Wait for it... wait for it... it's a Convention!

First, my apologies. I am sitting in the dark at a table at 1:30ish in the morning, and I can't see my keyboard, so please be patient! There may be more typoes than usual!

Gosh. Today. Okay, let's start with the morning. Once again, there was lolling, and sleeping in. It was lovely. I headed out to the mall to see what was possible for breakfast and after checking out all the food hall options, I had a salted caramel mocha, sat quietly and enjoyed the open air food hall and then headed off to the Cheesecake Factory where I attempted to consume a breakfast burrito consisting of potato, egg, chicken chorizo, salsa, beans, avocado... it was massive It was well over a foot in length. needless to say, i didn't finish that meal! 

After that I wandered the mall, and some women did some amazing things withmy hair. unfortunately the clip was $59 and the 6 side clips $8 a shot,... so I then spend half an hour trawling Macy's and JC Penny's to discover they don't tend to do barrettes and clips and etc. Poo!

I came back and checked out the dealer's room, then the art show, and then the opening ceremony. Connie Willis is a lot of fun. So, con isnow officially open! First panel was by the San Diego Zoo and involved all these weird animals  that i can't remember the names of but i have pics of! :)

Then I gathered together Grace, Miriam, and a new recruit called Keyan and we headed out to Outback Steakhouse for some deep fried onion. And we had it. And it was... as you;'d expect a breaded, deep fried onion with a creamy sort of dipping sauce. I did enjoy it, and can now die happy and all, but yeah, It was OK.

Before that, however, we had to wait for 15 minutes or so, so we hit Target and I bought... dundun dun.... booze! Yep, from Target! Apprently Target inb America has been trying to go upmarket and it has upset some of thepeople who use it, which is funny because target Australia seems to be trying to go downmarket and get cheaper and crappier... but there was booze! I bought abottleof sweet tea vodka for $10.99 and shared it all nightlong. I also bought some Twinkies,a  hostess fruit pie, a butterfinger, and mini peanut butter cups.he butterfinger was OK and the cups went during the Aussie party thrown by Garth Nix and Sean Williams.

So, yeah, Aussie room party, was pretty full on. Garth and Sean had gone all out and found boxes of Australian wine and beer and softdrinks, and so the room party was very popular and very awesome. I helped clean a little afterwards, and they didn’t need me for serving, which was all-good. I finally saw Jonathan so gave him a hug and a hello.

 

My lappie ran out of power last night, so now I am sitting in Connie Willis’ GoH speech while I finish this write up.

 

I was drinking sweet tea vodka last night, which was actually pretty awesome. Very definite tea notes, would have been brilliant with ice. I met a lot of Johns, a Corby, and a a Nathan (or Nate?), a  Kevin, a Rachel, and an Anastasia. Anastasia organizes things, and is part of Comicon, and is running some of the larger parties for WGC2011, and she, Kevin and Rachel are into Goth industrial, and have invited me to a Goth industrial nightclub on Saturday night! Yay! Highly amused – we decided all this in the first 5 minutes of meeting each other!

 

I ended up having discussions about gender roles and masculinity, violence as a language, practiced John’s pitch with him, discussed novels and publication. It was a good party, and Garth and Sean kicked every one out at around 1:30, so I helped clean up a little before I went and got the lappy and sat in the cold dark garden to try and post.

 

Decided to skip part 1 of the WFC business meeting. I am such a freak sometimes. cherishes the freak

 

There’s a consuite here that has food! And drinks! I shall stop drinking the expensive hotel bottled water and move onto the free bottled water instead. And they have breakfast and sandwiches for lunch and stuff, which is awesome. My breakfast this morning was the buffet, which was dreadful. Worst meal I have had in California yet! The sausages were spicy and yucky, and are produced in a solid block shaped into sausage shapes and you then slice them off or break them off if you can. The waffle was horrible and the scrambled eggs were blah. The cherry pastry was leaden and stolid. Yuck. And it cost me almost $20 when I included the tip! Tomorrow, I have porridge at the con suite.

 I have met Ferret and Zoethe, which was lovely, and I rabbited at them a little about kitchens, bread, opinions on the net, stuff.