Sunday,
March 23, 2003
AGGIECON - DAY THREE
Time to go home, now, yes. . .
Sunday morning, I got up and started packing all my stuff. Pat offered to let me store it next to her table in the dealer's room so that I wouldn't have to shunt it all to the car in one trip, then did me an absolutely outstanding boon -- she drew a map and directions to the fabric warehouses where she gets her material for the capes she makes. Nice fabrics for $1.50/yard, silks for $3.50/yard, WIDE fabrics -- I think I was in seamstress heaven.
After dumping the luggage in the dealer's room and hauling some of the light stuff out to the car, I came back and wandered around for a bit, then sat in on what I thought was supposed to be the end of the Farscape Jeopardy game, hosted by Lani Tupu and Virginia Hey (Zan from FARSCAPE -- VERY pretty lady). My last panel of the day, "Judging a Book by its Cover" was supposed to be in that room, so I figured I'd sit there for a while and watch the show.
So I sat.
And sat.
Then got up to check the sign outside the room -- yeah, the panel was supposed to be there.
Sat back down, enjoyed the game some more, and FINALLY realized that it'd been going on for quite some time now. I pulled out my de facto pocketwatch (my cell phone) and discovered it was 12:00 PM, a half hour AFTER the panel was supposed to start.
This was not a good thing. I got up and walked out to check the sign again, which is when I overheard two people in the hallway mutter something about the panel having been shifted to another room. A sign to this effect and some notice for the participants would have been nice, but I guess that wasn't happening.
Since I 1) already missed a half hour of the panel, 2) wasn't anywhere near the artist that Jamie Murrray and Brian Stelfreeze were, and 3) still had to head over to Florence and do an interview with Elizabeth Moon to do before heading home, I decided to skip out a little early. In short order I got over to the dealer's room, grabbed my stuff, gave Pat a goodbye hug, and got out of Dodge.
Luckily 190 continued westward in a sort-of W shape, so I took it until I found the road that led down to Florence and Elizabeth's house. She was busy currycombing her mare Kuincey in preparation for some friends whose child wanted to come over and ride her (Kuincey, not Elizabeth), so we chatted for a bit while she got mud out of Miss K's mane and I fed her (Kuincey, not Elizabeth) hay. But human food was an excellent idea, too -- afterwards, we went inside and munched on homemade barbecue while I talked to Elizabeth about her writing career and her most recent novel THE SPEED OF DARK (which is a brilliant book, by the way). Got about 40 minutes of tape and lots of good quotes before the friends arrived, so I made my excuses and headed northwards to one rather miffed cat and one extremely enthusiastic one who wanted to be petted NOW, dammit.
All in all, a fun
con. Now I just have to do the laundry that was a result of it.