Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Weekend: mostly a win -- today's negative is not of the same magnitude as the positives of the past two days. (Typing this on a dying keyboard, please excuse missing letters here and there.) I don't think I'm getting back to Timonium today, though I'd wanted to. I'd hoped to get home early enough last night to not be too wiped out to get back to Chesiecon this morning, but just before midnight suddenly my eyes went wonky and my head hurt -- a friend let me borrow a room key so I could lie in the dark for an hour, and that helped enough that I could drive home, but this morning I've been moving way too slowly and suddenly it's afternoon and how did that happen? the con proper will be over by the time I coulld get there, but catching people who haven't left yet and maybe getting some music time in that we didn't get to last night were on my agenda. Alas, despite getting as far as showering and picking a cute outfit, my body and brain are going slower and slower... At least I made it to the program items I was scheduled for!

But though my spoons are all gone, the emotional recharge of Being With My Tribe the last two days lingers. :-) The "Disability and the Starship" panel on Friday ... left a lot of whole avenues of exploration and discussion lying there to come back to some other year or at some other con, because there's so much inor connected to the topic, and so many people in the audience were interested and had interesting contributions. As moderator Jan Whitley said, we could have gone on for several hours.

The Homespun Ceilidh Band concert on Saturday was fun (as expected), with a rather full room and some rather impressive dancing near the door. ("Oh, that wasn't much, I can't go nearly as high as I did thirty years ago." Well yeah, I'd wondered about that, but there are plenty of 20- and 30-year old dancers who can't get as far off the ground as she did yesterday. I remain impressed.) And then I went and joined maugorm's pick-up band for the Renaissance dancing (and realized how rusty I've gotten on some of that repertoire).

But the best of it was the hugs and the conversations, seeing old friends, meeting new people. Physical contact, smiles, in-jokes, nifty ideas and tidbits of shiny, shiny knowledge (I learned what happens if you glue tiny stilts onto ants' legs -- or have a grad student do it, anyhow), stories, reconnecting, and just being where I belong. Fibromyalgia and fatigue made me physically uncomfortable much of the time, but the emotional lift of being with my tribe was a bigger factor until my body just wouldn't go any more.

So. Chessiecon. Yay. I didn't make it back there today: small "boo". But all in all, a yay. And now I think I need a nap.