Home Again, Home Again, Dancity-Dance
May. 26th, 2011 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancinghorseWe've been busy today. Here's a report on our panel at the Nebulas--quite concise, includes lots of links. In short--Mission Accomplished.
The panel was very well attended (including some quite illustrious people in the field), very lively, required some thumping of microphone to herd the various cats, and was agreed to have been a Success. As noted in the post, we'll probably need to do it again next year, because boy howdy are things changing fast.
The rest of the trip was very business-y and research-y and visiting-dear-friends-y. Left Thursday morning, arrived an hour late, to be met by sleepy![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
birdhousefrog and whisked off to her house, where I met all the cats. And had a late supper. And fell over.
Next day was fairly mellow in the morning. Breakfast, more cats, tour of farm. Met chickens. Admired their eggs in buckets in the kitchen. Those are very hard-working chickens. Opined that back before humidity became a soundness issue, Walkabout Farm was my dream farm. It has a horse-usable barn and lovely paddocks, and the countryside is beautiful. Now, of course, I couldn't live there and hope to stay supple enough to ride, but it's a wonderful place to visit.
Toward midday we loaded up and headed for the big city and the swanky convention hotel and meetings and foregatherings with many writerfolk and fanfolk and confolk. I participated in the Mass Signing, which was large and well attended, and signed many books. Once that was done, I caught up with old GEnie friend and man-about-townrwglaub and went off to dinner with, among others, suricattus and Cynthia Felice. We drank wine and Ate Meat and had lively conversation.
Saturday was my ohgodcrazy day.loldoc, another old friend, had driven all the way down from Brooklyn, and ceffyl had come up from Raleigh with her mom, who has a horse farm in Maryland. There was much meeting and foregathering and plotting and talking writing and books and horses and life in general.
We had to part at dinnertime as I had got roped into one of the Tor tables at the Nebula banquet. It was a banquet, in the good and bad senses of the phrase, but the company was excellent, and includedarcaedia and mcurry.
Once the banquet was over, I was more or less on my own time. I crashed. Sunday we were set to head back to Walkabout via some sightseeing around DC.birdhousefrog grew up in the area, and used our limited time to great advantage. I got to sit in Einstein's lap, and to feel the power of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, and to head on up Capitol Hill to the Library of Congress, which was declared open but actually closed. Phooey. Next time. Mine hostess left me there with ceffyl, and we stopped for lunch at a lovely little cafe, then headed out via Metro into Maryland to pick up her car and swing by her mom's horse farm.
Her mom raises and breeds Egyptian Arabians--good ones; the ones with size and substance and good minds--and has a lesson barn. It was a big day: her baby, her young stallion, was coming from the trainer. We got to be there for the arrival. I'll post more about that on Monday's horseblog over at Book View Cafe.
Dinner found us at Walkabout Farm;ceffyl left me there, but we had another farm visit set up for Monday, with more horse time and horse conversation and a lovely lunch. We flirted with a red spot on the weather radar on our way back to Virginia, just missed the deluge.
Tuesday was another Busy Day. I found out late Monday evening that I was doing a school visit in the morning--daughter of the house's fifth-grade class had seen the book trailer for House of the Star, and wanted to meet the person with all the white horses. So off we went, and my 45 minutes turned into a lot more like an hour and a half. We talked horses and writing and dogs and writing. Most excellent class, great questions. They wrote me letters afterwards, which I must answer--they asked more great questions. I really enjoyed them all.
From the school we went back into the city for a bit of novel research--down along the old roads to Arlington, then up to the Custis-Lee house, now known as the Lee Memorial. Books and internet can give a good sense of what's there, but there's nothing like actually getting out and hiking up that steep hill in the humid heat, and feeling the breezes at the top, and seeing the straight line of sight across the river to the Capitol. Really brings the reality of the situation home.
After that I was ready to go splat, and had a little work to do, so surrounded myself with cats and computer and got to it.
And of course Wednesday was the big travel day. Long waits in ostensibly short lines at Dulles, then a middling short delay (90 minutes) in Dallas. It was my first trip with serious tech--phone with unlimited data, ebook, plus the usual laptop, andloldoc had lent me a mifi unit that came in Very handy when I came home to find my internet out of order. Is fixed now, but hello, reality.
Most interesting to be able to get flight updates as they happened. And while the NookColor's battery life is notoriously awful, the external battery did work with it. I didn't actually use the ereader as a wireless machine since I had the phone and the laptop; kept it for reading on the plane. That worked well. No need to lug heavy books, and I could bring a wide selection. Nice. I didn't try writing on it, either, but definitely could, with the SD card installed. Next time.
So, an excellent trip, very useful, many good friends old and new, and altogether a most worthwhile thing to have done. Now we are back in the dry desert air (thank god), in the usual chaotic reality (oh god), but hey, ponies. And a Camp starting a week from Monday.
The panel was very well attended (including some quite illustrious people in the field), very lively, required some thumping of microphone to herd the various cats, and was agreed to have been a Success. As noted in the post, we'll probably need to do it again next year, because boy howdy are things changing fast.
The rest of the trip was very business-y and research-y and visiting-dear-friends-y. Left Thursday morning, arrived an hour late, to be met by sleepy
birdhousefrog and whisked off to her house, where I met all the cats. And had a late supper. And fell over.Next day was fairly mellow in the morning. Breakfast, more cats, tour of farm. Met chickens. Admired their eggs in buckets in the kitchen. Those are very hard-working chickens. Opined that back before humidity became a soundness issue, Walkabout Farm was my dream farm. It has a horse-usable barn and lovely paddocks, and the countryside is beautiful. Now, of course, I couldn't live there and hope to stay supple enough to ride, but it's a wonderful place to visit.
Toward midday we loaded up and headed for the big city and the swanky convention hotel and meetings and foregatherings with many writerfolk and fanfolk and confolk. I participated in the Mass Signing, which was large and well attended, and signed many books. Once that was done, I caught up with old GEnie friend and man-about-town
rwglaub and went off to dinner with, among others, suricattus and Cynthia Felice. We drank wine and Ate Meat and had lively conversation. Saturday was my ohgodcrazy day.
loldoc, another old friend, had driven all the way down from Brooklyn, and ceffyl had come up from Raleigh with her mom, who has a horse farm in Maryland. There was much meeting and foregathering and plotting and talking writing and books and horses and life in general. We had to part at dinnertime as I had got roped into one of the Tor tables at the Nebula banquet. It was a banquet, in the good and bad senses of the phrase, but the company was excellent, and included
arcaedia and mcurry. Once the banquet was over, I was more or less on my own time. I crashed. Sunday we were set to head back to Walkabout via some sightseeing around DC.
birdhousefrog grew up in the area, and used our limited time to great advantage. I got to sit in Einstein's lap, and to feel the power of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, and to head on up Capitol Hill to the Library of Congress, which was declared open but actually closed. Phooey. Next time. Mine hostess left me there with ceffyl, and we stopped for lunch at a lovely little cafe, then headed out via Metro into Maryland to pick up her car and swing by her mom's horse farm. Her mom raises and breeds Egyptian Arabians--good ones; the ones with size and substance and good minds--and has a lesson barn. It was a big day: her baby, her young stallion, was coming from the trainer. We got to be there for the arrival. I'll post more about that on Monday's horseblog over at Book View Cafe.
Dinner found us at Walkabout Farm;
ceffyl left me there, but we had another farm visit set up for Monday, with more horse time and horse conversation and a lovely lunch. We flirted with a red spot on the weather radar on our way back to Virginia, just missed the deluge.Tuesday was another Busy Day. I found out late Monday evening that I was doing a school visit in the morning--daughter of the house's fifth-grade class had seen the book trailer for House of the Star, and wanted to meet the person with all the white horses. So off we went, and my 45 minutes turned into a lot more like an hour and a half. We talked horses and writing and dogs and writing. Most excellent class, great questions. They wrote me letters afterwards, which I must answer--they asked more great questions. I really enjoyed them all.
From the school we went back into the city for a bit of novel research--down along the old roads to Arlington, then up to the Custis-Lee house, now known as the Lee Memorial. Books and internet can give a good sense of what's there, but there's nothing like actually getting out and hiking up that steep hill in the humid heat, and feeling the breezes at the top, and seeing the straight line of sight across the river to the Capitol. Really brings the reality of the situation home.
After that I was ready to go splat, and had a little work to do, so surrounded myself with cats and computer and got to it.
And of course Wednesday was the big travel day. Long waits in ostensibly short lines at Dulles, then a middling short delay (90 minutes) in Dallas. It was my first trip with serious tech--phone with unlimited data, ebook, plus the usual laptop, and
loldoc had lent me a mifi unit that came in Very handy when I came home to find my internet out of order. Is fixed now, but hello, reality. Most interesting to be able to get flight updates as they happened. And while the NookColor's battery life is notoriously awful, the external battery did work with it. I didn't actually use the ereader as a wireless machine since I had the phone and the laptop; kept it for reading on the plane. That worked well. No need to lug heavy books, and I could bring a wide selection. Nice. I didn't try writing on it, either, but definitely could, with the SD card installed. Next time.
So, an excellent trip, very useful, many good friends old and new, and altogether a most worthwhile thing to have done. Now we are back in the dry desert air (thank god), in the usual chaotic reality (oh god), but hey, ponies. And a Camp starting a week from Monday.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 05:34 pm (UTC)It's much more humid here than it is in NM, of course, but at least it's not the beach!