I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do. Don't want a doll, no dinky

I made it through several conventions, including being in charge of loscon's con suite, unscathed. And Lynn and I are starting to mail out our Christmas cards. For the past few years, we've been including a photo newsletter with our cards. If we're already exchanging Xmas cards, you'll get one of these in the mail real soon now; otherwise, here's a chance to see what we've been up to over the past year.

animelosangeles's pre-registration is very strong -- we have 247 members so far. That may not sound like a lot for a convention less than 2 months away, but it's more than 80% up from our numbers of a year ago, when we had 1346 total members. We've got a cap of 1800 members for Saturday, so I expect we'll be turning away about 300+ people on Saturday and telling them to come back on Sunday...