Post Marscon, pre-trip

[catherineldf]

Spent the weekend at Marscon kicking off my yearly convention migration, which is sort of like swallows or caribou, only in smaller numbers and with less time spent outdoors. :-)
Friday night was dinner at Da Afghan with friends and colleagues. Mr_bad_example was on a roll and coined numerous ideas for  future works, including a potential shared-world antho tentatively entitled "The Librarians of Spite." Not sure what the end result would look like but the notion was hilarious. The weekend also produced the term "Elaboramancy: It's all about the Ritual" but I no longer remember who came up with that one.  After dinner it was back to the con for the Tales of the Unanticipated Party where we all sat about being giddy and in some case, witty, until I needed to go home and collapse.

Saturday, it was off to the "I Heart Bad Girls" panel which was lively and well-attended. I love high energy panels where both the audience and the panelists are on. Not sure we said anything super memorable but I gather it was all quite entertaining. Plus it gave me the opportunity to wear a lot of black leather and lace with my steampunky ankle boots, so completely successful from a personal perspective. I also sat through a panel on femme fatales before heading down to read with Lyda Morehouse in a 2 person version of a Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading. She read from her forthcoming Archangel Protocol prequel novel while I read portions of "The Egyptian Cat" (Tales of the Unanticipated). It went well and was reasonably well-attended for a reading at this con. And I'm looking forward to reading the prequel. 

After this, there was hanging out in  various lobbies having conversations, then off to dinner at Da Afghan again with a slightly different combination of dining companions. Then back to the con for the masquerade and half-time show (evil overlords run for election - pretty funny on the whole). Then upstairs for parties and more chatting.

Sunday was "Vamps and Vampires" which was pretty low-energy. I had meant to get organized, which might have helped, but got side-tracked with overtime. Not awful, but definitely slow. Post lunch with amiable writerly companions, "The Dark Side of the Fay" was much livelier. We got in some good discussion about how the fay are depicted, their social function, how those depictions have changed over time and related. This was followed by more chatting, this time covering everything from moderation style (I go for mean and funny, myself) to Donna Harroway's "The Cyborg Manifesto" to the state of queer sf/f. In short, an excellent convention.

And from there home to deal with kitty abandonment issues (Maat seized a steampunk barrette that I bought at the con and dashed off with it. When we got it back, one of the filagreed pieces was missing and we had a fun-filled few hours trying to figure out if she could have swallowed it. Seems to be okay though so it probably just fell off.). Then stayed up too late to watch Kathryn Bigelow win "Best Director," which was a very, very cool thing and about bloody time. Yay!
 

Comments

[jean-roberta.livejournal.com]

Steampunk barrette! Too bad we can't see a photo of it here. (Of course a vengeful kitty would know what hard-to-replace thing to destroy.) Re hair accessories, I only associate steampunk with hatpins, hairpins (meant to be unseen), switches (partial wigs), ribbons, flowers, etc.

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a picture when we get it glued back together. One of the other bits fell off right before Maat got it - not the best gluing on the planet, alas. Basically it has little filagree bits and glass on it, so interesting to look at.