Hello! It's been a while; I've been doing lots of things. If I talk for too long, I might just divide this into multiple posts.
So, first, Yosemite. We had a nice trip; it was a little shorter than usual, but that suits me, since I'm getting old and don't have the stamina that I used to. Still, we managed to hit most of the major sights: Bridalveil, Tuolumne, Mirror Lake, Lower Yosemite Falls. The others seemed to have a good time too; Katie was particularly taken with the concept of a tent. We ate lots of bacon, and a really nice dinner at the Mountain Room (I had some barbecued pork thing on polenta and a basil gimlet). Oh, and on the way back into town, Jann managed to talk me into joining her at this thing in Santa Monica that she steadfastly insisted was not a rave. Some of the less ravey performances we saw were pretty great, a one-man band, a friend of Narin's at the carousel, a light and sound thing inside a glass house that was really cool and difficult to describe in this space, and the Jurassictechnologyesque "Department of Nocturnal Affairs."
And then a few days later was comic-con. The presentation went reasonably well, I think. We were surprised at the number of people attending...in fact, this is probably one of the largest academic audiences any of us will ever have, which is simultaneously uplifting and, er, not. Afro-Samurai and Spotlight on Ottaviani were my favorite panels, though I didn't go to all that many this year (partly because of unexpected overcrowding issues; however, some of the more important ones, such as
MST3K, were preserved as a result of the ever-increasing YouTubeization of our daily lives). I did get to talk with some people and do the usual stuff like look at elaborate costumes and buy neat things, and on the whole, the con was definitely a success.
I feel like I'm forgetting something important, but it'll come back to me soon enough.
