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A week later, and I'm finally getting around to writing about BASCon.

I've attended 3 BASCons now, every other year, and I always have had a tremendous time. The smaller size means it's easy to meet virtually all the attendees, and it seems to have a less cliquey, friendlier atmosphere than a lot of cons. The hotel it's held at is fab, with a giant atrium, incredibly spacious rooms and an open-bar happy hour (which I shouldn't have taken advantage of, but did, with no ill effects. Though I did show all my companions how to use my Epipen. Darn those anaphalactic reactions anyway.

I didn't actually do that many panels this year, though I did volunteer to mod two.

morgandawn and I did one called the Song Video Decoder Ring. We did an overview on how vidders put together song vids, aimed at helping viewers appreciate what's going on in a vid. It was pretty well attended and we got a few compliments on it at the Dead Dog. (

morgandawn gets major kudos for doing the bulk of the work on the panel and burning the DVD with all the vid examples. You are fab, my dear.) I modded another panel on Spies and Slash, since it was a way to make sure all my fave fandoms (UNCLE, I Spy, Pros, MI-5/Spooks) were represented. It was also well attended (we totally filled the rather wee room it was put in). I wanted to focus on why so many spy shows make interesting slash fandoms, and there was a lot of great input from all attendees on a wide variety of fandoms.

A large part of the reason why I like attending BASCon is the people. I get to hook up with old friends, and I always get to meet new ones. This year, the new ones included vidders

permatform and

lierdumoa, whose enthusiasm is awesome and who fab vids played in the vid show.

And speaking of the vid show,

morgandawn did a wonderful job recruiting non-attending vidders and burning disks of the show to make the concom's life easier. She also got me to do a last minute intro to the vid show, which was a lot of fun to do. Which is a good thing, since I only had two days to do it. Ahh, pressure as a motivating factor can be exhilarating. (More on the vid show later)

The art show had some truly lovely pieces in it, and after swearing not to, I even bid on three of 'em. I won a very nice Karen River portrait of Bodie (which had been put up by

morgandawn, as I later found out) and a Suzan Lovett print of all the Homicide: Life on the Street characters which I have coveted for a very long time but sold out long ago. Thanks to whoever put that one up for auction.

All too soon, the con was over, but

stormheller and I got to spend most of Sunday before our flight back to Toronto with one of my best friends from grad school. Raymond is a big sweetheart and very slash friendly and I don't get to see him nearly often enough. Stormy and I took him out for a very wonderful sushi dinner in return for his chauffeuring us around the Bay area.

The flight back was uneventful, though my back is still recovering. I'm going to have to start quaffing massive quantities of anti-inflammatories before long flights in the future. (I'm mostly enjoying getting older, but this having your body start falling apart on you thing really sucks.)