The Mandelbear's Musings

We're back. The facehugger has really made a difference -- this was the first return trip in several years where I wasn't yawning continuously and fighting sleep for the last 150 miles. I yawned a couple of times, and felt a little sleepy a couple of times (a seven-hour car trip will do that), but I didn't feel as though I was about to fall asleep. Yay!

Many goodbyes and a couple of good conversations this morning. Having a CD out gives me something new to talk about, which is always a good thing.

Total CD sales at the con: 1. Oh, well. Eric sold a few, I think. Having a CD also gives one an excuse to hang out with the dealers.

It occurs to me that my last Loscon post was Thursday, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Fortunately it's been mostly concerts and conversations so far, so there isn't as much to report as might be.

AJA and Dr. Jim Robinson both gave concerts yesterday -- that was good. Dinner with selenesue in the "good restaurant". Some open filking that started breaking up around midnight; I went up to the parties and finally got in about 1:30. Slept well.

Side note on the facehugger -- I seem to be getting used to it. I'm still having some trouble getting the mask tight enough so that it doesn't leak, and a little trouble getting to sleep. But by the time morning comes around I sometimes have to check to see whether I'm still wearing it, the way I do with my glasses sometimes. I can live with this. Ordered a CPAP pillow, which is back-ordered and should be back in stock later next week.

My concert (with the chaoswolf on drum and backup vocals) was today at 2:00, and seemed to go very well indeed. Smallish audience, but I think my performance was better than usual. Three weeks of practicing every couple of days with the Wolfling seemed to help. Got a decent recording with the H2. I think the drum came out too loud; we'll probably have to skip it when it's just two of us, and drop down to something quieter like shaker.

I'll post the set list later; for now, I'll just note the shortnames: cicero bugs rosie tool rrprayer barratry stuff bigger. Obviously I need a script that conses up an Emacs abbrev file, or something.

I'm no good at reporting conversations. I'll just note a good talk around dinner with mysticfig, mostly about CD production, and a couple of nice chats during soundchecks with Moira Stern.

Right now I'm avoiding the "Banned from Argo" sing; I'll probably go down in half an hour or so. The flower_cat is napping; she -- and a lot of other people -- seem to be suffering from an excess of air conditioning. Doesn't seem cold to me, but...

We're all packed for Loscon -- the flower_cat and chaoswolf are out getting bagels and lox for breakfast. It works out to about 3 items per person -- quite a large pile, but not really all that much. For the first time, the collection includes a rollycrate with my facehugger and my favorite pillow. I wasted an hour yesterday trying to find a good CPAP pillow, but there doesn't seem to be a local source. The one I have is a memory-foam neck pillow -- it has a sharp drop-off on the side so that I can hang the facehugger over the edge while the foam keeps my head relatively stable. It works quite well, but it's too big for travel unless we're driving. I may resort to tracking down one of the others we have around the house, and cutting a chunk off the side. What I'd really like is an inflatable.

Concert early Saturday afternoon. The chaoswolf and I have been practicing for the last two weeks; we both needed it. We'll have to practice more regularly from now on.

(I really need a travel icon, don't I?)

11am: SJC

I'm travelling lighter than usual this week. Decided to go back to a backpack as my carry-on after finding out the hard way that a TravelPro rolling briefcase is remarkably easy to overstuff to the point where it won't fit under an airplane seat. Ended up with a pretty nice backpack with the Rick Steves brand, but actually made by somebody else. It's enough larger than my old Jansport that it comfortably holds a modern 15.4" laptop, and the front flap hangs in front of the zippered back section rather than over the zipper. So you can get out the laptop without unsnapping the flap.

The flap is also asymmetrical, covering a sizeable zippered pocket (which I'm not using at the moment) but not the mesh bag that holds a water bottle. Yay! There's a back compartment that the straps stash into, and enough room over the front pocket and under the flap for me to put my shoulder bag in order to convince the airline that I only have one bag. That's less important this trip because I decided not to take Plink, my little Vagabond travel guitar.

Instead of Plink I took my new Yamaha recorder and my (very) old recorder book; I'll either re-learn recorder or get dragged out of my hotel room by my neighbors and drowned in the pool. To give you some idea of how long I've been out of practice, let me just say that the book is only a few years younger than my wife.

This is being written at around 11am in the San Jose airport -- they have nice desks where you can sit and plug in a laptop, but they don't have free WiFi. So it'll get posted sometime after I get to Portland.

I note in passing that the master for CC&S has been dropped off at work for UPS to pick up this afternoon.

4:20pm: Portland Convention Center

I'm here. Nothing much going on, and it seems to be difficult to connect with LJ here. Hopefully that's temporary. Doesn't matter much, since I'm currently ssh'ed in to home. I just love the net!

The Mac is its usual hatefull self. Should've brought a real keyboard. Think I'll go out and look for something to eat before the Meet and Geek at 7:30.

6:34pm: Convention Center

Seems LJ is totally hosed due to a power outage in San Francisco. So it goes. Dinner at a Red Robin's. Fried shrinp and fish and chips. Tasty, and not terribly expensive. They have several local brews on tap; I had a porter from a brewery whose name I don't remember.

The new backpack is definitely more manoeverable than Rolly, and holds at least as much stuff. Turns out, from having stuffed it under an airplane seat, that it's almost exactly the same dimensions. But because it doesn't have the wheels and so on it's lighter and holds more (though arranged differently and not necessarily more accessibly. Not quite as handy if you just want to toss something into it and move on (for example in a dealer's room or trade show). I'll probably keep using Rolly for SF cons, for example; you also can't easily use a backpack as an impromptu music stand.

6:30 am: Red Lion Hotel at the Convention Center

LJ may be back, and my master is "out for delivery". Web access here at the hotel is unuseably slow, but I can ssh ok, for the moment. Here goes!