Arisia
What a blast!

intenselaura and I just got home from out third Arisia SF&F convention in Cambridge Mass. This one was the best yet. A huge part of our enjoyment of the Con this time is that we now know more people.

Year One, Laura's friend wispfox introduced us to her friend/roommate jasra.

Year Two we met jasra's adorable SO majes. (Does any one man REALLY have the right to have so much charisma and so many beautiful women who insist on kissing him???)

At a dinner the first year we also met avivasedai (who I promptly offered to throw under a bus for some stupid reason since she is really quite wonderful!) Happily she declined and we have been friends with her and her guy perldiver ever since. Last year perldiver, who is one of the people who runs the gaming room, introduced me to "Munchkin" which apparently everyone on the planet has played except me! This year he ran a new game called "Deadwood" set on the backlot of a B-movie company. It was a lot of fun. perldiver and I were both wiped out by a very sexy woman who had amazing dice skills.
This year at majes's dinner party we met even more amazingly intelligent, sweet and sexy people. Yes,yummygirl I do mean you!

I was very fortunate this year to be introduced to the writer-extraordinaire starandrea whom Laura had met the year before. And this year starandrea's sister, the effervescent marcicat came along too. starandrea managed to slip away before signing her terrific SF book "Children of Power: Smith Valley" for me. So she MUST come back next year by which time I will have more books of hers to sign! And marcicat must take the Monday off so they don't have to bolt so early!

Thank you to majes for hosting his now annual dinner party. And the last morning we were able to say good-bye to many friends at avivasedai's breakfast.

As for Arisia itself, the Con was fantastic. There were some great panels, many of which were jammed full of bright, articulate and most importantly interesting people. (I scribbled several quotes down which I will no doubt use in future projects without attribution! BWAAA HAA HAA!)

At the last minute the Wizard's Bash (whatever it was) was cancelled and a Circus themed dance was substituted. Other than everyone having the fantasy of one day running off and joining the circus I couldn't figure out what it had to do with SF&F. I WAS SO WRONG!!!! These are OUR people. There was more talent on display in that show than anything else I have seen in the last year, much less at a Con. It was fantastic. I dearly hope it returns. And in retrospect Circus has as much to do with SF&F as does Bellydancing, which we also loved for the second year in a row. (Okay, the announcer REALLY needs to be replaced with someone who actually knows how to talk, use a microphone and READ!!!! He was dreadful! But I'm a professional broadcaster/host who is fussy about these things. Seriously, he sucked! Happily the dancers were incredible!)

The Hyatt Hotel in Cambridge now GETS Arisia and the co-operation between hotel staff and the Con people was fantastic. This year I don't think we broke the elevators even once. (Last year the repair company ended up stationing a guy there 24/7!) We had dinner at the hotel restaurant one night (They had a Harry Potter theme which was cute not to mention highly yummy...no, not as yummy as you yummygirl, but still a pretty good buffet! My friend and software genius Sean, picked up the tab which made it yum...er tasty and and in my price range!

The drive from my house to Arisia is about nine hours. (Much less than some people who flew in from California for the Con! and australian_joe who came in last year from duh...