In the Sunshine of Your Love

Just got back from the Eric Clapton concert. Now I am well and truly and utterly exhausted. I swear to god, tomorrow I'm not going to do anything but sleep and run to the grocery store. Oh, and post all about Utah, Writercon, and the concert, because I'm sure everybody is dying to know all about my week.

Writercon: Thursday. Or: I managed not to kill anybody.

And I mean that in the nicest way.

We woke up at 6:00 AM and left Utah at 6:15. The six hour trip down was very uneventful. We stopped in Filmore for gas and St. George for breakfast. The car never overheated and Jaime pretty much slept. We arrived in Las Vegas at about 12. I freaked out (as I always do in a strange city) and took the wrong exit. But it all worked out OK, except for the fact that my car did start overheating, and we had to crank up the heater and sweat was pouring down our bodies and making our clothes stick to our skin and we were getting a headache...

We couldn't find the Imperial Palace. rahirah said that she thought the Imperial Palace was built in crooks and crannies left over from the other nice casinos, and I think she was right. As a result, the entrance to the hotel and the entrance to the garage were next to impossible to find. Urge to kill...RISING. Finally, and I don't know how, we found the entrance, found the parking garage, and god help us, we found a parking spot.

Things are going a bit better, I thought, as we escaped the oven that had once been a car into the...oven that had once been a parking garage. We lug all our heavy bags towards the general direction of the elevator, and that's when we get our first hint that Something Aint Right.

The elevator took forever. In a simmering hot garage with heavy bags, forever takes on a new definition.

Now, I truly believe the Imperial Palace exists on a seperate plane of existance where dimensions have shifted and space and distance has no meaning. We entered the building through a door that was approximately 20 feet from the entrance of the casino. And somehow, we entered the hotel on the other side of the fucking building

Confused and exhausted, we wondered through the shops and then the casino. Loud, smokey, crazy lights and stupid fucking people. That must be the purpose of all the lights. It hypnotizes unsuspecting people into balls-out stupidity and they move like lobotomized sheep through the casinos. We finally pushed our way through the crowds and reach the Check-in Desk. Salvation is in sight. There's a clamp around my brain and my feet are on fire.

We stand in line. And we stand in line. And we stand in line. And we stand in line...and then we stand there some more. And then we stand there some more. My temper is growing short and the bags are growing heavy as the minutes grow long. Finally they call us over and we check in without incident, they give us our map, our keys, and our messages and it's only 1 hour after we arrived on the strip.

We trundled back through the casino, pushing our way through the sheep, and reached the elevators. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. I don't think we got to our room until nearly 20 minutes after left the check in desk.

The A/C was on full blast in our room, but it was in the hallway. The hallway was wonderfully cool. The rest of the room? Not so much.

We had a Luv Suite with a giant tub. Big enough for both of us with room to spare! I take a long bath, I have a cigarette, I have a rum and coke, and I start to feel a bit more human.

There's a meet and greet thingy scheduled at 4 at Tequila Joe's. We go back down the slow-ass elevators and run into...sadbhyl, xionin, and mydeira! We squeed. We hugged. We squeed some more, and hugged some more, then we all went on our way to TJ's.

We were a bit early, but a lot of people filtered in. It happened to be Happy Hour (thank god) and we all got a little tipsy. I'm not going to remember everybody I met, but here's a run-down of who I do remember.

wisteria_, thanks for the cigarette!
essene is like the cutest, sweetest, funnest person I have ever met. Seriously, it was like love at first sight (heh, does that sound creepy?). spiralled stopped and said hello. Did I meet soundingsea at the party too? I honestly don't remember. We'll say I did. sunnyd_lite is just the chirpiest person I've ever met. She's full of smiles and energy, and her user name is apt.

There was lots of "Have you seen nautibitz? Have you seen mrmonkeybottoms?" People kept saying "Yeah, they're around..." But I never saw them. :(

We stayed for an hour. Everybody was talking to everybody else, and I was just sitting there feeling sorry for myself. It was not their fault. I was still exhausted and grumpy and feeling a little sick to my stomach, so I went back up to my room for a few hours and hung out. I told Jaime he could go to the casino and do his thing and let me rest.

Around 8:30ish, we ventured to the con suite and met a lot more people there. If you were one of the people, I'm sorry I blanked on your name. "have you seen nautibitz?" "Yeah, she's around..."

Me, Jaime, xionin and essene decide to go back to TJ's and watch Kareoke on the off-chance that of running into Nauti there. Of course, she wasn't, so we made ourselves comfortable and watched the really bad, really, really bad, singing. There was an Elvis impersonator and a Neil Diamond (who had no sense of rhythm and sang the wrong song alltogether). We tried to get xionin to sing, but she said her throat was sore. One guy came over and asked Xio to dance and Jaime looked very possesive and agressive and the strange guy backed down. Having Jaime around is pretty useful most of the time.

We then retired to bed, a bit tipsy, a bit exhausted, a bit the worse for wear.

By the way, the beds are included on the list of "Everything That's Wrong with the Imperial Palace."

Writercon: Friday. It's all a blur

Neither of us were particularly hungry on Friday morning, but we dragged ourselves to the Tea Room for breakfast. We had about 90 minutes before the opening ceremony for the con started, and we needed every spare second. I won't go into all the boring details of the endless wait, the over-priced food, and the small portions, but at least it cost a lot of money and took up our entire morning.

We ran into sadbhyl, xionin, mydeira, and wisteria_ just as we were leaving the Tea Room and warned them that they wouldn't have time to eat breakfast there. Instead, they went to the "coffee shop", got some breakfast, and we all herded upstairs to the Royal Room A.

Honestly, I don't remember much of the ceremonies, and I don't remember what panels I attended at all. I'd have to pull my program out of the luggage, and I have no idea where it is. That's not to say the panels weren't interesting. I'm sure they were fascinating...they just got lost in the alcohol, I guess. Was the "Shades of Gray" panel on Friday...? LOL, wow, my memory sucks.

Oddly enough, my memory does include something I wasn't even there for. Kalima announced in a panel that all Fantasy/AU fic is pointless and people shouldn't read it or write it. Properly chastised, we all solemnly agreed to never do it again and furthermore, to have her sign-off on all future projects. Incidently, when I met her, she was perfectly polite and nice to me, though to be fair, she probably didn't know what I was.

At one of the panels, I ended up sitting at the table with Mary (you know, Journeys!) and allyv. It was the last panel of the day, and again, I'm sure it was fascinating...Anyway, afterwards Mary was all like "Do you want to go get some dinner?" and I was all like "SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I was supposed to lead the poetry slam at the Con Suite (Incidently, at this point, I still had not met nautibitz or even caught sight of her, though apparently everybody else had.)

So I blew off the poetry slam to have dinner with Mary and then later that night xionin said "Nauti was at the poetry slam and asking about you."

Well I would have felt bad about missing her, but I was eating dinner with Mary and Caro! "SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" We went to the Pizza Palace, and what a surprise! It mostly sucked! But the company most definitely did not suck. It was very, very awesome and we had a great conversation.

So I went up to my room to change for the cocktail party and realized I looked like a cross between a widow in heavy mourning and a bag lady. Something Had To Be Done. So we ran downstairs to one of the stores and bought a purple necklace and a purple silk scarf to complete the outfit, and I looked much better.

At the cocktail party, I met up with nautibitz finally! And lovebytez and mrmonkeybottoms. I really wish I could have spent more time with Love, actually. I don't know her from LJ at all, but I want to know her. It only took over 24 hours to meet them! We only chatted for a little bit because there were lots of people to chat with! I then spent some talking to pukajen and ascian3. They're both totally fucking awesome. I seriously could have talked to them all night, but my attention was diverted a few times.

Oh! Before I forget! I had the chance to talk to Jane Espenson a bit at the cocktail party before she went up to her room. She's the most amazing person. Really. If I were going to stalk somebody (and I'm not! I'm just saying if...) it would be her. I really wish I could have spent mroe time talking with her, but I think we all say that.

Oh, and I got a chance to meet redrover1980 who is both sweet as candy and fucking hot as sin. Seriously, she's gorgeous.

So at some point in the night, I fell into a rather serious conversation with rabid1st and allyv about Spike on S5 of Angel. Hopefully i convinced them to give S5 another chance...Apparently it looked so SERIOUS that nobody dared interupt us to even say goodbye before they went to the strip club! I wont' name names here, because I don't know if they want the world to know what animals they are, but man, I wish I had gone with them!

I think I turned in pretty early. Around midnight or so. Because, after all, I did need to spend some time with my husband. Oh, but before we turned in, I planned to meet up with allyv, rabid1st and Mary for breakfast at the ungodly hour of 8! (Can I say Squeee again?)

Writercon: Saturday. The Blur gets fuzzy

Around 7:30 I woke up and got dressed, intent on meeting Mary et al for breakfast at the Tearoom. I arrived at 8:00 and waited...and waited...finally just got a table for myself and this time decided to eat the buffet. It was better than ordering from the menu. Just as I sat down with my food, they showed up.

I have to say, with all honesty, that rabid1st, allyv, and Mary are three of the coolest ladies I have ever met. I never once thought "Man, this is boring." No matter the ebb and flow of our conversation, it was always interesting (to me). I hope I wasn't boring them to death, though I suppose that's very possible.

More panels I don't remember. I do remember Jane Espenson's q&a! Again, most awesomest woman on the planet. She verified that Spike went to get his soul (yes, that was still a topic of heated debate at the con), that she was against the AR, that Buffy loved Spike at the end, that she didn't agree with Joss's decision to have Spike say "No you don't..." She thought it didn't fit in with the finale, but Joss was enamored with the line, so it stayed. She said that they had a lot of fun putting in little moments between various ships and loved the gay subtext, that was also intentional. I definitely got the feeling that she was "one of us". A fan as much as anybody, and if she wasn't a writer, she'd be writing fanfic with the rest of us. She seemed to really enjoy us, and we all really, really enjoyed her. *sigh* I want to have her babies.

We went to dinner with essene and spiralled that night. We meant to go to the Luxor, but we only made it as far the MGM Grand because time was running short. It was $25 per person! GACK! But we were all starving and time was, as mentioned, runnign short before the erotica panel, so we just sucked it up and ate there. The food wasn't bad. I don't know if it justified the price, but it wasn't bad. We had a spirited discussion of many things including Angel/Cordelia. Again, must mention the general rockage of essene.

Then the erotica panel. That was interesting. Poor rabid1st had the balls to say she wrote for an audience and I thought they would attack her. Finally she was essentially forced to say she writes for herself more than for an audience. Apparently, it's a cardinal sin to write anything with an actual audience in mind. As though they only write for themselves. Puh-lease. If you write for yourself, and not to share or entertain an audience, you wouldn't post it online. Anyway, I don't know if it bothered her, but i was more than a little put-off by their reaction. And I thought things might come to blows again over the distinction between porn and erotica.

I did my workshop afterwards with xionin, Pattyanne, and William's Girl. Some really, really hot stories were created, and I really hope they continue with them (even if it isn't what they usually write...)Jaime sat in on it as well, and I think he even got something cooking! I hope so, because I'd love for him to start writing on a regular basis.

We went up to the consuite afterwards and Jaime then retired, but I stayed for an hour and talked to spikespet and tempestuouspixy. Sorry I didn't get that info to you ladies! Do you want me to email you? After that I went to bed because I'm a wuss and my bedtime is 1:30.

Except, I didn't actually get to sleep. Jaime was curious about some things I said in the workshop, so we ended up staying up until 2:30 discussing...well, a lot of shit that I'd normally discuss in a college class fully awake. I hope he learned something.

You know, I'm sure more stuff happened on Saturday but that's all I've got. I should have wrote this stuff down as it occurred, but I was very lazy.

Writercon: Sunday. It all comes to an end.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday....I slept in until 11:00, took a long hot shower, packed up, and checked out. I wondered down to the con rooms (or I guess, Up...) for lunch and ran into Mary again. This time they were all waiting to have lunch with nautibitz, lovebytez, and vixkitten. They invited us to join them, and I happily agreed.

That lunch rocked. We were all laughing so hard that I could barely eat. The real surprise of the day was that the buffet was actually decent, and worth the money we paid for it. We all went to the "Gay Me Up" panel (YAY! I remembered a name!) after that, and I couldn't keep my comments to myself. Fortunately, Mary didn't mind listening to me. I amused her greatly. :)

We went to another panel and then closing ceremonies. From there we went and had drinks with diachrony and her sister. We didn't get to spend much time with her over the weekend, but I'm assuming she had a great time. After that, I went up to the Con Suite and listened to sadbhyl read some intentionally awful fic by pukajen and ascian3. The truly horrible thing was that I remember reading that fic (and it was AWFUL) and I think I read the whole thing. Back in my indiscriminate things when I'd read anything.

We had to leave after that. The drive home was mostly uneventful. Just very long and very exhausting.

My general thoughts:
Fun, fun, fun. shaddyr did a great job with the consuite. chrisjournal did a great job keeping everything going smoothly. harmonyfb did a great job with the panels (and her hair looks fabulous too! Halloween hair suits her...) kellyhk kept us all safe and Kimi looked just as awesome and cool as ever. I never got a chance to talk to her at all, which made me kinda sad. dettiot was cute...she's more than cute, but every time I see her, all I can think is "She's so goddamned cute!"

All in all, I didn't have a single bad experience (except with the Imperial Palace itself...)Everybody was fabulous, and I made some great new friends. I can't wait to do it again!

Fanfic and vids

I have been mad inspired ever since the first day of Writercon. Epic stories, short stories, drabbles, all kinds of different pairings ranging from characters I wouldn't normally write to Spuffy. Het to slash to gen. Characters and situations that never interested me before are now on my mind.

On top of that, I had nothing to do while driving except think and listen to music. So of course, I have vid ideas popping up all over the place. Those are more problematic, because in some instances, I don't think I can get the footage. Of course, I was lacking sleep and a little hung over for the most part, so not all of them are genius ideas. (Why I wanted to make a Willow vid to "Cocaine", I'm not sure. I just remember thinking it was a great idea at the time.)

It's always something. I wish I could do some writing right now, but I'm sleepy and my neck still hurts like a motherfucker. I've had the heating pad on it all night, and get Jaime to rub my neck every time I can grab him. It's helped slightly. Pain killers don't really help. I'm going to try to get a massage tomorrow or Thursday. Maybe that will help.