We only caught the last four hours, but Stellercon was great! I definitely like the relaxed, intimate atmosphere. If felt like the lines between categories of people were blurred, so guests could mingle and people could chat without nerves getting in the way.

This was my first time watching the Baen Traveling Roadshow. Toni kept it lively but informative, and tantalized us all with the books they’ve got coming out. She also gave away a lot of books–next time I’ll have to come prepared to speak up and often!  I also ran into James up there, and enjoyed the lively discussion of science and science fiction for which he was a panelist.

Before the con we had a crazy morning in which some karma came due and was paid, but not too painfully. This entire process of getting our house on the market has gone smoother than it should, by any rights. We worked like dogs, of course, but we also made record time even by our break-neck standards, and a lot of crucial issues were resolved at just the last minute.

So, of course, this morning things had to go wrong. It should have been a quick clean-up of a few outside items, whisk over the floors one last time, and we’d be off. Instead it took us four hours to get everything in place, and during the course of that we cleaned up broken glass which had shattered in all directions and just squeaked by without our daughter breaking her arm.

I’ve seen people break a limb before, in addition to my own, that is, and there’s a certain ugly moment were you can see it. The fall is just wrong, the person has this shocked, stricken look, and you just know. That happened when our daughter (who was masquerading as a monkey) fell off a deck railing which is between three and four feet high, and fell hard, without catching herself in any way, onto concrete.

Amazingly, she’s bruised and took all the skin off her elbow, but is unbroken. Funny how one can go so quickly from frustration to gratitude.

Oh, and btw, she did get to see storm troopers.  When we pulled up their was a group picture of Star Wars folk going on–the timing couldn’t have been better.