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Worldcon: Day 2
THIS WAS A VERY BUSY DAY AND IT’S NOT EVEN MY BUSY DAY
I managed to go to TWO panels today, which is two more than I usually manage in my entire convention weekend, so I’m very proud of myself. :)
I went to the guest of honor interview with Nalo Hopkinson, which was tremendously entertaining, and then later went to a panel on writing aout climate change, upon which an Internet Friend was presenting. After that I got to talk to her for a bit, which was lovely, and between those two panel things I had lunch with my friend Lithera, who I don’t see nearly often enough.
After those things I managed to grab dinner with another friend who is VERY BUSY this weekend and I might not get to see him again, so I was v. happy to have even just a little time to hang out with him.
Then, thanks to Lithera’s Awareness of Things I Didn’t Know, we went to a concert performed by Clipping, a group headed by Broadway & Hamilton star Daveed Diggs (who played Jefferson and Lafayette in the debut year/album of Hamilton), and we had a ridiculously good time. Although I was unintentionally rude to a friend on the way in and although the air has been cleared over it I still feel badly. (I did not realize I’d been rude at the time but when they said “we need to talk about this moment” I was like “oh shit I was really rude wasn’t I,” so, yeah. Mea culpa. Anyway!)
Diggs is known for (among other things) doing the fastest rap ever done on Broadway in his role as Lafayette, and…he’s really fast, guys. I mean. That man has exquisite control of his tongue, my god. It was great fun and probably deserves a writeup of its own, but that’s not realistically going to happen so I’ll just mention the funniest bits:
“Who here is from Helsinki?” he asks, and like six people give a feeble cheer. He burst out laughing and was like “Um, no, guys, see, where I come from when somebody asks that you yell as loud as you fucking can, so let’s try again,” and he did and the crowd roared and then he was satisfied. *laughs*
And then the encore he came back out and was all “oh, gosh, guys, this is such a surprise, i’m totally unprepared for this,” with all innocence and sparkling eyes, which was just pretty damn funny. :) And then he said, “Okay, I’m going to do another song I can’t really remember the words to,” which he did. He screwed up a couple times, too, and laughed at himself. Oh, and there was a very funny bit where they mixed the Doctor Who theme into the music, which obviously got a great cheer. It was great fun!
I’m basically gonna do a post-con picture post because it’s easier than trying to do one every day on the clogged hotel wifi, but MY DUDES. MY DUDES, I COULD TOUCH HIM. I WAS RIGHT UNDER HIM, MY DUDES.
They were at the convention because they’re up for a Hugo for their album, wich is a science fiction story, and apparently they’re kind of nerds and were REALLY EXCITED to be nominated (seriously, I genuinely think they were, he sounded chuffed!) and I hope they win. But even if they don’t, I got to post “Daveed Diggs just walked by” on twitter this afternoon and that was freaking awesome. :)
Then I wandered around for quite a while trying to find the Dublin 2019 party, which I eventually did find and hung out at and chatted with people and had a lovely time until I decided I’d better go collapse into bed.
And now I shall, because it’s way late. I mean, except it’s not because I’m really still on Irish time, but yeah. Bed now. :)
(the glasses, man. he came out after the show and the glasses, man. the glasses are just NOT FAIR. IDK why, they’re like total nerd frames, but GOOD LORD, MAN.)
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Worldcon 75: Day One
I am in Helsinki for Worldcon! If I was a more organized person I’d have posted about this earlier, but, well, I’m not, so. I’m in Helsinki for Worldcon!
I will be publically available for chatting at the following times:
1. The Dublin 2019 parties on Thursday & Saturday nights
2. From 2-3:30ish on Friday afternoon–informal kaffeesklatch type thing, the Dublin 2019 table will know where I am if you don’t see me in the seating area around there
3. The Hugos on Friday night
4. Any other time you waylay me unless I have stuff specifically scheduled
4a. I have a panel about women writing comics on Saturday morning at 10am so I’ll definitely be there. :)Anyway, Helsinki! I flew through Copenhagen, which turned out to be exciting because I thought I had an hour layover but it turned out my plane arrived, I got through passport control, and as I was heading for my gate (ON THE OTHER END OF THE AIRPORT) they announced final boarding for my flight to Helsinki. I scurried and said “my connecting flight just got in!” and they gave the board a skeptical look, but the sign didn’t say “closed” yet, so they let me on and closed the door behind me. Whew!
I hate (haaaate) taking public transport in places I know not at all, so I was nervous about the train from the airport to the hotel, but it turned out that it was very well annotated and I made it with no problem. Then my roommate collected me at the train station (THANK YOU) so all I had to do was follow her and get there safely. And now I’m oriented, so it’s all good.
I immediately saw half a dozen people, upon arriving, whom I might have hoped to see at some point over the weekend, so that was rather lovely. We got dinner and our tiny group of three expanded to about 11, some of whom expressed great surprise over my very different hair (and went on to theorize I might be a spy; I told them not to blow my cover :)). Then I wandered around the convention hall a bit trying to get oriented inside, and managed that fairly well, but didn’t go to the panel tat semeed fun because it was already packed full when we got there!
Instead I said to people that Helsinki is on the same latitude as my hometown, so I was going to go outside and be emotional about the light :)
Then I went outside and was like, oh shit no, I really *am* going to be emotional about the light, and it left me feeling a bit verklempt.
But then I found another friend and got introduced briefly to Ellen Datlow who knew my name (*faints*) and I had a bit more to eat and it was a lovely ending to the evening, which is now going to end properly so I can get up early and have more time with the light. ♥ :)
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A Liverpool Lark!
A few weeks ago my friend Leah said her husband wasn’t much interested in seeing Wonder Woman, so she wasn’t likely to see it in the theatre, and Ted said “THIS WILL NOT DO” and checked to see how much plane tickets to Liverpool were and they were practically nothing so he sent me to Liverpool for a lark with Leah, and we went to Wonder Woman together!
Knowing I had to get up wery wery early for my flight, I took a shower the night before and ended up with…Quite The Hair in the morning.
But I tamed it, and got myself some hot chocolate at the airport. I was very tired. But less large of hair. :)
It was the shortest flight I’d ever been on that didn’t involve being in an actual puddle-jumper (ie, 6-12 seat twin propeller airplane). We went up, we went down, there I was. I hung out at the airport for a while, reading, until Leah could collect me, and we spent an EXTREMELY giddy couple of hours ranting about work, children, and the patriarchy. (And, to be fair, a bit about Tom Hardy. Not so much ranting there, mind you, but. :))
These drinks are not actually alcoholic, because it was 11am, but they were DELICIOUS!
We went to our movie. We sat through a truly inordinate number of ads, which, thankfully, had no sound. We started to become concerned, in fact, after many many soundless ads. Then the trailers started, also soundlessly. They were doing these weird little 10 seconds spots for Dunkirk, and the second-to-last one faded to black and immediately came up with the trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes, except because there was no sound and the fade to black had been so brief, they really looked like one trailer.“Is this how we won WW2?” Leah asked, mystified. “Woody Harrelson and an army of monkeys?”
Then a theatre employee came in and said the entire sound system in the theatre had blown and they would not be showing us Wonder Woman in that theatre at that time.
However, there was another showing half an hour later, and they let us go to that one!
We had an utterly splendid time. Leah really enjoyed the movie. It ended and she said, “That was…that was *good*,” in astonishment, and then we went back to the airport, picking apart all our problems with it and rewriting things to our satisfaction, but we were really happy and had such a good time! And decided that we should really do that more often, because it turns out to be really cheap to pop over for a day, and ours is one of those friendships based on kindred spirithoodness rather than regular meetings in real life (we think that was our 6th time actually being on one another’s physical presence), but it was such fun that it seems like it should be a thing we do, and I need to look into doing that with OTHER friends in England and equally nearby locales…!But yeah. That was really great. Yay for a lark!
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Stranger in a Strange Land
We’re on holiday in America. Flew to Michigan, then drove to North Carolina. The first night in the RV, we stayed at one of those RV campground type places that feature heavily in horror movies. Obviously we survived, but Ted and I kind of went O.O at each other. Also I flooded the back of the RV by over-flushing the toilet! Go me!
But fireflies! I’ve finally seen fireflies! They’re goddamn magical, OMG. Wow. Wow. SO COOL! Also cardinals and bluebirds! I’d never seen them before! (My high school was the Kenai Kardinals. I honestly thought ‘cardinal’ was spelled with a K until I was about 20, and spent a fair number of years wondering why the cardinals in Pamela Dean’s Secret Country books were mis-spelled. #blush)
Thunderstorm along with the first fireflies, too. Lightning in the background, flashing purple against the clouds, with golden lightning bugs scattered thru the trees in the foreground. So beautiful. I wish I had the photographic skills to have captured the imagery.
Driving through MI, there are all these great little red-winged blackbirds all over the place. Very crisp coloring. “They look like little fascists!” said Ted.
“Well-dressed ones,” I said.
“Aren’t they all?” Ted asked.
Me: JESUS CHRIST GAS IS 2.49 A LITRE WHAT THE HELoh that’s a gallon JESUS CHRIST GAS IS 2.49 A GALLON WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY
Also me: oh 57km to Madison oh that’s not ba–oh wait that’s miles i really don’t belong to this country anymore
Northern Tennessee, I guess. Driving thru soft misty green rolling hills. Strikes me that maybe I’m sposd to see them as mountains & that we’ve reached the Appalachians. (TBF, they were probably the Appalachian foothills, as the Appalachians proper are somewhat more mountain-like. Wee soft things, but still, pretty definitely mountains.)
Americans are so…American. So friendly. Much smiles. I’d forgotten how when you’re on a walk most of the drivers will wave at you as you go by.
And the food. Weird goddamn flavorless anemic American butter. Weird goddamn cloying corn syrup American Pepsi. O blessed American root beer. O god, the land of 40oz “medium” drinks, wth, America.
Everybody in NC: OMG YOU SO PINK YOU BURNING
Me: I’m fine, I’m sunscreened, I just turn hot pink in the heat.
(I am tanning, though. For my value of tanning.)I don’t want to live in the hills of North Carolina myself, but I can understand why people do. None of it’s anything like Alaska, not really, but it reminds me of home in its way, and it’s beautiful. I’d be really happy to come out here for a month or so to write and let Indy run around in the sunshine.
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Kitsnaps: Early Morning Oxford
I don’t have anything wildly brilliant to say about my Early Morning Oxford Photography Expedition, except that I was very, very glad I’d gotten up so early because the day was absolutely glorious, and the next morning, which would have been my only other chance to take pictures, was heavily misty, which wouldn’ta been so nice. :)
I have a deep fondness for shadow-selfies. I don’t know why, really. I just find them pleasing, and the gold wall with gold morning light seemed a particularly suitable place for one. :)
This is the quite magnificent Methodist church more or less around the corner from where I was staying. (The place I stayed, called the Cherwell Guest House, was about as minimial (and as cheap) as you could possibly find in a B&B, but they were incredibly understanding about my whole “well I’ve booked for 11 nights but I could be here 8 or I could be here 15, I just don’t know,” situation, and were perfectly happy to let me go home with no penalty after 4 nights, so frankly if you need genuinely budget accommodations in Oxford and very nice people running them, I recommend it. None of that has anything to do with the church, but all I know about the church is it’s pretty, anyway, so. :))
Edmund’s Church, Oxford, is off to the right there. I spent a fair amount of time taking pitures of its very cool garden through its gates, and didn’t come up with one I liked enough to share. :p
Towers cast morning shadows on Radcliffe Library, or at least I think that’s what the rotunda is called. Possibly it’s the University Church towers casting the shadows, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just the super cool building beside the rotunda. :)
Said super cool building can be seen to the left, here. :)
I wish this was a much nicer picture, but I couldn’t get it any better without climbing over things I wasn’t supposed to. Anyway, it’s for Tersa, even if it’s not actually a rose window. :)
