WorldCon Day 2, Thursday

[nlbarber]

Lovely start to the first full day of the con: Lois had one open breakfast slot, and had told mbernardi to collect a small group and meet at her hotel at 9. The group was Lois, her daughter Ann, and mbernardi, filkferengi, Mary (CatMtn), mmegaera, and me. I sat across from Ann and Lois and had a good time hearing about Ann's work--she's just completed a degree in fine arts, and works in metals, primarily. Lois, unfortunately, had some form of concrud settling in her throat and had a croaking voice in consequence--this kept up all weekend, but didn't really start to give out completely until the closing ceremonies. At the end of breakfast Lois passed out a stack of signed copies of the 1987 Analog with the first installment of Falling Free, enough for all of us there and some extras for mbernardi to pass along to other listees or worthies of other sorts.

I then delivered a message from Lois to the NESFA table in the Dealers' Room, and missed the first panel session wandering through the Dealers' Room and in the Art Show. These places don't seem so dangerous for me as for some others--I'm so overloaded with unread books that I won't do a lot of browsing through the booksellers, the jewelry is often not my style and/or color, the clothing ditto. The guy with cool mineral specimens might have gotten some of my money, but $80 for a polished quartz ball of about 3" diameter dissuaded me.

I didn't spot anything really enticing on the programming at the 11:30 timeslot, so I decided to check out the lovely 16th Street pedestrian mall and find lunch. It was 2 blocks from the Convention Center to the mall, then down several blocks to a Tokyo Joe's--a favorite chain of mine when in Denver. Coming back I tried the free shuttle buses, which make the mall even nicer.

At the 1:00 timeslot I popped into the "remembering the BayCon WorldCon", didn't get caught by the discussion, and went back to the dealer's room. I then went early to the 2:30 Lee & Miller reading across the street at the Hyatt. This was good, because the room had been changed to the Convention Center. The reading itself was not so good for me--it was hard to hear (rolanni has a very soft voice and preferred to not use the mike, kinzel is a little louder but also avoided the mike), they read from Duainfey which I've read in eARC format, then as there was a big block of time they read first chapters of most of the core Liaden books. I followed along on my Palm on the Liaden books, since I couldn't hear enough to track the stories otherwise.


At 4 was the first Bujold reading, from TSK:Horizon which will be out in early 2009. I took notes, but DianaH posted a nice summary to the Bujold list.

Next up was the Bujold list curry party, but as my carpool didn't leave the Convention Center until 6:15, I popped into the Kathy Mar filk concert for a while. Enjoyable, a couple of things I recognized, but not a problem to leave when the time came. It was very nice indeed to have that concert at the Convention Center and not at the filk hotel, though--and there were other filk events at the CC, too. Pity I always had other things that pulled me more strongly...this was the only filk I made it to.

I met my car pool at the Big Blue Bear in front of the Convention Center and we drove to kitsune42's (sekmet) parents house, a 1920's bungalow in the Park Hill area of Denver.
The house was small, so we gathered on the front porch and the front walkway using tables and chairs from the house and from a neighbor.
I missed chopping duty--much was done before we got there, and I volunteered too late for the second round (after a last-minute grocery run had been made),
but I wandered into the tiny kitchen and offered to relieve Alayne at stirring one of the pots, and that became my role for the evening. Alayne stirred on two pots, and I stirred one at first, then had a second added.
James had a panel until 7 so the cooking began rather late. We didn't actually start eating until sometime after 8:30, but no matter. The results were wonderful and worth waiting for, and I at least had a great time as a kitchen minion. James made 4 curries, with a couple offered in variations to accommodate vegetarians and other dietary needs: vegetable curry, chicken kurma, kofta dall dhansak, and mattar paneer, with purchased naan and paratha, small vegetable samosas, and gulab jamum and burfi for desserts. James has posted recipes for all the curries.


At eating time I didn't go out to the front yard (where I think the tables were all full anyway), but stayed inside to eat and chat with mbernardi and with kitsune42's father. Between that and kitchen-minioning, I find there were a number of people at the party that I never got to meet. (Another reason is my introversion, even in this size a group where most of us 'know' each other from list interactions. Must do better at walking up to people and saying, "Hi, who are you?") The party broke up a little after 11, and we drove back to the Sheraton (where my carpool driver was staying), then Alayne and I walked together to the Crowne Plaza.

There are a few more curry party pictures in my Denvention set on Flickr.

Comments

[ann-mcn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting these reports of the Con -- it's good to hear about it, and to know some of the people named, so I can imagine being there.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the introversion thing. Normally I'm terrible in anything much more than one-on-one interactions. But the Con wasn't like that at all for me. For one thing, people kept coming up to me [g]. It was very odd.