WARNING: I HAVE HAD VERY LITTLE SLEEP AND MAKE NO GUARANTIES ON THE COHERENCY OF THIS POST.

Yes. So, we're on the way home from Vegas. There have been trials, and there have been tribulations, and they are not over yet. Currently I'm in Cleveland, and through several strange turns of events am hanging out in the Continental President's Club with aliwings. "Free" drinks, snacks, wifi, newspapers, comfy chairs and relative calm and quiet, and never a line for the bathroom. Free is only in quotes because we did have to pay to get in here, but once we're in it's all we want of these things. Which is why we came in. Ali's napping in a chair a little across from me, I'm writing this to try to stay awake a little longer. It was this or keep Tweeting utter nonsense, and really, we've all had enough of that this week.

I'm not going to try to reconstruct our entire trip, because that would take forever and be boring, so mostly I'm glancing through my tweets to see what was actually interesting and talking more about that. And then I'll explain this part of the trip, the part where Everything Went Wrong and all.

If I didn't make this clear, and I'm pretty sure I didn't, lynxreign and I went to Vegas for vacation with a bunch of other people to celebrate the 15th wedding anniversary of aliwings and head58. The four of us flew out together on Saturday, on a crazy-early non-stop flight from Boston, which went beautifully, except for the part during check-in when we learned that Ali is on the no-fly list, because there is another person with her name or something. We got it worked out, it was no big deal, just took some time and made us fret a little getting through security. Oh, OH, that reminds me of the Plagues we went through to get going on this trip, which may just be it's own whole entry, we'll see how much I get through.

1, The Plague of the Rogue ATM: Friday night, the night before we left, lynx and I were out running errands and stopped at his ATM to get some more cash out for the trip. The bank's ATM ate his card and wouldn't give it back. The machine was punched and called dirty names, 1-800 numbers were called, and the upshot was that there was nothing we could do, because Sovereign does not actually have a 24-hr customer service line, we would be on a plane before the branch opened the next day, and we were just fucked. I did eventually manage to convince lynx that the trip was NOT ruined, and we did still have access to monies, and everything would be fine, but it was a very tense evening.

2. The Plague of Small Animals: On the way to the airport Saturday morning no less than 4 small animals tried valiantly to hurl themselves in front of our car. None were hurt, we passed the test successfully.

3. The Plague of Parking at Logan: *sigh* Their signage was confusing and contradictory and it took us a while to find the right parking lot and get situated.

4. The Plague of Ali: As mentioned above, Ali had some problems checking in, but we got it taken care of.

That was pretty much it, which is a pretty piss-poor amount of plagues if you get right down to it. After the second one we were getting punchy though.

ANYWAY, flight good Vegas hot. Checked in to Caesars (where everyone is a Caesar, so there is no apostrophe, which bothered me until I worked it out in my head for a little while), and we went straight to the buffet because we were too early to check in and the airline didn't feed us at all. STARVING. We got room upgrades with very fancy rooms that I utterly failed to take pictures of, and a beautiful view of the pools and part of the strip and the In-N-Out Burger sign. I got to swim some, and we ate like crazy. Huge, rich meals every day actually started to really take a toll on me towards the end, but the food was SO GOOD pretty much everywhere we went. And yeah, Vegas is freaking hot this time of year. Pretty sure it was not below 100 any of the days we were there, and the wind was blowing the heat in our faces everytime we went outside and it was AWFUL, but honestly, I know this is a cliche? But dear GOD at least it's a dry heat. That kind of heat plus any humidity at all and I would have just curled up in a ball of awful dampness and refused to move until someone air conditioned me. Got to see Penn and Teller, my first time seeing them live and YAY! So much fun. Penn was playing upright bass with a piano player (well, he was playing with his bass, the piano player was just also playing), and it was cracking me up to hear people be like, "Is that him? Does he just look like him? Weird!" I got tickets late, so was not sitting with the rest of the group, just me and Matt, and our seats were AWESOME. Right down front and a little to the right of the stage, right in front of where Penn and the piano player were set up. Everyone else was in the upper level, hee! Had frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity3 and it changed my life,

IDK, I'm running out of stuff I want to talk to EDIT: ABOUT, is what that should say. I'm not talking to my stuff. Not yet. ANYWAY: for now. So I'll skip to the end. Yesterday at 9pm (Pacific) the four of us went back to McCarran airport and checked in for our flights home. I'd tried to think ahead, so I had different shoes and socks for the airport and some other things with me to make me feel less gross, but an overnight flight is still pretty messed up. Woke up in a very cloudy and foggy Cleveland, got to our gate for our Boston flight, and waited. And waited. And then there were weather delays because apparently New England is being flooded, and then the flight was released and like, yay, we're going to leave a couple of hours late but we'll get to go! And then I went to the bathroom and when I got back everything had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and our flight was canceled and we ended up in front of the most awful Continental customer service agent EVAR. We were trying to get her to send us to some other New England airport so we could just freakin' drive home, and when we were like, "So what other NE cities do you fly to?" her answer was "Well you tell me!" in this awful snotty voice which made it clear that she just did not give a shit about any of it. We ended up booked on a flight to Laguardia, and that's when we met Shelly, who is a GODDESS OF THE AIRLINE, who worked her tail off to make things better for us, and totally guessed who had treated us wrong when we explained it, and got us on the flight to Connecticut that I'm waiting on now. We also talked to the supervisor, who also totally guessed who the problem was. When we told him the part about "Well you tell me!" his face got all funny and he said, "Are you SERIOUS?!" and we were all like, "yeah," and he looked very upset and apologized profusely, so that helped. We made sure to compliment Shelly a lot too, which he said was also expected, actually.

After getting to our new gate and realizing we had several hours to kill, Ali decided that she desperately needed some quiet and some comfort and the two of us got day passes to the President's Club, where I am now with the wifi and the snacks and whatnot. Ali got a nice nap in, but then it started getting busy and they decided she wasn't actually allowed to sleep, for whatever reason, so she's reading and I'm typing and if all STAYS ON PLAN FROM HERE ON OUT DO YOU HEAR ME UNIVERSE we'll be back in New England around 5:30 or 6, which should get us home around 8 or 9, which SUCKS but is better than most of the alternatives. So tonight we will get to see our kitty and sleep in our own beds where we do not have a jacuzzi in the bathroom, and it will be bliss. Well, it will be bliss once Copper stops meowing around 3am, that is.

Obviously more stuff happened on the trip, but that's a good overview.

Leaving for Vegas in an hour, be back Thursday morning. I'll *probably* still be online here and there, because that's how I roll, but if something important happens feel free to nudge me. Will be Twittering, but I don't get replies sent to my phone or anything. Let's see if you kids can keep from breaking the internet or having a party while I'm gone, yeah? And a shiny copper cookie to anyone who has any ideas on why I can't get Wordpress to upload the podcast, when it worked just fine the other day. Grr.

*mwah*

So I mentioned this on FB and Twitter and whatnot, but I'm having technical problems with Wordpress. I've been poking at it and looking around, but I really need to run to Davis to pick up contacts and be getting ready for the Vegas trip (We leave Saturday at ass o'clock in the morning), so if anyone knows anything about this I'd be grateful.

Comments don't work on my podcast blog. I've gone through all the settings and it SHOULD be working, but when you click the link that should let you comment (currently says "no comments") it doesn't bring you to a form or anything, it just takes you back to the top of the page. And if you click the title for an individual post, it does the same thing, it doesn't take you to just that post, the way it should.

So, Wordpress wizards, who knows what's up here?

Edit: head58 fixed it! There was a stupid problem with the permalink setting, which I never would have thought to look at. Apparently it likes one kind and not the other, no idea. Thanks Mr. Head!

Sorry for the Sunday night spam, but this just came across my Google reader from ioianthe.

I want to go to there.

I am in love with this bag.

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a GearHo.

The only thing that could possibly make it better would be optional messenger bag-style straps, because I prefer that or a backpack to a shoulder bag, but it looks like it would actually stay on my shoulder, and considering it's purpose, the shoulder straps make sense.

DO. WANT.

Ok, I've been thinking about this for a little while now, as you can see if you glance at my Twitter feed, and running it over with a few people, and I have to say, I really dislike Scholastic's Top 10 Dads in Literature List.

First, let's hit the obvious biggy. As far as I know (I've only read the first chapter of Hunger Games, so someone help me out if you have read it. In the chapter I read the protag is described with olive skin and dark hair, so IDK, maybe she and her dad are not white, but I'll get back to that in a minute) the only non-white dad on that list is Babar. In case you've forgotten, Babar is an elephant. So yay, India's represented? Sort of? By animals and colonialism? Don't get me wrong, I love Babar, but it's problematic and I don't count it as diversity for a list like this.

Ok, Atticus Finch. Good pick, Scholastic! He's a great character and a great dad, and is so far just killing the poll over there. So why do I feel so icky about it? Maybe the part where it feels like this is their "we put him in so we can all feel good about ourselves!" pick? If there had been even a tiny bit more diversity in this list, I probably wouldn't mind this, but as it is having Atticus is like, ok, we can't have any actual PoC on the list, but we'll put in this white guy who protected the poor misunderstood and persecuted black man, that makes it all ok! And I also can't help feeling like he's winning the polls because people who haven't read the book are voting for him so they can feel good too. Which might make me a cynic, but I don't care.

Carlisle Cullen. Carlisle freakin' Cullen, REALLY!? You know, the vampire dad who was so loving and kind that he turned other people into vampires so he could have a family! And then didn't teach that family how not to be creepy stalkers! Dad of the year, he totally has my vote.

Dr. Murray (Wrinkle in Time). I like this pick well enough, but he's not really around much in the book. I mean, the whole point is that they're going to rescue him. Which is wonderful in a lot of ways and he is a good dad and I love the later books with more of him in them. So I don't have a problem with him being on the list, just that he's not really in the book much at all.

Same with the dad from the Hunger Games (again, only read the first chapter and heard a few summaries), who died before the book even starts. I'm not saying he's not a good dad, just that for a list like this I'd expect to see dads who were more a part of things.

Mr. Bennet. Oh please, really? Look I like Austen and I love Pride and Prejudice, but Mr. Bennet's kind of an idiot, spends most of his time making fun of his wife and daughters, and doesn't really seem to care if they marry for love or not, unless you're name is Elizabeth. Austen liked writing slightly stupid parents, it helped make her protags stand out more. He's a decent enough guy but I don't think he's a great rolemodel dad.

Ramona's Dad. Ok, this one sort of melted me a little. I like Mr. Quimby. Although I will say that what I remember most from that book in particular was when he got all depressed and started smoking and being a jerk to his family. He turned it around though, and I can totally see him on this list.

Pa Ingalls. Umm, ok, this one's tricky for me. I mean, ok, he was a great dad to his girls, no question. But the issues with Little House just lead me right back to feeling squicky about the lack of diversity on the list.

Daddy Warbucks. Yay, industrialism. . .woooo. . .

Arthur Weasley. Totally down with him he is an awesome dad.

So ok, there are some decent selections on the list, but taken as a whole it's just, really Scholastic? Really?

Edit: head58 reminded me that I did want to mention that the depiction of dads in literature is often pretty crap to begin with, so it is possible that the problem isn't with the list, but with the literature in general. Which doesn't get Scholastic off the hook since they're a major publisher. I'd also like to see some acknowledgment that maybe good PoC dads are hard to find in books, and maybe that's a problem in itself.

You guys know how I like to talk about yuki_onna's writing, yeah? Some of her older books that are kinda hard to find are now up on her site as e-books, for low, low prices! Buy them if you want something to read while looking busy at the computer, buy them if you're curious about her writing but don't want to shell out for one of the newer books, buy them buy them buy them.

If you're interested in poetry I highly recommend A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects.


The other thing here is that Cat has just sold a book to Tor (yay!), but it's going to be a bit before anything happens with that, so for right now there's not a lot of income between cycles. So if you have a few bucks and want to help out a really fantastic writer who needs to keep writing, consider an e-book today!

It has been decided that this weekend I get to go to Maine to visit yuki_onna and justbeast! Wooo! lynxreign and I are going to drive up Sunday afternoonish, head over to the island on the ferry and have dinner with them, then lynx will head back home and leave me for a couple of days. Tuesday Cat and I will head over to Portland for fiber geek time and then she'll take me to the train station, where I'll catch the Amtrack "Downeaster" back to Boston. The only trouble I'm having now is decided if I should take the 2:30p train back home, so I get in around 5, or the 8p train home, so I have more time with Cat. The later one gets me in around 10:20, which might kinda suck, and I don't want to feel like I'm wearing out my welcome, so IDK. Cat swears I won't be, but I'm still weighing pros and cons here. I'll figure it out. Mostly I can't wait to see the island in the daytime for the first time ever, since when we moved them in it was already dark. :) Yay!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY heytherenatalie!

Happy Birthday to cielamara too!

Tip o' the hat to theladywyvern for this one. lynxreign has been punishing us with this song lately anyway!

So I've mostly spent the day looking at free Wordpress themes and stuff. Let me tell you, if you ever want a theme involving Vegas, poker, gambling, etc, go to web2feel.com. Someone posting there is obsessed. Or it's a really popular type of blog right now, I have no idea. I just know that I have looked through 80 pages of themes so far, and every page has had more than one of these types of themes on it. ENOUGH WITH THE GAMBLING BLOGS, THANK YOU.

I did find a theme I like for wehavethumbs, so I might put that up here in a bit and see if I still like it.

Because we were talking about it at the party today and couldn't find it thanks to Apple TV + youtube's shitty searching, I present for your pleasure, the Head Over Heels literal video.

BRB, moving to Hawaii to be an archivist at a volcano. Even though I'm not an archivist. . .GAH.

Zomigosh! wehavethumbs.com exists! Not much there yet, and the design is not going to be staying like that, but it exists! That's my website, guys! That's where my podcast will go! And now that there's a website, I can start talking about it publicly and stuff! It all goes there! So now I have to:
-work on the design and graphics and stuff
-Thursday I'm going shopping with Guido to get a mic and bounce ideas around with someone who knows a LOT more about this than I do.
-play around more with GarageBand, check out Audacity
-actually record an episode (ioianthe? We'll talk about scheduling)
-work out a recording schedule and start contacting all the people I want on the show
-and, uh, stuff. There's more, but I'm all excited and list making is not as much fun as going ZOMG THE THING LOOK!

So there's that. :)

If anyone feels like making me logos or site banners or helping with the design, I probably wouldn't say no, but I'm not completely averse to doing it on my own, either.

So, saw UP last night, and there were tears just all over the place. This movie made me cry almost more than Lilo and Stitch,* except that would be impossible.

I
Loved
UP.

LOVED.

Look, the hero is a grouchy old man! Who gets to have adventures! He isn't just a grouchy old dude who's just grouchy because he's grouchy, either, I thought they did a really good job exploring his backstory and full life so he wasn't just one dimensional. And the kid that goes on the adventures with him isn't treated as just a sidekick or comic relief, although he is both at various points, but they switch it up some, so there are times when it seems like the old dude is the kid's sidekick.

The crying wasn't all happy crying, but it isn't really sad crying either. If you go with an SO expect to be reaching for their hand a lot, is what I'm saying. It'll make you feel like a total sap until you realize that everyone in your row is crying just as hard as you are, and then the move will make you laugh so hard you'll start to wonder about your mood swings.

The dogs are real dogs, too, which was awesome. And the overly colorful, loud bird is named Kevin, NOT THAT WE WERE COMPARING IT TO ANYONE WE KNOW OR ANYTHING.

The short at the beginning is also totally charming, so really, Pixar just completely won for me.

I think some of us are going back for the 3-D version, although that might just make me cry harder.

*Explanation for anyone who is not noisyhooligan: We saw this movie together with his mom back in Little Rock, and I realized when the credits started that my fatal mistake here was seeing the movie about two days before my period was supposed to start. Which meant that I literally began crying during the opening credits, and did not stop until we left the theatre. He started out trying to comfort me until he finally just gave up, and I eventually let him know what was up. Because really, I was fine, I was just never going to stop crying, apparently. It was actually completely hilarious.

Going to Up at a dinner theatre...thing. Woo Pixar!

Seems like everyone's doing like, real Wiscon recaps, and I'm over here going "IDK, IDK, STUFF HAPPENED AND IT WAS AWESOME AND SOME STUFF HAPPENED THAT WAS NOT AWESOME BUT ZOMG THE AWESOME STUFF WAS BEYOND AWESOME THE END."

And while this is pretty much standard operating procedure for me, I figured I should at least try to do a *little* better.

( My Wiscon, by Emily )

I'll post it to lolracism once my membership gets approved, and only like, 10 people on my f-list will get this, but the demand for it was great, so here you go.

( Incomprehensible macro behind cut )

It's time for a books post! Wiscon is a literary con, and I bought books. Oh, did I buy books. I basically walked into the dealer's room and said "Here is all my monies, thank you." So, listing what I got, with some annotations.

Friday, the Gathering (for those that don't go, it's like a party with different sections of stuff going on and you wander around and talk to people and have snacks and there's cool stuff to do)- Galley Table. Oh my stars, what a great idea. Four tables forming a square, and inside that square are two ladies putting out ARCs as fast as they can. That table is SWARMED, because those ARCs are a dollar each, and you can get up to ten. I got five.

Demon Princess: Reign or Shine, by Michelle Rowan- first in a new YA series, girl finds out she's special. I started this one at the con and finished it on the way home, so I can actually talk about it a little. First, I have to admit that I'm starting to get sick of "adolescent finds out he/she is special" stories. This was probably compounded by the fact that I started another such book at the same time I started this one, but still. I did like that instead of being a fairy or a witch or something, she finds out she's half demon (this is not a spoiler. The name of the series is DEMON PRINCESS. That is a hint). It was an interesting twist on it, and while yes, she gets to be beautiful and popular and now she has KEWL POWERS, there's this whole thing where the Main Character (Nikki) has to freak out because demons are icky and evil. Fun and different, and could be interesting! It's. . .well, it's not awful, ok? It's a fun and entertaining book, but some of the dialogue was awful. Like, ok, the demon royal family in the other dimension, sure, they're going to be a little stilted, I guess, but some of the teen dialogue wasn't much better. I'm going to be passing this over to shadesong's 14-yr old girl soon to see if her opinion matches mine, but there were definitely places where the writing needed some work. There are also some minor Twilight issues, by which I mean Nikki falls for guys because they're creepy over-protective stalkers. I think by the end of the book the relationship is becoming a bit more equitable, and Nikki definitely has agency where Bella never did, but it still squicked me out a little to see her thinking, "Why I am so attracted to the creepy overprotective stalker dude? That's hot!" But at least she has the decency to be a little creeped out by her own feelings until she gets to know the guy better. Oh, and there's an attempted rape, which she thwarts with her KEWL POWERS, which is fine, but then she goes straight into saving the day in the other dimension. And the attempted assault is used as one of the ways she figures out what's going on, because hey, that guy seemed nice and sucked, so maybe *other* people that seem nice actually suck too! So that was a little weird. I'm also not sure how much play the author's going to get out of this concept and set of characters, and there's a minor hint that we might be headed into Laurell K. Hamilton-different-supernatural-boyfriend-every-book territory, which I SINCERELY hope I'm wrong about. But it was fun, and cute, and a dollar, and I'll probably at least check out the next book from the library when it comes out next year.

The Convent of the Pure, Sara M. Harvey- ZOMG I'VE BEEN WANTING TO READ THIS ONE FOR A WHILE! I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the galley table, and grabbed it immediately. This is saraphina_marie's book, and you can see a trailer for it here. DUDE. So yeah, that went on the pile.

Azrael Loves Chocolate- Michael's a Jock; An Insider's Guide to What Your Angels Are Really Like, Chantel Lysette- Have heard nothing about this, but it was on the YA side of the tables and looked like it could be an interesting and fun story, or it could be utter crap if it takes itself seriously. We'll see.

Gaijin Girl- Dreams of the Dead, Thomas Randall- another beginning to a series, also YA, about an American teenager living in Japan, weird shit starts to go down. Looks interesting.

Beastly, Alex Flinn- More YA, modern urban fairytale version of Beauty and the Beast from the Beast's PoV, in NYC. We'll see.

Dealer's Room stuff!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1- The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan- Yup, YA, yup, first in a series. I've been hearing about these books for a while now, and finally decided to give them a try. This is the other book I started at the con, and yes, a young boy finds out he's special. Once again, this is practically in the title, so it's not like I'm spoiling anything to say Percy finds out he's the son of a Greek god. OH BUT WHICH ONE? It is a mystery. Not really, I'm kidding. I finished this one last night, and can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be picking up more books in the series as soon as I can. Harry Potter (hah, typed Pooter accidentally) + Greek myth + better writing (and I LIKE HP, is what I'm saying)= lots of fun, even if it does feel really, really similar to HP in places. But who cares?

the alchemy of stone and the secret history of moscow, both by Ekaterina Sedia- Another author I've been meaning to get into for a while now, actually. Look, yuki_onna tells me what to read, ok? And Miss Sedia was at Wiscon, actually sitting at the table where I bought her books, so both are signed and I got to have a lovely chat with the author. These both look really, really good and may be the next things I read. secret history has a blurb from Neil Motherfuckin' Gaiman on the cover comparing it to Neverwhere, so that's hot, and alchemy of stone has "a novel of automated anarchy and clockwork lust" as a tagline, so really, these both ought to push a LOT of buttons for me.

Filter House, Nisi Shawl- A short story collection that won the Tiptree, and once again, Cat just tells me what to read and I buy it, ok? When I'm chatting with the author and Cat MFN Valente (trend it on Twitter!) tells me that one of the stories in this book is pretty much her favorite short story of all time, I listen. So I got it signed and also had a nice chat with the author's mother, who is very proud of her daughter and fun to talk to.

Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu- Nnedi read at the same reading yuki_onna was in, and I LOVED the story she was reading, so when I got to the dealer's room and found her book, I snagged it without question. Should have gotten her to sign it, but I never had it with me when I saw her the rest of the weekend. Ok, girl finds out she's special, but on another planet! And a lot of it is based on Nigerian folklore, which should be interesting and from what I've seen so far, pretty different from what I've read before. Plus everyone who's read this book that I talked to has absolutely loved it, and Nnedi is going to be one of the GoH's at next year's Wiscon! Yay!

Interfictions, an Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss- You may have heard me talk about the Interstitial Arts Foundation before, and if you haven't, you should go look them up. I LOVE what they're doing, and this is last year's anthology, which Cat is in (continuing the theme that Cat tells me what to read. . .and we're not done with it yet). shadesong is going to be in this year's upcoming anthology, which I think comes out in November? Which I will be making art for. Art that made this year's editors sigh happily at me, and which ktempest (also in this volume that I have sitting next to me) also totally agreed was awesome. So I kind of have a crush on this whole organization right now, is what I'm saying. Probably be collecting autographs on this one next chance I get.

Pretty much everything Jim C. Hines has written so far: I'm totally not kidding about this, either. The list is- The Stepsister Scheme, Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and Goblin War. I got hooked on Jim's stuff when PodCastle (fantasy short story podcast) did a short story of his based in the same world (and with some of the same characters) as the Goblin books, and then I found out he wrote Stepsister Scheme and read that, and ZOMG LOVED IT. I wanted to give shadesong her ARC of that back so I figured I'd better get my own copy. It was one of the three books I used for my final booktalk in my YA Services class last semester, and I really, really love his writing. Oh, and yuki_onna recommends him too, so there we are again. Someday he will be at a con that I'm at and I will fangirl all over him.

And lastly, another anthology, Federations, edited by John Joseph Adams. yuki_onna's first SF story is in here! Along with stories from Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, George R. R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, ktempest, and even more awesome people. Very excited about this one.

So yes, that is my book haul that involved two trips to the ATM for more cash. Very pleased with my haul.

Another cool thing that happened at Wiscon (I am very much trying to hold tightly to the really, really good parts, because there were many of them and they were really, really good, and while we definitely need to keep talking about the bad parts I don't want to let them wash away the good stuff): going to lunch at Cosi (YUM IN AND OF ITSELF) and having a chat with the manager or whoever it was after our meal about what Wiscon is and why, and even getting to explain Verb Noire to him. He was really interested and receptive and will hopefully go look it up and buy the books, and he was nodding and excited about my explanation of "SF authors who can talk about alien races but not HUMANS that are DIFFERENT from THEMSELVES are LAZY." So hey, there's one more person in the world who gets what VN is about and thinks it's cool, woot!

If I have some better brain energy tomorrow I may try to talk about some of the bad parts, because I do absolutely believe they need talking about, and I've added my voice to some of the posts on the subject already but more can't hurt.

Did I mention that the VN party was the total hotness? And I don't mean just that the room got warm, hoo boy!