At Orycon I thought I was having a pretty good time, though I recognized that the con was passing in a blur because I was so heavily programmed. Seeing other people’s con reports afterwards, though, I realize now that I missed an awful lot of people… in fact, I feel like I practically missed the con. There were many people there I saw only in passing or not at all, I attended only two program items that I wasn’t on, and I had only two meals away from the con hotel: I walked down to the farmers’ market by myself for a quick lunch, and we had a very nice French dinner with friends from Seattle. Every other meal was either eaten in the noisy sports bar or snagged from Hospitality or the Green Room, because I didn’t have time for anything else.
Next time I will try to remember that panels are not my only Orycon program commitment. I was only on 6 panels, but in addition to that I had a reading, a writers’ workshop, auctioneering the Sue Petrey Auction, and Opening Ceremonies (which included a runthrough beforehand and the Endeavour Award ceremony). Jay Lake phoned while I was at dinner on Saturday to ask if I could help out with Whose Line, but I begged exhaustion. Orycon is my hometown con and I feel I owe them a lot, but next year I think I need to tell Programming to schedule me on only one panel-qua-panel per day to leave room for all that other stuff.
At the end of the con Kate was very low in energy and we left early. Our friend Lise is staying with us for a few days post-con, and we took her around for some touristing in Portland today, but Kate was pretty draggy all morning and after we got back from lunch she threw up and went to bed. She’s been sick as a dog all afternoon, poor thing. I hope that our Thanksgiving plans will not be affected, but she’s really out of it. Neither Lise nor I is affected, at least not yet.
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