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Travel was a nuisance; I effectively missed Friday, after my original flight was cancelled for mechanical problems. I arrived in Madison late enough that the hotel shuttle was no longer running, and wound up taking a cab instead, at the hotel's expense. Having discovered out how minimal the book options were in the Detroit airport, I bought a lot of books for the trip home, one because it was specifically recommended during a panel, and five from a dealer who had used paperbacks for a dollar each, with no strong selection criterion beyond "I haven't read this yet." So far, I've enjoyed the lot. (I wrote down a few other recommendations during panels, but didn't find those books in the dealer's room.)
My hotel reservation for next year includes Thursday night. I might even get in early enough for packet stuffing and/or the Room of One's Own reception.
Once we made contact Friday evening, which came after I spent about half an hour wandering around the sixth floor [1] and asking people "Have you seen my girlfriend?"![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adrian_turtle and I spent most of the con together, occasionally separating for panels but doing social stuff, including meals, together. One aspect of the long-distance relationship is that time together at a con is more valuable than it might be if we saw each other every day. We don't, obviously, like all the same people, but the overlap is large enough for us to have plenty of people we both want to spend time with. (That said, if one of us wanted to spend significant time with someone the other disliked, we'd work that out too.) My solo wanderings were mostly just down to Michelangelo's for tea; she had basically all of Friday at the con before I arrived and a few hours after I left. I would have liked to be part of her Friday lunch group, but that would have been logistically iffy even on my original schedule. Last year I went to the Farmer's Market Saturday morning while she slept in; this year, we both slept late, which was much more valuable at that point.
It seems worth noting that while I'm always glad to be around Adrian, we either grin more at Wiscon, or are more likely to be around people who point out that we're grinning; either way, being told that makes me grin even more.
When I ran intowild_irises early Saturday, she explained that she hadn't been ignoring me specifically: she had decided not to answer any emails about "let's get together during the con," even to say she wasn't making plans, because it was one way to reduce the stress a little bit. A few hours later, she suggested breakfast Sunday morning, and I accepted. She, Adrian, and I made an attempt to find real food rather than just tea, but I turned out not to have much of an appetite for protein. Still, the espresso place (a bit further down State Street) had good tea and space to talk, which we did. I think Adrian and I spent more time catching her up on our lives than the other way around. Even in the middle of running a Wiscon, Debbie is a comforting person to be around, as well as intelligent and interesting in the other ways that I expect in my friends.
I ate at Himal Chuli twice, Sunday lunch with Adrian (after they didn't have room for us andannafdd the previous night) and Sunday night with her, Janet, Matt, and their daughter Alice. Yes, I like it enough that I was happy to go there twice in one day; I should look for a Nepali restaurant here, though it's as much what Himal Chuli does as the basic cuisine, I think. (The very nice fish I had at lunch probably isn't traditional Nepalese cooking, for example, and I suspect chiya [think chai tea] varies widely in ingredients and thus in whether I'd like it. Himal Chuli's is definitely to my taste.) Adrian, Janet, Matt, and I managed good conversation, with baby-wrangling in the interstices; when it came time to pay, Matt and Janet argued that they should count Alice as a full share because, even though she didn't eat much, they tip higher now than they used to, to make up to the staff for cleaning up food from the floor and such, and that we shouldn't be bearing that expense. I decided that was reasonable.
Janet was also on the Fun Home panel with me, and had lots of good things to say, which surprised me not at all. Monday afternoon, when I got through airport security and was walking to my gate, I saw Matt, Janet, and Alice at theirs. Madison is a small enough airport that I figured I could hang out with them until my plane was due to board, so we talked some more, and I chased Alice around a bit so her parents could have a bit of a break. (This is an easy bit of baby-wrangling: the child wasn't particularly hungry, though willing to toddle back to Matt when he said "I have some meat for you", nor unhappy. She just didn't want to sit still. Since she was about to have to sit still for an extended period, letting her move around made sense. [My flight out of Madison, and my connecting flight to New York, went entirely smoothly, as did the bus and subway trip home from LaGuardia Airport.]
Other than the programming I was on, I got to about the last 2/3 of the panel on making peace, which led to me reading Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After, and about the same amount of Sexism: a spotter's guide. I don't know how that one started; by the time I got there, people were talking about how to spot, and avoid, sexism in oneself as well as in things one is reading. One thing discussed was denial of agency, and whose story it is: "she was attacked," "he attacked her," and "she fought off an attack" can all be accurate descriptions of the same event, but only the last emphasizes what the woman in question did. The idea isn't to avoid the passive voice, but to be mindful of one's choices.
elisem had some new jewelry that I admired. I even tried on a clear Swarovski crystal hedgehog necklace, but when I asked Adrian what she thought, she said it needed an evening gown; someone else, who didn't think that or does femme dressup, gave it a home. I got to the haiku earring party late (because of being on a panel at 9:00 that night), and saw no earrings that appealed to me by the time I arrived, so wrote no haiku. I did taste the last of misia and perigee's masala chai caramels, and talk carbonel into writing a sonnet after she said that was the form that seemed to fit her earrings and title, not a haiku.
Elise, Adrian, and I had an excellent hour or so of conversation, with tea at the very end, in Elise's room Sunday afternoon before Elise and I had to go to be on/at programming. I think we'd all have liked more time to talk, but the disadvantage of there being so much going on, and so many people to talk to, is that conversations often feel too short. (If I hadn't had my own panel then, I'd have gone with Elise to the Mike Ford reminiscence.) We'd started off with Elise showing us her dress for the fancy dress party that evening, which led into tattoos, the symbolism thereof, and thence to more personal stuff. That interlude, and the cup of good hot Darjeeling Elise made me near the end of the hour, also helped restore my energy levels for the Fun Home panel and the evening that followed.
mrissa and markgritter, while not at the con, were passing through Madison Monday morning, and arranged to meet with a few locals they knew, plus me, Adrian, and oursin. It was good to actually meet M'rissa in person. What I remember most from the conversation is that, after about 15 minutes, she said "You really are from New York!" What hadn't come through on LJ and in email was how fast I talk (and probably other aspects of my accent), because of course she reads email, from anyone, at the speed that works for her, which is much the same for my email as for a Minnesotan's.
annafdd had dinner with me and Adrian Saturday night. We ate Afghan food, at a place we picked by the basic "wander down State Street and see what's there," and had a pleasant hour's conversation.
If I'd metnaomikritzer before, it was only a very brief, casual conversation. This year, Adrian and I had a nice long conversation with her outside the con suite, I think Sunday night, including about eye doctors, the advantages of an actual doctor rather than just an optometrist, and idiosyncratic drug reactions. (She and Adrian knew each other from last Wiscon.)
The time I spent talking with Sarah Emrys and R. (Ruthanne?) Emrys Gordon in some of the open space on the second floot was pure serendipity. One of them mentioned that they'd lived in Northampton, Mass., and I mentioned having spent a summer there, doing math at Hampshire College. That's their alma mater, and they were startled by the idea of summer math, but immediately knew who I was talking about when I said "David Kelly", the math professor who'd run the program. So we spent a bit of time talking about Hampshire and the math professors there. They're now living in Illinois, but got married while they were in Massachusetts, and one of them mentioned that even though Illinois doesn't recognize their marriage, her family takes the relationship more seriously because they had a legal wedding, not only a religious or other commitment ceremony. That's not, of course, the main reason why marriage rights are important, but it's not trivial.
There were also, of course, plenty of shorter conversations, including a charming 90 seconds or so with Donya in the Green Room, who looked at my Scrabble earrings and said "don't you think that's a bit blatant?"; asking someone random if he'd really just arrived from Hong Kong [2] (yes); seeing some ofintelligentrix's recent glass work, along with other cool stuff in the Art Show, and getting the chance to tell her I'd liked it; and a brief stop at the Tiptree Bake Sale. Oddly, this year I wound up missing both the Tiptree Auction (the same evening programming) and the GoH speeches (a great need for the hot tub). Maybe next year.
[1] All the parties, and the con suite, are on the sixth floor. By now Wiscon and the hotel know each other, which includes lots of major familiarity, them knowing what we're like, and us knowing where the pool is and that I knew to take my cardigan because my panel was in the "Senate" room, and trivia like walking into one of the restrooms, hearing someone say "They've remodeled," and responding "yes, and they took out half the lights." (I couldn't tell you what color the stall walls had been last year, but they weren't wood-patterned then and they are now. "Half" is an overstatement, but it is dimmer.)
[2] The con badges had locations, pulled automatically out of mailing addresses by some piece of software. This worked fine for the US and Canada, and very oddly for the people from the UK. I don't know whether I'm the only person who saw "Shaolin Kong NT" and immediately parsed it as Hong Kong, not the Canadian Arctic.
My hotel reservation for next year includes Thursday night. I might even get in early enough for packet stuffing and/or the Room of One's Own reception.
Once we made contact Friday evening, which came after I spent about half an hour wandering around the sixth floor [1] and asking people "Have you seen my girlfriend?"
adrian_turtle and I spent most of the con together, occasionally separating for panels but doing social stuff, including meals, together. One aspect of the long-distance relationship is that time together at a con is more valuable than it might be if we saw each other every day. We don't, obviously, like all the same people, but the overlap is large enough for us to have plenty of people we both want to spend time with. (That said, if one of us wanted to spend significant time with someone the other disliked, we'd work that out too.) My solo wanderings were mostly just down to Michelangelo's for tea; she had basically all of Friday at the con before I arrived and a few hours after I left. I would have liked to be part of her Friday lunch group, but that would have been logistically iffy even on my original schedule. Last year I went to the Farmer's Market Saturday morning while she slept in; this year, we both slept late, which was much more valuable at that point.It seems worth noting that while I'm always glad to be around Adrian, we either grin more at Wiscon, or are more likely to be around people who point out that we're grinning; either way, being told that makes me grin even more.
When I ran into
wild_irises early Saturday, she explained that she hadn't been ignoring me specifically: she had decided not to answer any emails about "let's get together during the con," even to say she wasn't making plans, because it was one way to reduce the stress a little bit. A few hours later, she suggested breakfast Sunday morning, and I accepted. She, Adrian, and I made an attempt to find real food rather than just tea, but I turned out not to have much of an appetite for protein. Still, the espresso place (a bit further down State Street) had good tea and space to talk, which we did. I think Adrian and I spent more time catching her up on our lives than the other way around. Even in the middle of running a Wiscon, Debbie is a comforting person to be around, as well as intelligent and interesting in the other ways that I expect in my friends.I ate at Himal Chuli twice, Sunday lunch with Adrian (after they didn't have room for us and
annafdd the previous night) and Sunday night with her, Janet, Matt, and their daughter Alice. Yes, I like it enough that I was happy to go there twice in one day; I should look for a Nepali restaurant here, though it's as much what Himal Chuli does as the basic cuisine, I think. (The very nice fish I had at lunch probably isn't traditional Nepalese cooking, for example, and I suspect chiya [think chai tea] varies widely in ingredients and thus in whether I'd like it. Himal Chuli's is definitely to my taste.) Adrian, Janet, Matt, and I managed good conversation, with baby-wrangling in the interstices; when it came time to pay, Matt and Janet argued that they should count Alice as a full share because, even though she didn't eat much, they tip higher now than they used to, to make up to the staff for cleaning up food from the floor and such, and that we shouldn't be bearing that expense. I decided that was reasonable.Janet was also on the Fun Home panel with me, and had lots of good things to say, which surprised me not at all. Monday afternoon, when I got through airport security and was walking to my gate, I saw Matt, Janet, and Alice at theirs. Madison is a small enough airport that I figured I could hang out with them until my plane was due to board, so we talked some more, and I chased Alice around a bit so her parents could have a bit of a break. (This is an easy bit of baby-wrangling: the child wasn't particularly hungry, though willing to toddle back to Matt when he said "I have some meat for you", nor unhappy. She just didn't want to sit still. Since she was about to have to sit still for an extended period, letting her move around made sense. [My flight out of Madison, and my connecting flight to New York, went entirely smoothly, as did the bus and subway trip home from LaGuardia Airport.]
Other than the programming I was on, I got to about the last 2/3 of the panel on making peace, which led to me reading Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After, and about the same amount of Sexism: a spotter's guide. I don't know how that one started; by the time I got there, people were talking about how to spot, and avoid, sexism in oneself as well as in things one is reading. One thing discussed was denial of agency, and whose story it is: "she was attacked," "he attacked her," and "she fought off an attack" can all be accurate descriptions of the same event, but only the last emphasizes what the woman in question did. The idea isn't to avoid the passive voice, but to be mindful of one's choices.
elisem had some new jewelry that I admired. I even tried on a clear Swarovski crystal hedgehog necklace, but when I asked Adrian what she thought, she said it needed an evening gown; someone else, who didn't think that or does femme dressup, gave it a home. I got to the haiku earring party late (because of being on a panel at 9:00 that night), and saw no earrings that appealed to me by the time I arrived, so wrote no haiku. I did taste the last of misia and perigee's masala chai caramels, and talk carbonel into writing a sonnet after she said that was the form that seemed to fit her earrings and title, not a haiku.Elise, Adrian, and I had an excellent hour or so of conversation, with tea at the very end, in Elise's room Sunday afternoon before Elise and I had to go to be on/at programming. I think we'd all have liked more time to talk, but the disadvantage of there being so much going on, and so many people to talk to, is that conversations often feel too short. (If I hadn't had my own panel then, I'd have gone with Elise to the Mike Ford reminiscence.) We'd started off with Elise showing us her dress for the fancy dress party that evening, which led into tattoos, the symbolism thereof, and thence to more personal stuff. That interlude, and the cup of good hot Darjeeling Elise made me near the end of the hour, also helped restore my energy levels for the Fun Home panel and the evening that followed.
mrissa and markgritter, while not at the con, were passing through Madison Monday morning, and arranged to meet with a few locals they knew, plus me, Adrian, and oursin. It was good to actually meet M'rissa in person. What I remember most from the conversation is that, after about 15 minutes, she said "You really are from New York!" What hadn't come through on LJ and in email was how fast I talk (and probably other aspects of my accent), because of course she reads email, from anyone, at the speed that works for her, which is much the same for my email as for a Minnesotan's.annafdd had dinner with me and Adrian Saturday night. We ate Afghan food, at a place we picked by the basic "wander down State Street and see what's there," and had a pleasant hour's conversation.If I'd met
naomikritzer before, it was only a very brief, casual conversation. This year, Adrian and I had a nice long conversation with her outside the con suite, I think Sunday night, including about eye doctors, the advantages of an actual doctor rather than just an optometrist, and idiosyncratic drug reactions. (She and Adrian knew each other from last Wiscon.) The time I spent talking with Sarah Emrys and R. (Ruthanne?) Emrys Gordon in some of the open space on the second floot was pure serendipity. One of them mentioned that they'd lived in Northampton, Mass., and I mentioned having spent a summer there, doing math at Hampshire College. That's their alma mater, and they were startled by the idea of summer math, but immediately knew who I was talking about when I said "David Kelly", the math professor who'd run the program. So we spent a bit of time talking about Hampshire and the math professors there. They're now living in Illinois, but got married while they were in Massachusetts, and one of them mentioned that even though Illinois doesn't recognize their marriage, her family takes the relationship more seriously because they had a legal wedding, not only a religious or other commitment ceremony. That's not, of course, the main reason why marriage rights are important, but it's not trivial.
There were also, of course, plenty of shorter conversations, including a charming 90 seconds or so with Donya in the Green Room, who looked at my Scrabble earrings and said "don't you think that's a bit blatant?"; asking someone random if he'd really just arrived from Hong Kong [2] (yes); seeing some of
intelligentrix's recent glass work, along with other cool stuff in the Art Show, and getting the chance to tell her I'd liked it; and a brief stop at the Tiptree Bake Sale. Oddly, this year I wound up missing both the Tiptree Auction (the same evening programming) and the GoH speeches (a great need for the hot tub). Maybe next year.[1] All the parties, and the con suite, are on the sixth floor. By now Wiscon and the hotel know each other, which includes lots of major familiarity, them knowing what we're like, and us knowing where the pool is and that I knew to take my cardigan because my panel was in the "Senate" room, and trivia like walking into one of the restrooms, hearing someone say "They've remodeled," and responding "yes, and they took out half the lights." (I couldn't tell you what color the stall walls had been last year, but they weren't wood-patterned then and they are now. "Half" is an overstatement, but it is dimmer.)
[2] The con badges had locations, pulled automatically out of mailing addresses by some piece of software. This worked fine for the US and Canada, and very oddly for the people from the UK. I don't know whether I'm the only person who saw "Shaolin Kong NT" and immediately parsed it as Hong Kong, not the Canadian Arctic.