WisCon 29, Day Two

I didn't do a very good job getting up early for the con today. Panels started at 8:30, which seems beyond the pale to me, but some folks are morning people and appreciate it. I think I got to the con by 10:30, which meant I walked in late to the second round of panels. I think I decided to bag the whole thing and just went to the Con Suite for something to munch on, or to the art show or dealer's room.

I did end up buying a couple of prints at the art show: Pieces by Sandra SanTara, the originals of which I guess were painted on feathers. (Either that or they're really good reproductions of feathers!) They're both cat-related (tigers and jaguars), which I guess won't surprise anyone, cat-centric as my household is.

I went to lunch with Tracy, Bill and his brother Michael. Tracy suggested gyros, knowing my fondness for the gyro place on State Street. Actually I think she said something like, "When I think of you and lunch, I somehow end up thinking of gyros." Mmm, processed meat product with sauce and pita bread. Yum!

After lunch I worked a two-hour shift watching the Internet computers set up for the convention by Bill Humphries. Then I finally went to my first panel, and second half of a panel called "Believable Evil", about characterizing plausible and effective evil characters in fiction. Many panels have a tendency to break down into lists (especially into lists of books), and this panel seemed to have reached that point by the time I arrived, as people were mostly throwing out names of evil characters who worked for one reason or another. More breadth than depth, alas.

There weren't any panels I wanted to go to for the next period, so I went to the Con Suite again, and eventually hooked up with Jae, for dinner. She was going to dinner with a couple of British fans, Chris and Penny, who were in town for their second WisCon, as well as a friend of theirs, Adrian. We went to a middle eastern restaurant I like, Kabul, and had a pretty lively and entertaining chat. Adrian is from Oklahoma, where they don't have many SF conventions, so this is a pilgrimage to get together with other fans for him. Chris and Penny are (it seems) pretty involved fannishly in the UK. Chris (at least - maybe Penny too) is a Doctor Who fan, and we talked about the new series a bit. I, of course, have not seen it (grumble grumble). But it's doing very well over there. They're quite nice folks, all of them.

In fact, we had such a good time that we were late getting back for the Tiptree Auction. (Well, okay, slow service at the restaurant had something to do with it.) The auction is to support the James Tiptree Jr. Award. I've been to several of them, and although auctioneer Ellen Klages is very entertaining, I felt like I've seen enough of them to last me a bit. So I headed to the con suite instead and hung out there for most of the evening, and swung by a couple of parties just to stick my head in.

I managed to avoid playing Katamari Damacy when I got home. But I still didn't get to bed much earlier...

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