I'm going to regret this tomorrow

So today's been a bit weird. I'm not entirely sure it was worth me staying and work paying for me to stay past 3.00pm, but I did and they did, and I found some things to do, but was really just marking time. Work was fairly busy until 3.00pm, so that helped. I got stuff done.

Currently, it is a perfectly normal hour for me to be awake if I didn't have anything on tomorrow, but since I will be getting up earlier than normal work time so I have time for a shower and breakfast before reg desk at 8.00am. I have been to bed and got up again, because my brain would not shut up and I'm trying to stop thinking.

There are still quite a few people up and about - they're all dressed, while I am in fuzzy socks, pyjamas and a jumper. I'm not going over to talk to them, because I don't quite feel that awake. I did try reading for a bit, but I left my glasses (and my name tag) upstairs, and don't want to chance waking any of the others until I actually feel I can sleep. And the nice man at the bar gave me a hot water even though they had closed, so hopefully that will help.

At least the hotel wireless is working spendidly for me.

The con so far:

I went to the book launch of A Foreign Country, which is an anthology of New Zealand speculative fiction. There are people I know in it and the stories look pretty good. The editor made a nice speech about it, the cover art was admired, and one of the authors read her story from the anthology, as it was one of the shorter pieces in the book. I was asked to take photos, but there were people there with far more professional cameras than my point-and-shoot digital, so hopefully those will get passed onto the concom and mine can be deleted as appropriate.

I also went to the opening ceremony. The main speaker was very energetic and enthusiastic, and it was more or less what you would expect an opening speech for a con to be, with self-and-other depricating comments, asides from the audience, and lots of laughter (apart from the tequila, which I wasn't quite expecting). The trailers for the long-film entries to the Julius Vogel awards followed. I spent some time on the reg desk before it was closed and then crashed for a bit.

And now I'm here, and awake, and why is this the case?

More about Au Contraire

So I suppose I should do this while I am still awake. I am now at home and tonight I sleep in my own bed.

This morning I was up about 6.30am and maudlinrose and I made our way to Floriditas for some excellent eggs benedict and a flat white (for me) and a cup of hot chocolate (for her) before making our way back to the hotel and spending the next couple of hours on the registration desk. Also, the hotel's wifi failed, but we weren't sure if it was the hotel wifi or my laptop, so I spent the next hour or so trying and failing to sort out the internet. I believe they ran out of ip addresses or something.

Wandered through the floating market and bought The King's Bastard by Rowena Cory Daniells because a) it was the cheapest thing on that table b) the bookseller, whom I trust, recommended it, and c) it's signed.

The panels/discussion groups after lunch were what I was most interested in today: geek crafting (bring your own handwork or learn to knit a tribble); fanfic cliches (a general discussion on cliches in fanfiction); Queer SF (a panel with Elizabeth Knox and Cheryl someoneoranother); instant crossovers (put names into a hat, go up individually or in pairs, draw out two names and make up stories about how they meet).

Geek crafting was as expected and I did beadwork there and through everything else I had on that afternoon. Fanfic cliches got derailed several times by an earnest young man who knew a lot about Japanese monster movies and not much else; other movie/book/television cliches were also discussed. Queer SF was interesting, and I found it interesting that for Elizabeth Knox, the point of the romance between the angel and the vinter in The Vinter's Luck was the cross-species aspect and not the fact that they could both be defined as male. I've not read or seen the movie of this book, so can't comment further. I might get around to it at some point. Contributed to instant crossovers, but feel it would work better in a more fandom specific gathering, such as get_together, particularly since then they can all end with people sleeping together (particularly if one of the parties is Captain Jack Harkness or Captain James Kirk or both).

Along with jessikast, tamarillow and maudlinrose, went to Flying Burrito Brothers for dinner and two pitchers of frozen apple margaritas between the four of us. That was good. Then the others headed off for their things, and I wandered up to Hell with callie.

We went to the masquerade and one woman had the most amazing outfit of Agatha Heterodyne as Cinderella, which was very impressive.

Afterwards, I wasn't required for anything, so eventually made my way home, and from there hence to bed, which is the plan now. At least I'll be able to sleep tonight.