Worldcon, Day Four

Day four of worldcon, Saturday, dawned bright and sunnily. My wife, Tammy, had to head off to work for a few hours, so I stayed around the house, relaxing and writing my previous two posts.

That was all fine and dandy, Tammy got home after a few hours, so we packed up and headed into town, parking at the convention center. We hit the Dealer's Room/Art Room floor at about 1, which is when we heard that the art show was closing down at 2pm, which was a bit of a shock. I hadn't actually entered the Art show yet, as I'd been waiting to do it with Tammy, so we immediately went in and started soaking in the arty goodness. Tammy had seen the arts how already, not knowing then that I was hoping to see it with her, so she was able to point out some highlights. It was a good show, but it's a measure of how nice Mile Hi Con's art show is that I wasn't feeling it was all that nicer than MHC's. That said, we found a nice print and a unicorn calendar in the print shop that Tammy wanted.

That done, at 2pm, they started shoving everyone out. Since everyone in the art show had had to check their bags, that meant that there was a huge line to pick your bags up again, and Tammy let me go sit down while we waited. Bags collected, we had a quick (but not very good) soft pretzel from concessions before we started going through the Dealer's Room. This was mostly for Tammy's benefit, stopping to look over jewelry, clothes, and art-related displays more than the books. Unfortunately, my feet started to really hurt after about forty minutes of this.

Unfortunately, they *really* started to hurt. I left the Dealer's and went to sit down, and even sitting down they were killing me. We advised some other con goers about local sushi (Sonoda's, 16th & Market, quite good), and then we grabbed one of the nice couches that were sprinkled around the exhibit hall floor for Tammy to rub my feet and try and get them to relax. She rubbed for a while, then she went off to the Dealer's room some more while I continued to rest, and then she returned and rubbed. After my feet had calmed down, we decided to head off home - I didn't really feel up to doing anything much.

Home was nice. We relaxed, we ate, and then we decided to return to hit the parties at around 9ish. That was fun - there were some interesting parties where we got drinks (Reno in 2011), Ice Cream (Young Writers contest), and barbecue (NASFIC in Raleigh 2010). We also enjoyed some nice shrimp in the Con Suite. There was some discussion of the recently won Hugos, but no one seemed overly surprised or upset by much of the selections, so it didn't go far. After it hit around 11 or so, Tammy and I hit the wheels to head home and relax.

Worldcon, Day Five

Sunday was much nicer. For one, my feet hardly bothered me after Saturday's meltdown.

We got up that morning together, and headed out for some breakfast at Sam's #3, where we ended up sitting next to another local Worldcon attendee at the counter. Astonishingly, not only did he currently live in Denver, but he came from North Carolina like my wife Tammy. For a while there I sort of leaned out of the way and let them discuss various NC-related topics.

Once breakfast was over Tammy dropped me off at the convention, although unfortunately at the wrong spot, requiring me to walk all over the place to find a door that would let me in. Sigh. Once in, I hit the Dealer's room for the last time, picking up some pins from the Foglios, some Interzone magazines from that publisher (who was running a last day of con special, probably because of the trouble of shipping all of the issues home), and picked up a Heroes tshirt and a slogan tshirt, as well as a gift for Tammy's upcoming birthday.

That done, I looked around and realized I was done with the Dealer's room. There really wasn't anything left over I wanted to get that I couldn't get in Denver the rest of the year, so I quit it and went off to a panel.

The first panel had to do with Heinlein at the Worldcons, a few people up front giving us some very interesting stories about Heinlein before the big event - a recording of his Guest of Honor speech at the 1976 worldcon, which was fascinating to watch. I never got to meet him, and so I was riveted during the entire speech.

That done with, I went on to a panel on remembering Robert Asprin, who recently passed away. Phil Foglio and two other folks were on the panel, discussing Asprin's work and life and his desire to perform all the time - I thought it was really interesting, and there's another person I wish I'd gotten to meet.

Finally, Closing Ceremonies. Everyone got into a room and - well, it's necessary, I suppose, but basically we watched a succession of people thank the convention runners and the guests. Lois McMaster Bujold, the GoH, got a mostly standing ovation for her heartfelt thanks even though she'd lost her voice.

Emboldened by all the praise given to the volunteers, and the requests for more help, I went by the Treasury office after the closing ceremonies, where I was happily given work until I finally stumbled out again at 6:30, calling my wife for a ride home, where I mostly just vegged on the couch tiredly until we gave up and went to bed early at 9pm.

Well, I need to get to work - I suppose I'll write up a general wrapup and a list of the neat stuff I got later.