At The NORWESCON. :-)

.....At this moment I'm more-or-less ending the day in a concert in the Evergreen Rooms 1 & 2, listening to the band 'Starlight'. They are a five member group doing a little filk, a little folk and a little bit of a lot of cool music. The Evergreen Rooms are right above the free WiFi area (the Coffee Shop), so I thought I would take advantage of the music and the WiFi by catching up in Live Journal.

.....As usual I find NORWESCON rather inspirational from a number of different viewpoints. The primary being the passion for arts and sciences from a uniquely different place than I see from the SCA. People in SciFi / Fantasy Conventions are just as passionate about their forms and expressions of artwork as anyone in the SCA. After a year of being immersed in the SCA viewpoint, I find this different viewpoint a refreshing change of pace. It's a nice way to sort of 'cleanse the pallette' of the mind before the hectic June Faire season starts.

.....I love coming in on Wednesday night. Moving into the room with absolutely no stress. No crowds. No pressure. Very relaxing. We actually spent some time in the hot tub and relaxed. The work cell phone never even buzzed, and I felt absolutely no desire to call into work and find out what was happening. :-)

.....Thursday was also relatively low stress. The programming started later this year than usual, around 4PM. I heard that this was a suggestion made the previous year from the fact the people seem to be waiting in line for an hour or two to capture their badges for the weekend, on top of the fact that most people are moving into their rooms on Thursday. It made sense, but it made for a rather slow day.

.....TBT and I did go and see the Opening Ceremonies. I was surprised by Kinuko Craft, the Artist Guest Of Honor for the weekend. She had a lot of interesting things to say about people breaking into the paying world of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I made a mental note to see if I could listen to more of what she had to say later.

.....Patricia McKillip, the Author Guest of Honor had interesting things to say. She is a very down to earth person and I made a mental note to seek out a panel or two with her on it. I have read a number of her books, including the Riddlemaster of Hed, and enjoyed them. She doesn't seem to age at all! She is at least as old as my mother and looks to be my age, and still churns out books on a regular basis. I need to remember to get my McKillip books autographed by her tomorrow. :-)

.....Today was much busier. TBT and I went to a panel on 'The Business of Art' first thing. I think that TBT gathered a lot of validation from listening to the panelists talk about how they produce their artwork from home. The takeaway for me I think was that if you are doing something you love for a living you can throw out the concept of an 8-hour workday. All the panelists talked about working sometimes for eighteen or twenty hours at a stretch to finish a project they were working. It wasn't something that stressed them out. It was just 'something they did'.

.....Went to at least one panel on novel writing. Not much new on that one except for the fact that I'm one year older and am still not working on a novel. Need to get on that one eventually. :-)

.....Followed that one with a discussion about the concept of 'the Cloud', or the virtual network. The panel consisted with concept designers from Google and Intel. It is amazing the paradigm shift were undergoing these days. Even though I don't consciously relize it I am struggling with the shift from having information and 'things' that I hold in my hands to a time and place where everything I hold valuable and dear to me will be 'virtual' and stored somewhere that can be accessed by others. The concepts under discussion were very amazing to me. Not necessarily from the standpoint that they were unknown, but that I had never looked at the information from the point-of-view discussed. Ethics in the world are about to undergo a major overhaul and where they end up is still in the development stage. Think of a world where the very concept of 'privacy' is virtually non-existent. Very mind-blowing it was.

.....Went to the Movie Previews after lunch. Didn't see anything I hadn't already seen. But I did see some clips from the upcoming movie 'Thor' that convinced me that I wanted to see it, not matter how campy it turned out to be. Lots of Super Hero movies upcoming. I think that people are wanting some more heros to save the day. :-)

.....More disturbing news on The Hobbit and Peter Jackson's 'editing'. Sigh. New characters added to the story. Sigh! I wish Peter would stick to movie-making and let people who actually understand Professor Tolkien do the writing. Just sayin'.

.....Went to a panel on the Seattle Museam of the Paranormal. They tried very hard to be objective in what they said and showed. But I left the presentation not wanting to go and pay the place a visit as the people running it are not the most rational. But I may have to walk in and check the place out the next time I'm on the Seattle waterfront. It is right across the street from Safeco Field, in one of the old Office / Warehouses there.

.....Then I spent the rest of the day and evening listing to Bardic Music in the Evergreen Rooms. A nice relaxing way to end the day. May have to work on getting a few of these groups to come to June Faire if possible. :-) I loves me some good bardic music, even if it is the deaded 'filk'. Good music is good music and it doesn't matter if it is filk or not.

.....Debating whether or not I have enough energy to make it to the midnight showing of 'Rocky Horror' It is something of a tradition for me, but I'm having a difficult time staying awake now. I might not make it until midnight, much less the two hours of movie and entertainment involved.

.....Saw Alys Firekeeper today. It was good to see her. She is working as something of an Executive Secretary to a couple of motivational speakers / authors who live in the San Juan Islands. She lives in a room in their house and basically is their 'go to' person for all their needs as they travel around the country. Sounds like a good gig.

.....Saw Bjorn today as well and spoke to him briefly. Saw Mir this evening at the Bardic. Melusine and Wade were spotted earlier, as well as Xenos. Tsuruko has done a fantastic job at all the panels she's been on. There's been a big SCA presence at NORWESCON this year, it's been great to see.

.....They are about to clear out the room to set up for 'Rocky Horror', so it is time to shut down. I should check my e-mail, but am reluctant. I don't really want to see 'the Real World' after several hours of good, escapist, music. Maybe I'll wait until the morning to open e-mail. :-)

.....Zzzzzzzz.

.....Aaron / Arontius.