So, tomorrow evening Daniel and I are catching a red-eye flight out of SFO to Toronto. Wheee! WorldCon here we come!

This should be fun. This will be the first con we've been to where we didn't have to hop in the car or catch a BART train to go crash at home every night. No more sneaking sheepishly out of parties at 11:30 p.m.

And we'll get to see lots of old friends. And probably make some new ones.

I will probably have some amount of internet access while at the con, but I don't expect that I'll have much opportunity to post journal entries. However, I am bringing along the Handspring Visor and the folding keyboard, and hope to use it to record some entries which I'll post after the con.

In the meantime, some random observations in lieu of a properly coherent entry:

Most frequently answered question of the week: "So what do you do at a science fiction convention, anyway?"

Favorite typo of the week (mine): "Press this key to delete users." Zap!

Favorite typo of the week (someone else's): "The manufacturer will not accept liability for connecting this machine to instruments, which do not meet the relevant safety standards." Bit of a bummer, really. The only reason why anyone would buy this machine is to connect it to other instruments, and here you tell 'em on page 78 that they can't.

Also spotted several references to "pograms", which I guess is when a genocidal mob goes around erasing computer programs written in languages it doesn't like.

Somebody lost a mattress on 880 today. It blocked the third lane from the right completely, but there was *fluff* all over the place. Not as bad a traffic jam as the time somebody's wide screen TV flew off the back of their pickup truck and shattered in the righthand lane, though. (One of my great fears about driving on 880 is that one of these days I'll be the car behind one of these people who's decided to haul cargo without securing it properly.)

I had a moment of sheer panic yesterday, when I thought I'd lost my wallet. (Or rather my card case - where I keep my driver's license and all my credit cards and stuff. My mother has kept her cards separate from her cash ever since she was robbed at gunpoint, 27 years ago or so. A few years ago I adopted the practice as well.) That would have been great timing, right? Lose all that stuff just before leaving town for a week. Fortunately, I found the card case sitting on the driver's seat of my car. It must have fallen out of my pocket while I was driving. Yay. Nervous breakdown averted.

I picked up a case of Diet Vanilla Pepsi a couple of weeks ago, and became totally addicted to the stuff. Apparently I'm not alone, because I've been to two grocery stores in the past 3 days trying to get more, and they're all sold out. I've been forced to fall back on Diet Pepsi Twist. (Normally, I'm not all that fond of diet soda, but in this heat, I often find myself wanting something with a bit more kick to it than water, but without the sugar and calories of non-diet soda. When it comes to full sugar sodas, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, but I find diet Coke practically undrinkable. Odd.)

Okay, I think it's time for me to toddle off to bed. See you folks after the Con!