Yep, traveling and going to cons really interferes with hanging-around-online time. It was lots of fun though! 🙂
SpoCon was a really nice con. I hadn’t ever been before–hadn’t even driven through the Cascades there, from Seattle, which was really lovely. Except for the weird and inexplicable traffic. Some of it was construction-related, but most of it was just…inexplicable.
Dan Dos Santos was the artist guest of honor. His art is so gorgeous, and I’m happy to report he’s a REALLY nice guy too. Mark and I had a couple of nice conversations with him, and Mark had a panel with him as well:
The panel was surprisingly relevant for me–it was about breaking into the art field, but all I had to do was change “art” into “writing” in my head, and all the advice was basically the same: figure out what you really want to do, work at it really hard, don’t be a jerk, get a thick skin about rejections, keep trying, keep practicing… Yeah. Exactly.
Later, Dan painted a portrait of Patty Briggs while they chatted. That was awesome.
We had to leave before the portrait was done, but Patty is going to post it on her website. It was really, really neat to see it just coming together. It looked like her from the first few brushstrokes.
I didn’t end up with any programming myself at the con, nor even a Pro membership, alas (though I later learned I should have told them I was a SFWA member…sigh)–my mistake, signing up so late. Even so, it was a good weekend, time well spent, I think.
Got back to Seattle fairly late Sunday evening; therefore, yesterday was largely spent sleeping in and recovering. But then (as I believe I mentioned) the day was SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL that Mark and I just had to go outside. We walked first to the neighborhood garden just down from his apartment, then on to the university’s arboretum. This is the place that had the corpse flower blooming a few months back, that Mark saw and I missed; it’s not blooming now, but other lovely and weird things are.
Lovely:
Weird:
Plus about a billion orchids.
Yesterday evening, dinner with more friends of Mark’s I hadn’t yet met (some year or other I will finally meet them all!), and a bonus! running into other friends of his at the new yogurt shop on Capitol Hill. Then this morning, up and packed and back to Portland for me. It’s nice to be home, as ever, but always hard to leave Seattle. :/
But I had a lovely dinner of fresh garden cherry tomatoes and basil (and Trader Joe’s mozzarella), and a delicious garden zucchini. Loves my garden, I does.
The rest of this week stays just as busy. I’m doing a thing tomorrow which I will tell you about later, as much as I’m allowed to (which I don’t know yet); then Thursday I’m popping down to Eugene to see my cousin, who lives there, and my brother, who is visiting there. It should be fun!
And, obviously, I’m not going to WorldCon, which isn’t news, but I thought I’d mention it, since it seems like so many people *are* going. I hope you all have fun! As for me, two major cons were just not in the budget this year (SpoCon was very affordable). World Fantasy is the major I’ll be going to, and I’m definitely looking forward to that.
I think that’s pretty much all I’ve got. Did you miss me? 🙂