Balticon 2013, featuring REST AND RELAXATION, which I desperately needed after five days on the road in three different states with a dance gig and toddlers galore.
Okay, I did a few things. But not many. I arrived Friday afternoon in plenty of time to check into my room and put my chainmail into the art show and still have free time before the Steampunk Ball. I wandered through the Victorian gambling games session, where I failed to get into a game of whist, and the con suite, where SFWA was sponsoring a band. I am not actually fond of bands in con suites; it negatively affects conversation.
Note to SFWA: when you state that "Esteemed past and present members include Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Ray Bradbury, and Andre Norton", the first thought that comes to mind is that ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE DEAD. So which are the present members?
I hadn't yet finished my Regency waistcoat, so for the Steampunk Ball I wore my Regency shirt under my Hugo evening gown (this worked better than you'd think) accessorized by a short top hat borrowed from my roommate Leslie Johnston. I felt dashing. At left is a rather blurry photo of the outfit taken by Leslie; click to enlarge. Doesn't the linen of the shirt look fine?
The ball was very successful. We had the biggest circle for the Overboard mixer ever and even managed to do the Airship Pirates Quadrille, which is Not Easy. We could easily have gone longer, but got bumped by the Teen Dance, which turned out, annoyingly, to be mostly nonexistent. I kept poking my head back in and finding no dancers there. I ended hanging out with Noel-Marie Taylor and stayed up much later than I should have.
Saturday I slept in and moved verrrry slowly afterwards. I took a nice long swim. It was bright and sunny, but the outside air was cold, which was a little disconcerting. The hot tub was not working, grrr. I drifted through the Victorian parlor games, which appeared very well-attended, hung out in the con suite, and eventually hooked up with Leslie to watch the masquerade, which was good but not overwhelming. Having CostumeCon the week before Balticon is not helpful to the Balticon masquerade. Lisa Ashton presented a rather wonderful Kali, Carol Salemi put a friend in a very nice Dumbledore, and my friends Beth and Becca waltzed in a pair of Labyrinth costumes on stage.
The costumer party afterward was squeezed into one of the parlor room, which made it kind of non-fun, so I went off to hit the 2015 worldcon bid parties. Orlando people dodged every question having to do with the problem of running directly against Dragoncon in its own backyard and seemed to have few specific plans to back up their grand-but-vague ones. ("We will attract new people!" "How?" "We will tell them how great worldcon is!" Um, right.) Not inspiring. Spokane didn't manage a party at all. Also not inspiring. I may end up voting for Helsinki by default.
Sunday I did my panels. First was my costume panel on making sense of patterns. It was rather wide-ranging and incoherent, and probably had too many panelists, but the audience seemed to get something out of it. Later in the afternoon was my music editing for dummies session, which lacked the hoped-for data projector adaptor and screen. We ended up huddled around my laptop while I demonstrated easy tricks with Audacity. Sadly, my schedule meant I missed the musical guests' Ragnarok musical.
I dropped by the Helsinki bid table, cuddled the weird stuffed white creatures, and generally let myself feel warm and fuzzy about voting for it, even though I'm not super-thrilled at the idea of two European worldcons in a row. We have now established that the public transit in Helsinki is (1) free and (2) orange, and that it has all the usual big-city amenities. The convention program would be primarily in English. Not sure how they plan make it feel particulary Finnish, other than that there might be program items in a sauna. This is the first bid ever to have inspired the question "Would we have to be NAKED?!" Yes, apparently, and sex-segregated.
I stopped by Michael Walsh's dealer's table to buy my usual couple of books. It was supposed to be just one book, since I'm on a tight budget, but he offered a two-fer, and who can turn down two books for the price of one? I now have an old Melissa Scott/Lisa Barnett novel I'd never read and a more recent Tobias Buckell one
The hot tub was functional again, so there was hot tubbery with Leslie followed by a late arrival at the swing dance, which had too much teaching (I thought getting there past the halfway point would mean the teaching would be over...) and music that isn't quite my preferred style to dance to, but I got in some good dances with various friends.
Afterward, there was the tech party, and a chance to catch up with my senior honorary niece, newly-community-college-graduated Maura Taylor, who is just as impressive a young woman as I expect her to be. I turned in relatively early since I had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch my bus home.
It was a con. It was fun. I was not stressed. I was not exhausted. After my disastrous 2012, I am getting a handle on this business of keeping convention work committments under control and actually enjoying congoing again.
(Below left, Leslie dressed up for masquerade night. Those are silvered turkey vertebrae on her hat. Right, Beth and Becca in their Labyrinth costumes for the masquerade. Click to enlarge.)
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