(no subject)

I'm awake and dressed, and ready to go back into town for my presentation with idlerat and others this morning. Roommate slytherincess has just woken up so she can come with, for her stint in the beta booth, and longtimegone and tea_and_toast are still asleep, having turned in something close to three last night.
It's been a whirlwind of a 24 hours, and even though I have to leave in seven, I am so glad I came. The FictionAlley party yesterday was my first event, and a wonderful experience, as about 60 FA mods, coders, writers, artists and visitors, a sweet service doggie named Puck, and founding FA-ers malachan and owlman partook of yummy fries, onion rings and chips and salsa, and a lot of people ordered lunch, too. I mostly had diet coke, and it was good.
We had FA nametags with bright Sharpie pens, and everyone got their choice of what I am happily calling SNAPE BALM (photo coming soon) - packaging created by ani_bester from various FA covers. If you see me at TWH and you don't have your lip balm yet, just let me know and I'll give you a tube of the cherry flavour.
After that, I came back to the hotel, t00bed around for about fifteen minutes, then went to blackholly's panel with cassandraclaire, jlh, my roommates, smilie117, gwendolyngrace and etakyma. After that, I changed and we headed back into Salem for a yummy Southwestern dinner and an amazing "tequila cosmo" at Cillantro, then I briefly went to Tamora Pierce's reading (and oh THANK YOU hermorrine for the signed books!) and then to my own presentation on old school fanfic.

We read portions from:
Surfeit of Curses
Psychic Serpent
Paradigm of Uncertainty
Ancient Prophecy
After the End
His Majesty's Secret Service
I Am Lord Voldemort
An Unlikely Coven
Boys Own Camping Adventure
Call of the Wild
Alternity

For all apart from the fics that we ourselves had written, we had a challenge - whoever could guess the fic first would win a hat, or lip balm. Roz McClure took top honours, getting multiple fics, and we had some brief discussions about concepts found in the pre-GoF stories, like the fact that we didn't know wnat an Unforgivable was, or even what Voldemort's followers were called, until post-GoF, which makes things like the "burn" curse in Alternity all the more interesting to me. Nobody actually guessed Alternity, btw, but IIRC the rest were guessed.


And despite the fact that I had planned to read A Marriage of True Minds and Speculum Curse, both by Hyphen, we were sort of out of time, as it was pushing midnight, so Rob, spouse of pegkerr, drove us back to the hotel amid some drippy rain. And then there was a room party, and blackholly and longtimegone and I took a break to go down to the movie and visit briefly with melissa_tlc, cheesy_jeffer, Chris Rankin and a few others (although we missed seeing owlman in the back of the room), then returned upstairs whereupon I finally collapsed just after 2am. And now it's almost eight and I'm about to head back into town...

Ok, Barb is at the door. Time to flee. Probably won't update again until I'm at the airport around fourish... Don't forget to come to the TLC podcast, if you're reading this from Salem, over at FINZ at 130ish.

Liveblogging from TWH

Here's melissa_tlc getting ready for our podcast!

Vegas or Bust!

Yes, I got a bit lost heading back to the airport so I'm glad I gave myself some extra time to catch my flight.

I'm so sorry I missed seeing some of you entirely, and I hope everyone makes it to Vegas for Lumos in July - I'm already working on my presentation submission. It's amazing how fast everything happens - I was chatting with Jessica just before I left and we were goggling that it's been three years since our first in-person nImbus planning meeting.

Everyone I saw looked wonderful - a little wet and sometimes muddy, but it was so terrific to see everyone! I hope you all have an amazing rest of the conference, then tune into the podcast we recorded over at Finz this afternoon.

The highlight for me, other than the people I got to see, was having Dr Henry Jenkins in the audience this morning - and I am still overwhelmed by the smarts, insights and perspectives of my co-panelists.

Emmy and Hallie and Amy - I am so sorry I never saw y'all to say goodbye, and Morri, please don't kill me but I totally forgot to go up and get my books. Let's coordinate for you to send them down to me, and I'll paypal you back for the s&h?

They just tweaked the panel and my flight has been delayed because of the rain, so it turns out I could have squeaked another hour with all of you, who I can just imagine having fun throughout the town of Salem. Miss all of you, and see you next summer!

When I get home I am going to have to drop a few LJs for people who haven't posted ontheir own LJ or commented on mine since May of 2004, just so I can add new ones, as I am at the maximum number now. If I dropped you and you're still reading, please let me know and I'll add you back!

: pimps

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