BayCon was super-fun, though it got off to a rather rocky start for me, owing to a recurrence of the vertigo thing, which I thought had nearly disappeared on Friday, but which came back with a vengeance on Saturday (until I had the good sense to take a decongestant and some anti-vertigo medication.) It's hard for me to be sociable when I'm sick, partly because being sick is tiring, and partly because I never quite know how to answer the inevitable, "Hey, how are ya?"

On the other hand, the minor bright side to feeling unsociable is that I actually went to a fair number of panels, and the panels were for the most part good. I saw a panel on "Forensics of the Future", which was actually mostly about forensics of the present and the things that CSI shows that don't really work that way, but was good. I went to a panel on "Women in Science", which was fascinating, but also a bit frustrating. Fascinating in that the panelists were all women scientists who had graduated from high school between the late 1950s and the mid 1960s, and had therefore encountered levels of barefaced sexism and discrimination that would be largely unthinkable today. We got to hear soem great "war stories". Frustrating in the sense that there wasn't much light shed on why there are still large gender gaps in some of the sciences or what we can do about them. There was a general agreement that mentoring is very important.

Something that may be an interesting observation, or may just be coincidence - all of the women on the panel were only or oldest children, and had mothers who were only or oldest children. This led to some speculation about whether birth order was a factor in girls being interested in science or in being comfortable pursuing traditionally "masculine" activities. I found this interesting, because I am also the oldest child of a mother who was an oldest child. I know there's plenty of birth order research out there, but I don't know if anyone's ever looked at this angle.

I went to a flint knapping demonstration, which was pretty cool (the presenter went through the process of making an obsidian arrowhead while she talked).

I managed to spend a lot of time in the dealers' room without actually buying anything. (I was eyeing some rather pretty engraved pocket knives, but decided that though they were pretty, I could probably get a better quality blade elsewhere.) Daniel found an absolutely beautiful Kristi Smart frock coat, which was extremely flattering on him, and garnered much admiration from other con goers. (The frock coats were popular con wear this year, both as the basis for pirate costumes and just as general convention wear, but if I may say so, few people wore them as well as Daniel wore his.)

It's interesting actually to see the trends in costumes - the last time I was at BayCon, which must be 4 or 5 years ago now, there were scads of Jedi and Klingons. This year, there were relatively few Jedi and Klingons, but a remarkable number of pirates. My favorite costume was by someone who dressed as an atevi from C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, partly because I love those books, and partly because it's relatively rare to see someone costume from a book.

And I made a few new friends, and saw lots of old ones. And once I got into the swing of things, was thoroughly distracted from worrying about my vertigo, or the scads of boxes I still have to unpack, or the silly manual I'm doing at work which would be printed now except for the several rounds of last minute changes that were requested. Cons are good for that. They remind you of the things that are really important in life. Like staying up way past your bedtime playing Lord of the Rings pinball.

Oh, and for the (hopefully) final update on my vertigo - I saw the doctor this morning. Unlike the ER doctors a week ago, she could very clearly see that there is fluid in my ears. It's not an infection, though - it's my allergies. (Which are manifesting in a somewhat odd way, because they are not causing red itchy watery eyes, which is my usual signal to take an antihistamine.) She instructed me to take Claritin every day for the rest of allergy season, and to call her if things don't get better or if I show signs of developing an actual infection.

I have the dumbest health problems. All this angst, and it turns out to be hay fever. Hmph.