Saturday,
September 1, 2001
MILLENNIUM PHILCON - DAY THREE

A new look, and more con adventures

First off, yeah, I did a redesign of the journal page, mainly because it's been pretty much the same for the last, what, two and a half years? I'm still not sure if I'm going to stick with this particular layout, but so far I seem to like it. And since it's all on template, I can always go in and change it if I decide it sucks monkey choad.

Okay, back to the con -- after sleeping off the previous evening's excesses, Julia and I bopped out and grabbed brunch at the Reading Terminal Market. We'd aimed for breakfast, but what with creaking out of bed, realizing that my feet were on fire from standing for so long the night before at assorted parties, taking another very necessary shower, yadda yadda yadda, we wound up missing the breakfast course. Which wasn't a loss at all -- we had some absolutely stupendous hamburgers instead, so all was well on the food front.

Then it was on to the con for the Financial Planning for Writers panel. Susan Schwartz, Amy Sheldon, Peter Liverakos and Linda Dunn ran us through "the basic financial information you need to make sound financial decisions, with special attention to writers and other creative types and their financial needs," as reported in the Pocket Guide. I must add that no investment advice was offered, only general info about setting financial goals and ways to reach them (this is to make the SEC happy). Very, very useful stuff -- I got the handout and related URLs, and I think Lyndon and I are going to hit a financial advisor when he finally gets here so that we can start managing things for our retirement.

And speaking of retirement of a sort, sleep deprivation truly hit with a vengeance around this time, so we went back to the Hilton for a nap. I found that an hour's nap every day really made a difference about being able to stay up and attend the parties -- word to your momma.

After the second awakening of the day, we struggled into some pretty clothes for the long-awaited Musketeer Banquet at Joseph Poon's in Chinatown. Oh, man, talk about yummy Asian fusion food -- I was in hog heaven with their wonton soup with spinach nachos and Peking duck. Post-banquet, Jules and I headed back to the hotel to drop off our purses, then over to the Marriott to hit the SFWA Suite, the Tor party, the SFFNet Suite, and whatever other parties we could find.

We promptly discovered that most of the available oxygen molecules were being sucked up by way too many bodies on the party floors, so we headed down to the lobby where we met up with Kristine Smith (who was absolutely convinced that she didn't have a shot in hell of winning the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, poor thing), and sat down to listen to a synopsis of her next book. This was postponed when we were joined by Susan Schwartz, Ellen Klages, Bill Seney, someone whose name is escaping me at the moment, and Derek (who was drifting around the lobby like the party animal he was), and settled down to a chat about everything and anything. At one point Janis Ian, who as a new SFWA member was experiencing her very first Worldcon, joined us, and she and Julia started talking about singing and performing vs. writing (for those who aren't familiar with her work, and I do know that there are some relative kids reading this, Janis is best known for the songs "Society's Child" and "At Seventeen." Yeah, her. Extremely nice lady, packed to the gunwales with energy and totally delighted with her entry into the specfic community) while Kristine and I talked about forming the specfic answer to the Rock Bottom Remainders. Hey, all we need is a drummer, and we're ready to give Steve King some competition on the band circuit.

We also promised Kris that we were going to do a Texas YeeHAW for her at the Hugos on Sunday, and she perked up a bit. At some point we realized it was closing in on 2:00 am once again and we really needed to repair to our individual rooms for some sleep. You may have noticed that there's been a pattern of late nights on this trip, and you'd be correct in assuming that Mellie is starting to feel somewhat wilted by this point.