Last night trinsf  nudged me into going to w00tstock, which I am very glad about since it was an amazingly cool show. 

Highlights; Wil Wheaton read a story with musical backup from Paul and Storm, Adam Savage did a slideshow presentation called '100 Wishes' and Kid Beyond, who I had never heard of before did some just incredible live looping beatboxing thing that made me really, really wish we were had been in a danceclub instead of a theater. And although she 

We started, and then ended the evening at Home and I went home finished packing and now me and my overfilled suitcase are just counting down the minutes until I board the train to Seattle. 

Trepidation 2009 was excellent, thanks in no small part to the awesomeness of fandom in general and of my friends in particular.

Although, now I simply cannot shake the feeling that it is a post-con Sunday XD

This Friday the 19th in addition to the usual Fydy meetup, it's time again for Hubba Hubba. The theme this month is Sideshow and I haven't been recently, so I'm sorely tempted-but it doesn't lend itself to the sort of moderation I should probably still be attempting given that I'm on amoxicillin for the next week or so.

Then on Saturday the 20th, the Light Room in Berkeley is having the opening for local artist and all around good guy Michael Dashow. That runs from 2pm to 6pm, which should give me time to get to Borderlands at 7pm to see the Brazen Hussies and still have time to hit the town after.

On both Saturday and Sunday the NorCal Pirate Festival in happing up in Vallejo, it looks fun but is way the heck out there. Is anyone driving up to that Sunday?

FyDySyFy, Hyatt Regency, 5:30pm.

No booze for me tonight, since I'm having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow morning. So here's a rare chance to see me sober on a Friday night! Terribly exciting, I know.

Hyatt Regency, 5:30pm.

Come see who survived the weekend.

Overall, I personally had a very good time at Baycon but this was a weird year for a number of my friends, which prevents me from saying it was a good con.

clockworkbuddha, sinmix  and myself arrived late night Friday just in time to pick up my badge and (most exciting) my namecard for my first ever panel the next day. After that I got changed and checked out the party floor. Things were going reasonably strong and, hilariously, the entire hallway on the 3rd floor was wrapped in plastic, prompting many condom and dental dam jokes. The usual hours of running into friends and party hopping ensued.

Saturday morning I got some breakfast, and then it was time for the panel. I was nervous but it turned out to be a real hoot and it would be nice to do it again at Silicon. Afterwards I finally hung my art (no new pieces, because of printer problems) and checked out the Dealer's Room before it was time for the SF/SF staff meeting. By the time that was over I was startled to realize it was still only Saturday afternoon-it seemed like I'd been at the con for days.

After decorating the Lounge for the Saturday Night Disco-Steam barely-sekrit theme I took a nap, which helped. I changed into my evening wear which included a groovy sequined headband. I peer-pressured the other roomies into joining in (JP was already rockin' a open collared black shirt under a blue jacked) and they ended up looking fantastic. We hung in the Lounge for a bit, then got some dancing in. At some point I ended up in the Lounge for a while longer before heading up to bed. When I got there, The Magnificent Seven was on and we all watched the end of that before hitting the sack.

Sunday I was free as a bird, with no panels or other responsibilities. We missed the breakfast buffet so got lunch instead, I hit the clothes swap briefly, then a panel, and spent most of the day enjoying the process of wandering between meals and conversations that formed, split and reformed. Eventually it was time to get changed to the evening and out Weird West Travelling Medicine Wagon group costume. I had been a little frustrated with my own outfit for it, and some things I had not finished in time-but clockworkbuddha  did an awesome job with his part and we looked good as a group so it ended up being tons of fun.

The rest of the night varied from great to lousy depending on who you were and were you were standing, and I was periphally involved in parts of that. I felt like I had a very good night, but the knowledge that an unusually large number of my friends did not put a bit of a damper on things. In the end a handful of us stayed up until dawn and managed to be the first people in the restaurant at 6 a.m. when the buffet opened, which was one of those nice con-type experiences.

Monday was the usual last day of touching base with folks I didn't get to talk to except in passing, doing a last pass of the art show and dealer's room and laying plans for future mayhem with various people.

A full report to follow in SF/SF, as always.

Saturday I started the day off with a visit to the dentist. I supposedly had two appointments left, Saturday and one next week-so I assumed the braces were going on next week. Turns out that was not necessary, my braces went on and next week's appointment was canceled. Which is great except for my mouth feeling all torn up for the next few days and my enunciation being all messed up. It's making phone support at work even more stupid than usual.

After the dentist clockworkbuddha , sinmix and I headed over to SCRAP to get costume supplies, and we all scored some good stuff for cheap. I love that place so much.

Then it was time to head over to Cafe International to meet up with folks for the Star Trek movie. I enviously watched people eat the deeelicious french bread cubano sandwiches while sipping on my smoothie. I already missed real bread.

We headed from the coffee joint to the Kabuki to meet up with the rest of our group and I was amused to see elite  and a bunch of other browncoats leaving the theater.

As for the movie, I really enjoyed it a lot. It's not going to Change Science Fiction As We Know It or anything, but it does everything it needs to and has a damned good time doing it.

FyDy SyFy, Hyatt Regency, 5:30pm. Nerds with drinks, possible Hugo discussion and inevitable Trek wankery.

Due to a recent labor strike by our collective livers, May is Moderation Month! So you may even get a word in edgewise! Stranger things have happened.

SF/SF #85.

I write about Hugo nominee 'Little Brother', lady_leandra  writes about Wondercon and the Browncoats, plus coverage of Peter Beagle's birthday party in the park. Which I missed. Cause I suck. ::sigh::

So AT&T Park is doing a Star Trek night on Monday 4/27, including foam Vulcan salute giveaways.

As I read the page it looks like they're even having a costume contest. I wonder if any Klingons will be there?

Friday was F4, of course. Present this time were the usual suspects (trinsf , britgeekgrrl , hai_irouchuujin ) as well as digitalsidhe , Eric in the Elevator and his wife, and from practically across the street clockworkbuddha , bringin' the pretty. There was no real Hugo discussion this week, since Escape Pod had not posted yet but there was Thai Chili Lime ice cream and bacon chocolate, a round of drinks on the house and, towards the end of the evening a tour of the no-longer-revolving-but-still-awesome Equinox restaurant at the top of the hotel, which has really amazing views. I was a total chicken in the glass elevator once we got a few floors up, though :)

There were tons of wonderful things going on over the weekend as well, including the Cherry Blossom Festival, Psychotronix and Peter Beagle's birthday celebration in Golden Gate Park. However I didn't leave the house except once for groceries, since I'm trying to buckle down as I gear up for Baycon (literally) and work on art, jewelery and costumes as well as continue trying to learn Illustrator. All in all I did a decent job of it and also made time for bacon and eggs and the first half of Ambassadors of Death on Sunday.

Yesterday was Monday, but it was beautiful out and after work we went for beer and nibbles at Nova as a sort-of interview for someone they might be hiring at my company, so all in all a decent way to start the week.

Then tomorrow we're going to the ballpark to see the Giants play the Padres :)

After work yesterday I headed over to the Hyatt Regency to hang with trinsf, britgeekgrrl  and hai_irouchuujin. I arrived later than I would have liked and stayed a bit later than originally planned but had a very good time. We discussed another Hugo nominee; Ted Chiang's Exhalation-which was the most recent Escape Pod broadcast but which I haven't read yet, britgeekgrrl  brought a pint of Humphrey Slocomb's 'secret breakfast' flavor (corn flakes and bourbon) which was delicious, and I promised to bring some bacon chocolate next week. We were joined later by digitalsidhe  and then by two other folks whose names escape me now, Paul and someone else... this was shortly before I left, so I didn't get to chat much with them, unfortunately.




( ... the rest of the evening ... )

Hyatt Regency, 5:30pm, you know the drill.

Tonight is Clockwork SF, so I won't be staying terribly late since I have to change into my glad rags and so on, but both britgeekgrrl  and I plan to be there till about 7:30, so feel free to drop by.

Feeling a little behind on everything, but mostly because there is so much 'everything' right now, so that's all good.

Last Friday's meetup ended up going very well. We started at The Thirsty Bear, where I met trinsf  a little after five o'clock. It turns out they don't seat tables till half past so we reserved one and waited outside. We were seated promptly and got a pitcher of very nice sangria and some delicious tapas. We spent a couple of hours there, joined by britgeekgrrl and hai_irouchuujin . Discussion was appropriatelly fannish and very entertaining.

The Bear has good food and good drinks but the table situation and the volume was not quite right for what I wanted so we threw around some ideas and britgeekgrrl suggested the hotel bar at the Hyatt Regency over on Embarcadero so we decided to check it out on our way to the Muni station.

Oh my god, I love the place! Walking into the wide open lobby atrium with the giant spherical sculpture I knew immediatelly it was the place. The vibe is pure Logan's Run seventies-futuristic. The drinks were decent, the food pretty damned good and the service was excellent, they also have some sort of happy hour I've already forgotten about and areas to expand/retreat into as needed.

We were joined by ewhac  and a friend of britgeekgrrl  and stayed till about midnight in the end, a pace I don't think I will be able to maintain every Friday (certainly not the next two as I have Clockwork SF and Hubba Hubba later those evenings) but consider a very good christening.

I didn't do anything much over the weekend except work on stuff at home and watch Rome, god I love that show.

The new issue is up, Abney Park and Clockwork SF coverage from me. Stuff from others as well, presumably.

In other news, it looks like we're settling on the Thirsty Bear down on Howard for the Friday after work meetup thing. Tapas!

So I signed up for Fandom 2.0, which looks to be an interesting idea.

While I was there I noticed the site has an events feature, so I went ahead and formalized the Friday casual meetup thingy. Since Grumpy's was nice but sadly too far of the beaten path I have settled on Varnish as the location. I will be there on Fridays between 5-7PM for the forseeable future until this either becomes established or I get tired of drinking alone.

Ok, so Grumpy's seems like the current best choice for a casual meetup, so I'll be there sometime around 5PM to grab a pint and maybe a burger (the Yelpers claim the burgers are good) if any of y'all who work in the area are interested.

I'm looking to do a casual after-work-drinks thing on Fridays, since so many of my friends and local fans seem to work within a rocks throw of where I do.

I'd like to find a place that is casual, has a good social space (tables, not too cramped) and is within a couple of blocks of either the Montgomery or maybe the Powell Muni/BART station and is easy to find.

The current top contenders are Eddie Rickenbaker's, which does fulfill all of the above but has some seriously problematic Yelp reviews, and Varnish, which I love but is a tiny bit harder to find and therefore less attractive for casual drop ins.

Any other suggestions?

I know some on my flist are Whatever readers, and some have been following RF09, but if you haven't now is a good time to check over on Scalzi's blog to check it out. Fair warning: while the specific posts on the Whatever are well moderated, the discussion at large is a chronophage and potentially very upsetting, even if you just skim you are liable to become angry, tired or stressed.

I was following the RF09 discussion at the beginning, until it spread so far and parts of it got so ugly and it spent so much time eating my brain that I had to put it aside. I was inclined to agree with the opinions originally expressed by Scalzi, that the discussion was necessary and valuable, but this iteration of it had become too toxic.

However, even while reading that post I was thinking of the portions which I had found useful, from which I either learned something new or had something I was already aware of illuminated for me.

So, if you were reading before but gave up or were not reading because of how messy it seemed, or even if you were not aware of it at all, this is a good place to start.

Mary Ann Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed

Due to the tendency of this discussion to travel, I'm disabling comments here. I don't think it would serve any useful purpose to start talking here instead of there.

My own personal suggestion; if you do feel the urge to enter the conversation rather than just reading it, please wait for a bit before commenting anywhere. Give it a couple of days even, and continue reading in the meantime. Chances are you will see others who have said what you wanted to, sometimes better than you could. And people will most likely have replied to them.

Consider these posts and the responses and see if you will really be adding to the conversation. It can be very humbling to realize how unoriginal and poorly thought out one's line of reasoning was, so why not learn from others who failed before you? I have over and over again considered posting something and then seen it discussed in ways that have been incredibly enlightening.

Saw John Sclazi and Mary Robinette Kowal at Borderlands last night. They did a reading and signing with a little improv thrown in for good measure. The store was as packed as I've ever seen it and Mr. Garcon and TLATL made it up from the wilds beyond the City for the occassion. I wasn't familiar with Kowal's work, which turns out to be brilliant, so that was a nice surprise too.In addition to the books I picked up I also managed to score some good finds at the Salvation Army and Buffalo Exchange stores up the street, neither of which I'd visited before.

In other news, I was working on the calendar for SF/SF and found that the Cinematic Titanic crew (Joel and the rest of the original MST3K gang) are taking the show on the road, including San Francisco! Which I was all excited about until I realized I will be at Gallifrey those days. Ironic, considering that Gally is where I saw Joel last year. Ah well.