Back from Atlanta

I am back home from the Writercon and trying to post something relatively sensible and not consisting of the list of names with my squees attached (at least not only).

The Writercon was all kinds of awesome and I am very glad I was able to go there. I've got to hang out with various cool people - those I knew before and some met in the first time; I've got to listen to interesting discussions and occasionally mumble something of my own; I've got to get some useful information and some gossip; I've got to drink and dance a lot; I've got to wear stuff I have nowhere to wear usually and generally had a jolly good time.

The only thing I wish for: More! More! (of everything mentioned above)

There is so much to tell, I am getting lost, so I'll probably post bits and pieces and then some more bits and pieces.

1) The whole pattern of our communication there was not unlike it is here, on LJ. People grouped with those who they know and share fandom / views. the smaller fandom circles are overlapping or fit inside of a larger circle and people could meet new folk from those overreaching circles. On the other with some circles we never crossed. I, for example, was hanging out with folk from my f-list that I know and love: sweet_ali, fer1213, molly_may, st_saliery, soundingsea, missmurichson, revdorothyl, ascian3 and also with poshcat and marsterslady, I've met some awesome people, whose LJ handles seemed familiar, but whom I didn't actually know: musing_mia, lisalamona, hazel75 and many more (ok, this part of this list can be endless, so I just stop here - I met a lot of awesome people); I also met a lot of cool folk about whom I had never heard before.
As I do here, online, I lurked - except lurking online in public posts is very different from lurking in person. I mean, you are actually lurking here. Or actually stalking. I found myself following exactly same patterns with talking to people I don't know well as I do

2) meeting people from The Internets is not scary at all. Probably the fact that we all are axe murderers and deviants (AKA giant dorks) helped. I know, I felt very confident about it, especially remembering the Serial Killers convention in Sandman. Were there expectations met? Well...
a) I found that personality-wise the people are exactly the same as I knew them through their posts. and if we knew each other through LJ reasonably well, we hit it off immediately, and it didn't feel like the first meeting at all. otherwise, it took some time and talk to start squeeing over each other. ;)
b) appearance-wise, people were much prettier than their pre-con photos and self-descriptions led me to believe.

3) the panels I was at (as a panellist or just in an audience) were mostly great. Pity the best ones were too short. My favourite so far is the last one: Magic, Science and Technology - we hit some really cool thoughts and didn't have nearly enough time to explore them. (the fact that the most interesting ideas came to me when the time was over didn't help, either).

4) There was A LOT of drinking and dancing, and it was GOOD.

5) Apparently, my LJ name is unpronounceable. Who would have guessed? Hee. It's not as bad as some though. and even knowing our real names, we still think of each other as our LJ names.

6) carmen_sandiego did a tarot card reading for me with her Buffy deck, and we had an interesting discussion about whether Fred or Willow is better suited to be the Queen of swords.

7) there was a lot of folk flying from Toronto to Writercon on the same flight. Basically, we occupied half of the plane. ;)

More people, panels and pictures later.