I just wrote some incredibly elegant words for this final journal entry, then somehow accidentally refreshed the page and lost the entire thing. So, I will attempt to reproduce it, but I apologize if it is not as mellifluous as originally intended. I'm telling you, it would have brought you to tears.

This weekend was a lot of fun. Since it was the 35th Anniversary Reunion, lots of Clarion alumni from all different years showed up to party with the new kids (some of the bigger names that came were Geoffrey A. Landis and Mary Turzillo). There were catered cookouts, frisbee-tossing, and many rounds of Exquisite Cadaver (a poetry round-robin game, where you write the title of the poem on sheet of paper, pass the paper to your right/left for the next person to write the first line then pass it to the next person who will write the second line, etc. This continues around the circle until you get your original poem back, which sometimes bares no resemblance to the title, and often includes a profundity of sexual innuendo).

Yesterday, Janet and I biked down to the library to look at the Clarion manuscripts in the Special Collections section, but the section was closed for the weekend. So we walked next door to the Beal Gardens, a six-acre exhibit area with plants like Honesty and Stinging Nettles and Coriander, and wandered around looking at the plants and watching a possessive pond frog puff itself up and croak at the fish which approached it.

But people started leaving yesterday, and continued leaving today, and will finish leaving tomorrow. It's been really sad to see people I've gotten to know really well over the last month and a half get in cars and drive away and not come back. Email will still connect us, but it just won't be the same.

Thank you all for riding shotgun on my journey through the writing process. It wasn't nearly as lonely knowing that friends were along for the ride. If you happen to be at a convention I'll be attending in the future (I'll be at Trinoc-con in Durham, NC at the beginning of October, and, if I can swing the finances, at World Fantasy Con in Minneapolis at the end of October), please come up and introduce yourself if I don't know you already.

Cheers, everyone. It's been interesting.