Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Finally posting about Albacon and why this post is so late

Got in a little fender bender on the way back from Albany, NY. I was five cars from the toll booth when some artard in a sports car decided to cut me off. He blared on his horn and flipped me the finger. I looked up and saw the car in front of me give a bit to the right. So I did the same and we both curled around the sports car. He go PISSED!!

He hit the gas and bumped my truck. Now the truck can take it. His little car could not. It was not even a five mile bump. More of a parallel parking bump. He jumped out of his car to look at the damage and started walking toward me. Byron went fierce on him, jumping into the back seat and raging at the guy. Yes Byron the worlds most chill dog, went full on attack dog! The jack ass felt it would be better to leave well enough alone got back in his car and shot across two lanes of traffic. Well not shot, but laid on the horn flashed his lights and did just about every obnoxious thing he could.

I really dislike the 128 toll booths! Every one has to pay the toll for using the road up until then. After which there is another toll just a few miles away. The area is a mess and there are a lot of accidents there. Mostly little bumps like mine, but sometimes really bad things happen.

Thought nothing of it on Sunday night, I was in a bit of pain from the long drive any way. Woke up Monday morning with a full blown case of Con Crud and a stiff back. Spent the day drowning my sorrows and drying up my snoot filled nose. Which meant that yesterday when I got up feeling better I had to do all the stuff I would have done on Monday, unpacking, laundry, food shopping.

Feeling much much better today still a bit of soft muscle pain when I bend, or for that matter cough. Hoping nothing is really wrong with my back. It hurts a bit normally so I don't want to read anything into the increase in pain.

Albacon was fabulious just the very best. Spent some time on Friday behind the Registraton desk. Byron played a very good game of "Pay attention to me!" He would lay down under the table where I was sitting and ever so slowly and gradually slide first his tail out the other side of the desk. Then a foot would appear and finally his butt. I had put up signage for people registering and those who had already registered. Finally I put up a third sign warning people to watch out for the dog.

At one point he bolted from under the table and ran into the hotel restaurant. Not sure why, I had never seen him do that before, and it was the only time all weekend that he ran away from me like that. My two panels were not well attended, one was at the dinner hour on Saturday the other against check out time on Sunday.

Got a kick out of sharing my new favorite OSHA calculation, how high you can comfortably wear a high heel shoe based on the size of your foot. It is 12+3*(shoe size) / 8 = Q I'll use my foot as the shoe size and work it out for you.

12 + (3X5) / 8 = Q
12 + 15 / 8 = Q
27 / 8 = Q
3.5 = Q

So the largest heel I should wear would be a three and a half inches. I was wearing one of my favorite light purple shoes when I mentioned the formula. I have no idea how high those shoes are, never measured them.

I went to a lot of great panels too, my favorites being the one on Allen Steele, by Allen Steele. Got to talk about "Orbital Decay" his first book and one of my favorites. I missed the first panel on his Coyote series, I need to find a list of all the books and short stories in that universe.

Enjoyed a few others as well. There was a great panel on writing memoirs for geeks. The fellow who wrote "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks" was on the panel, he use to be a reporter for the Boston Globe, now he freelances.

Grabbed books from some of my favorite people, they had a nice small (self) press table set up in the hallway so people could grab their books and get a quick autograph. Personally I think that next year the small press should just go into the dealers room. I know it will be a hard ship for the small press to purchase a table, but it is fairer to the dealers already there.

The con was very small this year, just over 200 people. I do have to send extra love to on of the NESFAn and Arisea member Lisa Hartel, she is just the sweetest person and a great friend. She knows about my allergies and has no trouble making others aware of it. She walked out of the dealers room on Saturday and let me know that one of the dealers had a box of fresh fruit on his table. I knew to stay out of there until he removed them on Sunday.

Ended up not taking a lot of pictures of people with Byron, not sure why, just did not come up as often as before.


Got in a stupid discussion with a guy who walked up to registration and asked why woman like the McCaffrey Pern novels so much. I guess he could not get his head out of his ass long enough to realize that Anne and her son write hard SF with dragons and strong female characters. All her characters are strong well drawn people, even the bad ones.

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