I attended a magnificently fannish party yesterday.

Signs that you are at a really fannish party:

• New arrivals are introduced both by name and by livejournal handle. Names frequently elicit blank looks; livejournal handles frequently elicit, "Oh! That's you?" (Alas, journalscape is not on the radar of this particular crowd. I'm probably going to buckle down and get a paid livejournal account, and figure out how to get it to pick up this journal's RSS feed.)


• The question is not, "What are you doing next weekend?" The question is, "BayCon or WisCon?"


• Jokes about punched card programming get big laughs, even though few people in the room are actually old enough to have done serious programming with punched cards.


• One or more of the hosts occasionally retreat to the other end of the house to have an introvert moment. Nobody thinks of this as odd.


• And, of course, detailed examination of, and commentary on, the hosts' book collection forms part of the evening's entertainment.

It was great fun. What was slightly odd was realizing that, even though I'd never met any of the people at the party before, except for the hosts, almost all of them were about 1 or 2 degrees of fannish separation away from people I did know. Fandom is a small place. Cosy, though.