hazelchaz | I guess I should have known by the way you parked your car sideways

Starting to put my Anime Expo 2004 pictures online. Click on the picture of

library_lynn in her new teddy bear ears to start thumbing through them. I took about 200 photos; I'll be putting them up about a day's worth at a time.

We got back from Armadillocon 26 safe and sound. Had a fine time. Little bit of culture shock - the convention is about the same size as Condor or Conjecture, but in some ways run completely different from how those science fiction conventions are run. I'll explain some of that as I go along.

The Texas fans at Armadillocon were very friendly. Their guests of honor included Sharon Shinn, Stan Schmidt, Barbara Hambly and Charlaine Harris, as well as Charles Vess (artist) and KD Wentworth (toastmaster) and myself.

We arrived Thursday afternoon; Kurt Baty picked us up at the airport. Austin has a brand spanking new airport, a good looking place. It even has an art gallery -- there's an exhibit tucked in between the shops and concessions. I'm told that on weekends, they even have live music performing! We missed that, of course, because we flew in and out on weekdays.

We decompressed in our room for a while.

library_lynn took a nap. I hung out in the Con Suite, which was the only thing going on, for a while, and then Chuck Siros drove me over to Eckerds (drugstore) to buy earplugs -- I snore a bit, and she likes to be able to sleep through the night. Then it was time for dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant in the shopping center across the street. This is Armadillocon's traditional pre-con committee/GoH dinner.

It struck me as odd as that the restaurant had set out an odd number of chairs at each table in our section! (Seven tables with five chairs each.) By the time

library_lynn and I got there, every table had one empty chair. I relocated one of the chairs to a different table so

library_lynn and I could sit together.

On the way out, we talked to the hostess for a minute or two. She was impressed that there was a convention across the street and that some of the real-live authors and editors had been eating at our restaurant. But while I was trying to tell her that it was worth giving Armadillocon a try, Lawrence Person was telling her all the reasons she (being a younger person) wouldn't enjoy it - no media programming, etc. (We forgot to mention that the main event Saturday night is a dance with live music -- I wish we'd thought of that.)

More later...