Orycon Horrorshock: Fourth Estate Gets it Right

Just back last night from three days down in Portland, running the Fan/zine Lounge at Orycon. I barely got out of the room all weekend, ate precisely one meal during the convention, no meals outside the hotel, zero meals as such on Saturday, averaged 4-5 hours of sleep a night, and yet was usually cheerful, never cranky, and generally had a fine time.

It helps a lot that I shopped for the event at Trader Joe's, and bought mainly sustaining sorts of things like seeds, nuts, bran muffins, smoked cheese, whole fruit, and fresh vegetables. Thus I was able to run all weekend on a handful of pepitas here and two clementines and a bunch of pea pods there. And tea. Arthur brought his electric kettle, and on Lise's advice I bought in milk to go with the cookies, and so I was always able to have a nice sustaining cuppa.

It also helps a lot that running an Orycon fan/zine lounge is generally a low key business, anyway. The room fills up a bit in the evenings, and it's somehow never quite empty, but the traffic is never much to keep up with, and we tend to attract the more respectful sort of fans, who police up their own messes and don't require much hand-holding. And really, I was going to spend most of my Orycon in the fan/zine lounge anyway, so wottheheck.

I garnered some nice compliments on the hospitality, saw at least some of most of the people I wanted to see, and didn't have the opportunity to experience the not-so-well-runness of the greater Orycon 29, so it wasn't a bad way to spend the weekend at all.

And come home to find that there's someone on the staff of The Oregonian who has the sensitivity and nous to write an article on a convention that actually gets it.