"But aside from that, Ms. Lingen, how did you enjoy the con?"

Happy Easter, those of you who celebrate Easter.

I am...extremely sore of throat. I am so very sore of throat that swallowing liquids is No Fun, and swallowing solids is Right Out. I am trying to get to the point where I could maybe eat some mushy oatmeal or Cream Of Wheat. In the meantime, juice. This is not a good combination with being hypoglycemic. Whee.

So. When I got to the con Friday, I had a tiny slight tickle in my throat, and sucking on lemon drops would fix it. Hung out and talked to people in the lobby area where there's registration -- you know, the good kind of not-organized thing that cons do best. Eventually it was time to go be on my first panel, "Does SF Have a Sell-By Date?". The start of it was a little shaky, as we had to hash out whether or not SF is primarily predictive (No!), but things got better after that, and the audience was very participatory. pnh identified the next up-and-coming movement in SF, AdhesivePunk, with its magazine, Amazing Glue Stories. I talked a lot, but I didn't see audience members rolling their eyes when I reached for the mic, so we'll pretend it was all good. I had fun.

But my voice did start to go. Had dinner with timprov, greykev, careswen, mmerriam, and hilarymoonmurph, and my voice continued to go, and going outside in the raw spring weather to walk from the hotel to the restaurant and back again was a Bad, Bad Idea. I was doing a terrible job of resting my voice, so I went back to the hotel and hid until my reading. A rather strategic button came off my skirt (same skirt, different button, retrobabble!), and so it was a good thing I'd stuck jeans in my bag, and anyway I was thoroughly chilled by this point. (Also I have run four pairs of stockings in three days this week. Sigh.)

Drank some throat tea from the Green Room, which got me halfway through the reading. The other half was done by timprov, who did not trip unduly on the Icelandic patronymics and did a nice job. People showed up. They laughed in the right spots. They were kind about the whole situation. As these things go, it really could have been worse.

Also timprov and greykev and careswen and mmerriam were going to be Visual Aids of the decapitated pantheon for me, and mmerriam almost got stuck that way. Nobody volunteered to be a puffin, for some reason.

So then largely out of interest but also because it was an activity that would not encourage me to talk, we went down to a music party. I enjoyed that a lot. Left while it was still going strong, but I suspect they had a good deal more music than I had Mris.

Yesterday morning greykev and timprov and I had breakfast with cakmpls. The food did not make me less dizzy. Went to lydy and Jane Yolen and Laura Krentz's panel on pop-up books, which was really nifty, but I kept getting more dizzy, not less, and my throat kept getting sorer, and at that point I decided that I had already done the thing where you pass out in the hallway at the convention and have to be hauled away, and it wasn't any fun when it happened last time, and so maybe I should haul myself away while I still could. And so here I am.

I can brain again a bit this morning, so that's progress, and we will see whether it's a good idea for me to go back to the con or go down to my folks' today, or whether I should just stay here. If it was just my folks at my folks' house, I don't know which way we'd go on this subject, but my grands and my Onie are there, too, and I don't want them to catch what I've got, but on the other hand I'd like to see them. Still. At this point I am not feeling sanguine. Perhaps being semi-upright will help. We'll see.

Ick, ick, ick.

Not going back down to the con today. Not going anywhere. I have my brain back but am dizzy and awful. Managed 2/3 bowl of mushy oatmeal before I had to stop because it hurt just plain too much. Further caloric plans for the day: honey in my tea; juice; egg drop soup; strawberry ice cream.

None of you get this, all right?