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Before I start, I participated in the Tolkien Reading Day at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
read_lotr_aloud but never posted my entry here, so here 'tis.
An Inauspicious Beginning:
OK, trip report, finally. I had a terrific time, despite " the vacation punishment," as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
1madrad dubs it, which was levied coming and going. My trip to Orlando, went really smoothly for my birthday that Wednesday, or so I thought. Quick through security, picked up a sandwich, and early boarding, a smooth take off--I love the feeling when the wheels leave the ground--with a free seat next to me making the trip comfortable. A fast flight that set out early, an easy connection to the limo for the Marriot, and I was quickly settled in my room with a nice view of the pool and pond, and some greenery beyond--yay the green I was so hungry for!
Then I opened my carry-on bag, took out my macbook case, and the snag hit, for my macbook case was empty. Oh fuck! is right.
DCA Airport security took out my macbook, then they put my macbook case back in my suitcase, without the macbook. I managed to get the number of airport security back in DC and got the run around. The guy insisted that most likely another passenger picked it up. I finally got out of him that there was a separate airport lost and found that I then got the number for, though he said they would be closed now, and that nothing would go there without going through him first. So I called there and left a message and climbed into bed--I had about 2 hours sleep the night before--with a little cloud over my head saying, "Wurst Burthdae Eva!"
It was a very sad, sad hour until the airport lost and found called me and said they had!my!macbook! Yay!!! Life was good again. The ironic thing is that I did hear something about a laptop on the loud speakers in the DC airport before I boarded, which was probably it. Most likely though, if I did go check through my bag then and realized it was Travelia (the name of a Cavendish hero my macbook earned through this little adventure) they were talking about, by the time I tracked down the whole message and where to go, and went through what it took to claim it, I probably would have missed my flight, so it would have been a hassle anyway, though a preferable one to arriving without Travelia. Anyway, they agreed to Fed Ex Travelia to me to get there Friday morning. I napped much more peacefully thereafter.
I got up for the newcomer's meet-up that evening and found the wonderfulithiliana and life started getting better then and there. I got to meet the lovely caras_galadthon and savageseraph, ran into old friend parttimedriver, who I unfortunately didn't get to spend any more time talking with than that, chatted with and made a new friend, and then ithiliana and I met up with sweet aprilkat and stayed up too late chatting away, making it a superior quality birthday evening after all. We talked a lot--well, OK I sputtered a lot--about Racefail09, which made it a little easier for me to deal with the presence of people who contributed to said fail at the conference.
Waffle Report:
I slept in, skipping the early morning session, as was highly necessary, and had waffles and bacon, which is what traveling is all about (is it not?), at the Marriott. This was the least of the waffles in quality I had this trip. The next morning, I walked over to Denny's, where I channeled my gleeful Thomas-Builds-the-Fire muse, and the waffles were much better. The following morning found me further afield--and a gorgeous day for walking it was--at Cracker Barrel which has.no.waffles! But the French toast was excellent, and maybe better than the previous mornings' waffles. I ate an apple, banana, and cookie Sunday morning in order to get out on the road to Sanibel, which was definitely the breakfasting low point of the trip. The next morning I ate in my cabin--fruit, including oranges I had picked, and a blueberry scone and rye bread and butter--all to the sound and view of the ocean, and reading email. Bliss. But my last vacation breakfast concluded with The Best Waffles of All from Perkins Restaurant and Bakery. Oh Perkins! Why don't you have a branch nearer where I live? WOE! Those were damn good waffles.
Oh Yeah, Conference:
OK, so ICFA 30. later in the morning on Thursday, I went to a sesssion, Challenging Heteronormativity. Patricia Meltzer's paper was the most interesting to me as it was on Octavia Butler. She made a point on how Butler skates between liberal ideology and Black nationalism (though with the ways in which Butler treats gender, I might call it separatism in general) embracing neither, and saw Butler questioning whether desire can ever be consensual--and left us with pondering that.
Thursday afternoon I made it to a roundtable discussion on Helen Merrick's fab article "Queering Nature: Close Encounters with the Alien in Ecofeminist Science Fiction" started off by Dewitt Kilgore. I didn't completely finish the article before the meeting, but enough that I was able to make contributions to the discussion. And it was a really good discussion between 15-20 people, though a couple of people didn't speak much. It felt like a really stimulating graduate seminar, so kudos to Dewitt for setting that off, and I felt the twinge of really missing being in that environment, which was a little bit of healing for me.
Then I went to a fan studies session and heardithiliana read her paper on Jane Land's Star Trek fanfic novel, Demeter from the 1980's with an all woman away team that beams down to a lesbian feminist separatist colony. And you should all be jealous, because though you can read this fun paper if you are on her flist, you will not hear her animated reading. I especially liked when she repeated, "gloat, gloat!" when the novel posed plot devices including women only. (-: And Eden Lackner's essay on fan policing of plagiarism by other fans was very fun and highlighted with a slide of the Foucauldian!Panopticon (a prison in the round where all prisoners can be viewed at all times). I got the feeling the audience was at first a little daunted trying to figure out Eden's point of view on all this--"policing? not necessarily an evil? wait . . . " which I think worked really well.
I went for a swim thereafter--pool could have been warmer as the air wasn't that warm by evening, but it was still a joy to look out and see palm trees while swimming. Then a big group of us had dinner in the hotel and then called it a night.
And I'll call it a night on this entry, and leave the rest of the report for another.
read_lotr_aloud but never posted my entry here, so here 'tis.An Inauspicious Beginning:
OK, trip report, finally. I had a terrific time, despite " the vacation punishment," as
1madrad dubs it, which was levied coming and going. My trip to Orlando, went really smoothly for my birthday that Wednesday, or so I thought. Quick through security, picked up a sandwich, and early boarding, a smooth take off--I love the feeling when the wheels leave the ground--with a free seat next to me making the trip comfortable. A fast flight that set out early, an easy connection to the limo for the Marriot, and I was quickly settled in my room with a nice view of the pool and pond, and some greenery beyond--yay the green I was so hungry for! Then I opened my carry-on bag, took out my macbook case, and the snag hit, for my macbook case was empty. Oh fuck! is right.
DCA Airport security took out my macbook, then they put my macbook case back in my suitcase, without the macbook. I managed to get the number of airport security back in DC and got the run around. The guy insisted that most likely another passenger picked it up. I finally got out of him that there was a separate airport lost and found that I then got the number for, though he said they would be closed now, and that nothing would go there without going through him first. So I called there and left a message and climbed into bed--I had about 2 hours sleep the night before--with a little cloud over my head saying, "Wurst Burthdae Eva!"
It was a very sad, sad hour until the airport lost and found called me and said they had!my!macbook! Yay!!! Life was good again. The ironic thing is that I did hear something about a laptop on the loud speakers in the DC airport before I boarded, which was probably it. Most likely though, if I did go check through my bag then and realized it was Travelia (the name of a Cavendish hero my macbook earned through this little adventure) they were talking about, by the time I tracked down the whole message and where to go, and went through what it took to claim it, I probably would have missed my flight, so it would have been a hassle anyway, though a preferable one to arriving without Travelia. Anyway, they agreed to Fed Ex Travelia to me to get there Friday morning. I napped much more peacefully thereafter.
I got up for the newcomer's meet-up that evening and found the wonderful
ithiliana and life started getting better then and there. I got to meet the lovely caras_galadthon and savageseraph, ran into old friend parttimedriver, who I unfortunately didn't get to spend any more time talking with than that, chatted with and made a new friend, and then ithiliana and I met up with sweet aprilkat and stayed up too late chatting away, making it a superior quality birthday evening after all. We talked a lot--well, OK I sputtered a lot--about Racefail09, which made it a little easier for me to deal with the presence of people who contributed to said fail at the conference. Waffle Report:
I slept in, skipping the early morning session, as was highly necessary, and had waffles and bacon, which is what traveling is all about (is it not?), at the Marriott. This was the least of the waffles in quality I had this trip. The next morning, I walked over to Denny's, where I channeled my gleeful Thomas-Builds-the-Fire muse, and the waffles were much better. The following morning found me further afield--and a gorgeous day for walking it was--at Cracker Barrel which has.no.waffles! But the French toast was excellent, and maybe better than the previous mornings' waffles. I ate an apple, banana, and cookie Sunday morning in order to get out on the road to Sanibel, which was definitely the breakfasting low point of the trip. The next morning I ate in my cabin--fruit, including oranges I had picked, and a blueberry scone and rye bread and butter--all to the sound and view of the ocean, and reading email. Bliss. But my last vacation breakfast concluded with The Best Waffles of All from Perkins Restaurant and Bakery. Oh Perkins! Why don't you have a branch nearer where I live? WOE! Those were damn good waffles.
Oh Yeah, Conference:
OK, so ICFA 30. later in the morning on Thursday, I went to a sesssion, Challenging Heteronormativity. Patricia Meltzer's paper was the most interesting to me as it was on Octavia Butler. She made a point on how Butler skates between liberal ideology and Black nationalism (though with the ways in which Butler treats gender, I might call it separatism in general) embracing neither, and saw Butler questioning whether desire can ever be consensual--and left us with pondering that.
Thursday afternoon I made it to a roundtable discussion on Helen Merrick's fab article "Queering Nature: Close Encounters with the Alien in Ecofeminist Science Fiction" started off by Dewitt Kilgore. I didn't completely finish the article before the meeting, but enough that I was able to make contributions to the discussion. And it was a really good discussion between 15-20 people, though a couple of people didn't speak much. It felt like a really stimulating graduate seminar, so kudos to Dewitt for setting that off, and I felt the twinge of really missing being in that environment, which was a little bit of healing for me.
Then I went to a fan studies session and heard
ithiliana read her paper on Jane Land's Star Trek fanfic novel, Demeter from the 1980's with an all woman away team that beams down to a lesbian feminist separatist colony. And you should all be jealous, because though you can read this fun paper if you are on her flist, you will not hear her animated reading. I especially liked when she repeated, "gloat, gloat!" when the novel posed plot devices including women only. (-: And Eden Lackner's essay on fan policing of plagiarism by other fans was very fun and highlighted with a slide of the Foucauldian!Panopticon (a prison in the round where all prisoners can be viewed at all times). I got the feeling the audience was at first a little daunted trying to figure out Eden's point of view on all this--"policing? not necessarily an evil? wait . . . " which I think worked really well. I went for a swim thereafter--pool could have been warmer as the air wasn't that warm by evening, but it was still a joy to look out and see palm trees while swimming. Then a big group of us had dinner in the hotel and then called it a night.
And I'll call it a night on this entry, and leave the rest of the report for another.
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Hehehehe!! It's good to be with likeminded people. :)