mrgh?

I think I am not fully back on Irish time. I mean, I know copy edits are boring, but I don’t usually actually fall asleep doing them. I especially don’t usually fall asleep for two hours. I’m seriously going “o.O *blinkblinkblink* mngngngh?” right now. Jaysus, as Seirid has learned to say. Of course, I did get up at a quarter to seven, which is earlier than usual even when I’m properly in my time zone…

Friday wasn’t actually a con day (I think there might’ve been a charity quiz of some kind Friday night, but we were too wiped out to go out and find it). Our big accomplishment for Friday was getting over to Chapters, where my books had in fact been ordered and had arrived and where they seemed very pleased indeed to have me sign them. They said they thought a couple copies had already sold, and while I was there one of the employees bought the Walker Papers books, so I signed ’em for her. :) So to my great joy, it is now possible to buy my books in Ireland. Only at Chapters, but by God, if you’re in Dublin, you can buy my books! Yay!

Saturday really was a day spent almost entirely in the bar, chatting with friends. While I’m typically quite good at remembering salient conversational points and funny moments, the best I can do right now is the Paul Cornell moment. It turns out that both Paul and are not just James Bond fans, but specifically James Bond *novel* fans, and upon discovering this they both went into raptures of geeking while I looked back and forth in amusement and amazement. Paul (who is truly the most diffidently, apologetically charming of Englishmen) apologized twice for the geekfest, explaining the second time that, “I’ve never done this with a woman before!”

*laughs out loud* Actually, the other funny Paul moment was when Kate said she didn’t really like Martha* and Paul looked absolutely crushed. While he was looking crushed (and Paul really does an excellent crushed look) Kate went on to say that well, okay, she’d liked Martha “in the finale and in the school episode,” which caused Paul to move from crushed to bewildered as he said, “Martha wasn’t in the school episode.” And then *we* looked bewildered and spluttered with laughter, unable to actually form words, while he worked his way through to, “Oh! You mean the school episode I wrote!” And then he was less crushed. *laughs and laughs*

*More accurately, Kate didn’t buy into the Martha-falls-for-the-Doctor aspect of the story, and turned that into a blanket statement of disliking Martha.

We went to one of the Marvel panels, which was a lot of fun. Mark Millar, who is a short, charming, utterly impish Scotsman (artist JG Jones, who worked with him on WANTED, is not quite as short, but is an equally charming Louisiana boy and extremely elfin, and Ted and I were sitting there trying to imagine the sheer chaos that must follow those two if they’re within forty miles of one another), dominated the panel, and I can remember more or less nothing of what was asked or answered. I can say that if next year’s con is as successful as this year’s they’re going to need a bigger box panel room, because for that panel, at least, the room was stuffed to overflowing.

At the end of the day we decided to not go to the pub quiz because we thought we needed sleep more, and then we got rained on when we headed back to our hotel. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned there, but the lesson is probably “bring an umbrella” more than anything else.

Sunday we had great plans to be at the con hotel by 10am so we could get in the Jim Lee line. However, the luggage storage place at Heuston Station was closed, and when I went to the customer service desk as the sign at the luggage place told us to if the luggage place was closed, the guy in customer service had neither a key nor a care for it. I have rarely met such an unpleasant case of Somebody Else’s Problem, and was pretty pissed off at not just his cavalier attitude but his absolute shut-out of it being anything he should have to deal with. After a while Ted flagged down somebody else who very kindly let us store our luggage in the ticket office, so eventually we did get out of the train station and off to the con to stand in line.

And there was a _lot_ of standing in line. We’d intended to be there early so we could go to ‘ 11am panel after line-standing, but instead we just stood in line. And then some more, and then more, and then after that we stood in line, but when we were finished we stood in line and they told us to take a number and come back and stand in line later.

So we did. :)

Jim was still on break for quite a while after we came back to stand in line with our numbers, so we had quite the talk with the people in line with us, Liam and Yvonne, and then we peeked and watched him draw the Joker and (I think) Batman for them. It’s so cool watching someone like him draw. A lot of people had copies of ABSOLUTE HUSH, which has a green interior, and he was doing drawings on the inside front pages with pencil, ink, and white ink, the latter of which took a little while to dry. People kept going by with their books held open on their fingertips and their eyes wide with awe and joy. We saw a brilliant Hawkman and a gorgeous Batgirl, and a…Beast or Wolverine, I can’t remember which. That one was fun to watch, because he was going “scribble scribble scribble” and that’s what it looked like, scribbles, and then he did a long line and then it was “oh! that’s a face!” and then scribble scribble scribble oh! that’s Wolverine! So strange and cool to see!

Apparently the first drawing he did Saturday was a Cyclops that he just put everything into and it was utterly fantastic. I heard about it, and told Ted about it, and he looked all sad that he hadn’t gotten to see it. :) I also saw a stunning Two-Face, and a full black and white pen and ink piece of the Joker and Batman for the owner of the comic shop that was running this thing which was Oh. My. God. gorgeous.

Anyway, we were there behind Liam and Yvonne, discussing what character Kate wanted to have Jim draw for her, and had settled on Storm, and were saying that she needed the lightning bolt earrings for best effect. Except for some reason “lightning bolt” was too hard to come up with, so I said something like “the zzz-zzz-zzz earrings,” and made a lightning bolt with my hands, and then we were enormously amused by zzz-zzz-zzz earrings, and kept going “zzz-zzz-zzz” at each other (simple minds, simple pleasures…).

Meantime, the handler guy was making sure Jim was okay, and he said he was tired, though not so much tired of drawing as just tired from jet lag, but then he suddenly looked at us and said, “Are you American?” because my accent was apparently confusing him terribly and adding to his whole sense of dislocation. He said, “I kept thinking there’s something not *right* here and I couldn’t figure out what it was.” :) (And I, being accustomed to being with Ted rather than Kate, said, “We are!” and then realized that er, well, *I* was, anyway…)

So finally we got up there and Kate asked for a drawing of Storm and how they were enjoying Ireland and if they were here for more than the con (there were a couple of American women hanging around in the background and we figured probably one was Jim’s wife, as she had an expression of long-suffering patience, as though she’d spent a lot of time sitting on couches while he drew pictures for people for hours on end), and because other people are much better at shamelessly promoting me, told them all right off that I was a writer, and Jim drew a little, talked a little, drew a little, talked a little, pick pick pick pick draw a little more, and then voila! there was a sketch of Storm!

While he did my drawing of Rogue he asked about what I wrote, and I told him, and said I was living here, and he wanted to know where I was from, and I told him that I’m working on a comic book myself as a writer, and that it was basically because of him, because it was his run on the X-Men that got me into superhero comics, and, watching him draw, said (inanely but honestly) how astonishing it was to watch someone do what he does. He said, very interestingly, I thought, that it was basically like a really complicated signature. You just do it so much that it becomes second nature and you don’t really even have to think about it. Which is strange, cool, and makes sense. And then he finished the drawing and I gave him a copy of URBAN SHAMAN, and then we were off!

As soon as we got out the door Kate did a veritable spasm of delight, causing the con people to crow with joy and take pictures of us with our sketches. Hopefully those’ll be posted sometime this week. :) Oh, and there was a little boy who came in in a Spider-Man costume and got his picture taken with Jim. So CUTE! *beams*

Kate took a couple of very silly pictures of me after we got our drawings. I was, for some reason, being a Superhero:

From these pictures, I would say my superpower is the Power Of Boob…

Hrm. I made dinner, but I’m not actually in the least bit interested in eating it. I wonder if I’m sick (I certainly got wheezy this afternoon) or if I’m still feeding off the enormous amounts of food I ate on holiday. I’d sure rather it was the latter. I’ve been sick at least as often as not the last 3 or 4 months and I’m really pretty tired of it.

(I have now been writing this entry for over five six hours. I ate some dinner. I’ve made some cookies. I got very slightly more than halfway through the edits. These are the days of our lives…)