author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Playing catch up! OK. Where did we leave off?

Ah yes. Partying until the last dog done died. Dude, I went up to the Consuite at about 6:00 PM and didn't leave until 2:00 AM. I think it's safe to say that of the World Fantasy and Horror Conventions I've attended (WHC '02 and '04; WFC '04 and '05), WFC '05 had the best attended, most hospitable, and most fully stocked Consuite of 'em all. Fred, we love ya. Additional shout-outs to Alma and Deck, Lucien Soulban, my fellow sock-knitter John (Hay?), Darcy (recipient of a brand new misshapen doily) and her fellow gatecrashers, and Kevin Przybylowski. And of course Jen Tishrean, fellow NaNo'er and fellow traveller whose train has probably reached its home station by now.

I slept through much of the return journey. Due to the aforementioned late night, I didn't get much sleep before it was time for Jen and I to pack up and run like the wind down eight blocks of State Street to the bus stop whence we'd be whisked away from Madison and down to Chicago. Then, due to much sight-seeing in Chicago, I slept through most of the afternoon on the train. Stayed up writing and reading and playing computer games in the lounge car, then slept the rest of the night away. And then I did the biking/bussing thing to get home from Union Station in Denver, and I slept through much of that afternoon.

I was awake enough to notice the neat stuff about catching a west-bound California Zephyr in Chicago, though. Since Chicago is the very beginning of the route, we got all the route-beginning announcements, like descriptions of the route, the cars, the services, and so forth. I made a reservation to eat in the dining car this time, which was neat. Got sat with two other party-of-ones, with whom I exchanged the sort of small-talk that substitutes for getting to know one another. I had the cod. The cod was quite good. The veggies, however, were limp and tasteless, and the rice pilaf was even more bland than that served at the WFC Awards Banquet. One of my dining companions found the chicken pretty dry, too. Butter and ranch dressing seemed to solve both problems.

When I finally woke up Tuesday afternoon, I headed down to Caffe Sole for a NaNoWriMo write-in. I used the Ancient Decrepit Compaq Contura Aero 4/25 so that Willow could borrow my Averetec, and it's amazing how many distractions you can find on a DOS-bound non-networked computer. Just for instance, when I got to wondering about daily averages, I wrote myself a NaNoWriMo Progress Evaluator script in QBasic, which you can download if you so desire. (Its PHP incarnation is available here.)

Distractions aside, you can see that I made progress. More tonight, hopefully, at the IHOP All-Night Write-In. Stay tuned.