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Connections, or Where I've Been
Jul. 29th, 2004 10:44 pmIt all began with hubris, which would amuse ataniell93 no end. ;)
In 9th grade, I found out about Governor's Honors, a summer program the state of Georgia has for high school students. The minute I heard about it, I was determined to go for French, being ambitious to swank about [hence the hubris bit]. In 10th grade I was nominated for social studies but, having no extracurriculars, didn't even make it past the first round. By the next year, I was determined to have *all* the extracurriculars & pursued that goal with customary thoroughness.
One side-effect of this was hanging around very late after school, which was how I first got acquainted with my friend Tom [yes, the same one of "as in 'Tom and'"]. After high school, I went off to BYU, & Tom went off to Georgia State, where he wound up joining a fraternity of mostly gaming nerds and/or baseball fans. One of the baseball fans was the Proud Mundane, whom I wound up marrying many years later.
About four months after our wedding, we were out for dinner with a bunch of the gaming frat brothers [including Tom], when the topic turned to Magnum Opus Con, which they'd all been to and were very insistent on dragging us to same. Tom said we could have a "married people's room" with him and his wife.
We let ourselves be persuaded & the following February found us at MOC 7. In spite of inconveniences like a rousing quarrel that kept us out of our own room for much of Friday evening & disparate hours Saturday night [Tom came in at 2 in the morning & just *had* to rattle every metal hanger in the closet hanging up his costume, although the table & chairs were all available for draping it over on his side of the room. Our bed was right next to the bathroom, as we found out the hard way when Tom's wife got up at 6 a.m. & showered next to my head. ;(] that made our convention experience extra-interesting, we contrived to enjoy ourselves [although it will be noted that we have never, in 12+ years of active congoing since, shared a room with another married couple].
Given the guestlist at that con, it would have been impossible to *not* enjoy ourselves [in spite of our friends' best efforts]. For me there were: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Roger Zelazny. For Marty there was _Mad Magazine_ artist Sergio Aragones. I saw a panel with a nice, softspoken lady named Lois Bujold [which I remembered years later when I saw one of her books on a book club flyer; getting it free was the first--but not the last--book I ever read by Lois]. The dealers' room was enormous & was where we first met some of the folks we hang out with at cons to this day.
Another thing I also did that weekend was to sign up for the Carole Nelson Douglas mailing list, which I've been on ever since. Soon thereafter I started acquiring her books. Note I didn't say *read*ing her books; acquiring & reading are two completely different and distinct activities.
Some years later, having acquired several of them, I actually started reading her Midnight Louie mysteries, enjoying them enormously [rather like Midnight Louie himself ;)]. I collected the first few of her Irene Adler mysteries, but didn't get around to them.
Until Balticon this year. One of the books I packed to read while traveling was the first book in the series _Good Night, Mr. Holmes_, which I started on the way back. The catch was, it was so good, I kept reading on it and went on to devour the next few sequels. I didn't have the latest two in the series, & so went to the library. Being cute & efficient, I searched for everything by Douglas on the [mostly] statewide system, including lots of anthologies. I also got all the Jennifer Crusies the library had, since I was there anyway.
I wound up with a huge stack of library books & thoroughly enjoyed myself for several weeks, much to the detriment of customary on-line activities, such as this, rec.music.filk, etc. It was almost a month before I was even back posting comments. When I finally got back to rec.filk, there were over 1400 posts to wade through [which I did in two days last week, because pacing myself has never been a particular gift--not that the sunlizzard would know anything about that, would you? < weg >]. With all the librarians either on the Bujold list or married to listies, you'd think I would've wised up to the whole library thing ere now, but sometimes I'm kind of slow like that.
Now, I'm gradually getting back in touch with folks, although I'll never be completely caught up, because there's no *way* I'm going to go back & read almost two months of journal on literally dozens of folks; even I'm not *that* masochistic. [Hey! I *heard* that! ;)]
There's been some other stuff in there, like Sci Fi Summer Con, our 13th anniversary, some local sf club meetings, a majorly cool housefilk at joyeuse13's house, a 4th of July cookout with my parents, etc., but it's been mostly about the books [oh, and the cat, of course, because, as fairestcat could vouch, it's always all about the cat :)].
I turned in some library books Monday & wound up filling out 45 reserve forms, with 15 more on Wednesday. Let's just say, the local librarians are feeling the love.
I'm finding some good new authors & ordering far too many books [as cheaply as possible, of course, but still--did I mention my spouse is cute when he whimpers? < weg >], but having lots of fun.
So there. thpppt.
In 9th grade, I found out about Governor's Honors, a summer program the state of Georgia has for high school students. The minute I heard about it, I was determined to go for French, being ambitious to swank about [hence the hubris bit]. In 10th grade I was nominated for social studies but, having no extracurriculars, didn't even make it past the first round. By the next year, I was determined to have *all* the extracurriculars & pursued that goal with customary thoroughness.
One side-effect of this was hanging around very late after school, which was how I first got acquainted with my friend Tom [yes, the same one of "as in 'Tom and'"]. After high school, I went off to BYU, & Tom went off to Georgia State, where he wound up joining a fraternity of mostly gaming nerds and/or baseball fans. One of the baseball fans was the Proud Mundane, whom I wound up marrying many years later.
About four months after our wedding, we were out for dinner with a bunch of the gaming frat brothers [including Tom], when the topic turned to Magnum Opus Con, which they'd all been to and were very insistent on dragging us to same. Tom said we could have a "married people's room" with him and his wife.
We let ourselves be persuaded & the following February found us at MOC 7. In spite of inconveniences like a rousing quarrel that kept us out of our own room for much of Friday evening & disparate hours Saturday night [Tom came in at 2 in the morning & just *had* to rattle every metal hanger in the closet hanging up his costume, although the table & chairs were all available for draping it over on his side of the room. Our bed was right next to the bathroom, as we found out the hard way when Tom's wife got up at 6 a.m. & showered next to my head. ;(] that made our convention experience extra-interesting, we contrived to enjoy ourselves [although it will be noted that we have never, in 12+ years of active congoing since, shared a room with another married couple].
Given the guestlist at that con, it would have been impossible to *not* enjoy ourselves [in spite of our friends' best efforts]. For me there were: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Roger Zelazny. For Marty there was _Mad Magazine_ artist Sergio Aragones. I saw a panel with a nice, softspoken lady named Lois Bujold [which I remembered years later when I saw one of her books on a book club flyer; getting it free was the first--but not the last--book I ever read by Lois]. The dealers' room was enormous & was where we first met some of the folks we hang out with at cons to this day.
Another thing I also did that weekend was to sign up for the Carole Nelson Douglas mailing list, which I've been on ever since. Soon thereafter I started acquiring her books. Note I didn't say *read*ing her books; acquiring & reading are two completely different and distinct activities.
Some years later, having acquired several of them, I actually started reading her Midnight Louie mysteries, enjoying them enormously [rather like Midnight Louie himself ;)]. I collected the first few of her Irene Adler mysteries, but didn't get around to them.
Until Balticon this year. One of the books I packed to read while traveling was the first book in the series _Good Night, Mr. Holmes_, which I started on the way back. The catch was, it was so good, I kept reading on it and went on to devour the next few sequels. I didn't have the latest two in the series, & so went to the library. Being cute & efficient, I searched for everything by Douglas on the [mostly] statewide system, including lots of anthologies. I also got all the Jennifer Crusies the library had, since I was there anyway.
I wound up with a huge stack of library books & thoroughly enjoyed myself for several weeks, much to the detriment of customary on-line activities, such as this, rec.music.filk, etc. It was almost a month before I was even back posting comments. When I finally got back to rec.filk, there were over 1400 posts to wade through [which I did in two days last week, because pacing myself has never been a particular gift--not that the sunlizzard would know anything about that, would you? < weg >]. With all the librarians either on the Bujold list or married to listies, you'd think I would've wised up to the whole library thing ere now, but sometimes I'm kind of slow like that.
Now, I'm gradually getting back in touch with folks, although I'll never be completely caught up, because there's no *way* I'm going to go back & read almost two months of journal on literally dozens of folks; even I'm not *that* masochistic. [Hey! I *heard* that! ;)]
There's been some other stuff in there, like Sci Fi Summer Con, our 13th anniversary, some local sf club meetings, a majorly cool housefilk at joyeuse13's house, a 4th of July cookout with my parents, etc., but it's been mostly about the books [oh, and the cat, of course, because, as fairestcat could vouch, it's always all about the cat :)].
I turned in some library books Monday & wound up filling out 45 reserve forms, with 15 more on Wednesday. Let's just say, the local librarians are feeling the love.
I'm finding some good new authors & ordering far too many books [as cheaply as possible, of course, but still--did I mention my spouse is cute when he whimpers? < weg >], but having lots of fun.
So there. thpppt.
