Post-Arisia Post 1

Here's the list compiled from the "Life on LiveJournal" panel (Saturday at 7 PM):

fibrowitch
niqaeli
tikva
chillguru
jbadger
psyop_spec
fangtsu
agrumer
lady_babalon
hfcougar
nightstalker
teddywolf
plymouth
farwing
mabfan
dicotomygrrl
fuzcat

The panelists were prettypammie, shadesong, happypete, mamadeb, and gnomi.

Post-Arisia Post 2

Herewith, a couple of the sites I referred to at the "Beta Reading" panel:

Mailing Lists

The fanfic_med mailing list. Good place to get medical information for stories.

The fanfic_geography mailing list. Writing a story set in a city/country you know nothing about? Ask here, and someone might be able to help you out.

The fanfic_law mailing list. A place to ask law questions for use in stories.

Grammar-Related Sites

Common Errors in English

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

The Apostrophe Protection Society

The Grammar Lady

Books on Grammar and Usage

Garner's Modern American Usage by Bryan Garner

The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style by Paul W. Lovinger

Macbeth Hath Murdered Sink!

Arisia was a blast, if exhausting. Between mabfan and me, we had 15 panel items, so our attendance at panels was dictated by what either he or I was on. Thus, we missed much of the rest of the con (having only a one-hour lunch break and a one-hour dinner break on Saturday).

Things we never made it to this Arisia include:
-- The dealer's room
-- The art show
-- Other people's panels

So if you were there and I didn't see you, I apologize and I hope to catch you at whatever our next intersecting convention is.

Here are some highlights (as I can remember them) of the weekend:

-- Shabbat dinner: due to the tightness of our schedule (shabbat started at 4:20; 3 of the people at dinner were on the same 7 PM panel), dinner began promptly at 5 and ended promptly at 6:30 (I heard a number of "We're on time? Isn't this a Jewish event?" comments). Thanks to all who attended and all who helped in the set-up and clean-up processes. And to all who dropped by mabfan and my room to check out the bathroom sink. I learned a valuable home-decorating lesson this weekend: don't put red-veined marble in one's bathroom sink. Here's the deal (and it explains the title of this post): after dinner, I carried a bunch of stuff from the room where we'd had dinner into MAB's and my room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something disturbing, and I yelped. No exaggeration, it looked like someone had been murdered in the bathroom sink (magid, mamadeb, farwing, will any of you corroborate this assertion?). After a moment, when I took a closer look, I realized that it was simply the pattern of red veins in the off-white marble. But boy, was it scary for a brief moment.

-- Panels, panels, panels: Many they were, but fun. I saw a large number of people who knew to find me and/or MAB by looking at the program grid and tracking us down in whatever room we had just had a panel. I was on panels with all sorts of fun people, which is always a good thing. Debate was lively, and much information was gleaned and shared. And to my surprise, we had the best turn-out I'd ever seen for a language-related panel when, on Saturday afternoon, I moderated a panel on "The Future of Language."

-- Birthday gathering: Lots of fun, with people wandering in, staying for a while, and then heading off. We had a number of people who came and joined us as we watched the masquerade...or, at least, attempted to watch the masquerade. Silly camera-operator-type people. :-) Finally, after a well-placed phone call by MAB, we were able to actually watch the meat of the half-time show and not just the reactions of the presenter of the half-time show. And after the masquerade, more people dropped by to help me celebrate my birthday. Thank you, one and all, for helping me make my birthday a real celebration.

-- Sunday: MAB and I didn't get to sleep until about 1:15 AM, and then we got up at 7 to finish packing. We met a friend at 7:30 for a run to Brookline to (a) bring our luggage home and (b) have breakfast. A lovely time was had, and then we were brought back to the hotel for checking out of the hotel and then more panels. He had a 10 AM, I had an 11 AM, at 12 we did our one brief trip to Dealer's Row, where MAB bought me a lovely pair of earrings from Angelwear Creations (an annual Arisia tradition for us; birthday gifts of sparklies are a lovely thing) and other random things (including talking to a friend we'd barely had 2 seconds to say hello to during the rest of the convention). At 1 PM, MAB and I together had a panel, and then I had a 2 PM. We left the convention at 3, went home, did some non-convention-related errands, and then met mamadeb and jonbaker for dinner at our local kosher Chinese restaurant. After dinner, we browsed at Barnes & Noble (we're SF fans; what do you expect from us?) and then headed back to the hotel, where we'd arranged to meet some friends for drinks - due to the craziness of our respective schedules, we hadn't had time to meet up until after the convention was officially over. So we spent a lovely 2 hours with them, then made a brief appearance at the Dead Dog party* and then headed home to sleep.

In all, a great weekend and a fun convention.

*The Dead Dog party is the party run by and for the committee and staff and others involved in running the convention, sort of a "whew; we all survived" kind of thing.