Well, I had this brilliant idea about trying to post every day from the Comic-Con in San Diego but as I configured my laptop to take along, something went kablooey and I suddenly had no operating system or files on it. Lovely. Fortunately, I have my old laptop to take along so I can work on assignments but I'm not sure I'll be able to post to this page from it. We'll see. If you don't see anything here from me until Sunday night, you'll know I couldn't do it.
As always, there are 7,342 things that absolutely have to be done before the convention. As the time ticks away, most will one by one fall into the categories of, "Well, maybe that one can wait 'til next week" or "Well, maybe I don't need to do that." This will get the list down to about 43, of which 41 will get done…except that halfway down the San Diego Freeway, I'll suddenly remember three more and — well, you get the idea. I'm still hoping they'll decide to delay the entire convention by a week but it's not looking good.
Every moment of my convention is booked with panels, meetings, meals, parties and something else I'm forgetting. Oh, right: Sleeping. Have to do at least a little of that. But I know I will miss checking in on the news three or four times a day as the Internet allows me to do when I'm home. Many years ago, when I was a major wallower in the Wonders of Watergate, I was away at a science fiction convention the weekend of the Saturday Night Massacre. It wasn't a bad convention, as I recall. There was then a short-lived trend that at the costume competition, at least a couple of women would show up without costumes — i.e., naked. I was 21 years old at the time and that was a big deal. Hell, it still isn't a small deal. But when I got home and found that I'd missed a fine chunk of Nixonian History, I wished I'd passed on that convention. In those pre-VCR, pre-C-Span, pre-cable days, if you missed something on TV, you missed it. I missed it. I recall thinking, "There will always, God willing, be more naked women…but how often do you get to see the entire Nixon Adminstration come unglued?"
So ever since, I make it a point to actually turn on the news while I'm at a convention or, more recently, log into a few news sites. I doubt I'll again see the likes of the Saturday Night Massacre. But the way things are going, it does look like G.W. Bush is going to have to throw out a few bodies any day now.
Back to packing…