Wiscon 36 Con Report - Food Edition

On the way to Wiscon, I bought a hummus sandwich at the Cosi in the airport. It has leaves of basil on it, which was odd. I would've preferred spinach. I also bought a bagel at DD. The fate of the hummus sandwich -- I ate most of it on the bus, discarded the rest eventually. The fate of the bagel -- turned hard and got thrown out, but I used the cream cheese on a later Starbucks bagel.

I got off at Memorial Union and walked down State Street with my luggage. So to reward myself, I stopped into Noodles & Co and got a pad thai with tofu and a fizzy peach drink. I thought I'd get back to Noodles & Co later, but I didn't. These got consumed in their entirety once I reached the room.

Had a fancy local root beer in the bar that night. Then went up to the Governor's Club lounge for desserts. A strawberry cupcake that was hard and dry and not very good, and a chocolate coffee trifle that was very good. (The con hotel does better with chocolate than other types of dessert.)

Breakfast was also in the Governor's Club lounge. Scrambled eggs (sometimes these seemed to have cheese, other times not), fruit that's mostly melon and pineapple, and various breakfast pastries. (They also have yogurt, cereal, bagels, english muffins, etc.)

I may forget the order of things after this point.

Restaurants

Mirch Masala(?) It's sort of around back of the hotel. I think I ate there last year, but if so, they've remodeled and might be under new management. Ate here with Kimberly, who reminded me we had the ASL dinner together last year, and with people she'd gathered. Some of them were new to Wiscon.

Decided I like (* is a wildcard):
paneer *
* korma
* pakoor (if that's the chick pea batter)
samosas are okay

They serve a buffet earlier in the day, so that might be a good option for some. Someday I will try Indian drinks, such as lassi.

The Fountain

For the gender variant dinner, we ate here. It's really close to the hotel and is probably new this year. It's a burger and sandwiches place, but it has not only one veggie burger option, but two! I had a portobello mushroom, but I could've had a black bean burger. They were a little slow. Our party was about a half a dozen, so not so terribly large. Fortunately its proximity to the hotel meant I didn't miss the start of the Tiptree Auction. Also had sweet potato fries.

Got a smoothie from the farmer's market. Pineapple. Mmm.
Had a free piece of Ian's mac and cheese pizza at the appdev meeting. So I never got into Ian's on my own and got my card punched for another year. Woe. Also, they moved across the street.
Bought a cheesecake chocolate brownie thingee from the Tiptree bakesale. Yum.
Lucked into a fresh batch of popcorn at the consuite once. Got soda and water there on other occasions.

Never had dessert again in the governor's club lounge. Did have breakfast most every day there. Had hors d'oeuvres once. Tortilla chips and black bean dip, veggies and bleu cheese dip, and veggie dumpling things that I didn't very much. Also a Shirley Temple.

Various chocolates from the reg desk or parties. Really knew better than to stick any in my pocket, but did it anyway. I had to throw my mp3 player's earbuds out (they were old anyway) and clean the player as best I could.

Looked at the pasty shop's veggie options, decided I wasn't interested. Failed to find the food cart at the farmer's market that last year had great Thai wraps.

Dessert salon, I had the chocolate mousse, because that's consistently good. Had the wrong shaped spoon for it. The pecan pie thing had a hard crust that wouldn't cut with my fork, so I just ate the topping off of it. Went back later for a chocolate decadent cake thing that gave me a good shot of sugar and caffeine. Not sure if it had coffee in it or not.

I think that was everything. Never enough opportunities to eat at all the cool places. Plus I felt I should eat in the governor's club lounge when I could, since I was paying a premium for the privilege.

Wiscon 36 Con Report - Convo Edition

So this Wiscon I felt like I was always talking to a different group of people! For me, I get all these intersections at Wiscon. Wiscon itself and the people running it, Broad Universe, Outer Alliance, Clarion, people I met in previous years, people I met online (usually _because_ of Wiscon in some way). And this year in particular, I really felt that.

I helped out with Access, though not as much I should have. Though perhaps as much as I could have without feeling stretched extra thin. And I had wanted to attend a panel that was being interpreted, but too many conflicts.

I was on a panel about Broad Universe. Where the panelists exactly numbered the audience members. Except that one of the audience members could've been on the panel. It was a bad timeslot. Not because it was early in the morning or late at night, because it wasn't, but because it was the most crowded timeslot, like, ever. There were a least a dozen other things going on. The panel went well even with the low attendance, and it was fun to talk about BU.

I was on a reading for Outer Alliance. That was well-attended for its timeslot -- the parties were all in full swing. The room felt full, even though there were technically empty seats. I read one of my Clarion stories. Well, part of it.

I went to the Outer Alliance party, but had a panel conflict at the start of it. That also seemed to be going well, as people would stick around for the book giveaways. And I saw many people take the reading list there and at a later panel on YA dystopias.

Speaking of Outer Alliance, Julia Rios recorded several panels (I think all ones I went to!!) for the OA podcast. So if those recorded well, you can look forward to hearing those in the future.

I ran into Emily Jiang, or rather she ran into me, who was in the Clarion class after us. I felt all.. big brotherly.. no wait, that sounds sinister.. but like, I wanted the 2008 class to do really well and enjoy Clarion as much as (I think) the 2007 class did. They were the second class to be in San Diego. So if we were the guinea pigs, they were the capuchin monkeys.

As previously mentioned, I went to the gender variant dinner, despite not knowing anyone! (Tried to convince some people I _did_ know to come, but didn't manage it. Three times I tried!) It turns out I did sort of know some of the people I ate with, from seeing them on panels (or they saw me on one) either this year or past years, or from LJ.

But yea, I'm all brave and extroverted and stuff now. Because I _also_ sat down at a table in the dessert salon with nobody I knew. A whole table of strangers! Met Vanessa, who does horror movies, and later we chatted in the Arisia party as well.

I was generally comfortable joining a group if I knew someone in the group, and would join in if I had something to say. Although a lot of the time, I won't have anything to say, so I might still come off as quiet or shy. It really is just as fun listening to a conversation go on, really! You can learn so much at Wiscon just doing that.

So yea, nice putting faces to LJ names! See if I can actually remember them all now. :}

If anyone I met at Wiscon is following me now and wants me to friend them, I can totally do that. I don't really write friends-locked posts though, so you're not missing anything.

(Note: Please don't anyone feel bad if I didn't mention you by name in this post. I may mention you in a later post. Or not. And if anyone I _did_ name wants their names redacted or altered, just let me know.)

I'm also over on Facebook. Oh no, internet platforms colliding!! It's http://www.facebook.com/juliemandrews. Because I'm that cool.