humid

is the word!  I went to Memphis (southwest corner of Tennessee) and Chattanooga (6 hours east of Memphis), and in the latter attended LibertyCon, an excellent, small sci-fi convention of the literary bent.  Guests: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Lucifer’s Hammer, The Mote in God’s Eye, Ringworld, etc) Timothy Zahn (COBRA, Dragonback, most of the decent Starwars books), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Elantris, later Wheel of Time novels with and for Robert Jordan), among many others!  We stayed in an adorable hotel, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo (you could stay in a converted train car, but we just got a room!), ate bread, cheese, apples, and free food from the Con Suite, and generally had a blast!  None of us got any books signed, but Tim Zahn asked to take a picture with us when we were in our Starwars costumes:

 

Me (Stacey/Pink Five from Trey Stokes’s excellent fan films) with Tim Zahn, and then Me, Jeff (Grand Admiral Thrawn), Ellen (Mara Jade), and Zahn!  We also had lunch with him after his panel “inside the mind of Grand Admiral Thrawn,” and Jeff asked him if the physics of Starwars bothers him.  He says no, since you can just handwave it all 🙂  I asked him in the panel why he mentions Stacey in his book Allegiance: it’s a nod to all those excellent fan works, and he’s a big fan of Trey’s work, so Stacey seemed like a great character to put in.  He was going to give her a comment about Han’s “monkey,” but Lucasfilm wouldn’t go for it, so he decided to mention her “peculiarly colored boots” or something to that effect (she wears pink Uggs for several films; my costume is of Sith Stacey, from the 5th film).

  

Mara Jade, Stacey, and Antonia Stark’s arc reactor in progress (in a cave, built from a pile of scraps).  It’s really quite bright!

 

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven at a panel on how to save civilization (see their upcoming book about an incoming asteroid!) and Brandon Sanderson (on a panel about characterization/plot, which was mostly plot: he outlines his plots with bullet-point goals, and he discovers his characters).

 

Oddly poetic given the fact that Dark Knight Rises came out that weekend!  (Sorry to disappoint; it’s photoshopped: the slant of the picture made it look like a B, so I made it so!  Hey, at least I didn’t add a lens flare!)  Also, gas is ridiculously cheap!  It took several shots for the gas to show up instead of diesel…

Tasty what?  I can’t hear you over the sound of my air conditioning!  Our theaters (at least, Carmike 12 does this) put out an anvillicious advertisement for Coke (remember “movies are better with a coke and a popcorn?”) Imagine a hundred huge popcorn kernels falling in front of you, being munched away by invisible hands/mouths, then fifty or so ice cubes falling and soda pouring, only to be sucked away by a straw labeled with tiny CocaCola marks… All in LOUD SURROUND SOUND!  After the first time, it gets annoying.

 

Also, fireworks appear to be very important in the south…

 

Just in case you can’t see the details very well, I looked it up on the internet:

Yup.  That’s the guy.  Freaky pimp-man with flaming stick in his hand.  Not disturbing at all.

You can tell that I pretty much took no pictures at the con… that’s my bad!  I was enjoying chatting with folks too much, and… well, I can justify taking fifty or more pics of David Tennant (San Diego ComicCon 2010, anyone??), but I think one pic of these authors is enough XD

That’s most of the story: humidity, fandom, fireworks, and then massive jet-lag on Thursday (I sat down on the couch around 10:15 AM and woke up late that afternoon…)  Happily I seem well-awake now!

Also, on Saturday I went mini-golfing with friends for one’s birthday.  I think par for the course was about 20 (18 holes).  My score?  84.  Yup. I suck at golf.  Even mini-golf!  At least I didn’t end up in the water feature (somebody else did).  And the birthday lady liked my chibi-Loki card and earrings 🙂  I didn’t take a picture of them, alas!  Oh, well.

 

NOT MY ART!  I do intend to line a copy, though!  I’m on the left, as Captain America, the birthday girl’s in the center as Fury, and various other fantastic folks are mentioned (Iron Man and Thor couldn’t make it to the party, alas, and the artist/water-feature-golfer isn’t featured in her own drawing).  Is it not fantastic?

And I do apologize for the delay!  I will try to be better…