Bay Area ConStruction

SFSFC has organized several conferences on local SF convention running under the name "ConStruction." This year's edition will be July 15-16, 2006 at the San Jose Hilton. Information about about ConStruction 2006 is now available on the SFSFC web site ConStruction page.

I note that CS2006 feels obligated to call itself "A Conference for Event Planners of Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy and Anime Conventions," presumably because people who organize anime conventions don't think SF conventions are anything like their events, and that fantasy conventions are completely unlike horror conventions. I understand wanting to be inclusive; I just think it unfortunate that there would be a perception that these four categories of convention would be sufficiently different from each other than people would think there is nothing to learn from each other. To me "SF convention" is a blanket term that covers all of that ground, but I'm obviously decaying into old-fogeydom, as the exchange a while back on the Con-Version BBS about what a "general interest science fiction convention" was.

Eye, Yi, Yi

I went to the optometrist today for an eye exam. I do need a slightly different prescription, although Dr. Fong says it is only a tiny change from two years ago. I explained how my left eye has been hurting for the past couple of weeks every time I look to the upper left. I thought it might be eyestrain, or possibly even something to do with new medications my internist prescribed a few weeks ago. She did a longer-than-usual examination after numbing and dilating my eyes. She thinks she saw a very tiny little foreign object -- she described it as a tiny ball -- but couldn't see it when she looked a second time; however, where she'd seen it, there was a little indentation that eye-dye highlighted. She rinsed everything out well and gave me some artificial tears to use for a couple of days. She can't find anything else wrong -- my eyes are fine for the most part -- and it's possible that I got this tiny little fleck of matter up inside my eye where it would poke me every time I looked to the upper left. Right now my eyes are still watering and recovering from the work she did on them earlier today, so it's not likely I'll know if things are better until tomorrow at least.