Monday, February 12, 2007

Back in the Real World

I'm now back in the real world after a weekend in Chicago and a night at the headquarters of Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. I don't even know where to begin to describe the party, so I think I'll wait until I have pictures to illustrate it. Suffice it to say that the Chicagoland Browncoats are very, very cool people.

I had a good convention and managed to have a reasonably intelligent conversation with Lois McMaster Bujold, but that was mostly because I didn't know who I was talking to at the time. I was hanging out in the green room, waiting for my first panel to start and drinking tea and got into a conversation that seemed to range from jokes about kids with swords and other pointy weapons (based on a children's programming note about javelin practice) to discussions about cross-marketing books that fit into multiple genres. It was only around this time that I looked at her nametag to see what her books might be and where they'd fit. And then I did the freeze around famous people thing so that she probably thought she'd insulted me and I was avoiding her for the rest of the convention. Note to self: Develop social skills, stat.

The usual Murphy's Laws of travel applied. If I get to the airport early, the flight is guaranteed to be delayed, and it was. They rescheduled it the moment I set foot in the airport -- literally. But I met some nice people and had a good chat while waiting around in the terminal. In the ultimate bit of cruelty, the gate where I had to wait for hours was right across from the Cinnabon place, and I swear they vented their ovens right into the waiting area. But I held strong and did not give in, though I may possibly be baking cinnamon rolls later in the week. I finally dragged home, nearly two hours late.

It's going to take me a while to recover. It didn't help that I had to get up shortly after 4 in the morning one day and then stayed up until almost 4 in the morning the next day, after a brief night of sleep in between. I'm getting too old for that kind of thing. I've made it through all my e-mail and caught up on anything else I needed to check, and I think I'm declaring the rest of the day comp time because I'm not sure I could do anything coherent at the moment. I have to work on my music and catch up on the TV I taped. I didn't even want to go to the grocery store today, so I will be scavenging in the freezer.

In other news, today we sold Damsel Under Stress for publication in Dutch, and I found out that I got a mention in an article in Locus magazine.

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