God God dear Gawd was it ever hard to get up yesterday morning! The alarm rang at 8a and there wasn't a thing I could do about it, since I had to scrape the top layer of grime off of myself as well as buy that camera battery before the first panels at 9a.

I was very happy that there was a camera shop merely a block away and he not only had a battery but one all charged up! Fortunately, I mentioned that I needed a charged one, because they don't come that way, you know. I took lots of pictures going back to the hotel, it was such a relief to have that ability to do that again.

Back to the hotel, I had missed the first third or so of the panels, so I saw one third each of them--Single Subject Journals with Renee, Molly Zero and Slavegirl, who turned out to be Lunesse. I have never read Lunesse, but I am crazy about Slavegirl, and not just because I enjoy cooking journals, but because I dig the style, so clearly I am going to have to start reading her!

The other one was on Writing for Fun and Profit with John Scalzi, Evany and Sars, which was interesting as well. Too bad that I couldn't see all of both, but since all of JournalCon was about trying to enjoy what you were up to while missing out on something else, it was an appropriate start.

After that was my panel with Beth and Pineapple Girl on How to Have the Most Popular Journal in All the Land. My contribution was "Start it no later than 1998," and Beth's was, "Be Pamie." Not much help to anyone, but we had fun.

The last panel was on Moveable Type, which I was not at all interested in, so I and other non-Moveable Type-types hung out in the main room ,trading swag. There was all kinds of swell stuff. I brought the flyswatters from last year because I had leftovers and couldn't afford to buy anything else. I figured that most people wouldn't have been there last year, though, so it would work out well.

There was lots of great stuff. Wendy brought Play Doh, Krystyn brought envelopes filled with glitter and plastic stars, Tim and Ann brought matchbooks from their wedding (was I the only person that didn't know that two journallers met at the last JournalCon and then got married?), Javina brought cartoons, Lisa brought pencils (I grabbed a handful, hey, I was doing her a favour, the box was huge!), both the other Lisa and Hez brought fridge magnets, Jane brought Milk Duds, Terry brought little pink monsters, Molly Zero brought bookmarks, Karen brought hand quilted fridge magnets, Michelle brought cds, and so did Beth. She didn't bring that many, though, so they were immediately snagged by those of us hanging around the swag table like cats hang around restaurants in Rome.

Then was the trip to Alcatraz, which was really fun.

Jen Wade brought us to the pier like a Girl Scout leader, but abandoned us to our devices before the trip, which only makes sense. If you live in San Francisco, you've been out to Alcatraz too many times to count. So she set us adrift, fairly certain that we would get back alive and unharmed. The worst thing that happened all day was while we were still in her care, on the bus when an insane homeless man asked each of us for a dollar and then spat on Bitter Hag and called her a bitch. I only realized this after he got off the bus, threatening to cut off our necks, because I was completely baby-focused, having snatched Victor away from Beth the moment that I could.

Beth proved that being a Mommy means that you are ready for any eventuality, passing baby wipes to Bitter Hag in order for her to purge herself of insane homeless spit. I don't know if it were a spray or a gob, but I don't know if it was me if I wouldn't be tempted to gob right back. Or course, then he'd probably start biting and I don't think I could handle the escalation.

The group was me, Renee, Amanda, Jared, Beth and Victor, Lynda, Michael, Bitter Hag, Bev, Jill, Meg, Karen and Mr. Karen...and some other people that I'm blanking on. It was really fun, and much less touristy than one would imagine. In LA it would have been "Disney Presents Alcatraz", this was really just plain Alcatraz.

The boat ride was a little bit more touristy, since they forced you to pose behind a life ring before letting you onto the boat. We were pretty certain that that did not mean that the boat operators wanted to remember us fondly, but that they wanted us to buy pictures when we returned. I have never had the slightest wish to buy a picture of myself in such a situation, but when I saw it afterwards, it was remarkably flattering! There was a lovely shadow under my chin, obscuring any extra chins that I might be holding for anyone else at this time, and besides, they gave you two copies and two fridge magnets of yourself for $20, who could turn that down? Not me, not with that chin shadow.

When we got there, the memory of my camera filled up, which made me laugh. First the battery and then this? I hadn't dumped my pictures from the day before, I didn't realize that there were quite so many, so I had to go through and get rid of stuff so that I could take new ones.

We all kind of split up, or at least I split up, and wandered up the hill in our own time. There was this audio tour that was really amazing, it was recorded by two former prisoners and two former guards, so you really got a full picture of what it was like there. And my God, it was a beautiful day, and the water and the sky were so lovely, and the view of the city was amazing. I thought that as jails go, that ain't too bad, but on the audio they said that it made it worse, that you could always see what you couldn't have. I read a book once that said that Heaven was in full view of Hell, and that was the greatest torture, seeing Paradise and knowing that you could never go there.

On my way out, I ran into Beth and a couple of the others attempting a toxic clean-up, as Victor had apparently decided that he was not actually a baby but in fact a poop bomb ready to explode, and his poor little diaper was not prepared for the amazing amount of poop that poured out of him, so everything from his clothes to his carrier to Beth's jeans were liberally smeared.

They should issue HazMat suits with babies.

Everything was flung into a paper bag from the gift shop ("What souvenir did you get from Alcatraz?" "A big bag of poop!") and then we caught the ride down for cripples and small children, which we all were at that point. My ankle was hurting! Plus I was carrying the baby, and nobody was keeping me off that tram, let me tell you.

When we got down, Bitter Hag and Bev were already in the queue to get on the boat, so the rest of us cut in line with not a single qualm. At least I was qualm-free.

Back to the mainland, where I bought my picture and we started looking for something to eat, it being late and us being exhausted and starving. I wanted to get back in time for the readings that afternoon, but first there was the eating and the sitting, there was emergency eating and sitting to be done!

In a large group, it's almost impossible to make a consensus of opinion, so we lost a few of our number to the crab on the wharf, which I had no intention of eating. I wanted to go to Ghiradelli Square to get ice cream, and I frankly didn't care if I went alone (though that would mean that I would never get back to the hotel and would have to live on the wharf for the rest of my life), but I was persuasive enough that a nice number of us limped over there, burst into tears at the sight of the hill that we would have to climb, saw the insane homeless man from the bus again, burst into tears again at the sight of the stairs that we had to climb, got to the Ghiradelli store, got some chocolate samples, realized that the ice cream was at the other shop at the other end of the square, walked over there, saw the queue (about fifty people long and six people wide) and said, "Forget it."

I am quite startled that the rest didn't all give me a well-deserved clout across the head, but there was a frites place on the lower level, so we finally sat down there and ate frites and sandwiches and I had two bottles of root beer.

At this point it was 4p or so and I still thought that we'd get back in time for the readings, but that is because I am an insane optimist, and once we were sitting down, we did not stand again for a really long time.

After said really long time, we finally staggered up again and went in search of the trolley. Beth was in search of a place that sold strollers after carrying that baby in her arms since the Great Poop Explosion of 2002 and she was over it. Although I certainly carried him as much as I could, only when he would start crying and not want to be soothed would I give him back to her.

My favourite moment was when I was hanging him upside-down (I tend to spin babies around like plates) and he was laughing, and then Beth said, "I guess I can tell my husband that Vic is big enough to hang upside-down now!" I had no idea that I was getting to be the first person to do that, but she was just waiting for his neck to be strong enough. See halfway down this page for a shot of my other favourite activity, pretending to throw him into the garbage.

We found the trolley right outside a K-Mart or WalMart (passing that same insane homeless guy for a third time in a third completely different place) or something that sold folding travel strollers, and Beth flew in like the hounds of hell were behind her, exiting some minutes later with a big smile and a baby on wheels.

Got back to the hotel just as everyone was leaving for dinner, but between the fact that we had already eaten and the fact that we were all on the verge of collapse, we waved bye-bye and I invited Beth and Meg into my room to relax.

We sat and talked and rested and it was great. At one point, Wendy came round (wearing the famous Ass Splinter Pearls!) and asked if we wanted to get some food but we were still all tired and fagged out and not hungry, so we turned her down. I was sorry later, because I would have loved to hang out with her more (or at all) over the weekend, but at the moment I could neither have moved nor eaten.

After an hour or so, we headed downstairs to the lobby. I knew that I didn't want to do the karaoke thing, but there was supposed to be another outing known as Lucy's Whirlpool of Fun that sounded cool, even though I was still pretty tired. It ended up not happening, though, since Lucy was shattered and went home to try to rejuve in time for the last day of the con. So Lucy's Whirlpool of Fun turned into Lucy's Arid Wasteland of Fun. No, we still had fun, but of a quieter kind. There was a group of us already in the lobby, foolishly sitting on the ordinary chairs and leaving the comfy chairs to waste. We chivvied them over to the proper side of the lobby and blissed out in the big leather chairs.

I met Abbycat, who is not a girl no matter what you might think from his handle, whom I had apparently met the night before outside the Chinese restaurant, but between being the tiredest person alive that night and meeting Beth and Vic, he left my head completely. Babies can drive even cute guys out of your memory, they are quite powerful beings that way. He was really fun to talk to, very drawly and laid-back. And slightly hard to hear, but that's me. Michael Rawdon was there too, and Javina and Molly Zero and Krystyn and Luny and it was all just chatting and talking and laughing and so on.

After hearing about how much fun karaoke was, I almost wished I had gone, because there were people there that I would have loved to hang out with, but on the other hand, I wouldn't have wanted to miss the sitting and the talking and the hanging out with the people that I was in fact hanging out with. The constant refrain over the weekend, heard from basically everybody, was that there was simply not enough time.

By the way, the pictures of Krystyn and Michael below are of them specifically pulling faces, they don't really look like that all the time. Or at least, not most of the time.

The party broke up around 9.45p, and I went up to the room and bathed. It's so nice to have a tub that you can actually stretch out in, so much nicer than the midget bath at my house.

When I was done I figured that I was actually hungry after all, so I threw my clothes on and went out in search of sustenance.

Let me tell you, I might as well have been searching for an elephant wearing a red hat. I realized that when I hit the Burger King and it was closed. At 10.25p on a Saturday night. I realized two things, that they roll up the sidewalks in this town, and that this is the financial district and they tend to roll up the sidewalks for the entire weekend.

I walked around for an hour or so, nothing to eat, nothing was open, nothing nothing nothing. And the streets were far from deserted, there were tons of people and cars, they were just walking and driving by darkened, shuttered buildings. I took some pictures, so the walk was not a waste. I was still hungry, though.

When I got back to my room, I ate some Jax that I had and watched the rest of Superstar on my laptop, the one with the totally un-sexy Judas, and my God did he sing badly at the end. I understand that he was trying to convey pain and mental anguish, but he could have done it a bit more melodically.

Tony Vincent, the hot-'n'-sexxy Judas on Broadway, made a great Simon Zealot, but he just didn't have enough to do. Jesus was much better than on Broadway, he still pouted and overacted, but he sang it much better on the DVD, his voice was less strained for the high notes. I mean really, though, was Jesus really so pouty? Those disciples really should have kicked his ass. Rik Mayall was a better idea as Herod than a real Herod, and Pilate was seemingly in a contest with Jesus to se who could over-act the most strenuously. Surprisingly, Pilate won.

Last time I wrote about the original movie, I said that I noticed that unlike in Godspell, there is no resurrection. This time I noticed that there is in fact a resurrection in this show, but it is Judas who rises again. Hmm, puts a whole different spin on Christianity, ain't?

After the DVD, I was going to go to sleep, but Krystyn came in and so it was all slumber party talking and giggling until it was 2a and we had to go to sleep. So far this has been great, but it has also been the least restful vacation I have ever had.

Today's horoscope:
A day for entertainment and socialization. You might catch a play, a party, a comedy act, or just laugh at life's absurdities.

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