lovely weather bones

I woke up with a fuzzy cat on my face this morning, which while not the most pleasant way to wake up in world is certainly efficient at getting the job done.

We're not home yet, stayed last night with old friends of Christopher (well, they aren't old, but he's known them a longggg time) and are doing so again tonight, in Alexandria. We could go out and do many things today, but instead I think we're going to kick back and recup from the Big Fun and possibly cab down Old Town and walk around and look at the water. Tomorrow we'll try to be industrious and hit a couple of museums before our flight, thus ensuring that even though we took it easy today we'll be exhausted for work the rest of the week. Ah well.

World Fantasy was lovely, besmirched only by the lack of your (yes, your) presence if you weren't there. And by the fact that there's never time to really get to hang out with at least five people you really want to hang out with, and that the people you do get to hang out with a lot, you could hang out with all the time and it wouldn't be too much. I only went to three programming items it occurs to me, which means it must have been a successful convention.

I thought we got crap freebie bags, but going through them just now, it turns out we got some interesting stuff. Things I would probably never find on my own which look quite good -- and more heavy on science fiction than fantasy, oddly enough -- and lots of books that will make good presents for people who don't have them yet. Still not as good as Ted's bag, but I'm banking on our own book bag karma for next year.

Michael Jasper -- one of the people I didn't get to hang out with as much as I would have liked -- did an unbelievably great job at putting together the small press debut party on Saturday night, which was a great success and went off without a hitch despite being opposite the Tor party. The numerous small press items that debuted all look wonderful and read wonderfully in the little gulps I've been able to ingest so far too. A good weekend for zines. To name a few (besides Say... of course!) there was the first issue of Trunk Stories (which looks great, order it from Small Beer), Intracities, Flytrap, the new LCRW (beautiful! perfect bound, color cover and my first advice column and lots of other, better stuff), the new Polyphony (not a zine, but I wanted to mention it anyway), and lots, lots more...

All the award winners were good this year, and really, it was a great year for nominees and winners and material in general. My only regret is that "Fitcher's Brides" didn't get a WF Award for Best Novel, and if anything I think it's because it's a book that makes something very technically hard look easy and read decadently pleasantly.

That is all for now. Everyone get home safe and rest up.

Next year let's go to good restaurants while we're at the convention. Last night eating great Thai food was like a sin, after Union Station for five days.