It's a little hard to distinguish some of the Ms. Ethnic World contestants toting costume from con-goers. Except the ladies in question don't have con badges.

Darkside was Not There, as he'd gone off with Friends -- I probably should have called ahead, his father said. Yeah, I probably should have, but it was all right for me to make the trip there. There from here at the con site is not half as far as there from home base. And I felt like I needed to get some air.

I seem to have collected a bit of a fangirl. That amuses-and-delights me ever so greatly! I have a very small handful of amusing filksongs. It's evidently nice to have original and amusing material at circles.

Some complete random just came up to me to dump his squee about talking to OMG GREAT WRITER. He'd evidently been sitting HARD on his inner fanboy throughout the twenty-minute conversation, and had to talk to someone, anyone, including the random chick with laptop, about it lest he explode. The transaction has left him less in danger of going 'splodey, and me possessed of a bigger grin.

Fandom is a small enough community that I bet people on the Bujold list who know me online are here at the con right now and don't even recognize me. (And I don't even recognize them, because the badges? So not particularly readable. Or informative.)

I guess I would be getting more out of the con experience if I had more of a crowd (a few people are good; for someone like me, an active crowd is so much better) ... and partly, everything compares back to CTY. This isn't CTY. I should probably stop expecting it to be, but anything that isn't even approaching CTY is going to be a bit of an anticlimax. It may be delightfully fun and worth the repeating, but ... not what it could have been.