Views from Medina Road

The return home from World Fantasy Con in Washington DC went very smoothly, compared to the trip there; a direct flight that left on time with a first-class upgrade courtesy frequent flier miles. Landing in LA after a week's absence was like returning to a different planet: overcast and drizzly, temperature in the 40s--about as cold as LA usually gets. The fires have mostly abated, leaving over 3000 charred foundations in their wakes.

Cleared out 1000 spam emails from the past week but still have several dozen substantive emails to process for the website or respond to. Paper mail is more of a problem; I went to the post office before the trip and filled out a form to have mail held there, with cumulative delivery after my return--i.e., today. But today, no mail, no sign of the mailman, nothing. Grr.

We saw more of Washington DC than of the convention--Library of Congress, Supreme Court, a disappointingly brief Capitol tour, Air & Space and Natural History museums, National Gallery, in addition to places mentioned earlier. World Fantasy Con has programming, but programming isn't the focus it is at other cons; WFC is more about meeting people, catching up with old friends, making new contacts. Did all those things. The banquet featured a rather too-long toastmaster speech from Douglas Winter, excoriating various world fantasies from Madonna's book to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; a few in the audience winced at some of the political barbs, but mostly the crowd was with him. Almost all of the winners seemed quite surprised to have won; and it was an unusual award ceremony in that almost all of them were actually present. Y and I left as the applause died for the last of them, to catch a taxi for the airport, with no chance (we'd already checked out of the hotel) to post the list of winners to Locus Online before leaving. The ride and check-in went so smoothly, we sat at the gate for an hour before boarding began; but there was no Internet access there either, and so it was 10 hours later, after landing and driving home, before winners were posted.

Now I'm off to fetch my cat, Munchkin, from the sitter...