Current mood:	sleepy
Current music:	Hobnobs playing computer games

Finally, my DWCon report
Its been almost a week now, so I really should write about what I did at the Discworld Convention.

Mostly what I did was have fun :)


shebit, moose_biscuit and I left on friday morning, and arrived at around 2pm friday afternoon, having detoured slightly to pick up Aquarion and lonecat. We got there mostly without incident, though a few minor wrong turnings were taken whilst the useful directions from the AA were being read from the wrong part of the page.

Arrived, registered with the hotel, registered with the convention, met and hugged various people. Not necessarily in that order. Balloon Modelling also happened (I wasn't very good at it, but I did make a rather good apple). Then sat in the bar for a bit, and then got told that if we wanted seats at the opening ceremony, we'd better leave immediately (this was about twenty minutes before it was due to start). We got a seat in the opening ceremony, though I still had to crane to see stuff - it was good though. After that Shebit, Moose_biscuit and I went to the Seamstresses Guild Meeting, where a system of giving out ribbons was devised. I think I gave out one ribbon that evening, having dressed up to promote our guild - after that I forgot about it! I wasn't a very good guild member. But it was fun watching the efforts of all the other seamstresses and other guild members throughout the weekend, trying to amass 'guild tokens' and be the winning guild. A crack *was* made about magical egg timers in the opening ceremony ;) I especially liked the method used by the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnykin-divers, of charging the guests tokens for using the public toilets!

After that, I went to Pterry's bedtime stories, where Mr Pratchett read extracts from his three next books, yes three! The next one, Going Postal, is out very soon (there were proofs around at the convention) and it sounds like its going to be a really good one. Later in the evening there was illicit pizza, and an interesting Jet Li film on tv that I didn't watch all because I would have fallen asleep, and an interesting conversation about language and aliens and evolution.

Saturday was a busy day, featuring swimming, and a few interesting programme items (though I missed more than I went to, grr) including the Guest of Honour Interview and the Maskerade Parade (which had some amazing costumes, well done to all involved, I especially liked AdrianO's entry, and the Feegles (entry entitled 'sheep? What sheep?') which went on to win the grand prize). The reason I missed a lot of things though, was partly because I wasn't feeling one hundred percent, and partly because we were preparing for our Buffy Musical Extravaganza! Pictures are now up on the website (which i'll put the link to later, but its in several of my previous entries) It went pretty well I think, we all remembered our words and cues, and managed to stay in the same key as the music most of the time (ably provided by stevefarrell Anyway, people seemed to enjoy it, and we raised over £250 for charity! There was some talk of us being asked to do it again at WorldCon next year, eep, scary! Finally, saturday ended with the hedgehog party (lots of sweeties!) and general talking in the bar and the hub. I think there was also a game of Star Munchkin.

Sunday was more of the same, talking to people and general Stuff, though again I didn't make it to a lot of the events I would have liked to attend. I did however go to the charity auction, and managed to buy some random books belonging to Jack Cohen, and I also went to the Discworld Anthems which was really good. In the evening, after a game of Zombies! (I might just have to get that game, its very fun) it was time for the Gala Dinner, which in keeping with the 'guilds' theme of the event was the Annual Guilds Dinner, hosted by the Patrician and the guild heads. I'm glad I decided to go to this, its always nice to do something dressy, and the atmosphere was great. The food was also surprisingly tasty, though unfortunately I didn't eat that much of it because I was still under the weather. After the Guild Dinner, I went to the Toast and Jam, though not for as long as I would liked, it was great! Near the end I wandered into the pub for a bit, and on the way back I found that people had migrated outside, where singing and dancing ensued, which went on well past the end of the Toast and Jam.

And so onto monday, the last day of the con, and the day where I spent more money than the rest of the days put together, oops! I went to the second part of the auction and bought a proof copy of Good Omens, and a set of American covered books, though those were almost by accident, I was going to put my hand down when it reached £10, but wasn't paying attention, and suddenly i'd bought some books for £10! Now I have to decide whether to open them and use them as 'lend to people' copies, or just keep them as an investment. I have to say I do like the simple bright US covers though. I also bought three bottles of beer from BursarVixen (though I actually paid the money to Rachel, who I didn't realise now lives just round the corner!) and was very good and *didn't* buy a feegle though I really wanted one. Oh, though I did also buy two cardboard ones at the auction for a couple of quid each.




Finally it was all over, the closing ceremony was great, and then it was just saying various goodbyes and making sure everything was packed up in the car. Then back to drop off Aquarion and Lonecat and have a cup of tea before setting off back to Brighton. Unfortunately, whilst pulling out of their driveway I got distracted, both by the weird thing happening with my dashboard lights and headlights, and the car sitting exactly where I wanted to pull out into so that I had to back around him at a weird angle. The lights thing - One of my headlights refused to work, and when I put my headlights on, the full beam dashboard indicator came on. When I put the side lights on, the dashboard indicator flickered and made a horrible buzzing noise. Anyway, I backed around the annoying person, nice as you please... and reversed into a car parked on the side of the road. Oops. The owners of said car had in fact been watching out the window for some reason, and immediately rushed out to panic. We couldn't see any damage at the time (it was dark) but I gave them all my details and they phoned me to tell me that yes, apparently there *was* some damage, in a different place to where we had been looking. They are going to send me a picture and an estimate - I doubt the cost to fix it will be more than my insurance excess so i'll probably just pay them. We made it the rest of the way home without incident (despite only having one headlight), got in, and promptly collapsed.



Overall I had a fantastic time at the convention, thanks to everyone who made it happen, committee, gophers, guests and everyone else who gave up time and effort to make it a success. Where can I sign up for the next one? ;)

The rest of the week has been a bit of a haze, I spent a few days recovering from being ill and general con-tiredness, and then it was back to work. Only a few more days worth of coding to do now, I might just about reach my target of the end of August! Well, the week that ends August, anyway ;). I also paid my car tax, and got the car problem fixed; I went to the garage and they told me it needed an electrician, but they recommended me a good one who came out to my work and did it while I worked - apparently i'd blown a wire on a component of the light, and this was why it was doing weird things. Still got lots of washing to do from stuff I brought to the con though...

Well, thats it! Again, a rather long entry. It's certainly taken me a while to write! Congratulations if you get to the end :)