Baked goods, bads, and morally ambiguouses.

- The Toon game went very well. In fact, it went better than it had any right to, given that I haven't run a game in, oh, more than five years at least. I was very happy with the legion of polar bears deciding one character was their deity and the gingerbread enlargement ray (which made characters large and gingerbread), among many other wonderful moments.

- Arisia in general was excellent (yes, this is way too late for a con round-up, but I'm slow like that). I got to see a lot of people, meet several new and interesting people (and not in the bad sense of "interesting"), and got plenty of exercise on the stairs.

- Revision continues, and I think it's producing good results. This draft won't be quite ready for reading, but it'll be close enough that a cleanup revision should be all that's needed. After that . . . well. We'll have to see.

- Why is it that I always come up with the cool short story ideas when I'm revising some big project and thus have no time to work on them? Not that that's stopping me.

- Working out twice a week means that that's two evenings when I have legs like noodles and all the energy of bread pudding. Still, it doesn't take much physical energy to sit in front of the computer. Mental discipline is another matter.

Arisia was again fun, and just what the geek side of me needed. I went to a few panels, talked with many people I liked, saw people whacking each other with sticks in the correct manner, made and suffered several really bad puns, and saw many many shiny objects. The masquerade seemed a little lackluster this year, though I don't know whether that was just my limited experience with masquerades. Maybe I just miss last year's Gimli. I also managed to do one Really Stupid Thing (i.e., Something Which Now Makes Me Cringe With Embarrassment But Which No One Else Probably Even Thought Twice About) each day. Go me?

Things I learned at Arisia:( Very little of which will be useful in the outside world. )

I will have a con report for Boskone up in a day or so. I'm just a little exhausted at the moment, and that's unlikely to change till at least Thursday.

Teasers: HP Lovecraft ordering pizza at midnight, how not to throw a Molotov cocktail, "I didn't write this sober and I'm not gonna read it sober," the calculus of fight choreography, and why I need to be kept out of the dealer's room. No, sigerson, it's not for the same reason we're not allowed near the scanners in Best Buy any more.

At the moment, about the most my mind can handle is that I have a mug of hot Tang in front of me. mmm tang.

or, All Con and No Sleep Makes Stealthmuffin something something...

Whoo. What a weekend. I've had a great time. I've also probably destroyed a good number of my brain cells and lost at least 10 SAN.

At the end of it, I'm left with this weird feeling that I didn't do enough. Given that this can be empirically disproven, I started thinking about why this is. There's a passage in Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men that describes this sort of reaction admirably, but if I see another Pratchett quote I think my head may implode, so I'll paraphrase. Because there is so damn much stuff to do, if I choose to do something, I am automatically not doing any of the other incredibly cool things. So of course I've missed out on stuff. I'd have to be more bionic than wavyarms to not miss out on stuff.

This is a very, very long writeup, so I've broken it down a bit. Bear in mind that I'm still a bit woogy at the moment, even with a hot shower, so my impressions are more than a little confused.

( Thursday: Sure, I'll help! )

( Friday: Cool people and a melon )

( Saturday: Autographs, spontaneous harmony, and meltdown )

( Sunday: I got a pointy hat! )

( Monday: Braaaaaains... )