Sekrit Projekt Revealed

Now it can be told that the Sekrit Projekt that johnnyeponymous and I were working on for Westercon was "Who's On the Ballot," a take on Westercon site selection by way of Abbott & Costello. Chris and I were the "opening act" for the Meet the Guests Reception, and from the way the audience reacted, I think it went pretty well. Lisa recorded the routine, and after the Meet the Guests, we went back to our room and I edited the video down to the about 7 1/2 minutes total running time and sent it up to Google Video, where it is sitting in the review queue. I will announce here and on westercons when the video is available for download.

My thanks to Chris for being a great partner with this -- I'd love to present it again sometime -- and to James Stanley Daugherty for writing it. Sometime later (probably post-Westercon), I will post the script here for your entertainment. (Don't worry; I'll put a cut-tag on it!)

Who's On The Ballot?

For the benefit of those of you who don't follow westercons, I'm pleased to announce that Who's On The Ballot? is now available for download. You'll never be able to think about Westercon (or Worldcon) site selection quite the same way again.

Moving Day

After the Westercon Business Meeting, Linda Deneroff helpfully agreed to sit behind the Montreal bid table for a couple of hours while Lisa and I moved from room 3005 where we originally were staying to the adjacent room, loft suite 3007, where we will host a Montreal party tonight and the "Next Stop, Yokohama!" party tomorrow night.

Kudos to Westercon and pentaclemoon for being efficient with my request to just stay in 3007 for the duration, rather than have to move back to 3005 on Tuesday morning. When I went to the front desk, everything was in order and they handed me the second set of keys. After a couple of hours of shuffling things around (and bringing up party supplies from the van), we'd reached the point where Lisa could send me back to the table while she went out to do some shopping.

We haven't received our own Montreal Bon Ami t-shirts yet, so I had printed the Montreal logo on t-shirt transfer paper and we were going to iron them on plain t-shirts. Lisa looked at my printed transfers and pointed out that I'd forgotten to reverse the image. D'Oh! But she went and talked to Fo'Paws, and Scott & Jane Dennis said that if we brought them the image (which I gave them on a USB key), they could print us a couple of shirts by tonight. Saved!

After coming back from the first shopping expedition, Lisa made me a sandwich and brought it to me here at the bid table (that's where I am as I write this) and headed back to the room to get her own lunch and rest for a short time. We'll close a little early this afternoon so we can move the bid table stuff to the room, go out and have dinner, and then do the final food shopping before starting to set up for the party, which starts at 9 PM.