Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: NOT NEW ZEALAND. Instead, this is a picture from a scenic overlook near Stillwater, MN, of the St. Croix River.

I spent most of the day both yesterday and the day before, NOT "attending" WorldCON. In fact, when Mason admitted to feeling a deep yearn to go on a short road trip, I literally had him put his finger down as I flipped through a new book I bought called "Day Trips From the Twin Cities."

By chance, his finger hit the entry on Taylor's Falls, a town that we had spent some time near on our trip, last year, to Michigan. We'd stopped at the Interstate State Park there. We remembered the landscape as pretty and since Mason did not want to get out of the car at all, it seemed like a perfect destination.

So, we zipped up 35E to Highway 8 and followed that to Taylor's Falls. For those unfamiliar with my lovely state, Taylor's falls is only about an hour away. We crossed over into Wisconsin briefly to try to see if it was possible to see the falls of Taylor's Falls from the car, but it was not. So, we started down the river back towards home, but had a much better experience once we crossed back over and followed highway 95 through Marine-on-St. Croix down into Stillwater.


Image: old school "screenshot" with my phone because my asus was being a butt.

Exactly what we needed.

I did a little "attending" last night, however, since naomikritzer was up for a Lodestar (as, of course, was yhlee .)  I will tell you that was also somewhat of a disappointment. I mean, Naomi won! YAY!!  But, there were technical difficulties: https://watch.thefantasy.network/the-2020-hugo-awards-livestream/https://watch.thefantasy.network/the-2020-hugo-awards-livestream/  and so she had to stop and restart, and it was like that a lot last night? Plus, following various social media snark, I wasn't alone in thinking that George RR Martin went on a bit too long about the good, old days in between announcing the winners. If you have the patience to watch this whole thing, power to you. I didn't. I wandered off and did several other things, while checking into the Discord server now and again to see who was winning. By chance, I popped back on in time to see another Twin Cities denizen, elisem  win (yay!)

If you're curious who else won what last night, check out https://locusmag.com/2020/07/2020-hugo-lodestar-and-astounding-awards-winners/

After that, I stayed awhile to follow Naomi around to various parties, but I think many of us have forgotten how to people... or all the good conversations happened after I pooped out and went to bed (which, to be fair, again is pretty typical of my in-person WorldCON experience.)