Winter wonderland

Someone coated upstate New York in a thin sheet of ice while I was gone. The evergreens are bent and defeated, like shaggy gray yaks, but the deciduous trees have become slender crystalline candelabra that twinkle in the sun. Some branches, bowed by their own weight, rattled against the windows of the train as it passed by yesterday. I've seen freezing rain before, but never quite so thick—there's half an inch of ice around some branches.

I am back safe and sound from Arisia, which was, all in all, wonderful. So much happened that I'll probably need to split it into three or four posts, so stay tuned.

Arisia 2007 in brief: Friday

Arisia in very brief: dressing up is good, meeting people is better, dancing the Numa Numa dance while dressed up and meeting people thereby is best.

Arisia in longer:

My Friday train to Boston was three hours late, the practical upshot of which was that I missed half of the 80s prom dance and all of Cecilia Tan's erotica reading (*pine*). But I did only miss half of the 80s prom dance, and had time to run up to my room and don my excellent 80s duds for the second half: black shirt and pants, white embossed jacket with black piping, mauve silk tie with an art deco motif, Chucks, Swatch, and rectangular rainbow mirrorshades. rigel seemed quite taken with my "Weird Al chic", as she put it, and very warmly congratulated me on my engagement—yay for seeing you, rigel! A young lad made the "we're not worthy" bow in my direction, and another emphatically doffed his nonexistent hat, so I think I have to score the 80s garb a success. (There should really be Ren80ssaince Festivals. I would clean up.)

I mostly danced with herbertinc and mst3kforall, as the dance was sparsely attended, then wandered around with herbertinc looking for fun. We passed a pretty young man in really excellent drag, and I made him some flirty compliment, at which the woman standing beside him complained, "Hey, you're distracting people from my breasts!" So I said, "Fiiine, I'll look at your breasts." Which I did, exclaiming, "Good lord, there's a duck in your cleavage!" And so there was. Thuswise was I a winner in the 2007 Arisia Rubber Duck Scavenger Hunt, which entitled me to turn in the duck for a fabulous prize, which turned out to be the duck. So I have a small duck now, to go with the wind-up walking sushi I was randomly given last year. See how awesome Arisia is?

We headed over to Rocky Horror after that, which was probably more cacophonous than it needed to be for my tastes, but fun regardless. I forced herbertinc up on stage for the virgin ceremony, where she was hardly scarred at all, and got a little choked up during the Walk Through the Fire Buffy lip-synch performance. It was a warm fuzzy surrounded-by-people-who-understand feeling (followed almost immediately by a "Good lord, some fans really have no social skills" feeling, so it evened out). I seem to remember toppling into bed after Rocky, after looking for a while from my balcony window at the Citgo sign reflected in the Charles.

Hmm. This is getting to be lengthy for "in brief". I'll close here and embark on Saturday in the next post.

Arisia 2007 in brief: Saturday

Saturday morning, I woke to the sight of people sculling on the Charles, with a slick little monitor craft putt-putting around offering guidance. It was a gray day, but the sight was cheery, and the weather was warm.

I attended panels in the afternoon:

1. Get Your Geek Off: Writing About Sex in SF & F, featuring Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press and other nifty people. She's always well-spoken and sensible; I frequently find myself nodding and saying, "Oh, why didn't I put it that way?" when she's speaking. I'm not sure I expressed myself well in the question I posed the panel, but I did make C. Tan laugh with an offhand comment, so mission partially accomplished. The panel was marred by a particularly egregious example of fannish cluelessness, but the panelists handled the awkwardness both briskly and kindly. Kudos!


2. LiveJournal and Your Social Life, which I found interesting chiefly for the discussion about dealing with friends who aren't on LJ and feel out of the loop therefore. There were good stories to be heard, and quick, engaged panelists; I'm glad I went.

The Great Luke Ski concert followed, but I'm going to discuss Luke-related things in their own post. When it was done, I dashed upstairs to put on my Dr. Clayton Forrester costume, then got into the endless snake of a line for the Masquerade.

The Masquerade had a record-setting number of entries, though I think a lot of that was due to the extended parade of Zodiacal entries. (All twelve, in fact, though some came in pairs. Not just Gemini.) I was particularly impressed by Mr. Freeze, with the fog-generating freeze-gun; the dementor-on-stilts with the mechanical claws; and the minotaur, which—well, there was a nine-foot partition hiding the contestants from the audience, and before the minotaur came out all we could see was a menacing red eye glowing above the partition. It was huge, and impressive, and yet it won not a thing, which shocked me. I (recently engaged to K—) was sitting behind kelilah's sister K—, and next to a wee hottie named K— in a red pleather devil costume. It was a veritable K—-convention!

My costume was reasonably well-received; I wore it to a few room parties afterward, and one person snapped my photo, but I think most people weren't quite sure who I was. I enjoyed being in character for a while, though, and those who did get it were enthusiastic.

Before the club dance, I changed into Fancy Outfit #3 (which Hogmanay attendees will remember—purple striped shirt, black pants and vest), then bumped into rigel, who introduced me to some of her zillions of friends. The dance alternated between wildly fun (80s music and geekery) and tedious (industrial goth music—sorry, sinsofthedove), and while the bleak, joyless rendition of Jesus Christ Superstar did offer me a chance to catch my breath between Safety Dance and Paradise By the Dashboard Light (which featured a steamy dance duet with rigel!), the breath-catching bits went on rather longer than I needed. I did request the Numa Numa song, which was wildly successful—there was a line of ten fans on the stage, doing the Numa Numa dance, and the floor was wild with enthusiasm. I found in it one of those rare moments of careless, total, flailing joy.

In the second half, I danced almost exclusively with elusiveat, who turns out to be a very nifty person who asks deep philosophical questions of the very muddy-brained boy she's boogieing with at 3:30AM. I will not soon forget dancing with her to the Super Mario Brothers remix of NIN's Closer: "I wanna fuck you like an animal, doodley do! Ding! Ding! Ding!" Around 4:30AM, I was hitting the bed like a rock.