dagibbs | Ad Astra con report

I had a great time.

D & I started by travelling to Toronto Thursday evening, so we could go to the Eternal Egypt show at the ROM. It was very impressive, and great to see a lot of real pieces of the past, well presented. I'm glad we did it.

Some highlights of and commentary on the convention:

The Buffy sing-along on Friday night. I thought that setting the DVD to play in with close-captioning on was a bright move. It was especially nice, actually, in the duet portions where I finally got a clear idea of what the less front part was. mycrazyhair and carynb were smart enough to sit behind me, rather than in front of me.
jeffreyab's party on Friday night. While I consumed none of the contents, the bar was quite impressive including a selection of scotches. Many good attendees, and it was wonderful to see Kyle again, though I wish she could have spent more time at the convention. Associated several faces with lj userids at this party, where amusingly introductions were done in dual (name/lj user) for a while.
Finding out that corbet was not (David) Corbet.
Finally getting to meet srfsports. I am, now, back to having nobody on my friends list that I have not met in person.
Visitting the art show with D on Saturday. In fact, spending time at a convention with D was very nice.
While the DJ for the dance was quite... young... for the crowd, he did make valiant efforts. The dance was well-attended, and a lot of people were dancing and having fun. And the music was entirely to my liking, but there was enough in there that I liked, and enough more that I could dance to. It was very nice to dance with D, including switching from "clutch & shuffle" to "Rhumba" during a slow song that went on too long. And, playing with jacomothefool during "Like a Virgin" was great fun. He IS a dancing fool.
mycrazyhair's new corset.
I actually bought some books in the dealer's room, including the quarters series by Tanya Huff and, based on kgkofmel's recommendation, The Faded Sun trilogy by C.J. Cherryh. Coincidentally, both were guests at the convention, but that didn't influence my buying decision (except in that it might have helped by influencing the availability).
Dinner with "the horde" at Memories, a japanese restaurant, including the flaming tower of onion. I think we actually had 16 people for dinner, and I made it back in time to see:
the Heather Dale concert with D. Very enjoyable, inspired me to buy _May Queen_ from her on Sunday.
and hanging around in the hotel lobby on Sunday, chatting with various people as they wandered by, sat down for a while, or wandered off again.
The hotel was a bit sprawling, not so much for distance accross, but for the amount of little up/down bits. It looked very difficult to get around for anyone handicapped.