Friday: family, friends, sf museum, space needle :)
I woke up ridiculously early on Friday, having gone to bed at like 8:15. Or maybe 9:15. Anyway, it was early, and I got a lot of sleep, so I got up at 7 or something. All stiff and sore. Nasty beds. (I was relieved on Sunday, when Michael, Scott’s 17 year old son, was complaining bitterly of being stiff and achy from the beds, too. It gave me great confidence that I was not having another horrible back pain attack.)
The rest is cut to spare the innocent, because one nearly-thousand-word post in one day is enough, and this one’s longer. :)
But getting up early meant plenty of time to have breakfast and hang out before going off to do things with my day, so that was good. Jim muttered at me (Jim is so not a morning person) because I was so cheerful, and I think I hung out and talked with Cal-who-was-there-last-year for quite a while that morning. I forget, but I do know that she’d said she’d bring me chocolate as a celebration for having my first book published, and indeed, she brought me a bag of dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses! *swoon*! I went around sharing them with everyone and generally having a swell time with that. :)
And Evan Fogleman accosted Cal Thursday night (her word, not mine) and so she ended up pitching her story then, and he wants to see it, and furthermore he told her what was wrong with the story he’d turned down, and so she was all NEEROW ZOOM JIT JIT JIT with excitement, because she could fix what was wrong with it, which is always a good thing. It was so cool to see her again. :) I also met (Thursday, I think, not Friday morning, but that’s not the point) Ann from Forward Motion, who was completely delightful and had awesome t-shirts (one was something to the effect of, “Hug me or I will destroy the world”), and … and I have no sense of when things were happening, really, but by gosh I was having fun!
Left the hotel around 9:15 and didn’t go back until shortly after 5, and then only long enough to be collected by lj-user lithera for a movie date, but *between* that I met up with Jaime from McAnally’s, Jim’s email list, and we hung out and had coffee and talked for over an hour, I think. Lots of fun. Very nice lady. It was a really nice way to spend the morning. :)
When I broke with her, I went to the Science Fiction Museum, which I hadn’t gotten to go to last year, and *man*. It was SO COOL. I could’ve spent 3 hours there easily, but I only had about 1, so while I gave the first room all the heed it deserved, I kinda skimped on the rest. I had no idea Neal Stephenson handwrote all his HUGE ENORMOUS MANUSCRIPTS. They had the original draft for the 3-book Baroque Cycle, which was literally reams and reams of papers, and ye gods. Ye gods. Did I say ye gods? Because ye gods.
They had original Star Trek scripts and props and Sean Young’s costume from Bladerunner (which, to my surprise, I bet I would fit in, in another 20 pounds. And my God the shoulders on that thing. I really wanted to try it on.) and I was looking at one of the ST:TOS communicators, and just *tell* me that wasn’t a cellphone, because it totally was. And just…it was REALLY COOL and it made the geek in me very happy. I must go back with more time, because I only kinda got to skim a lot of the stuff in the later rooms, and it was well worth visiting. As Lithera said later, “Don’t you get the feeling they have just *huge* amounts of stuff they don’t have room to display?” And yeah, totally. I so want to see the rest of the loot. :)
I was freezing to death after sitting outside for more than an hour, and I didn’t really warm up in the museum, so I bought a long-sleeved shirt for myself (this is unheard of) at the tourist trap gift shop, and bought t-shirts for the boys, and put my shirt on right away. Warm good. Plus, shirt cute; Jacquie, a girl working at the hotel, commented on its cuteness. :) (Jacquie had, the night previously, stood up very well to Scott’s overblown choice of words as he requested a cable so we could hook up Michael’s laptop to the internet, so I was predisposed to like her even if she wasn’t complimenting me on my clothing!)
Then I got together with my cousin Alanna, who’d even managed to get off work a little early, so we went out to lunch and talked about writing and theatre (our respective careers) and about my parents moving to Ireland and basically hung out for two or three hours. We even went up the Space Needle, which I hadn’t done since I was about 11. *laugh* Turns out Alanna doesn’t like elevators, and *I* don’t like heights, so we were a pretty funny pair in the elevator. Once we were up top it was fine, but in the elevator itself we were staring at each other with these glassy-eyed rictuses that were periodically broken (in the 41 second lift ride) by giggles because we were so melodramatic. It was *awesome*. :)
I got back to the hotel in plenty of time for Lithera (Kat) to pick me up, and mostly hung around outdoors smiling at nothing in particular while I waited for her. Just in a good mood all around. Once she’d collected me, we went downtown, where she brought me to a fountain which has a walkway through it. She claimed somewhere on the fountain is a plaque which says if you run through the fountain shouting, “I’m a Seattle superhero!” when you come out the other end, you will be! So we did that, and I don’t know if we came out superheroes, but we certainly came out sopping wet and full of laughter, so it was a grand thing to do. *beam* *laugh* And then, soaking wet, we went to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which was very enjoyable. My favorite line is still the one from the previews, where Brad says, “Come to Daddy,” and Angelina kicks his ass and then tosses her hair and in this perfectly vicious smug *wonderful* purr says, “Who’s your daddy now?” I luff luff *luff* it.
And after the movie I went back to the hotel and went to bed early *again*!