
Sunday
Slept in. Finished bad novel. Four dance classes. Disco: started small, grew nicely. Cross-step for dummies: started big, stayed big, pretty successful. Cross-step for experienced: smaller but still respectable. Did the cool new double dutch sequences. Madison: surprisingly large crowd, including several kids. Fun was had except when my mic battery went out mid-Madison on the last runthrough.
Cold cuts for dinner (after second cross-step class and before Madison class) instead of beef stew. Happy to have time to chat with Jeremy and Angela briefly.
Tired and anti-social to the point of hostile after last dance class, but still had to change and then set up for croquet. Gave up on full Victorian steampunk look and went casual steamgoth instead. Finally ran into Bob & Marianne in the elevator.
Nice tech crew helped me set up croquet, then we ended up with one tech table and two other tables going strong. Extremely enthusiastic players enjoyed miniature sets, liked to tap each other gently with the mallets, and want croquet to come to Pi-con, Lunacon, and worldcon. Last of those may be tricky. Line of the night from an enthusiastic teenage visitor to one of the players: "I love you and your tiny mallet!"
Too fried after all this to socialize much (do we sense a trend here?), but went by a very nice birthday party which had good food and friendly people who came by my corner to make sure I was okay and brought me small food items (chocolate cake, orange juice, etc.) Enjoyed watching everyone else have a good time. Washed up at the tech party completely out of social spoons and ended up sitting in one spot the entire time conversing only occasionally and eating nothing but carrots. Very dismayed to find people were turned away from entering masquerade due to lack of rehearsal time. We need to rethink the rehearsal concept. This is not news, but now it's an existing rather than hypothetical problem.
Got a chance to explain to next year's chair exactly how stupid the artificial events/program split is. Not sure I convinced her, but nice to vent.
Monday
Got up, packed, encountered GOH Phil Foglio in elevator, went back to bus station. Smooth return trip. Home by 2:15. Exhausted and looking like a deranged raccoon.
Final thought
I need to insist on a less strenuous schedule next year, especially if I am MCing again (unlikely, but you never know). This is the second year in a row I've had almost no time to actually enjoy the con.
That seems...hectic. Glad that good parts were good!
Posted by: Joshua Kronengold | January 19, 2012 at 02:01 PM