We're back from Readercon and post Readercon activities. The air is hot and dry, our house is almost unbearable and all the lawns are getting crispy, a very different situation from water-logged Massachusetts. We lost a kitchen chair and one of my sandals which is pretty good considering I didn't have as much time to puppy proof things as I would have liked. The sandal must have been hiding deep underneath a chair or the couch. The poor chair broke at some point, then was yanked apart and then chewed. We think the dog jumped on it to get to a cat although the pulling apart could have happened first. It was the chair facing out into the room under the table and thus more accessible than the others. I did also get the good news that I have a second interview for an interesting job tomorrow morning.

Readercon was fun and mellow with lots of interesting people. It suffered a little from its lack of parties, although that didn't stop us from making use of the Irish pub in the hotel. Oh yes, we spent way too much time in that bar. A desperate search for brunch one morning led a mtoley crew of us to a strange meal amidst birthday partying kids and jungle noises in the nearby mall's Rainforest Cafe. I enjoyed readings by Brett Cox, Paul Park, Patrick O'Leary, Jeff Ford and others. I'm still a little brain dead, so you'll have to excuse me if I forgot yours. The most memorable reading was for Twenty Epics which my husband hijacked to read an excerpt from the stories of everyone who wasn't present. I almost died during his rendition of David Schwartz's story because at times he sounded more like my Aunt Joyce than David doing his great uncle's accent. If you'd like to hear it for yourself, you just need to buy him a shot and hand him a copy of the book. Although I hit more programming than I ever have since my first convention, I only caught one half of two different panels because I had to sneak out to readings I promised I'd attend. I missed guest of honor James Morrow completely and only heard a few words from China Mieville one of them being, "tentacular" a great, great word. Sometime during one of "let's do shots" periods in the bar (I stayed with beer) we started up the "which SF author would you do" thing that was first played during the DC World Fantasy, I think. I had to pull in Lauren, who had just been voted onto the island, to balance out the mostly male, mostly gay panel because they kept vetoing the inclusion of guys with pony tails. If you want more details than that, you'll have to buy me a cider.