MOOP!

Balticon is my Home Convention. Like, there's many cons that feel like home to me, but Balticon was the first con I ever went to as a Real Person (and not a kid-in-tow), and it's close enough to the homestead that I always see a lot of my lonnnnnng-term Maryland friends.

Plus, it's the con where I've got the most friends who I made at a con. Arisia, I generally spend a lot of time hanging out with friends from outside the convention scene, who I already know through dance or burns or parties or whatever. Balticon has the werewolf group, and the Balticon Kink Collective, and the Giggle¹, and a TechnoFandom subset that feels warm and vibrant and welcoming, and a handful of costumer acquaintances, and it's just such a wonderful reunion, every year!

This year? No exception. This year was _incredible_, not just one of the best Balticons I've ever had, but probably one of the best *cons* I've ever gotten to enjoy. It was my tenth year, and I am so incredibly glad I made it.

Now onto the report! ( I'm cutting the Ugly section separately, since there's a tw for creepy rape culture )

Someday I'm gonna have a con report that doesn't have an Ugly section and it's gonna be awesome. :/

( Bad-Meh-Good-Awesome-Transcendent below this cut )

Okay!

This is already a pretty long con report, and I keep finding new bits and remembering other lovely pieces and I LOVED THIS YEARS CON SO MUCH.

Hopefully pictures will forthcome. For now though, sleep!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I only learned this year that there's a name for 'em, and also just how vast the conspiracy goes. H'apparently, there were five girls born to fannish parents in a span of about 54 weeks back in 95ish. I've been friends with Nikki and Maura for ages, and got to know Victoria a lot better this year, which was great.

2: I may have met Matt at my first Balticon, I have known him _forever_.

3: Did you read this line and immediately know where I got it?

So, here's what my life has been the last n weeks.

*I graduated. This was apparently a big deal or something.

*I took, and as of two days ago, passed my MTELs. Now I can get my teacher's license and get a job or something.

*I am currently in Atlanta. Two days of rest and relaxation with Sparr and the various folks around his living space, and then he and I go up to Columbus, OH on Wednesday for Origins.

*I helped my family move from Columbia MD to Park Ridge (just north of Chicago) IL. This involved driving for about six hours on Tuesday (mom drove the other half.)

*I drove my little sister to and from her college orientation at Hiram college. This involved driving for about six hours on Thursday and Saturday. No mom to help. On the plus side, I own a lot of music, and some of it she likes.

*I spent last weekend in Layfayette Georgia in order to go to my very first burn. Burns are hippie festivals; Burning Man is the best-known example. It was really quite fun, and I enjoyed running around the woods surrounded by hippies, and watching various people perform various arts, and learning things, and posing for photographs and jumping on the trampoline and etc. Also, there was fire, and it was fantastic. Alsoalso, I got to see in passing Amber, who is bright and sunny and really likes me and seems to want me to move to Atlanta almost as badly as Sparr does. She makes me smile a lot.

*I might make a real post about that one.

*Oh, also I went to Balticon a couple weeks ago. I slept in a car, and hung out with old friends and new friends, and again played less werewolf than usual, and broke my JungleSpeed totem (okay, technically Braffy broke it...) and wound up giving kisses to a gorgeous woman with fantastic pink hair, and flirted with the pervy artist, and in general it was all quite good. And like last year, it was a completely significant-other-free con. Which is a little strange, but mostly very freeing --the first time I went to Balticon, I went without my partner, and I kinda really like not being responsible for anyone else's happiness at the con. Not that I don't love being with my partners at cons, you understand --I do love it, very much-- but once a year...I'll gladly take the vacation from feeling responsible for other people's happiness. Because I am responsible, some, no matter how hard I try not to be. At least for my boys.

*Alys graduated high school. Go her!

*This is the first 750words entry I've made in twelve days, and the third this month. Please whine at me to do this. I won't be able to during Origins, but I should at least get my act together the week after, and once I'm back in Boston.

*Looking to get back in Boston somewhere around the fourth. Hoping to spend a night in NYC with...someone. Need to talk to relevant someones and see who has a couch and wants me to sleep on it. (I mean, I also have friends in the city who have couches that I can sleep on, but if I have people who actively want me as houseguest, I'll strive for that first.)

*Week after Origins is Girl Scout Day Camp. This might be my last year, but if you volunteer as an adult for five years, you get a pretty volunteer pin. And next year would be year five. So yeah, MD peeps, I might be looking for crash-space a random week in July or June 2012.

*I dodged the sunburn from camping in the middle of fuckyou Georgia all weekend (I hate the weather here, does it show), but the trade off is that I think I might have some poison ivy on my arm, and I certainly have bugbites everywhere. Still, that doesn't cause cancer, so I'm okay with this. I did my best to keep Sparr and Sarena sunscreened (two of my three campmates --Joe is a redhead and so did a very good job of keeping his pasty self covered) too, and I think it mostly worked.

*Made foodstuff with Sparr earlier --potatos and eggs such to put into breakfast burritos. Was good! Also, I made the mistake of asking Bethany how many people I should cook for (since she is the normal cook hereabouts) and she answered "sixteen".

I did not cook for sixteen people, because Christ, how would I?

That's all for now.

~Sor
MOOP!

(Okay, so, for a very long time now, I've known that MOOP is a burner term meaning Matter Out Of Place --probably learned it less than two years after I coined the term as my own personal word. Holy shit though, people actually use it, like all the time. It's how the burner community refers to trash, or to the action of leaving trash "Yeah, I was MOOPing all over the place last night, I should clean up" or "Jeeze, who left all this MOOP at our campsite."

The weekend was _so weird_ for that alone.)