Things move on. Yesterday there were 5 day lilies. Today there are 4.

Horsepeople rejoice! Champagne is real! http://bangornews.com/news/t/lifestyle.aspx?articleid=168474&zoneid=14

Last night managed about 10 hours sleep, and woke up tired, more coughs than seneezes. Boo.


I forgot to share the neat personal piece of art I got at Denvention from Mr. Howard Tayler, who sat not 5 feet from me in the front row of my first panel (I was moderating, but the crew was bold so that was good) of the con, scribbling away the while. We first met Howard at PenguiCon, or maybe it was at Trin*o*con ... some time back... and it was good to have him at the panel...



and this is not a good day to send us an urgent email since we'll likely nap through it.

V quickly..
last night the Friends of Liad struck, pulling a birthday cake (for me) out in the midst of a catering fiasco caused by overzealous hotel staff ... yes, my birthday was last week, but we were so busy getting ready for the con that we didn't have my traditional devil's food cake... last night, I had it...wow! Thanks crew!

The con has been enlivened by a tornado warning, great panels,and goood friends. The train arrived in Denver two hours late on Tuesday and somehow we've been a little behind ever since...

off to the dealer's room, will check in later.

Our most recent trip to the vet left Mozart unhappy with me, but with some medicine, and then Sharon took him home while I wandered off to the PO to try to get a bunch of supplies and books properly posted so we can have them at Denvention.

Note: this trip will mark the 34th anniversary of my first Worldcon trip. Today's icon shows me prepping for that trip, the photo was taken at the UMBC SF Research Collection's quarters, lovingly called the bowling alley by those who worked there. The mostly complete Lee & Miller schedule for Denvention can be found... on Rolanni's blog... http://rolanni.livejournal.com/348746.html

I've spent about 5 hours in the last few days getting my pre-paid cellphone minutes registered; I'd re-upped a few months ago and just recently noticed that the phone was still showing that it would time out about the time we'd be eating dinner on the train out of Albany on Sunday. I'm slightly dyslexic; imagine my absolute joy at navigating a series of "press these numbers (a list of 20 numbers followed) in this order then press *# 43 OK and after that press *#42, select code and put {this list of 20 numbers}" ... and in the midst of one such batch the phone ran low on battery power so I had to do it all again, having not noticed the battery level. Huh, obviously I am someone who uses the cell rarely .. but that's because where I live there are lots of places with no signal at all. I still don;t have texting set up on the phone, am will work on the voice mailbox later today, cross fingers. So after dealing with all these number pages and etc it appears I magically have around 30 hours of prepaid talk, which ought to hold me, I guess.

Today's lily count: 3

You didn't ask, but: I've been quite pleased with http://www.jamendo.com/ ... free music, and user supported music, is good.

Space music? Well, here's one I have on now ... http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/28532

Duainfey was posting a 35,000 plus rank earlier at amazon, and now is running around 29,000 and change ... keep on ordering! On bn.com., alas, the numbers were in the 80,000 range, sigh...

We like to have our train tickets in hand before we head out for the station: an old habit. So today I ordered the tickets for our trip to Denvention, figuring that, with other convention in town that week and operatives moving in ahead of time for the Democratic Convention (which is in town a couple week after us), room on board might get tight.

So I went through with the deal and found space on-board... and discovered that AMTRAK will permit us to pick up the tickets at the station or ... they will charge us $15 for Express Mail delivery. Got to be someone here to sign for them -- Priority isn't good enough... sigh. I feel so secure.

I am not pleased. On the other hand I'm not driving 2200 miles (each way) in high summer just to object.

So far then: we have ordered tickets. We have reserved rooms. We have put in motion requests for party space. We're looking to have a Friends of Liad breakfast. We have each sent off a bio. We have made preliminary arrangements for cat sitter. We have each sent of a photo, we have begun planning what me might read since ... Duainfey will come out at the end of August (or early September) and not the beginning.

I was also going to start my walking tomorrow, so I'll be in decent shape for the Mile High City. On the other hand, there's snow in the forecast, so I did a short walk today, and rescued Santa Claus to boot.
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Amended to add: It looks like, given baggage limitations, that I may need volunteers to bring some items with them to Denvention. If you are going to be driving to the con
and might have room for a box or two around 10X18X11 or 12X12X10 (approximates)and under 30 lbs... let me know. Thx!

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