Eastercon

A week back from Eastercon today, but obviously Covid ate that week right up. Still testing positive at the moment, but feeling mostly normal other than a realtively (so far) light cough. The first few days I basically slept all day, after that it was fatigue, some congestion and fuzzy headedness, mild headache, that sort of thing. Not terrible as these things go, but obviously not delighted to finally break my covid-free streak. It meant we missed this month’s First Thursday (postponed to second due to Eastercon clash) and a planned trip to Edingburgh.

The weekend overall was good, we spend the first half of Friday at Star Wars Celebration, which was very impressive, full of cool exhibits and great cosplay. There was hadly any masking of course, but the Excel is cavernous which helps a lot. We didn’t get into any of the panels, but John played a demo of the new miniatures game Shatterpoint, which even I have to admit looked fun, and we both got to dress up, so it was a good time.

Highlights from Eastercon include; receiving the amazing gift of one of Esther’s beautiful shawls (photos to follow as a description will not do it justice), John interviewing Adrian Tchaikovsky and absolutley nailing it, watching Niall hit the GOH gig out of the park while also withstanding relentless Third Row nonsense with aplomb (mostly, he did break down a bit at the Throne of Books), Zen Cho’s delightful performance during her reading, and more generally seeing the convention succeed in raising the bar on hybrid.

That said, I was skeptical of the covid policy pre-con, and seeing the resulting masking percentage (low) and infection levels (high) means I’m going to be aiming for mask-mandate conventions only for the forseeable. Well, barring the next couple of months where I may as well take advantage of my new antibodies.