I Went to Worldcon and All I Got Was These Excellent Friends – Part One
Well, and covid. Which is one reason why this update is a bit later than I had hoped.
The lead up to the convention was the usual flurry of last minute art prep, overpacking, and in my case fan lounge prep. I had already volunteered with Committee Care before being asked to run the lounge, and figured I could do both since the lounge is usually pretty low effort. This time, for reasons too tedious to get into, the lounge ended up quite a bit of stress actually, and sucked up a lot of pre-con energy plus most of my first day onsite. Definitely something I will be thinking about very carefully before doing again.
Luckily our first day was Wednesday! The train got us in mid-afternoon, giving us time to pick up badges (regular and staff) and finalist info, check on the Lounge, hang art, then get changed, and head into town for dinner at Shilling Brewing with some of Third Row and Lori and Kevin from Hugo, Girl! The pizza was excellent, and the beers varied, and it was a lovely way to start the convention.
Thursday was my only panel. My First Time at Worldcon. I was on it with (GOH) Claire Brialey, Alan Fleming, Scott Edelman, and Emily January as moderator. We covered a bit of our own experiences as first-timers and then opened up to questions – it was a fun lineup and felt like a good vibe, hopefully at least some of the audience found it also found it useful and/or enjoyable.
After the panel we scurried over to the Opening Ceremony, it was good but ran a little long so we skipped out before the end so John could go to programme and I could head back to the hotel to change while watching the Fan Funds auction online through the magic of streaming. Based almost entirely on reports of an ice cream sundae with a tunnocks cake on it, we chose the Islay Inn for a lovely dinner with Alissa and Andrew Wales, and the one and ony Tobes! Valois.
Friday I popped into the start of Abigail Nusbaum’s book launch before getting a text from Mette and Bryan who I had arranged to meet up with, I rushed back and got to spend some time with them and Warren Frey before heading out to run some errands in town. I got my costume shoes resoled, and also picked up some timbits and an excellent sausage roll from Mòr. God knows what happened to the rest of the afternoon, but in the evening we joined Claire and Mark for a lovely dinner at Dim Sum which was very good indeed and included haggis curry dumplings amongst other lovely treats.
Back at the convention I changed into my dancing shoes for the The Dance Party at the End of the Universe where Scalzi absolutely nailed it as usual, and when that finished I popped into the room next door for another hour or so of chatting with folks.