Serenity Con stuff

I went to the Hub Productions Serenity convention this weekend. Had a great time. Came home exhausted. This account will probably be a little disjointed as a result.

Friday night at the cocktail party was fun, it pays to go hang out with the smokers despite a serious loathing of ciggy smoke. Here's what happened, as told by ZB:

As a long time smoker, I am very aware that cigarettes are very very bad. You know when they're not bad? When Ron "Shepherd Book very ridiculously awesome and also amazingly sexy" Glass wanders up to me and Jenwah (and Mim, the token non-smoker) and asks for a cigarette, and then hangs out and chats with us for 20 minutes or so, smoking and generally shooting the proverbial shit. That's when cigarettes and being a smoker = made of BDH win!!

Had a great time talking to Ron. Managed a very brief chat with Nathan on the subject of traffic and pubic transport policy in various cities around the world, a topic we arrived at because he asked how our day had been and we mentioned the 2 hours it took for us to drive in to town, major traffic jam due to some sport event thingy or other. Jen and I stayed the night in town so we wouldn't have to worry about driving home and also so we would be able to relax and not be in a huge rush to make it back into town the next morning for...

Breakfast! I wound up sitting next to Ron for the buffet breakfast, we discussed the differences in bacon cooking styles between the US (crispy) and Australia (I don't know, what would you call it, warmed through? Can you tell I prefer the crispy version too?), whether or not we let our pets sleep in our beds - I used to share with the cat but now won't, Dana never thought she would but now shares with her dog, Ron finds the whole idea horrifying - and when Nathan came down our end of the table to say hello there was an intense debate on the subject of calculating time in different time zones which made it clear that none of us had had enough sleep. After a while I began to notice that whenever I said something Ron would giggle quietly, I'm not sure this was a good thing, clearly I'm either mildly amusing or slightly weird. Or possibly both?

The highlight of the photo shoot session was Jen's photo with Ron which has to be seen to be properly appreciated but sadly she has no scanner at home so I can't link to it just yet, he literally swept her off her feet! When it was my turn Ron laughed at me again. Ron laughs a lot, this is a good thing because Ron's laugh is gorgeous. I do have a scanner but I am too lazy to fiddle around with it just now so you'll have to wait to see my signed pics with the boys.

Jason Palmer's talk was interesting, I enjoyed it very much. His work is made of awesome and my bank balance is therefore somewhat worse for wear. David scored a Boba Fett print (can't find this on his sites), Caitlin has a Jack Sparrow one and Tom has an Empire Strikes Back one. I fell in love with a portrait of Book which, we found out during Jason's talk, is the one picture of himself in a professional capacity that Ron wanted to hang in his house. Ron then told us during his Q&A that the only problem with it is he can't decide where to put it!

Ron had some hints about Shepherd Book to share:

• Book found god in a soup bowl - which prompted someone in the front row to say "Excuse me waiter there's a god in my soup", Ron asked if she wanted to swap spots with him.
• He took the name of someone he killed.
• Book's greatest victory was his greatest defeat.

Ummm, what else?....

Nope, too tired, I'll have to come back to this later.