Worldcon 2003 -- Toronto, Ontario
Sep. 3rd, 2003 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiper![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
solarbird has done a better job of reporting on this than I have; this is what I get for not having an LJ client that lets me queue up multiple posts to be posted later. Not to mention winding up spending most of the convention sitting around quietly and trying not to let my arm get to me. Thanks to my stupid arm I did in fact wind up missing most of the convention... but then again, from what I have been hearing I didn't honestly miss that much. The facilities were all right, I'll give Torcon that. Decent convention center, and the hotels were within an easy walk. So was the CN Tower, for that matter, which attracted our touristy attention (more on this below). However, there was a limited amount of food in easy range; there were a few restaurants, including a cheap underground food court across the street from the convention center, but things seemed to close REALLY early. I don't know whether this was standard for Toronto or whether it was due to the holiday weekend -- because they do apparently celebrate Labor Day, though they of course spell it Labour Day. So food was sort of not really an easy option unless it was during business hours.
The recent blackout apparently caused the program book and souvenir book to be late as well... and though we can't exactly hold the con accountable for the blackout, the program book was not very useful either. Nor was it very accurate, as it turned out. They wound up distributing actual current copies of the program schedule every day of the con, to supersede whatever was in the book.
The one con event I managed to attend, the Masquerade, was sabotaged by two things that made it majorly annoying. #1, it was way too long. #2, somebody apparently thought it was a good idea to interrupt the main competitive part of the event with... a fashion show. Now, I might have otherwise appreciated the idea of a display of past prize-winning costumes by Canadian costumers; it was a great idea. But NOT right smack in the middle of the main event. It would have been much better as a thing to have going on while the judges were making their deliberations.
I did not attend any filk, since I am not yet fit for public playing, and I also need to work on learning more stuff before I can show up in a filk with an instrument in my hands and not sit around feeling useless with it. But I did take my mandolin and I did practice, working on learning "Swallow Tail Jig", "Swallow's Tail Reel", and a couple other pieces out of my mandolin fakebook. That gave me some good stuff to do while keeping Dara company during her PT in our hotel room.
I did also manage to cruise the huckster room a couple of times, and wound up buying two books: The Glass Harmonica by Louise Marley and Channeling Cleopatra by Elizabeth Scarborough. I went ahead and read the latter, but found it quite a letdown despite the heroine being a big fan of the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. That made me really want to like the story, but I didn't care for the voice in which Scarborough told it, and most of the events in the plot just seemed... dumb.
I knocked out several other books on the trip as well: Long, Hot Summoning by Tanya Huff; The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey; Stealing the Elf-King's Roses by Diane Duane (which I also didn't care for); Portrait in Death by J.D. Robb; and To Trade the Stars by Julie Czernada.
And I hung out a lot down on the lowest floor of our hotel where the con had set up its Internet lounge. I was down there enough that one of the staffers for the room, as well as several other attendees of the convention, started to recognize me on sight. The unstable state of the wireless hub they were using was annoying, but then again, I was also getting net access for free so I wasn't about to gripe much. It let me get some stuff fixed on my web page and finish moving files from my old account to my new one, so that was all good.
All the hardware for my arm got me several astonished looks and questions about what had happened to me; it seemed like every third person Dara and I passed asked me what I'd done to my arm. Some folks thought it was some sort of weird hall costume; others surmised correctly that I was actually injured. One chick who had injured her own arm swapped tales with me about our respective injuries.
I popped over to the main party hotel a time or two with Dara; this was the Royal York, about a block and a half down the street from our hotel, which was the Crowne Plaza. The York was a much nicer hotel, hands down, with lavish decor and amusingly Kubrick-esque hallways that made Dara giggle and make jokes about The Shining. Their method of numbering rooms was somewhat confusing, though, and so was the fact that Floor 1 was actually the 4th or 5th floor, depending on whether you counted like an American or a Canadian. But I only did the party thing briefly, again due to the whole arm thing. While I need to chat with people more at conventions and be less of a wallflower, I wasn't exactly up to pressing through crowds of intoxicated fen with a broken arm. So we'll just have to see about Norwescon or the 2004 Worldcon in Boston.
We did get the chance to see a few old friends, though. For starters Dara and I roomed with our friend Rod from Kentucky, with whom we have roomed at Worldcons regularly for a few years now.
amethyst_dancer joined us for a couple of nights as well, and it was good to see her again; she brought with her a deerhide she had tanned with her very own hands, as well as a VCR and tapes of amusing things for Dara to watch during her PT. The most notable of these was Ian McKellen's appearance on Craig Kilborn's late-night talk show, in which the redoubtable Sir Ian was asked as part of Craig's Five Questions routine to read the instructions for changing a tire -- in his best Shakespearean actor voice. Very, VERY funny.We also bumped into Mike and Sue and Linda from Kentucky as well as Cync's friend Lincoln from the ICON crowd. Mike was kind enough to give me a massage for my aching arm and shoulders, which contributed significantly to my ability to make it through the con. Dara also got to meet up with a friend of hers from Iceland, a guy by the name of Kjartan who Dara and I both kept referring to as Karsten, mixing him up with my friend of that name in California. I figure the two must be different lingustic versions of the same name. And, lastly, we got to meet
futabachan and her partner ayilmaz, which led us to determining that there is in fact good sushi in Toronto. Always important to know.Toronto itself... I got to see less of it than I would have liked. What bits I got to see were within four or five blocks of the hotel, and while walking in search of a convenience store or grocery to buy much-needed items, I noted a distinct paper-mill smell that reminded me of Tacoma. So that was a bit of a lose.
I'm going to go ahead and close this post now as I need to get to bath and bed, but will post again tomorrow with the rest of my general impressions of eastern Canada and any other random thoughts that come to mind as I type.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-03 09:58 pm (UTC)I just got that book from the library and chugged through it. Delightful. Now I'm rereading the Vicki Nelson books because I have nothing better to do.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 10:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, I know, BFD.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 05:06 am (UTC)new Summoner Book???!??
Date: 2003-09-04 12:52 pm (UTC)Re: new Summoner Book???!??
Date: 2003-09-04 07:17 pm (UTC)Re: libraries
Date: 2003-09-07 01:42 pm (UTC)Re: libraries
Date: 2003-09-11 09:25 pm (UTC)Though just as effective for me as a deterrent has been the ongoing issue of too many books, not enough shelf space. :) And a To Read pile that I was going through annoyingly slowly; for the longest time I was ordering myself not to buy any new books till I had put a decent dent in that To Read pile.
One good thing about not being able to drive right now and having to take the bus to work -- I am PLOWING through that To Read pile.
Re: driving and reading
Date: 2003-09-12 12:43 am (UTC)There hasn't been an Arm Status report for a freakin' month, grrl! (unless you're hiding them under friendslock or something) How is it? and the rest of you? ;)
Re: driving and reading
Date: 2003-09-12 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-04 06:52 pm (UTC)