Mental Health Day

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Sometimes we need mental health days. In my case, right because I have no mind yet, after peopling intensively for three days.

But …. But it got me thinking.

We all need respite, and ways to decompress.

Sometimes things are so big and looming so dark, and it’s impossible to see past them, but we still need a place to go mentally.

Mostly, to no one’s surprise, I like to day dream.

If things are worrisome, say in the money way, yeah, sometimes I buy a lottery ticket. this is not so I can win and solve my problems — well, the most I’ve ever won was $600, okay? — but so I have the right to dream about all the things I’ll do with the money. If I buy it early and delay checking the numbers, that can be a whole week of daydreams and feeling secretly rich.

However of course there are other worries, and money doesn’t solve everything, because often money is not the problem. Even a lot of money can’t buy us a restoration of the Republic. (Though I cheer Elon Musk on in his attempt.)

So what do you do then? Well…. I read. And write.

Going into a reality where the good guys win, where freedom is restored and where the future is better than the past is a good way to escape and restore your balance.

…. which I guess is my way of announcing I’m working on the reissue of Darkship Thieves, and there will be a hardcover edition, yes.

I’m also still recovering from peopling.

So, there will be an AAR on Liberty Con tomorrow. And for today, I’m going to work on publishing and editing, and maybe finally finish the Malta story.

104 thoughts on “Mental Health Day”

  1. Did you read my post about needing a vacation before you wrote this? Talk about timely.

  3. Hi Sarah! This is for anyone interested, although our hostess’s account will necessarily be somewhat different. There were more of us long-time denizens of this blog’s comment section at LibertyCon than just Sarah. If any of y’all are interested about the convention just past, ask us and I’m sure more than just me will regale you with only slightly embroidered recounts of the weekend.

      1. Well now! Let me think. I won’t do a moment-by-moment commentary, no one would want that. 🙂 One thing I noticed was that we had a lot of first-timers there, as a percentage probably a fairly large bit more than most SF conventions. Of course, the only way you could tell LC attendees were first-timers was the mildly overwhelmed looks on their faces, the “first-timer” tags on their badges, of their hands held up when Brandy or Toni asked for first-timers at some of the all-hands sessions. But at LC, that really doesn’t mean all that much to anyone else, thery’re family just by stepping through the doors. As someone else mentioned, that goes for pros/fans, too, there’s no class distinctions made, everyone mingles pretty much completely. For example, you can find big-name authors playing spades with first-timer fans, in the lobby. In. The. Lobby. Try that at any other con, see what happens. Here, it’s pretty much standard.

        Again, this isn’t something I said first, but LC is sort of like a family reunion, just with people you like, not people you’re related to. 🙂 One neat (to me at least) thing about LC is that (so far as I could tell) next to none of the panels or other sessions is scripted or choreographed. Another “for example”: I was scheduled to be on the first of four panels dealing with the topic of “Establishing an Enduring Presence on Mars.” Our panel was to deal with “Mission.” I asked Jeff Greason, the panel moderator and a REALLY experienced presence in commercial space and innovative propulsion design, what that meant, what we should talk about. His answer was, “Beats me.” So we went up and basically riffed for an hour, me and a bunch of scientists and techies. But out of that has come the beginnings of an effort to do some serious experiments on how to (and if it’s even possible to) inoculate Martian regolith with a bouquet of terrestrial biologicals to attempt to create something like an analog of a terrestrial biome in situ to allow permanent agriculture on Mars.

        As I said in another panel, this one pushing our group (the Interstellar Research Group) to folks who may not have heard of us before, “This is how SF fans do science!”

        1. Unfortunately, I’m a no-timer for LC, so far. Didn’t know about it until after my father passed away, otherwise I could have scheduled attendance during my trips down to visit Dad. Now I’ll have to squeak it in drivign down to visit my brother in Texas, and selling it to spouse as a bit of entertainment and break from driving. 😉

        2. You can even get away with teasing the big names as a newbie. 😏

          At the Young Adult panel, David Weber was discussing how when he writes YA, he makes the writing structure more straightforward.

          Me: “So you wouldn’t put a chapter on the history of hyperspace travel in the middle of the climatic battle?”

          He laughed.

          2. Funny thing is: When I read that in On Basilisk Station I realized the time it took me to read that blurb was probably the same amount of time it took HMS Fearless to bring her impeller wedge fully online. 😉

      1. I’d never heard of LibertyCon, and don’t really have any idea what it’s about. A guest post and Sarah’s AAR will be a real treat for me.

      2. Point. But if we do that, I think it wouldn’t hurt to have it cooperatively written by me and at least one or two more attendees who are also regular (if occasional) posters her. Dorothy Grant, David Burkhead, others, come on down!!!

        1. I was there, though between a lengthy pregnancy-induced nap on Friday, the time-sink of the Masqerade on Saturday, and needing to leave early on Sunday, I missed a lot.

          But even just hanging out in the Con Suite and chatting with random folks who became new friends was awesome.

        2. I got home last night. Today, I am barely interacting with people, and putting my house in order. (Clean my room? Clean my whole house! Jordan Peterson is right – there is something very soothing about turning chaos into order, especially after being completely peopled and not in my usual habits.)

          Besides, the feline stress levels drop dramatically when the Luggage of Feline Lamentation +2 is put away on a high shelf.

          That said, um, con AAR in a nutshell: AAAAAAAAH PEOPLE!!!

          Slightly longer version: Thu-Sun morning, running on adrenaline from people staring at me and caffeine, hugging everybody I knew and could recognize (And some people lost a lot of weight, some people gained a lot of weight, some people went grizzled and grey… or completely white… visual recognition unreliable, names on con badges way too small, but fortunately, is Con. Nobody gets offended if you stare at their chest; they know you’re trying to read the name tag.)

          Lots of hugs. Years of missing hugs to make up for. And many, many face to face conversations, including with people I only knew online prior, so it’s really interesting to finally meet and get body language feedback on a conversation instead of dry text. In fact, didn’t even get to a panel until Saturday, because I was too busy talking to people.

          Which is sad because the panels at LibertyCon are amazing – unlike other cons where the panels tend to be the same into stuff and fan debates, here you have way too many actual scientists and variety of authors to let things be static. The “How would we actually establish a presence on Mars” panel is one I am very sad I missed, because they took 4 hours and broke it down into biota, habitat technology, etc. No bumper-sticker-responses to questions here!

          But it’s the sort of con that when someone next to me grumbled, “What’s with all the cancelled flights?” and I responded, “Do you want the short, easy, and wrong answer, or do you want the long, true answer?” …They were willing to take 15 minutes to “Let’s start back in 2014. It actually starts after the Everglades crash of ValuJet in ’96, but the tipping point that started the ongoing complete industry collapse came in 2014 as repercussion from the report on the Colgan Air crash.” Because yes, the person in the sarcastic t-shirt or the ballgown or cosplay costume just might be a Subject Matter Expert who’s here to blow off steam.

          You see that sort of thing all over LibertyCon, from Orbital mechanics and price point to orbit resulting in interesting design choices to a breakdown on the failure of implementation that is the Littoral Combat Ship (I actually had to look that up to remember the correct acronym instead of Little Crappy Ships. I am a cat of very little brain!) to a deep dive (involving actual neuroscientists!) on the link between migraines and epilepsy, to fungal species necessary for seed germination to…

          And sometimes these discussions are even on panels, instead of just in the halls, in the bar, in the dealer’s room, in the City Cafe of the Cake Rack of Glorious Diabetic Doom!

          There was also plenty of things I didn’t even get to, like the painting of minis, and the costuming, (You know you’ve run into really high level expertise when Jonna Hayden says “I am going to notify this corset company that they drafted their pattern wrong for this size and up; I’m tired of seeing them wrong and having to be fixed.” Yes, the person sitting in the craft room designs and builds entire costume sets for operas and ballets, and she’s sitting right there with a pin cushion named “Stabitha” and willing to talk to those of use who can usually point to the right end of the needle for the thread two times out of three. On a good day.

          And I still need to apologize to Martin Shoemaker, because the panel on weird west, the light behind the panelists had a ballast going bad, so looking at them directly was stabbity-stabitty-bad-migraine-inducing, but I really wanted to hear the panel, so I spent the entire thing staring fixedly at my phone and probably looking like I was completely tuning them out.

          But! I did get to congratulate Kary English, as the announcement was made at the con, and rumour is true! She’s been tapped to pull a Brandon Sanderson and complete Dave Farland’s Runelords series!

          My Sunday panel, cross-genre writing… it went way off the rails. Turned into my love actually opening up enough to start telling some incidents in dryest British humour, while Larry Correia and the audience howled with laughter. Despite knowing each other for over 20 years, Larry clearly hadn’t heard the one before that ended with:
          “The head nurse put up a sign that read ‘The first 5 minutes of life are the most dangerous!’
          …She’d barely left before some wag added in sharpie ‘The last five minutes are a bit dodgy, too.'”

          You know what? At that point, I’m just going to sit back, and let Larry, Jim Curtis, and Peter top each other, and drink my tea. Because thread drift is a way of life.

          1. I have two buttons that say, “Hi! I can’t remember your name, either.”

            2. LOL @ “Hi! I can’t remember your name, either.” I need one of those buttons.

              I used to get embarrassed about not remembering names, and I’d feel like I was the only one that had to pretend I hadn’t forgotten. One day, a few years ago, I decided to turn it from a social bete-noir into part of my identity.

              Now, when introductions happen with people I’m likely to meet later, I always say something like “by the way, I will forget your name,” with an assurance that I do actually tend to remember who people are. Some folks laugh, others say “fair enough,” and the majority say something along the lines of “oh my gosh, same here.”

          3. Waot, what happened that blew up the airline industry? I stopped flying regularly after about 2013, so I managed to completely miss all of that.

            1. ) Extremely short summary: new regulations put in after Colgan crash broke the training pipeline, and the supply of airline-transport rated pilots. The crunch was getting so bad the cracks were VERY OBVIOUS inside the industry in late 2019, and accelerating into a death spiral by early 2020.

              2.) Then, when the airlines were first informed that entering reactions to the shots into VAERS was voluntary instead of highly mandatory like for every other vaccine out there, then told not to enter any incidents at all if they were covid-vax related…
              Pilots lose their career if they can’t pass their medicals, which at that level are every six months. Knowing that in an extremely regulation-bound industry, the companies were being told not to abide by mandatory regulations, standard paperwork and incident tracking, made pilots extremely suspicious and scared for their medicals, and many took voluntary retirement or chose to be fired rather than take the risk of unknown side effects that were being actively hidden and losing their entire way of life if their number came up.

              3.) But because of the drop in flying, the general public didn’t see the collapse until flying picked back up in 2022. At this point, the system is so fragile any major storm system or other disruption will cause cascade failure because there’s no flex left.

              …while I could rant about it in depth and with military punctuation (and have, privately, to friends), I decline the opportunity to paint a big target on my back and wave a neon sign inviting bureaucratic retaliation, thank you. No guest post here.

              Instead, I have my tiny little niche, and work as hard as one little cog in the entire failing system can to keep it going.

              1. Lord. This describes EVERY SYSTEM I KNOW OF, from publishing to health to engineering to, particularly, law.
                ALL OF THEM. And these effects are from things these bozos did not even as a main thrust. And that’s why the great big take over will never happen. We’ll collapse and rebuild first.

            2. Not just a shortage of pilots, some of the problem is airplanes not getting to where they’re supposed to be. One canceled flight leads to another, and another, when the plane is left sitting at the wrong airport.

          5. I’m actually curious on vj. Post 911 consolidation, the government regulation safetyism (if we make it harder to enter industry we make it safer) and the general covidiocy I get but vj was hazmat transport.

            1. Prior to the ValueJet crash, the mission of the FAA was to protect the safety of and to promote the growth of aviation. If you look at that and see a bureaucratic civil war impending between two factions…

              Well, I’ll just note that after ValueJet, the mission of the FAA is now “Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.”

              clears throat I would certainly never say anything to attract the ire of a large and vindictive governmental bureaucratic agency while posting under my real name. I’ll just let you draw your own conclusions.

              1. Ah. Ok. I get exactly where you’re coming from. Just never heard it attached there.

                1. I had excellent mentors from the losing side. Like learning about Simon Bolivar, Castro, & Pinochet from mi mama instead of the history the US media wrote, let’s just say that the oral history of the survivors who were there and the official party line have… very little.. in common.

              2. And of course, to a government bureaucrat, ‘efficient’ means centralized top-down authoritarian control. The more bureaucrats involved, the more efficient it will be! What could go wrong?
                ———————————
                They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

          6. I think that was my favorite panel of Sunday, even if tangents were more common and you said little. The Science Fiction, Mystery, and Noie panel Larry was at before that with David Weber, Julie Frost, Jacob Holo, and Marisa Wolfe was a close second; it wasn’t as much fun but stayed on topic better. Slightly better.

          7. You’ve got me missing the M&M cake already! Hopefully next year I can actually manage to swing a membership and do more than just happen to be in the area. Especially if the escape succeeds by that point since going that way would be just a little inconvenient without one…

    3. The names on the badges were so small and so hard to read that it was pretty hard to even recognize fellow commenters since in most cases we have no idea what they look like. So what with that and social anxiety plus introversion, it wasn’t exactly easy to connect.

      Nonetheless, the con had a lot to offer and I will probably go again. Though traveling really sucked. It feels like the whole airline/travel industry is totally melting done.

      1. True enough. But some advice for next time–don’t worry about staring at someone’s badge for their name. Heck, none of us really expect anyone to recognize us instantly from a distance. Even Sarah, I bet. For me, even up close, even when my name’s been read. Well, probably not Larry Correia, but if you can’t recognize him even from a distance you’re probably legally blind. 🙂

          2. Orvan did have distinctive shirts that made him easy to spot out of costume if you knew what to look for. Herb mentioning one was how I saw and met him!

    1. AAR = After Action Report.

      In this case, a report on what Sarah did/saw at Liberty Con.

    2. I didn’t know either. But, like school, I figured it would make sense when Sarah wrote something.

    4. It’s all my fault! I’m rubbing off on her!

      ..Actually, I don’t know if I’m the one who taught Sarah that military acronym. I still proudly claim teaching her FIDO – Fck It, Drive On (usually said with a hand motion indicating getting the hell out of there and leaving whatever clusterfck – ah, whatever very complicated and badly messed up incident – behind you in your dust.)

      scampers off, tail high with feline mischief

        1. grins I’ll fight him for it!

          Aw, who am I kidding. If I challenged him to a duel, he’d probably choose as his place and weapons who can best build a deck with power tools and structurally overengineered designs. Or something equally awesome and impossible for me to pull off. With an alternate of claymores is waist-deep ocean water. (His waist, not mine, to make it even more “fun”!)

  6. Every day, the sun comes up.
    The goose looks up.
    Amazed at the blaze.He spreads his wings,
    Honks heavenward; the goose he sings,
    at the dawning of the day.
    A goose in a new world.

  7. To quote an old add: You deserve a break today!
    The lottery ticket is funny to me as I do the same thing. My dreams are never winning the whole thing but just a million bucks – I then mentally distribute the cash and have fun with the day-dream. It’s true that money won’t solve all the problems and I applaud you for knowing and understanding that too. Thanks for your observations, blog and the great stories you have given us along with those to come. Take care!

    1. When I was living and working in CaliF’nornia, I daydreamed that if the house I owned became worth a million dollars, I’d sell it and move to somewhere saner.

      Got laid off, did some necessary work on the house (hey, only had to replace two walls in the 1930s “bonus room”–both load-bearing), and sold it. Got half a million, less what was still on the mortgage. OTOH, that bought us a place in Flyover County east of the Oregon Cascades and helped fund our early retirement until we could tap the IRAs.

      So, daydreams can come sort-of true. Sometimes.

    2. My Mom used to say “Money will not by happiness. But it can take the sting out of being unhappy.” 😉

        1. “Money won’t buy happiness, but money makes life easier.”

          Someone who has worked for their money.

          Had a life without money in the ’70s. It is a lot easier handling things now, ’70s two, with money available to cover monthly shortfalls, even with the market drops. Neither of us panicked during market drops in the ’70s, we didn’t have any money to panic over.

          1. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can give you a lot more options, and make life a lot less panicked.

            There was a time in my life when I was trying to feed 8 people on $100/mo. Granted, a hundred bucks was worth more back then, but not that much more. Life is much less stressful now, and my pantry overfloweth, because if I ever need to feed 8 people on no income again, I shall have reserves!

          2. What money buys is convenience. A motor vehicle that runs reliably, so that you are not cast on the mercies of public transport. Concierge medical treatment, so one doesn’t have to sit for hours in an emergency waiting room. Restaurant meal delivery, instead of cooking for yourself. A house of your own, and privacy, instead of relying on roommates.

            1. What money gives is flexibility. Fortify your base of operations was Clausewitz’s advice, and good advice it was. That said, too much money brings its own problems, though thats usually because the type of person who gains a great fortune is often the kind of person who causes problems for himself and others, particularly others.

            2. A budget that isn’t totally blown by missing the bus from the airport so you have to take an Uber for $150…

      2. There was an article in The Wall Street Journal a decade or so back on the subject of “Can Money Buy Happiness.” Their conclusion was, “in theory, yes, but most people are lousy shoppers and don’t have any clue what sort of things they should spend their money on to make themselves happy.”

      3. I once heard a wise man say, “It’s better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.” Which should be obvious, but it seems like a lot of people don’t really think of it.

    3. When I first married Anonymoose, they were just ramming through the lottery in South Carolina, and our wonderful-but-terrifying preacher…fulminated. A lot. (I just nodded, being one of those who considers the lottery a tax on the mathematically illiterate.)

      But we used to fantasize about winning the lottery, just for the mental image of writing a 10% check and watching our preacher’s resulting ethical dilemma.

      1. For the most part I share you view, but I keep remembering that if a Las Vegas casino offered the same kind of odds that the lottery does, the gaming commission would run them out of business. I don’t mind the tax on those bad at math in theory, but the hypocrisy of “we’re going to send men with guns to stop this sort of thing…unless it’s us doing it” sticks in my craw.

        1. When the government sells millions of tickets and gives some of the money to a few randomly selected buyers, they call it a Lottery and it’s a perfectly wunnerful way to raise money for the State!

          When a few entrepreneurs do the exact same thing, they call it a Numbers Racket and throw them in jail.
          ———————————
          If an action is evil when perpetrated by a corporation, it is just as evil when performed by a government.

          1. I’d say it’s more evil; the corporation at least has to satisfy its shareholders, while the government only has to satisfy the bureaucrats who run the government, who have to satisfy no one, not even the pols supposedly elected by the citizens. Until #teamheadsonpikes ambles in, that is…

        2. I absolutely agree with you, I’m just kind of casual about it. There are so many things that push my buttons so much worse that lotteries just kind of make me go “meh”. (Though I did frequently sporfle at “The South Carolina Education Lottery!” “…yeah, you get an education so that you know better than to play the lottery.”

    4. When I fantasize about winning the lottery, it’s all about having the single winning ticket to the Powerball or MegaMillions, clearing a cool nine figures … and buying myself an Aeroscraft luxury rigid airship for a big chunk of it. So there.

  8. Congratulations Dear Hostess, take a day off. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you to hear an introvert spends several days at a conference seeing fans and friends and finds herself over peopled. I tend to similar things and live in a house full of introverts so yes its a thing, and yes you really do need some time to recover from that, please allow yourself the time 🙂 .

    1. Oh and I didn’t borrow your shocked face, its been getting a workout lately do to our idiot “government”. Instead I borrowed Mssr. Reneault’s/ Claude Rain’s as I fear he has little use of it these days…

  9. “Going into a reality where the good guys win, where freedom is restored and where the future is better than the past is a good way to escape and restore your balance.”

    It made me emotional to read that sentence. I didn’t realize how close to the edge I am, still, though progress is being made.

    I daydream, and go outdoors, and sit by the beaver lodge and watch the beavers build, and the heron hunt. And I’m ok for another day, another fight!

    Watching the cowards we trusted to represent us destroy the Republic is tough.

    1. I’ve written two flash fiction pieces in the same number of months that involve a character looking for a sign that the Republic can be saved and seeing a bald eagle, in response to Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge picture prompts that involved an image of the bird. They both have Grissom timeline references, but they were still good to write.

  10. Going into a reality where the good guys win, where freedom is restored and where the future is better than the past is a good way to escape and restore your balance.

    Yes, it is indeed, reading or writing; though in my experience the writing route is better, if you can swing it.

    Maybe it’s a side effect of being (what’s called hereabouts) a “gateway writer” — but it’s always impressive to me how much perspective one can gain on present events, looking back (through the eyes and minds of your characters and their sometimes-snarky take on what goes on) from a few decades or even a few centuries “up the line” — on our own present and immediate past and future.

    Beyond just a moment of “escape” — to inhabit with them a world where all has gone, if not right, then at least just barely right enough — it does more than improve morale. If the “channeling Story” thing has gone right (or right enough), it amounts almost to a constructive existence proof: Here, look! It doesn’t have to go our way, it could all still go crash in (your) future. But then again, it might turn out right fine… like this!.

  11. I’m finding if I can make something, or at least part of something, I feel a lot better.

    I wonder if it’s a combination of getting to ignore the crazy, off loading some of my emotional payload, and having something tangible at the end of the day?

    Also just realized, I might be able to make simple stylized art and covers using vector graphics.

    The threads to this are a flight sim I play just added the B-26 to the AI plane list, and I wanted to put together unit skins for it. The unit insignia are best drawn and manipulated in vector graphics, even though the final skin is a raster graphic. Plus a lot of them are already in svd format and public domain.

    Also Inkscape is free open source, and apparently pretty much just as good at the Adobe Illustrator. (Unlike say, Gimp vs Photoshop.) So tools aren’t a problem.

    The second thread was, I remember the covers from that Brian Sanderson kickstarter were mostly silhouettes on a solid color background, and they were really intriguing, in the “I want to know what’s in this book” sort of way. The implication is you don’t need a complicated or highly detailed image, you need a visually iconic one that makes the view ask “What is going on here?” and implies they’ll find out if they read the book.

    I imagine vector graphics are also easier to work with for all the different thumbnail sizes and aspect ratios, since they’re designed for that.

  12. We’re thankful God provided you r us. That’s enough. We don’t all need to bug you, shake hands, etc.

    But assuming a reunion “Over There”, we may try and get you to speak about stuff…

  13. Not that I want to provide any fresh sources of stress, but I found this interesting:

    Especially the part about denying people access to transportation and their own bank accounts due to being flagged with a ‘red health code’. It’s in China, but we can all see Australia and Canada moving rapidly in the same direction.

    Some bureaucrat flips a switch and cuts you off from money, transportation…what happens when you can’t pay your electric bill, water bill, mortgage and taxes because the government ‘froze’ your accounts?

    Of course, any suggestions that politicians and bureaucrats would use that power against their political enemies are just Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation!
    ———————————
    ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

    Yet.

    1. If the government freezes your accounts, they are no longer your government; they are tyrants, targets for termination. You can complain to get access to your money switched back on; but if they refuse, start removing them from office, permanently.

      1. And how do you do that, pray tell, when the culprits are thousands of miles away and you have no way of travelling because your money disappeared?

        1. Pay cash — but they’re trying to do away with cash, too.
          ———————————
          Harris-und-Biden were never elected — they were installed, like a toilet and a bidet. Unlike them, a couple of plumbing fixtures would actually be useful.

          2. And where do you get this cash from, when the same powers that confiscated your bank accounts also forbade you gainful employment?

            There are no easy solutions to any of this.

    2. It’s just about time we remembered that as Americans, we each have our own switches that we can flip. The ones that operate every two to four years are much preferred, but we have much faster and more…permanent…switches too. Those bastards can’t do anything that we aren’t willing to put up with (could be either encouraging or disheartening depending on how you look at it).

      1. The problem lies in that the bastards are constantly trying to do everything they can get away with. One voice shouting them down doesn’t get heard. You need a crowd of angry voices shouting the same thing before they wake up and take notice.

        NOTE: vomiting all over their footwear, or in their laps, will also get them to notice you.

          2. Unfortunately, my poor kitty puked all over the rug and now she’s listless and not eating. Taking her to the vet for a check up.

  14. Getting your mental headspace right is important and taking the time to rest and recover after a People OD is important for introverts like us.

    Cheer up, Great Aunt. We’re still here, and that’s better than anybody that isn’t.

  15. I figured being there was a bit of a strain and all three of you would need some time to recover after the con! Even being in the area but not a member was a bit draining for me. Take all the time you need and sorry we couldn’t talk more, and that goes for Dan too! And sorry I couldn’t meet Marshall this time either, though it sounded like it wouldn’t have been a good time anyway thanks to his conversation with Ian, heh. For those I did meet, it was awesome doing so!

    1. I find myself now wishing I had recorded video (or at least audio) of the Hoyts panel. If for no other reason than to have an audio record of “It’s not that kind of book!” which was something of a theme.

  16. A hardcover edition of Darkship Thieves? Yes please! I will buy the heck out of that.

    One year I hope to be able to attend LibertyCon. One year…

    1. The sooner the better. I missed meeting RAH because I kept putting off attending a con. And I was lucky as hell to get a chance to meet and talk with Jerry Pournelle the last time he came to Boskone. That’s the biggest thing about being human that I don’t like; watching friends pass away. the second one is missed opportunities.

  18. “So what do you do then?”

    Currently I go out into the garden and get some zen while watering and picking veggies. Especially the magical okra that appears every day. Okra plants are like alien trees.

    Or I put headphones on and explore Truth and Beauty through math, programming and art.

      1. Minus the walking around and the ten-foot poison tendril, anyway. 😛

        I re-read ‘Day Of The Triffids’ not too long ago and it’s still as creepy as ever. I saw the first movie, too, when I was about 12. Gave me the willies for weeks.

        The end of that movie was kind of a cop-out, though. Triffids melt in sea water? Way too easy. They must have really wanted that Heroic Ending.

        At the end of the book, the war against the triffids was just beginning.
        ———————————
        “When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

  20. “What do you do then?”

    Gym.
    …and, really that’s about it. Last con trip was not a happy time for me, and the current con slate isn’t going to make me happy either.
    Most of the people I used to do photos with aren’t around anymore.
    And, writing has been difficult.

  21. “Going into a reality where the good guys win, where freedom is restored and where the future is better than the past is a good way to escape and restore your balance.”

    (May want to watch MegaForce again. I’m sure it won’t age well for me, but when I was in junior high school it was cheesy goodness.) 🙂

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