My Head, She is Swelled

People have been immensely nice to me today, complimenting me about my handling of the Westercon Business Meeting. Thank you all! I couldn't have done it without help.

One of the nicest things said to me was, "Bruce Pelz would have been proud of you." Gosh.

Radio Play a Hit

The Girl Genius Radio Theatre was a big hit, with around 150 people attending and making the Club Regent Room feel comfortably full but not crowded to hear the performance of two older plays and the first performance of part one of an in-progress new play. Lisa did a fine job running the audio tech, including improvising a way for Victor Foglio to have a microphone for the sound-effects station even though we hadn't originally planned for it and had no more microphone cable.

We will, I hope, eventually be able to edit and upload the two full shows to Vimeo. I had a wonderful time as The Announcer, and thank you once again to Phil & Kaja for performing with us.

Late Night Hilarity

By Sunday night, I'd sort of gotten the feeling that I've been living in Club Regent, after Saturday's Match Game SF and the over-three-hour marathon Business Meeting on Sunday morning and the 8 PM Girl Genius Radio Theatre. After GGRT, our crew efficiently turned the stage from radio play to game show set with time to spare, and at 10 PM we set forth on another show. The contestants seemed to like it so much that they didn't want to leave, with the fourth and final game doing into extended-play not-so-sudden death before we finally wrapped things up after midnight.

Having been "on" for more than eight hours today (not counting time spent helping move equipment and set up/tear down stuff), I am utterly knackered and am not getting up early on Monday. Fortunately, I have no morning commitments and no specific tasks until nearly 2:30 PM.

My thanks as ever to the crew of people who helped Lisa and me make it happen: Bob Hole, our Producer, along with Eric Larson, announcer, and production assistants Brad Ackerman and Fred Moulton. All of you made it so much easier to look good.

After we got the show packed out and into the room after 1 AM, Lisa and I made a brief trip through the parties, where people continued to heap praise upon me for my Business Meeting turn today. Now I hear there are calls for my canonization, but I agree that it's too soon for that because I'm Not Dead Yet. But maybe I will be dead to the world in a few minutes.

Roll 'Er Up

I slept in this morning, not getting up until about 10 and not leaving for breakfast until after 11. Peggy Sue's, where we've been eating breakfast earlier in the weekend, was closed for the holiday, and when we tried Johnny Rocket's, we decided there was nothing on the menu that sent us, so instead we walked over to Flames, where I had an excellent steak-and-eggs breakfast while Lisa had a so-so breakfast pizza. Then it was back to the hotel for a short wander about and chat with people as the mood caught us.

I went to Closing Ceremonies, where Glenn Glazer made a short statement before officially ending the convention and figuratively passing the torch to Bobbie DuFault of Westercon 65 in Seattle. I had my picture taken with Phil & Kaja and we headed back to the Dealers' Room, where it was Closing Time.

Many people were running around doing packing up and moving out. I felt somewhat guilty for not helping more, but on the other hand, I can barely walk much right now, my legs are so shot from the amount of time I've been on my feet the past couple of days. I spent much of the afternoon sitting around and talking about the convention and related subjects, often with me elaborating on elements of how yesterday's Business Meeting went.

This theme repeated when we wandered down to the bar and joined up with other folks for a sort of pre-BASFA/post-Westercon informal gathering. Lisa and I were among those who ordered food, particularly those of us not going over to Coco's for tonight's BASFA meeting in Sunnyvale.

Lisa went back to the room after taking some photos of the bar gathering, and I hung around and talked for a while until the hotel's piano player showed up and started playing music, which pretty much cut off the ability to have useful conversations, so I went back to the room as well. There Lisa and I got the video off of the memory sticks on our cameras and reviewed parts of it. Unfortunately, there's the same glitch on both cameras: they stop recording at about 90 minutes even if there's room on the stick. (I assume it's a maximum file-size limitation.) So there's going to be a missing piece in the video, once I ever get it edited together, although fortunately it's not a very long piece.

We also made our hotel reservations for the trip up to Nevada that will happen tomorrow. Lots of driving ahead: tomorrow morning I take the Foglios up to San Francisco (they're doing some personal vacationing before they fly home), go back to San Jose, then Lisa and I pack out of the hotel and go to San Mateo where we split the material between our two vehicles, then we convoy up to Reno, where we have a hotel reservation. I think we'll end up staying at Circus Circus for four nights for only slightly more than one night here at the Fairmont, but that's the way the hotel rate crumbles.