Whew, it’s been a few days. I am back safely from Further Confusion 2013, which was completely awesome. The staff really did a bang up job for their GoHs (and I’m not saying that just because they flew me first class, although dude! Did you know you get REAL SILVERWARE?!?) took us to a really fabulous dinner—great people, great chatting, some of the best truffle mac ‘n cheese ever. I had a great time, got to see lots of friends and fans and hang out.
Sadly, I started to develop the plague pretty early on—first class is still in the circulating germ-tube that is a plane cabin—so by Saturday I had completely lost the upper registers in my voice and sounded like I’d been smoking Camel straights since kindergarten. (I felt fine, I just sounded horrible.) Thankfully the con had front-loaded the schedule on Friday, so the only things where I was really excitingly raspy were a late night writing podcast (which Kyell Gold kindly invited me to sit in on.)
Con progressed, plague progressed. I’d do okay in the morning and flag by evening. Carlota swung by and brought me pho to fortify me. Monday I went out birding with Sofawolf and some fellow artists (got Northern Pintail, American Avocet, and enough Ruddy Ducks to wallpaper a battleship.) Birding was awesome, weather was painfully spectacular, I felt great, but that probably doesn’t count because I’d get off my deathbed for Avocets.
Anyway, long story short, fantastic con, have been laid up for several days afterwards with the plague. (Well, you hold it off by force of will, you eventually pay the price. But I was determined that FC was gonna get their money’s worth, because dude! First class! Also, birds!)
A big thanks to everybody who made FC so awesome—staff, art buyers, fans and friends. Fantastic to see you all!
At the moment it is mixed freezing rain and sleet here, the car is glazed with ice like a Krispy Kreme donut, and I’m not going out driving in that again today. I would have a hard time living in San Jose for various reasons—cost of living, price of gardening space, allergies—but man, I could do with some of the weather about now…