CONvergence

I spent most of this weekend at CONvergence, an annual sci-fi/fantasy convention held in Bloomington, Minnesota. It's a great place to meet, mingle, and hang out with other geeks. Last year I went much at the urging of pants_of_doom and 433. I was a little worried I'd be stepping on my sister's toes, since sci-fi/fantasy conventions are historically more her territory than mine. But, CONvergence is as much a fan convention as a pro convention - and once I got there I found that it was nice to be able to jump back and forth between hanging out at room parties and hanging out with my sister.

Anyhow, this year I decided I would involve myself more by helping out with Dystopia, a theme party run by game night friends of Rogers and I. All of the volunteers helping to run the party dressed as members of the Junior Anti-Sex League, from Nineteen Eighty-Four. A few people got pictures of me, so hopefully I'll be able to link to one soon. We put bar code tattoos (of the temporary kind) on people, had soylent snacks, Dystopia bingo, and so forth. I primarily helped put bar codes on people.

Some of the distinctive memories, positive and negative, about this con:

+ Getting my sister's new book, Freedom's Gate, in the dealer's room and discovering that she'd dedicated it to my brother and I.

+ Connie's Space Lounge. I am so impressed with all of the work spacebug, s4, rahna, vaxjo and everyone else I'm missing put into this room. There were blacklights hung everywhere, a fantastic sound setup, air hockey, and a geodesic dome with lounging chairs and cushions set up inside.

+ Seeing Low Orbit play.

+ Getting hit on by the cute guy dressed as Capt. Jack Sparrow while I was barcoding him. Though, since I'm taken, I had to try not to enjoy that *too* much.

- Getting hit on by a skeevy, old guy who asked if he could "run his barcode through my skin". Ew. Just, Ew.

+/- Getting hit on a lot in general. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was gross, sometimes it was just really uncomfortable. I tend to get easily flustered when people are hitting on me, so it was kind of nice to get hit on a lot when none of it is going to go anywhere.

+ The glowy ice cubes that Dystopia was giving out as bingo prizes

+ Getting to see alisgray on her brief hiatus from D.C. Getting to take care of her Armed Forces Institute of Pathology badge when I discovered she'd left it at Vice City.

+ Ice cream at Vice City. And DDR people watching.

- The surprise special movie being Trekkies 2. I was kind of hoping for Sky Captain, or even I, Robot. Oh well, rgeorge and I weren't really into the idea of spending two hours watching it, particularly since we could spend that time acquiring food that wasn't from consuite, so we ceded our seats to people who would enjoy the movie more than us.

+ The panel by 433, ethel, birdfigment, and Melissa on geek mating rituals. I think it was the funniest panel I have ever been to at con.

+ Remembering that last year at con was one of my first real conversations with rgeorge. (No, we didn't hook up with each other at con, we just conversed.)

+ Helping take down Dystopia on Sunday. I wasn't around to see the transformation from normal hotel room to dystopic resistance hideout, so it was actually pretty cool to see it go back to being a normal hotel room.

July 4th

After I left CONvergence on Sunday, rgeorge and I proceeded to go find our way to some fireworks. In past years, I've seen fireworks at the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis (over the Mississippi River), at this park in Roseville (they usually had a big band play while awaiting fireworks so it was a good dancing venue), or at the Taste of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul. This year, we looked at the listing of fireworks displays, and decided it would be fun to go see them over the St. Croix, so we headed out to Stillwater. Stillwater, for those who aren't local, is a quaint (but touristy) little town about right on the St. Croix River. There's an old lift bridge spanning the river. Across the river is Wisconsin.

Anyhow, we found a nice spot on a concrete wall and settled in to watch the pre-show. Unlike downtown Minneapolis, there are a lot of recreational boaters around Stillwater, and they showed up en masse to watch the fireworks from their boats. I enjoyed looking at all the different styles of boats, and also enjoyed watching the police boat and coat guard boat weaving amongst them all. The city I grew up in - Madison, Wisconsin - was pretty strict about shooting off fireworks in the city limits. They are evidently far less strict around the Wisconsin/Minnesota border. Before the regular fireworks started, we spotted at least 4 fireworks displays which probably represented various people's backyard fireworks. There were also a few people shooting them off from their boats, and the boat police didn't even seem to bat an eyelash at it. We could also hear an orchestra playing in the gazebo by the bridge. Amont other pieces, they played some music from Lord of the Rings, "Memories" from Cats, and music from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The actual fireworks display was pretty nice. There were usually too many going off at once to realistically play name the chemical. Besides, name the chemical gets old after you've gone through each of the colors two or three times. Due to a question from Rogers though, I went and looked up what creates whistling effects when I got home. Sodium salicylate and/or sodium benzoate.

I hope you all had an enjoyable 4th.