Eurocon/Shamrockon

     Sitting in Operations (Ops) for the second convention in two weeks.   Something, I don't know what (a cold, flu, pleurisy, pneumonia, creeping crud) grabbed me my last day in London and has hung on with commendable (for it) persistence.

      Now on my second day in lovely Dublin.   My hotel is around a quarter mile from the Con hotel.  There is a multiplicity of neat looking restaurants and pubs on the way to and from.  My nose has been titillated by the smells of cooking as I walk from place to place.


I arrived at Heathrow the day before I was scheduled to leave London.   Whatever has hold of me, obviously was interfering with my mental processes at the time.

Since I was there, I booked a room in the airport Sofitel.  The room and bath were spacious.  The breakfast was complimentary and had all kinds of ethnic foods as well as an English breakfast.

But I finally managed to get aboard the correct flight to Shannon.  I mostly slept through the journey and collapsed in my hotel when I arrived.

When I was slightly refreshed I headed for the con hotel.  Alas, none of my hotel staff knew anything about Dublin.  There may be an Irishman in the Clyde Court, if so he is most likely a guest.  Thanks be to Heaven that Dubliners are friendly.  By asking a person per block, I managed to find the Double Tree.

As I mentioned above, there are lots of eating places on the route between hotels.  There won't be time to eat at all of them.  If the decision tree didn't have enough branches, there is also a food court and floating restaurant along the canal next to Mespil Street.










HB ice cream was passing out free treats, which I had to regretfully refuse due to my delicate condition.  Aren't they cute?

One of their fathers arrived as I was chatting them up.  Neither she nor he recognized the joke based o Newton's law of inertia....   What is Irish education coming to?  Or maybe my joke just isn't that funny.




Dublin is a charming city.  I was particularly taken with the multiple chimney pots on each building.

 Katie, a fellow fan mentioned that Dublin boasts a Museum of Leprechauns.  Five of us trekked as a group across Dublin and found the museum.  It bills itself as interactive.  There are docents who accompany visitors.

Mary, our docent told several Irish legends in the appropriate venues.  She is a very good  story teller and kept us and the younger guests amused.   We gave a round of applause at the end of her second telling.











 Since leprechauns are small, there was, of course a giant's parlor.












Katie found some excellent posters for visiting Ireland.

















After the museum, we marched across this delightful bridge over the River Liffey

and adjourned to a pub where we had a fine supper and began to separate on our various ways to hotels.

Thoroughly nice day.  I can recommend Shamrockon to all as a friendly, relaxed con.

Oooh, ouch!

   Checked out of the Fox Connaught this morning and discovered that the route given me by Nigel Furlong was perfect.  I had a round trip ticket from Heathrow to Paddington Station.  Nige gave me the tube lines to take which resulted in a far of ￡4.70 instead of ￡65.   WONDERFUL!

     What was not so wonderful was that I did not read my calendar carefully.  My flight to Dublin is tomorrow.  I checked into the Heathrow Sofitel for the night.  The choice was easy.  To change my flight cost 💲400,00;  The hotel is ￡160.  Easy peasy.  There is a huge difference between the Sofitel and the Fox.  My room here is spacious; the Fox was cramped.  The bed is larger and more comfortable at the Sofitel.  The most important differences are the bath witch is large and has room to move around and the fact that the breakfast is complimentary and contains all the things in an English breakfast and other countries, sushi, curry, and selected Chinese dishes.

We had people, not just children playing on the Fan Village green.  I thought it amusing that these three had gathered to game electronically together.









Someone brought a haul of bubble wrap.  There was a sudden noise like a fireworks stand on fire and it was a feeding frenzy of fans stomping on the stuff.  I managed to get my camera going to catch the very last of it.  Not just kids, everyone!










It was not just sedentary games being played on the green.  There were hula hoops available.  The quoits set had been broken by Monday.  But there was enthusiastic soccer with foam balls, bubble blowing and chasing and the like.










I found that I could actually see out of the Excel when I had time between crowd control and fan emergencies.
 This view almost show the Thames.  The glass circular building is the hotel attached to the Excel.  It was completely booked by the time I got around to making reservations.  Loncon 3 had over 11,000 paid memberships.  Happily for Ops, not everyone showed up at the same time.

There were huge crowds for people like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis and others.  All of them gave panels, autographs and readings.  For the most part they made themselves available to fans who wanted to chat.  That is one of the things I like about cons.  Most of the famous want to mingle.





At the end of the con, all consumables are consumed.  Many are left from private parties that publishers throw or the mysterious SFWA suite.  SFWA stands for Science Fiction Writers Association.  I'm not sure what goes on in the suite, but they do hand out good booze at the end of the con if it hasn't all been drunk.

What you are seeing is a part of the dead dog party.  I'm not sure why it is called that, but I think it is that fans love to party so they stay until all the beer is gone and the last dog dies.



     Next post will be from Dublin.  Eurocon, the European Science Fiction Convention starts there next weekend.   I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the lovely city before and visiting Belfast the days after.

A bientôt.

Worldcon 72 ------ Loncon 3

These are the pictures I took yesterday.  They are in no particular order.  The new blogging program will not let me put everything where I want it.  So, above is the crowd at the science booth.

                                       gentleman above had such elegant, real facial adornment that I could do no less than preserve it.   The children are gaming (of course) but not in the confines of the gaming tent.  They chose to play on our fan village green.  It even has a tree (photo pending).

The changes made to the blogging program are very frustrating.  One must do as the program "thinks" best instead of designing a blog the way it should be.

The photos above and left are the hall costumes I spotted on the way to lunch yesterday.  I truly love the costumes, probably because I am too shy to wear one and not talented enough to make one.      Oh well, I shall continue to observe with pleasure and a small amount of envy.












Last are the Morris dancers.   They came, played and danced, then left before drinking themselves into a stupor (in my ignorance, I thought that was a part of Morris dancing.

     Morris dancers are keen evangelists (at least these were).   When I spoke to them they informed me that there were lots of American Morris societies and that it was easy to join.  Then they pressed for a commitment to become part of the fun.

      This is the penultimate day of Loncon 3.  Tomorrow, those left will take down the tents, clean up the junk and figure out how much "seed money" there is for next year's Worldcon in Spokane,  Washington.  Instead of staying to help, I am flying to Dublin for Eurocon next weekend.  Additional science fiction posts will be from there.

      So, beloved readers (if there are any), hasta proximo (until next time.)

12 August 2014
Bill and Hillary Clinton International Airport, Little Rock, AR

     My trip to London and Dublin has begun auspiciously.  No troubles getting through security.  There were only a few people ahead of me and the TSA put me through their body scanner so no pacemaker difficulties.

     Fran and I returned from our western odyssey Sunday.  I did laundry and packed yesterday.  This morning, the mail arrived and I went through, dividing Fran's from my own.  No bills yet so I should have a pile when I return.

     The western trip started as a weekend swing through Cherokee to visit the Guffy/Sluder family reunions.  Heather Gabelmann is learning her family so she wanted to attend.  The arrangements were for us to  pick her up in Oklahoma City, go to the reunion and wave good bye as she drove up to Lincoln, KS with her father.   Jim had a huge funeral to do and wasn't able to come.  We agreed to drive Heather up.  Then Fran found the perfect birthday present for Sammi (our daughter).  We decided to pack it in the car and drive to Los Alamos after the reunion.

     That made the trip a little longer.  We wanted to spend a little time with Lois and Dave Pritchard who live in Pueblo, CO.  The decision was to meet halfway and have dinner at Tequla's, a really good Mexican restaurant in Trinidad, CO.

     There is a light rail running from Belen to Lamy.  Sammi had never ridden, nor had we.  We drove into Santa Fe and boarded the "Rail Runner" for Albuquerque.  It's a nice ride.  The train is fast and clean and inexpensive.  There is no dining car, nor a snack bar.  It is necessary to get snacks before boarding.  In Albuquerque, we managed to mesh with both grandchildren's schedules and see them... separately.

     The weather in New Mexico was wonderful.  Bright sun with moderate temperatures every day.  The rains had mad the flowers blooming and there were fields of them along the roadside.  I went for a walk Thursday and took a few pictures.

old tree against the sky

gallardia

      Sammi is playing volleyball in the New Mexico Senior Olympics for the second year.  Her team was eliminated in the first round of tournament play, but they did make it through the pool.





     Saturday morning, on the way to the athletic facility, we saw many balloons.  There was a major launch in Albuquerque.  The balloonists launch in early morning to take advantage of the light winds and what they call "the box".  The box is a wind phenomenon in the Rio Grande valley.  Winds at one level are southerly and in another northerly.  A skilled balloonist can return his balloon to close the same place from which he took off.

16 August 2014 at Worldcon London


     Started a couple of days ago from Little Rock aboard American Eagle (AE) to Chicago.  Typical commuter flight and the TSA was unstressed and not busy.  When I hit Ohare, there was a pleasant surprise.  British Airlines (BA) ran a shuttle from American Airlines (AA) terminal to their own in international.  The BA flight was a delight.  Business class offers enough room for legs and when the seat is dropped to level with the foot rest raised, it is a comfortable, if short bed.

     Where BA fell down badly was in their "expedited arrivals".  As we left the plane, we were given tickets that were supposed to get us into a short line.  It did, but there were not enough immigration agents to process the "expedited" passengers as fast as they could have gone through the regular process.  Several passengers mentioned that BA had been notified of this problem several times.  So far nothing has been done.

    I arrived in London rested and ready to go.  Advised to take the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station, I took a taxi to the Excel 65 pounds,  Ouch!

     My hotel, the Fox Connaught is about a kilometer from the Excel Center.  It's a lovely walk along the Thames.  But the Excel is HUGE, it too is about a kilometer long.  It's filled with meeting rooms and even though membership in Loncon 3 is 11,000+, we have not filled it.  There are eating stands along the concours and an office work depot in the middle.  I still had to walk the length of the place to visit a restaurant or buy electronics.

     Several old friends are here.  I've had dinner with Eve and Howard Ackerman and the Furlongs.  The Furlong dinner was in the Fo bar.  Most people think it is only a pub, a nice one, but the hotel (sans lift) is above.  Since my room is on the fourth floor, there is no noise.  Actually, my days have ended in the early mornings and the pub has been closed.

     I was amazed when I arrived at the con.  Registration was steering people away because "their IT was down."  Three IT people were working on the problem.  The registration were clustered around them and could not be bothered to look through the previously made badges of the volunteers.  Ops was scheduled to be in a "yurt."  What we got was a black pavilion with no lights.

     The con is a con.  There are many lines of programming, some of them interesting others not in my bailiwick.

     This morning, the "Rat Race" was held in the hotel space around the Excel.   It is a 10km race at the end of which the runners climb a large platform and jump into the Thames.  I saw them jump in, but no one climbed out.   Could this have been a race for human lemmings?

Jumping into the Thames

 

The Thames

























Warehouse on a Thames backwater.






Anatoli Arsebarski is a Russian Cosmonaut.  He is one of the con guests of honor.   After he arrived with his son as an interpreter, we lost him and Operations ran frantically around the Excel, trying to find him.

It turned out that he was told he was to sign autographs and pose for pictures tomorrow.  He graciously changed his plans and told us that he would sign today and tomorrow after his talk.  He is in London for a private get-together with some other cosmonauts.

It has been a very long time since I posted here.  So I start with a couple of FaceBook posts of the past week:

This is a wonderful day. I stepped outside to read under a sky that is so blue with cotton clouds so white, it could only be New Mexico. There is a faint scent of pine. Insects are busy checking out the moss roses and geraniums. Russian and lipstick sages have attracted a humming bird and a lizard is sunning itself on the walk.
The silence is broken only by birdsong and an occasional neigh from the neighbor's horses.
It's perfect.

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This is a wonderful day. I stepped outside to read under a sky that is so blue with cotton clouds so white, it could only be New Mexico. There is a faint scent of pine. Insects are busy checking out the moss roses and geraniums. Russian and lipstick sages have attracted a humming bird and a lizard is sunning itself on the walk.
The silence is broken only by birdsong and an occasional neigh from the neighbor's horses.
It's perfect.

Another unbelievable day. A few minutes after I sat down outside to read, a hummingbird hovered a foot in front of me to check out the red in my shirt. Since then, it has fed at the feeder and the lipstick sage. A woodpecker checked out the pine and two larks sang their way past my chair. Tere is one puffy white cloud in an unbroken blue sky. A gentle breeze shivers the aspens and sways the butterfly bushes.

It is the end of my week in New Mexico. No more pictures yet. I will post them later.

Yesterday, we drove up to Trinidad and ate with friends at Tequila's restaurant. Really good, real Mexican food -- Mmmmm.
It rained on the way back. We were driving through it all the way to Glorieta.
I love New Mexico's sky. Yesterday, the clouds just sat atop the hills and the lightning walked around under them. It was a change from the startling blue of the sky of the previous days.
Home tomorrow, then London and Dublin.

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Ah, but the day is not complete.  Last night, our daughter made what I thought was the schedule for the day.  It is an impressive sheet of paper with multiple lines.  In fact, the president of these United States probably has such a schedule, carefully broken into 15 minutes blocks with potty breaks.

Nope!  It was not the schedule.  It was the plan.   We were informed that we were to leave the house for the first appointment no later than 10:00 AM.  Fran and I packed and had a quick breakfast.  We were ready by 9:00.  About ten, Sammi started preparing food and we each had a lovely omlette.  It's a little after noon.  Sammi has showered and is dressing for the day.  Thirty-eight years have I known that girl.  You'd think I would have learned, at least a little.

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CAT TALES II (Paladin)

Again, no pictures yet.   If memory serves, no photos were taken of Din.  He was a gift from my future wife in my sophomore year at the University of Kansas.  A black kitten who was barely weaned managed to catch his first mouse within days of moving into our apartment.  His official name was Paladin.  I'm sure we were influenced by the television show.  My room mates called him Din, which they told me was Hindi for day.

I was rooming with the Kothari brothers, Vinai and Lalit.  They introduced me to the Indian community on campus and talked me into playing cricket with their team.  I was a lousy fielder.  But the parties they threw showed me more of our Din's personality.  He was playful and a woman's swaying dress was just the toy for him.  We found this out when one of our friends was practicing a dance for the International Festival.  She was moving rhythmically in her sari when Din attacked the floating cloth, climbing and swatting.  He was above her knees before we managed to extricate him from her... carefully so as not to rip the beautiful sari.

After the games, we would adjourn to the apartment and party.  Usually, this would consist of replaying the game and drinking a few beers.  Really just a few since we were poor college students and could not afford to get drunk.  That night, we had some dance music on the record player (younger readers may want to Google this term).  In order to avoid another dress battle, I pushed Din into the cabinet above Lalit's bed and set his food and water in with him.

Dancing progressed nicely until I danced too many dances with one of the other team's girls.  The combined vigilante force picked me up and tossed me into the yard.  As I was sheepishly re-entering the party, we heard a crash and scream from Lalit's room.  The mass of us managed to jam the door to see the other team captain in bed with his girl.  Both were stripped to the waist and wearing cat food and the contents of Din's water dish.  Din was parading up and down the bed, offering to fight them both, singly or as a couple.  The captain was cursing in what I suspect was fluent Urdu and the girl had managed to cover herself.  Party was over.

At Christmas that year, my parents sprang for an airline ticket home.  The Kothari brothers had an invitation in Kansas City so no one would be there to care for Din.  I packed and stuffed him into a gym bag for the flight.  How could I know that the little, black demon had worked out the zipper.  When the flight landed Lambert Field, I grabbed my gym bag and discovered it was empty.  Searching the plane for a little black tail caused me to be the last one off.  At the door, a stewardess was cuddling Din.  She glared at me and said, "I believe this belongs to you."  I stuffed the monster back in the gym bag and scurried off the plane.

From the moment he entered the house, Din was master.  We entered through the kitchen and I set my baggage, including he fateful gym bag down.  Our dog was Sean, a wonderful cross between an Alsatian and a collie, sweet, friendly, shaggy and a fearless protector.  He bounced up and greeted me enthusiastically, then discovered the gym bag.  He sniffed, tail wagging and almost danced as he realized there was another creature in there.  As we watched, Din's little paw wormed out of the end of the zipper.  It groped around, then zipped an opening about two inches wide and disappeared.  Sean was ecstatic, bouncing, tail wagging and panting.  Din's little head poked out and he surveyed the new room (probably the cleanest he had ever seen).  He wormed his way out of the bag and observed Sean's behavior with distant impartiality.  Sean danced up, tail still wagging to touch noses with the kitten.   Din permitted this familiarity for a few seconds.  Then he swiped Sean's nose with a tiny paw full of claws.  Sean jumped backward with a startled 'yipe'.

It was at home I discovered that Din was a bit sadistic.  He would walk calmly under Sean, allowing his tail to tickle the big dog's belly.  When he was under Sean's chin, Din would hiss and watch Sean as he jumped with an alarmed 'yipe.'  My brother had a hamster.  Din would lie on top of the hamster cage and the poor rodent would see this huge (for him or her I never knew) threatening cloud of feline menace.  The hamster would jump on its (there that settles the sex thing) wheel and run.  My parents told me that they could hear the wheel squeak all night long.   Most mornings, we would find the hamster lying exhausted in his wheel.  Mom did say that hamster bit cat's tail when he let it fall within reach.  Rodent's revenge.

Alas, Din did not live long.  He contracted feline distemper the next year and died.  His memory makes me keep my pet's inoculations up to date.