Mishalak

Welly, welly, welly, well my fine droogies. I’m finally here in Minneapolis safe and sound. I’m staying with Larry Sanderson right now and will be over at the convention hotel tonight. Net access is intermittent so it might be best to try and call me. Would love to find someone at the convention with something with net access or else a very kind person who would let me store pictures. Other than that not much to report yet other than a slight headache from too much air. How do you lowlanders stand it? And its got water in it too!

Okay I found the following on the Frontier website, " Codeshare flights with Horizon Air are operated as Frontier JetExpress using 70-seat Bombardier CRJ-700 aircraft." No way am I flying on a Bombardier CR7. So now it looks like my options are:

To keep my earlier flight plans and pay $300 round trip.

Book a flight earlier in the week and pay $170 round trip. E.g. Wednesday to Tuesday.

Wait for a better fare.

Drive

Any other suggestions for getting to Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Victorious – Ennio Morricone
Wednesday
I awoke on my last day and got finished packing up. I had mostly done so the night before, so it was much easier than when I left the hotel. I snacked upon a few leftovers for breakfast. Sue gave me the wonderful present of an elf-boy drawing. Eeee! I'm so happy that I could burst.

Soon after I set off walking towards downtown. After about 20 blocks I realized that I had left behind the mobile phone my mom loaned me for the trip and I decided that I had enough time to go back for it. About half a block after turning back I encountered Elise Matthesen! "Matthew, give us a hug," she said. She was just done visiting John M. Ford who was recovering from successful cataract surgery. I seem to have some sort of strange luck associated with her and Minneapolis fandom in general.

I arrived back at the house to find I just barely made it before Sue got into the shower. Lucky again. Deciding this was karma, fate, or something I went the opposite direction this time, to Dreamhaven books.[1] Which as luck would have it opens at 11am, just a little bit after I arrived at their front door. I was amused to see it was near the corner of Colfax and Lake, since Colfax is the name of a major avenue in Denver. Inside the Neil Gaiman shrine, holding his Hugo and other awards for American Gods also tickled my fancy.[2] This was a good diversion, though also bad since I bought five more books and had them shipped to my parent's home (UPS is bad about being able to get me things at my apartment).

I managed to make all my bus connections out to the airport with very little effort, though I missed being able to take a picture of Solera due to time constraints. The plane ride home was less perfect. One of those silly things with the plane needing a mechanical check out and us being trapped on the plane in our seats for 45 minutes. My legs felt quite cramped by the time we descended into a rainy day in Denver. Everything came full circle with going from sun to rain on a plane journey.

[1] Look the storefront of Dreamhaven, exciting.
[2] I had to take a picture of the Case o' Gaiman awards.
The lovely and talented staff at Dreamhaven:
E.V. & Elizabeth.
 

Teenage FBI – Guided By Voices
Sunday
No hangover greeted me on Sunday, so I count that as a minor victory. Two of my friends from the previous night invited me out to breakfast with them. That worked out just dandy and was not too expensive, though I was told later that I could have had an even better meal at Hell's Kitchen for about the same price. Maybe if I am able to go next year I'll try that. The one thing I was really annoyed with myself over is missing the slide show of early Worldcons including Denvention I. I would have liked to have seen that, I think I'll try tracking down whoever has the slides and seeing if they're going to do this again or might consider sending them to Milehicon.

About forty minutes later I was hanging under the dome with my fellow photograph aficionados. The light through the clouds was very good for taking pictures and the dome made for an interesting background. Especially for Alison who was taking and showing off her 3-D pictures.[1] Everyone there had a go at looking through the little plastic image combiner at the photos on her laptop. Being fans we were all impressed by this combination of technological wizardry and a traditional pastime.

It was also noted that the dome was a hot spot for open wireless networks and many fans were logging on to check email or upload photos. This felt like what the future should be to me. Checking mail using electronic devices in a plexiglas dome.

Most of the day was filled with tasks of minor interest like buying more books, paying for my Sue art, claiming a tee shirt (size small, yay!), and helping out with some clean up of abandoned eating detritus. Things got interesting again after closing ceremonies (which I accidentally missed, much to my dismay). I got to join the Minsif and GoH dinner party at Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. Good food, great conversation, and very cool dinner companions! I got a nifty 1940s sort of dinner party picture of the group too.[2]

When I got back to the con Alison was showing off even more photographs and we were having the usual fannish discussions about everything from employment issues to 'zine production. I was told that people were needed to come help finish off beer in the penthouse consuite and by the time the filking was winding down there were a fair number of us down there drinking and eating. Mostly drinking.

I had enough bad wine that I thought it would be a good idea to take off my shirt and wear Marti Gras beads instead. And it was tremendously bad wine, though not as bad as the turpentine kosher brandy which no one partook of. I didn't get totally drunk, though I kept myself nicely buzzed to mildly inebriated for the rest of the night. I again took over as bartender when the previous tender of that post left us around 2am. My good deed for the night was to keep pushing water on Alison, Sandy, and Lydia Nickerson when I could not convince them to slow or stop drinking.[3] (Hey, you try to come between them and a drink!)

Many things were discussed, some of which I cannot reveal due to my sense of honor and self-preservation. But the conversation kept on circling around to certain points. About the sixth time the same point had been made, the sun was coming up and a small amount of beer was spilt upon me. (I had been on the floor.) At this point I decided it was time for me to leave the conversational merry-go-round and head to bed. So I washed out my shirt and turned in. It was 5am. I was told later that Alison and Lydia didn't go to sleep for another four hours (1) and were much worse off than me due to having a higher blood alcohol content at the end. (And still went for Sushi!) Sandra slept with Joel in the consuite while we were there... just in a same bed. They did it in the same room where the rest of us were drinking and talking under the theory that with lots of people around to see it would be clear that nothing happened. Though we didn't even notice they were asleep in bed for about two hours. Very little could have distracted us from our serious bout of drinking and talking.

[1] Alison in background with computer, general picture of the dome crowd.
[2] Our Dinner Party in Black and White
[3] Wheee, I'm shirtless! This would be at a tipsy stage.
And the rest of the drinking party.
 

Bubak and Hungaricus – Arranged by Jaroslav Krcek
Friday
I generally awake after eight hours of sleep so I was up at about 9am. An hour later (yes, I take a while getting ready in the morning) I was dressed in my Levi 501s and a black DASFA t-shirt. I headed up to the Bar and got started cutting up the melons. With four down and two to go, I was grabbed to go back down to the loading dock to help unload food.

The pile of edibles was quite impressive. I particularly remember the 18 gallons of chocolate milk, skim milk, and orange juice. Back up to the con-suite to complete my task. A bit more organizing and set up and I was off for my first clothes change of the day. I wore an orange sleeveless top with my slim cut black jeans. It was my intention to get a picture of myself wearing this next to Orange Mike. I ran into him when I went downstairs, but he was just getting in so I left him alone and grabbed a sandwich from registration. (Those sandwiches from the Vietnamese restaurant were great, by the way. I'm not totally sure what was in them, but they were near perfect. I'm going to have to try to replicate them at home.)

After stopping in the "Online Communities" panel[1] I was puttering about helping and taking pictures in the 14th floor con-suite when I ran into Alison. She asked if I would like to go for all you can eat sushi with her, Steven, and Sue. Yes! Sushi is v. good in my opinion and the company for this meal sounded ideal. I met them downstairs at 5pm and we walked down the block to Ichiban Japanese Steak House. The sushi, while not extraordinary, was very good and quite plentiful on the endlessly circling boats of the sushi bar.

I was surprised that Alison and Steven's children, Jonathan and Marianne (respectively two and five), were along and eating the same things as the rest of us. I thought it quite nifty that they were being treated as much like adults as they were willing to behave. I doubt that I would have eaten sushi at that age, or anything too "weird" for that matter. They were a bit of a handful, especially Jonathan, but for children they did pretty well. I tried to be helpful with Jonathan, telling him a story when he was getting wiggly towards the end. That's the system I use on Maya (the five year old daughter of my friends Richard Morman and Carol Angel back in Denver) at brunch, but that trick seems to work better with older children because it only kept Jonathan's attention for a little bit.

I enjoyed the eel and the roe sushi best out of all the different things I tried. We all left fairly well stuffed, though Alison said she could have crammed in a few more pieces. Inspired by Marianne I had a Shirley Temple and water with my sushi. Alison and Sue had beer, in some ways they are a good deal more butch than me. I also got Sue to sign my copy of her chapbook. Eeee! Such a wonderful convention, and it's only the first day!

Back to the con for opening ceremonies. At one point before it started the very cute daughter of Orange Mike caught my eye. Kelly was looking angelic and willing to play to the camera, so I snapped off some pictures of her. [2]

I'm told that I looked good flouncing about in my outfit and I got some excellent pictures of the goings on. Toastmaster David Levine, whose name is quite similar to someone I knew at Pyramid Magazine, was a good speaker. He also did an excellently brutal job of killing the messy inflatable alien as the example of what might happen to people who don't bathe regularly at the con. Our noble guests of honor all got up in turn to speak and in one case sing and they all appeared to be okay with the four or five people including me snapping their pictures.

The last speaker, Elise Matthesen, dressed up as the high priestess of Vegetology, the convention's new religion. Using the holy book of Burpee she pronounced the convention's vegetable to be multi-ton hybrid cabbage. Then there was more music and everyone took an alcoholic or non-alcoholic Bloody Mary as the sacrament of Vegetology. Smooth! (Though spicy.) Afterwards I got my picture with Orange Mike[3] and then I changed into a slightly more sedate outfit of a black t-shirt with a embroidered shirt over that.

I wandered around, put out food in the con-suite and generally hung about until the 10pm panel; "Melbourne in 2010, why fans shouldn't drink at cons." In deference to the topic, almost everyone on the panel was drinking "tea." Late in the course of things, Geri Sullivan told Michael Bentley as he got up to leave, "The next person to leave the room has to chair a Worldcon™." Unfortunately, she forgot this fact five minutes later when she left to use the facilities, as is often necessitated when one has had large amounts of "tea." Almost the moment she left the room Erik Olson pointed out what she had said. In the twinkling of an eye her fellow panelists and friends from the audience were putting twenties on her chair and signing their names as pre-supporters for her Worldcon bid.[4]

When Geri returned she was informed of her new position and she proceeded to fall down laughing and saying, "You bastards!" to the many conspirators. I was very happy to get a nice picture of the exact moment she was saying this.[5] Very fun.

The panel broke up and we proceeded upstairs to the con-suite where people continued to bring Geri money and sign the pre-supporters sheet as word of what had happened spread. I was nominated as treasurer, a position for which I did almost no work other than counting the money because Geri wasn't totally sure that she had got it right the first time (she had). Sue Mason was located because we needed an illustration for the bid and she is the traditional choice for drunken bids (e.g. Melbourne in 2010). She drew a picture of Geri covered in money and looking rather annoyed which appeared in the next issue of the Bozo Bus Tribune. I eventually turned in around 2am after a lot more chatting and having fun with the fans.

[1] Online Communities Panel, picture by yours truly
[2] Kelly Lowery
[3] And here we are in all our Orangeness
[4] The Money
[5] Geri's Reaction