Heaven is a woman dressed in blue, and heaven is knowing someone who's in love with you. Heaven is

Loscon 32 photos are online. Click on the picture of myself and library_lynn to see them. (Full disclosure: we're on page 7 of 16.)

Loscon. This was the convention I was supposed to take it easy and sit at my animelosangeles table all day... I was responsible for getting two parties off the ground. The first one, for Kansas City in 2009 (the "Redheads from Hell"), we really should have put the word out to get more people to help. In fact, that's my biggest weakness. So I'll mention right here and now: Next weekend I'm running an laconiv party at Philcon in Philadelphia, and I could use some more help, please.

Tadao Tomomatsu, Lynn, and I ran the party. We had a shortage of redheads -- a few did turn up, like Arlene -- but we don't have hot and cold running redheads at L.A. conventions the way Kansas City does. So Lynn got this red animé-style wig, and she wore it during the party. ( When she went to bed, we stuck it on Tadao for a while... )

Let's see. Cookies, beef smokies in barbecue sauce -- Thanks to Caroline Smeby and Patricia Engel, two young fans who are new to science fiction conventions but have been to many animé conventions, for helping set up the party as well. They prepped the smokies. (And didn't get back to the room that night early enough to have any -- we ran out some time after midnight. They're both adults, that is they're over 18, or we might have asked for a "midnight check-in" like we would have done with Maria when she was 17... They were staying with us, and they'll be working on the Live Program for animelosangeles. But I digress.) We had the sausage cheese biscuits -- I made them with shredded cheddar (Smart and Final only had the mild pre-shredded), Bisquick, and Jimmy Dean Hot bulk sausage; I want to tweak the proportions on the next batch I make, they were a bit chewy for biscuits. I might even (shock, horror) have to add a 4th ingredient... That was about it.

Sometime in the wee hours, Marty Massoglia came up and paid for a pre-support. I wish we'd had extra people and had set up an obvious sales table with someone to pitch all the reasons you should pre-support and vote for Kansas City in 2009; we might have sold some more pre-supports, and perhaps a t-shirt or two as well. And we could have done something with the buttons and the temporary tattoos they sent us...

At 2:00 am, I was beat. I'd stayed up Wed. and Thu. night until 3:00 am, and gotten up before 11:00 am the following mornings, so I wasn't getting my eight hours of sleep, and I was so tired I didn't even want to stick around and direct other people to clean up. (Another habit I've got to change; I need to clean as I go, including getting the crocks soaked or washed as soon as they're empty, and to start tidying up in earnest at midnight. And Philcon's only going to be a one-night stand, with stuff being packed back up to ship home... gotta get this right. I'm going back on the road, in general, the following season -- Arisia and Capricon are on my list, and I might do Lunacon too.)

Saturday: Chaz overextends himself and scares those nearest and dearest to him. But that's another post.