Shamrokon was a lovely, fun, totally exhausted weekend. Not so much exhaust*ing* as exhaust*ed*; for some of the attendees it was the 3rd con weekend in a row, and for lots of them it was the 2nd. It turns out that’s a lot. :)
I myself was on three panels (all of which went pretty well), helped judge the Golden Blasters, which are one of my very favourite parts of the current Irish fandom scene, and threw a Let Them Eat Cake party on Friday night.
The biggest mistake of the cake party was not limiting people to only two slices before they had to go to the back of the line, because although we started with this:
(From bottom to top, left to right: vegan/gluten-free peanut butter brownies & carrot cake; gluten-free chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate ganache & lemon polenta cake (compliments of Susan Connolly); plates (the round white thing mid-table :)), diabetic-safe chocolate cake; Welsh cakes (compliments of Catherine Sharp), lemon cake; red devil’s food cake & more plates; baklava (compliments of Ted), German chocolate cupcakes & pecan sour cream cake.)
then this happened:
and then there was this:
while the line was, I’m afraid, still out the door. So I learned something, not, I said, that I was going to do this again, a statement which was not helped by Ted making lists about things he’d do differently next time and ultimately, as it turned out, not helped by people having met me and therefore apparently totally not believing that I would not do this again. :)
Despite running out of cake–oh, and there was fudge:
–anyway, despite running out of cake (and fudge), it went well and was a lot of fun and watching people swoon was pretty great. :)
I also got Lawrence Watt-Evans to sign both THE MISENCHANTED SWORD and his latest book, A YOUNG MAN WITHOUT MAGIC, and got to hang out and talk with him (& he wants one of the cake recipes :)) and with Laura Anne Gilman, who was, most splendidly, over for the weekend and the source of a wonderful lunchtime conversation on Saturday (I still owe you five quid, Suri). I caught up with a few other people, but–in true con fashion–TOTALLY FAILED to catch up with many others, including Charlie Stross, for whom I had specifically made one of the cakes. I believe his slice of it was delivered this afternoon by Kate, though, so whew. :)
I also managed to catch–or more likely, finally succumb to–some degree of con crud. After a month of travel and conventions I thought maybe I was going to get away scot free, but it seems not. Late Saturday afternoon my throat began hurting badly, so instead of staying to watch Doctor Who with 300 of my closest friends, I cut out a little early and stopped for the god-awful Chinese herbal tea I usually take when I’ve got a cold coming on. A few cups of that seems to have wreaked havoc on the cold, and we watched Doctor Who at home, and enjoyed it quite considerably.
At the closing ceremonies, as co-chair Brian Nisbet said, “We’ve done Europe, next, THE WORLD!” Dublin 2019 rah rah rah!
(pictures mostly nabbed from my friend Shelly, but i don’t remember who took the fudge pic!)