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Mayhem on the Northern Peninsula!A complete motion picture feature-film, starring:
The Mighty Kymm as the Queen  Today was Lucy's big party in honor of Kymm Zuckert visiting the Bay Area. Kymm is apparently visiting family elsewhere on the left coast for the holidays, and Lucy persuaded her to stay at her place for a weekend beforehand, and invited a big chunk of the area journalling community to meet her. Lucy's invitation stated, "every single person I am inviting could fill the house with personality all by her or himself, including the guest of honor. So imagine a dozen or more of you large, dramatic, boisterous personalities in one tiny house." And that turned out to be correct; a more upbeat, outgoing crowd of people you haven't seen in... well, okay, maybe you've seen one, but me here in the Land of the Nerds... nah! It helped that it was a beautiful day out, sunny and in the mid-60s. I spent an hour at a bagel store for lunch and reading Analog before heading up. Boy, was it ever nice! I spent the drive listening to Rush's Hold Your Fire and then Barenaked Ladies' Rock Spectacle, especially blasting "The Old Apartment" three times as I approached the Land of Lucy. The sky was absolutely clear, and I drove with the sunroof open, admiring the hills which are slowly turning green as they get more rain. I found a parking space right outside Lucy's house, and bounded up to the door. I've been working on my penchant for showing up to things absolutely on time, as this seems to disconcert many people when it comes to attending parties, so I arrived about 20 minutes late. Well, Eleanor, Jen and Trish were already there, so I guess I needn't have worried. (As I walked in, they immediately clammed up about something, and made some joking comment that they'd been talking about me. I suspect they weren't entirely joking, but I decided not to ask. I think that might become my new motto: "It's better not to ask.") Trish had just returned from Chicago where she'd been attending Scott Berks' birthday party, so she was having the total journalling experience this weekend. Eleanor and Jen tend to carpool when they go to journalling events outside of San Francisco. (I joked at one point that they're always together. That one didn't go over so well. It's the sort of joke which tends to fall in a gray area in terms of my ability to judge its worth. One of my blind spots...) It turns out that Eleanor had a class later that afternoon, so she had to leave early. Fortunately, the elusive Sei showed up and transformed into Jen's ride that evening.
I met a few people I hadn't met before: Kymm is a "big name" in the on-line journalling community. She runs Open Pages, the original journalling Webring, and writes copious volumes of lively entries in her journal, as well as being one of the front-runners (along with Jen Wade) in the "who can meet the most journallers" contest. She's witty and laughs easily, and a couple of times was reduced to complete hysterical laughter (once she started "keening", as people called it). She spent most of the afternoon wearing a little tiara that Lucy has foisted upon her, and which apparently started drilling holes into her skull. (I referred to Lucy as "the power behind the throne".) She also brought three pounds (!) of cookies and ordered us all to eat them. Mo turned out to be almost exactly what I expected, only taller: Intelligent, well-read, vivacious (uh, okay, nearly everyone at the party was vivacious), dressed all in black. She was wearing a necklace whose threads were nearly invisible, making me wonder at one point, "Yow, she hasn't actually pierced fifteen holes in the skin around her collar bone, has she?" Gah. No, she hadn't, as it turns out. I started reading her journal when she moved up here early in the fall, and we've exchanged some e-mail. Boy does she ever have a veritable polyglot of interests. And she's yet another people who can apparently read about twenty times faster than me. Sigh. I will admit I've never read the pseudonymous Never before. She's another out-of-towner who Michael Walsh has been reading and corresponding with for a while, and she came out to visit him for the weekend and go to this party. She and Jen Wade drove a conversation about womens' heights which was pretty entertaining. (Jen apparently comes across in print as taller than she is, although in truth she comes across in person as taller than she is, too! Kymm and Never, on the other hand, are both part of the surprisingly tall crowd.) I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her, but I'm going to give her journal a try for a while. Lastly, Catherine deCuir is the writer of the journalling section at About.com (formerly The Mining Company, if memory serves). I've browsed the site occasionally, although it's generally suggested to me that it's more for people who are new to journals (on-line or otherwise) and want some guidance. Unfortunately I didn't get to talk to her at all, and in fact she was only there for a little while and I had to ask Lucy after the party who she was. Well, it happens.
The party lasted for nearly eight hours. Bill Humphries showed up for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and folks (including Bill) made light jokes about how he's one of "those Weblog people". He seemed slightly disoriented in this particular crowd, though. And Lucy's friend Denise showed up in the early evening and hung around for the rest of the party. Michael (who I discovered has just about the firmest handshake I've ever felt) and Mo managed to just about get me to blush at one point in the afternoon and, uh, in doing so implied that I should perhaps be more careful in what I say or suggest when talking about other journallers here (although the real problem is I think just that I'm transparent as glass! Which, you know, isn't really a bad thing). Ahem. People talked about all the journallers they'd met, about going to JournalCon (Kymm claimed that JournalCon 'doesn't count' for Jen in the tally of the number of journallers she's met), about living in New York, or the Bay Area, or wherever. Also about television and movies and acting (Eleanor is an up-and-coming actress, and Kymm's parents were actors, and plenty of us are videophiles of one degree or another). In the evening we walked over to an Italian restaurant near Lucy's, where we ended up with this wild waiter who talked back to everyone (and vice versa). Lucy warned us that this was a peculiar establishment in that way, but I don't think anyone quite got what she meant until Mo ordered a glass of a specific wine, and then when the waiter brought bottles of red and white to distribute among people and Mo held out her glass for some, he said, "Didn't you order the [whatever-it-was]?" And she said, "Oh, yeah," and he responded, "Could you pay attention please?" I was shocked, until I understood that he was just joking, but it was quite bizarre for a nice establishment like that! He was a cool guy, though, and otherwise gave fine service. The food was actually pretty yummy (I've moved from trying pasta with pesto at new Italian restaurants to specifically trying gnocci with pesto, when it's available, and it was quite good, here). (Uh, John-the-Sicilian should note that my standard of "quite good" probably differs from his.) During dinner, half the cast of characters whipped out their digital cameras and took photos of each other. I didn't bring mine, I'm afraid, but somehow I suspect there will be no shortage of photos for me to link to. I was rather pleased that someone (Sei?) commented that I look rather photogenic. (Does this mean I look better on film than in person? Hmm...) Afterwards several people decided to take off, and a handful of us hung around Lucy's until 10:00. I finally decided I felt completely wiped out (I haven't been sleeping very well this weekend), and decided to split, and Mo left around the same time. The drive home felt a bit woozy, but I made it, and weirdly dialed up to the 'net to see if anyone had written an entry about the party yet (HAH!). I'm an addict. It was a most wonderful party. I'm not much for the "on-line journalling community", but the particular set of journallers we have out here are a great group of people to hang out with. Thanks for putting this together, Lucy!
Other entries about the party (to be filled in in the coming days as people write them), in order of posting:
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