I've been attending this con off-and-on (mostly on) since the first one in 1982 or so.

Carol and my relationship moved into gear at this convention in '91, when we spent most of the con with each other, not attending any convention functions.

Much of the week went into preparing for this con.

Last year I was asked to join the Programming Planning committee, which was an email group throwing out silly (and sillier) ideas for potential panels.

A few of my silliest ideas got picked up to be used, and I managed to get onto one of them. The title was "Fantasy Scams", the idea being that everone knows about fairy gold and dancing shoes, but what about some new piece of magic (or faked magic) could you inflict on a character or Fantasy-Role-Player.

We threw around a bunch of ideas at the panel, and I wrote down a few that may end up in an Hieronymous Glyph or Aelfred tale.

We talked a lot about various varieties of magic swords. It's amazing how many variants there are on singing swords, swords that must kill whenever drawn, and just plain works-better-than-most swords. And how many ways there are to make a magic sword that someone will pay you to take away from them.

I'd decided to not volunteer for every panel that interested me, so I'd have time to relax and see the rest of the convention. I only signed up for a few panels.

Then I got word that a friend who was running the music track was short on people, so I volunteered to do the harmonic arranging talk that Carol and I used to do together.

I ended up tag-teaming with her on this. She's a good musician and used to arrange music for her church. We had a good time and everyone survived, so I guess it worked.

A few days after I added "just two more things" to my schedule, I got an email from the lady running the Children's programming who needed to fill in stuff for kids. We'd talked last year, and I'd sort of agreed...

So I added a couple hours of reading my childrens' stories to my schedule.

At this point, my schedule was a lot more than full. I spent most of the convention either doing something with programming, or hiding in my room to rest for the next item.

See, there's this clever trick of not volunteering for everything. I'm still working on it.

In between panels, I did my usual chatting with friends, bought too many books, including three writing craft books, handed out a couple fliers for Editomat and casually mentioned the upcoming publication for Promised Rewards now and then, but seldom more than ten times in a row.

The panels I was on went well. I finally met Stephen Brust, one of my favorite authors. He's a truly nice, laid back sort of guy. Great fun to share a panel with.

My readings went much less well. I only had one kid at the first Children's reading, but she enjoyed it. I had one person at my adult reading, and no kids at all showed up for my last kid's program event.

Around Christmas I attacked some of the boxes of stuff from Carol's parents. Much of what I found was junk that nobody cares about any more. I don't think it even had sentimental value for Carol.

But, I found a half-dozen or so Chicago Bears souvenirs including a couple Bears Christmas ornaments.

Truly useless. Even if I followed football, I doubt I'd be a Bears fan (the Cubbies are different).

So, of course, I packed them carefully into a Ziploc bag and set them aside.

I grabbed the bag and took it to Chicago with me last weekend, just in case one of my friends was a closet football fan.

And then left it in my suitcase and forgot about it.

Until Sunday. On Sunday I had a first-panel-of-the-day reading for kids. I was pretty sure none of the kids would be football fans, but they might come with parents.

Nobody came to my reading. Not kiddie football fans or grownups.

So I was chatting with the lady who runs the Children's Programming while we waited for a kid to show up.

Turns out she's a sort-of bears fan. She works for a "Build-A-Bear" shop helping kids build a Teddy bear.

Not quite the Bears fan I was looking for, but I mentioned my Bears paraphernalia.

It turns out her folks are big Bears fans.

So, my junk went to someone who will appreciate it, and I feel like I done a good deed.

The good news on not having any kids show up for my reading is that I got to leave a little early. I was scheduled for a zoom meeting with one of my writing groups at 4:00. I managed to get home at 3:56.