Day in the Life of an Idiot

In my mind, this week started a lot better than it did. I'd been looking forward to Mason being back at school so I could get back to my routine, particularly going to the gym (which I haven't done since December). BUT on Monday, Shawn had a bunch of errands to do, including one I had to come along for -- taxes. Our tax guy used to be our neighbor (he was a tax guy before being our neighbor,) and he's phenomenal. And gay. Which is actually kind of important since the Federal government doesn't let us jointly file, and he specializes in dealing with gay couples and their messy tax situations.

I've often thought that someone like Stephen Corbert should make the case that Republicans MUST support gay marriage to stop all the tax wonkiness we've been perpetrating all these years.

Today, I was sick. Like food poisioning sick, only (knowing true cases of food poisioning) fairly mild as such things go.

So I spent much of the day in bed (or the bathroom). I'd hoped to start the day at the gym and then settle in for some much needed writing time -- which I've mostly put on hold while Mason was on vacation.

Bleah.

I'm feeling better at the moment. I pulled myself into an upright position and to the coffee house, because now I have a caffiene headache on top of all the stomach yuck. I knew the folks here would be able to recommend a solution. I'm drinking a black tea that has fairly mild acid content, and so far so good.

I wanted to write down my impressions of MarsCON, because, dude, if you weren't there you missed out. I think MarsCON is becoming one of my favorite local conventions, not only because they had the wisdom and taste to have me as a Guest of Honor many years back, but also because a lot of writers show up. I finally got a chance on Friday night to hang out with Bryan Thao Worra (among other luminati like Catherine Lundoff, Mike [damn the badge policy of only first names], Rebecca Marjesdatter and swords_and_pens) and talk about Captian America and the rest of the gang at Marvel. As I told them at one point, I need to do this more often. I forget how awesome it is to hang out with "my people."

Probably the panel of most note was "Villany for Dummies" at 11:00 am in Krushenko's on the 13th floor of the hotel. naomikritzer and Kelly McCullough were the other panelists and I had just the magic amount of caffiene in my system to be in the right frame of mind for this particular panel. At one point one of the audience members tossed down Eric Heideman's glove as a challenge to Kelly when he suggested that rather than hire fashion designers to make our costumes (no capes!), we should just pick the cheaper and more plentiful costumers. Though no one actually broke into fisticuffs or stood on tables, it was much like the sort of panel where that could have happened.

Dude, where were you? You would have LOVED it!

naomikritzer did a fantastic job moderating. She fed our weirdness while keeping the whole thing from becoming, well, TOO weird and out of control.

Also, you missed me reading from RESURRECTION CODE at the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading, though probably I'll be reading from it again at a convention near you (hopefully) since it's the one book I have coming out this year that isn't going to have a major NY publisher's powerhouse publicity machine behind it. Also, by chance catherineldf read an awesome short story that also had an Egyptian theme.