Reading: Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Watching: dawn

Moving: none today, but I did bike three out of the four days I worked this week and Saturday I walked 2.3 miles.

House: I finally motivated last Sunday, the last day of my four-day weekend. I cleaned the bedroom. Not the closets, but I did move the furniture. You'd have to know how big the bedroom is, and how little stuff is in it, to understand just how paltry that effort was.

Garden: picked more tomatoes.

4-6 October 2002: JournalCon

I don't often go out; I stay out late even less often; and ordinarily I sleep like a log. So for my eyelids to roll up before 1:00 on the eve of a weekend I fully intended to get the lead out for once was a rude...awakening. When I first woke I figured that, you know, it was 5ish and totally dark because this is that gruesome last month of Daylight Saving Time. So after a bit I figured I'd get up and clean, which is what I always do when I'm nervous (at home). It was 1:15. Yoikes.

I finished The Corrections, three fucking hours later. And I had my sister's story of her 1800-miles-away vigil on Brian's last night on earth fresh in my mind, so at 5:00 I got up again and called each of my parents. Just to check. (Remember that it was 7:00 for both of them and even so they'd probably both been awake for a couple of hours).

And then I was awake. And up. I discovered the stuffing capacity of my sexy new biking backpack, which I am all kinds of in love with despite its being not quite suited to the task I was asking of it. RDC wanted to know if I was going to bring my iBook, and I thought no, I'm not quite over the Fear of Losing yet. He pointed out that I was going to be among geeks and should hold my own, but however wonderful and pretty my white iBook is, I wouldn't've wanted it to get a complex next to pinkstinky's amazing palmtop gizmo (I'm like the Rolling Stone editor in "Almost Famous": "It takes only eighteen minutes to send a page of text cross-country!") or someone's keychain USB storage device that almost made my brain explode. (Who was that? A rockstar, clearly. Jane?)

I left my little buddy in front of the windows and left Cassidy in our usual spot in DIA's parking garage and left voicemail for RDC about exactly where it was (because after nine days, we would miss each other by less than an hour) and left Colorado by air just about nearly on time. I was excited finally to fly over the mountains in daylight, but they were covered by clouds. I didn't see any peaks poking through the clouds, but I did see the plane's shadow jumping up and down, shrinking and expanding as we passed higher and lower clouds.

As I stepped out of the Super Shuttle, I tore my new skirt. (The only thing I accomplished during my days off was consumption. I'm so proud.) As I checked in, I saw Mo in the lobby. "You look like you know me," she said, and zounds, I was at JournalCon.

I promised (and turned out to be a filthy liar) to return to her soon. In the registration room I found Lucy, who recognized me immediately, and Jen W, and Lunesse, to whom about my second sentence (after "Those are great pants!") was "Omigawd you went to school two towns from where I grew up!"

I don't remember what happened or whom I met before dinner. Does it matter? I saw or met or remet a bunch of complete unknowns whom I felt like I already knew. It was contradictory, the known and the unknown, the simultaneously fantastically nerve-racking (I have no cuticles left) and fun.

Molly Zero embraced me immediately and warmly. There was that and her Lauren Bacall voice and I was in love. Oh, and Lunesse's gorgeous skin that I wanted to pet as much as I wanted to pet her trousers. But I couldn't confess my crushes or I would be an antelope. There were people I knew I wanted to meet, and people I was delighted to meet despite barely having heard their names before, and it was all great.

At dinner, I shared a table with Krystyn, Ann, Tim, Trish, Michael R, Lunesse, Steve, and Michael W. At breakfast, with Steve, Michael W, Michael H, Lynda, Renee, and Amanda. I lunched with Molly, Sasha, Spinny, Susan, Adam, pinkstinky, Selila, and Stephanie. Dinner again with Emily, Spinny, Adam, Selila, Susan, Jeremy, Beth C, Pete, Karen, Frank, Pineapple Girl, and Jen W. There was no breakfast Sunday, not even orange juice, and when I moaned about this to Kymm she said, as if this mattered or were any consolation, that there was Pepsi in every machine in the place. So a bunch of us had breakfast for lunch, Anna Beth, Evany, Pineapple Girl, Pamie, Jared, Meg, Jane, Frank, Trish, John, Pete, Kymm, Beth K, Lucy, and Jen Fu. Because breakfast food after noon is what you want for a hangover, and even though I didn't drink, let alone exhibit drunken behavior like singing karaoke, I was severely hung over Sunday morning after barhopping, more like bar-touching, with Karen, Susan, Jeremy, Beth C, Pete, and Spinny, for several hours after my best-by date (which wouldn't have been so late or bad if I had had any sleep in the past 48 hours).

Am I name-dropping? I am, and I don't care, because that's what it was like: all of these fantastic people all the time, and part of the pleasure of their company was knowing that spending time with this or that engaging person meant that I wasn't spending time with yet another equally endearing person. But spending more time with Sasha and LisaNH, bussing up and walking along Haight street and resting under a tree in Golden Gate Park listening to a reggae festival; or with Jane and Jared and Trish after Jane mercifully drove us all to the beach; meant I knew more about them than their names, which, sadly, however much I read someone's journal, converse with them on forums, or communicate by email, is all I feel like I know about anyone now that I've met them, achingly briefly, in person.

Why can't it be JournalCon all the time?

Of course I wavered between taking notes and pictures or really being there. So I've forgotten, only four days later, almost all the hysterical lines, the significant looks, and the snarky whispered asides. But I haven't forgotten the camaraderie, the silliness, the crazy attempts to Stay with the Group, the spontaneous hugs, the knowledge that almost anyone I turned and saw would be the person I wanted to spend the next nineteen hours with.

But I remember some.

Oh, and I spun and glommed onto John Friday. "You must tell me everything about Shelley's wedding." And then he did. And when he said he forgot to tell everyone they could sit down again during the ceremony, I said, "That's your thing then, is it?" Which wasn't tactful, but hey, we had just discussed the tactlessness inherent in almost any question.

"Eat it like a taco," the stricture from the Chinese restaurant about the chipped pork in a lettuce head appetizer (the restaurant that wondered just how many of us would be Caucasian, because maybe it had to lay in enough ketchup).

I lent my phone to Abbeycat after dinner, he called his friend, he gave my phone back. Because I so seldom use the cell, certain habits aren't ingrained. I didn't lock the keys but just dumped the phone in my parka pocket, and lo, my phone dialed the poor friend a half-dozen times. Hello!

I took multiple photographs of a fire hydrant for a purpose and a person I have completely forgotten. I know I walked back with Lunesse (which I continually mistype as "Lunesee") and Stephanie, and at least two other people who might have been Michael W and pinkstinky. If you want your pictures, let me know and I'll email them.

I talked to Bob a little bit about books, but I restrained myself mostly. I wanted to ask my group about baseball sculptures in a bar, whether one was a catcher's mitt and the other a glove, but I was only interested because of the Salinger story. So I shut up. Ages ago, I added some books from Bob's list to mine, and the author of one book wrote me offering a copy. I turned the author down for the stupid reason I didn't want to give my address to a total stranger, but I did ask him to write to Bob, since it was one of his most important books. Bob said they corresponded for a bit. That was good.

Another person I spoke to for tragically only about three minutes was Christopher, whose name and journal were familiar, but only vaguely. I was quickly racking up folks I wish I had spent more time with because those three minutes didn't have to have been about journals (but they were) to have interested me.

KarenD's swag stunned me. She made fifty mini quilts that could be either coasters or magnets, and wow. I thought Mr. Karen, as well as the other spouses, was quite game to come along to this. Well, the prospect might have sounded scary, but the reality must have been a trip. I hope. Even if I didn't think Michelle's swag, a mix cd called Lounging at JournalCon 2002, was a great mix of lizardy music, I would lie about it, because she is the Keeper of the Karaoke Video.

I miss Jill already because I met her but then never broke bread with her and barely talked to her, and damn. Yet she called me cutie, and what is more irresistible than that? Ordinarily I wouldn't be susceptible to such an epithet, but ordinary is no word for Jill.

I attended Mo's Writing for Fun and Profit panel with John, Evany, and Sarah, and then drifted between the popularity and full disclosure ones. I wanted to hear both, of course. I skipped Moveable Type, since my Macintosh and technical consultant wasn't around and my eyes would have glazed over. Instead I sat in the hall, like skipping class in high school, talking with Spinny and Selila and Jane and pinkstinky and lord, I forget who else (and I was so overwhelmed I might not remember if it had, in fact, been God. Though I think God was attending the MT panel).

Afterward Molly swooped us all under her arm and led us like baby ducks to a French place Lunesse had recommended. The outdoor seating, the large group of near-strangers, the frainchiness, and the fact that I was having a leisurely lunch instead of the Planned Activity made me think of Paris, when I was so glad I chilled about Not Seeing Museums, didn't rush off after a quick Yank bite, but instead idled away two charming hours over lunch with Nisou and SPG and Tom and Marianne and RDC and was it really only six of us? Was this lunch only nine of us? It was a great time.

For the afternoon, did I want to lounge about in the hotel or see the city? A little of lots of people or lots of not so many people? Sasha and I had discussed strolling and shopping, which sounded fine, and we seized LisaNH and dragged her along. Jen led us to our bus and then we walked, and I have to say Jessie's mile-wide, inch-thick family tree has nothing on some other people's.

On Haight Street, Sasha looked at a sheer linen shirt. "Feeling like Kate?" I asked, and She Got It! She was my people, she spoke my language. That's another whole theme of the weekend, that all my references got got. Sometimes I slid into "Room with a View," like when I picked up Ann & Tim's swag, matches from their wedding, and exclaimed, "Mr. Beebe! Matches!" and Molly got it. Sasha got the Kate reference, so it was okay that she didn't get whatever I muttered about mackintosh squares as I spread my parka on the grass at Golden Gate Park. I didn't have to prevaricate or evade about my friend Melissa in Philadelphia or Sara in New York or Eliza in Baton Rouge.

Hm. Dinner decisions were hard. I would have loved to spend time with Molly and meet Terry, but I ruthlessly chose a larger group. And sushi over Italian. I had intended to be sucked into Lucy's whirlpool of fun or Michelle's gaming, but somehow I learned that neither of these things would happen, so I instead I didn't go along to karaoke along with all the other people who would never be caught dead at karaoke.

While I wasn't there, Wendy and Jake, of whom I had never before in my life heard and who therefore had no arm-twisting power over me, nevertheless somehow didn't get me onstage to "sing" "Dancing Queen." My spine, it is made of Wendy's Play-doh swag, clearly. John Scalzi, that karaoke whore whom everyone must address by his full name (kind of like Jen Wade), leapt to join us so that we would have the proper Abba number and gender distribution. I paid four bucks for a ginger ale, which I think is a lot, so I'm going to pretend it was tequila and call it my excuse.

After cheering Krystyn's amazing, Janis Joplin- or Linda Ronstadt-level "Oh Darlin'" extravaganza, and being wowed by how perfect Karen's wonderful voice is for "Born to Run," and giving myself whiplash when Jen, Mo, and I think Emily did "Bohemian Rhapsody," and delighting in Mo and Jen's "Copacabana," I vamoosed before the tequila got me onstage again. Instead several of us found a quiet bar and talked. I learned the iconography of Pete's extensive ink and some gossip about people I'll never remember, and I passed on some low-level gossip of my own. But not about you. Well, maybe.

Someone or other commented that my bag was large, and it was to use as a carry-around-town bag though small as an entire weekend bag. But in it, sometime around midnight, I found my eyeglasses and was once again grateful for my hideously overmaterialistic indulgence of daily contacts, which I left in my napkin. Then I was good for a while longer than I would have been with plastic glued to my weary corneas.

But very not much longer. For the third night in a row, my body would not sleep. I didn't get up early enough to scamper to the Starbucks for orange juice, but some kind, really competent JournalCon organizer provided some pastries and fruit (I had a chocolate chip scone and a pear). This is a little late to exclaim about what rockstars Beth, Lunesse, Jane, Jen, Lucy, and Monique are, but better late than never because they are. I was really glad Amanda thought, as I never would have, to organize thank you notes and gifties.

I was so nearly not awake for Sunday panels. I fidgeted to avoid falling asleep on random shoulders. The prospect of lunch with Lucy, who was a key person in my weekend plans, woke me up. It was a huge crowd, which I liked, though I did end up having lunch only near, not with, Lucy. But I got to commiserate about the ending of Amber Spyglass with Jen Fu and shove Philip Pullman down Meg's throat after first lying through my teeth by announcing that any adult who read children's books was obviously a psychopath.

I got my orange juice, so breakfast was done with. Thus I could lunch on a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich and a coffee chocolate shake, because that's what I have in diners. Not everyone had breakfast, but I need to give Frank lessons in this basic meal: he ate a fried egg (at severe risk of poison, eggs being so toxic) on top of his pancakes. Dude, the proper topping for pancakes is syrup or maybe fruit, not egg! Clearly, we need to have breakfast together more often so I can save him from himself. And it is Haitch's fault I am saying "dude," since I have just received email from her in which she inexplicably and for the first time calls me dude, twice.

Jane, sweet sweet Jane, and you know there's a reason that's a favorite name, drove Trish and Jared and me to the beach. Because I had promised myself that if I missed seeing STL and the girls, I would see the ocean instead. The only thing I minded about giving up California in September and going to Wyoming instead was the lack of PLT, STL, and the girls; the prospect of seeing them was a major justification for spending hundreds of dollars to go meet all of these internet freaks. Then PLT was going to be away, and then Z, who was looking forward to the merry-go-round at Yerba Buena Gardens (as was I, not having been on one in years), was sick all Saturday and C was still recovering, so STL sensibly did not herd them into the city. Again, by indulging in one pleasure, I forewent another. Or by missing one, I got to indulge in another. I didn't see my old friends, but I got to spend more time with my new friends, and at the beach no less, thanks to Jane's kindness. Eventually I realized something and asked, "Are you waiting for me to say I'm done?" Um, ooops. But thank you.

Ocean.

Of course, the ocean came at the cost of the afternoon lovefest in the hotel lobby, which we did get to partake in for a little while afterward. Steve, Michael W, Mo, Jen, Lucy, Renee, Beth K, and everyone. Eventually, the time came to peel ourselves away. Lucy drove Karen to her car and booted Jared and me out at the airport despite my strong preference to invade her house for dinner with Kymm.

Next time. And there must be a next time, oh yes.

In the meantime, some photographs?