This year is passing rather quicker than I would like and Necon 28 has now come and gone.
This Necon was probably the best ever. We had the usual curve ball from the campus provider and wound up camping at their reception center about a mile away over the Mount Hope bridge. Rooms and rooming became an opportunity of flexibility for the housing portion of the committee. Fortunately, I only run the art show.
Whatever rooming glitches there may have been, it that was made up by the fact that the function rooms , ie: the dealers, art and panel discussion rooms were large, with working AC and all were contiguous. Cafeteria, rooms, swimming pool, exercise room and a courtyard for BBQ’ing were literally all within rock throwing distance. And that would be a rock thrown by a penguin. Not having to walk scads of distance through swelter to eat or get something from your room was a pleasure for all.
The art show ran well and many blessings to all those wonderful people who helped to move all those panels up and down. The roast duck was John McIlveen, a really nice guy who deserves his children, hehe. The short notice talent show got about a dozen entries and what a hoot. Lots of truly talented people. There was frantic headbanging-chaos-rock to belly dancing to the entire convention singing choruses to the musical stylings of Cthulhu cultist and writer, Gary Frank.
Micki won third place for her belly dancing routine. Her valuable prize was a flying monkey catapult gun with four flying monkeys. I am going to mount it on a plaque and get it all gussied up. The medals we made for the Olympics went over well and I even got a gold one back for placing first in croquet. BTW, croquet is the Olympic sport of kings : )
Next year, we hope to be able to stay at the con itself. We had to truck back every night to be sure that Mojo, now about 11 months, hadn’t tore down the house. He has more energy than any three dogs and not much way to get rid of it except to tear ass around the yard while savaging whatever it is he has dragged outside whether that would be shoes, clothing, comforters etc.
Pictures are courtesy of talented artist, Steve Gilberts.
