Back From the Convention….

Despite all my careful preparations, airport security flagged me down and tossed my bags the same as they always do. This time the dangerous materials were.

1. A half-full container of vanilla extract.
2. Two of those little Vaseline lip balm things. (Cherry flavor.)
3. And a small container of superglue.

They graciously left me the lip balm, but made me put it in a little baggie first. Apparently putting something in a little baggie prevents it from being used for terrorism. The vanilla they made me throw away, which was a pisser because it was really good vanilla.

But apparently the possession of superglue was such an egregious offense that they not only confiscated it, but took down all my personal information from my driver’s license. Lovely, as if my government file needed more material.

So I pretty much give up trying to make them happy. Next time I’m going to go through security with a fucking chainsaw and jar of live wasps just so they have a legitimate reason to put my name in the book.

The convention itself was pretty fun. If you’ve been to these sort of cons before, you can probably imagine it pretty well. Lots of geeks of various creeds and nations, all free to be themselves for the weekend. I myself register at 50% writer geek, 20% gamer geek, 10 % comic geek, 5% anime geek.

A good time was had by all. There were girls in cat-ears and corsets, guys wearing cloaks and swords. There were also guys in corsets and girls with swords. It was a pretty non-judgmental atmosphere, which, honestly, I think is the thing that I like best about cons. Everyone is pretty much free to do their own thing and nobody’s going to raise too much of an eyebrow at you. In fact, the farther away from the norm you go, the more likely people are to be impressed.

But by far the coolest costume I saw was this….

When I first saw them walking down the hall, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. They’re the yipyip aliens from Sesame Street. For those of you whose childhood was lacking, here’s something to bring you up to speed:

I also discovered that I love speaking on panels. I love it. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to do more of that in the future.

I returned home on Monday to over 600 emails. So if you’ve written me and I haven’t replied yet, I plead for patience.

Later,

pat