I'm back from DarkoverCon, and I haven't gotten sick yet, but there's always time. I had lots of fun there with many of my friends. Much wine was consumed at "Salon Pyracantha," the private room party that I host for my convention friends. There was plenty of merriment and a little bit of money earned. I didn't have any art in the art show, which perplexed many of my "fans." I did have a few prints and one original work at a dealer's table, and some of those sold. This convention has long since ceased to be an actual fantasy convention and has devolved into a private reunion party for a community of friends. And that's not bad, because many of these folk I only see once a year at this event.

Some of my friendly mathematicians were there. I had to explain to them that I was not doing math at this time due to other obligations. I confessed to my "mathematical Father Confessor" that I was not doing math. He gave me absolution in the name of the Ordinate, the Abscissa, and the Z-axis, that is, the three-dimensional Trinity of the Cartesian Coordinates. At that point the symbolic implications became so clear that I had to stop myself from creating a new mathematical Christianity at that very moment. It is bad enough for my Christian imagination that one of my friendly mathematicians at the convention brings a bread machine and wanders around the convention giving fresh bread to people — and he looks just like Jesus, long hair, beard, and all. He gave me a loaf of multigrain mathematics to take home with me.

DarkoverCon celebrated its thirtieth anniversary this year, and believe it or not I have been to 28 of its 30 yearly meetings. That's an awful long time for a convention to run, especially since the same people have been running it the whole time. Now a new convention is about to start, run by my friends in the Order of St. Michael. It is called "DeryniCon" (website is not yet fully constructed) dedicated to fantasy literature and the work of author Katherine Kurtz, who is also the Abbess of the Order of St. Michael. See how things fit together? Well, there are two artist guests of honor for this one, and one of them happens to be me. The convention, if all goes well, will be on Columbus Day weekend, October 11-12, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I suppose I should do some fantasy art for this one, in the upcoming year. I don't want to disappoint them.

Back from DarkoverCon I returned to the whirl of holiday preparations at work. This includes a large amount of food sampling. At my job I am paid to eat goodies and taste wine. After all, how else can I recommend things to customers? There was also an employees' party to decorate the store for the holidays (or "horridays," as I call them). At this party, employees hung glitter and snowflakes and Christmas lights, including eye-blasting new-fangled LED lights. I didn't participate in this, since I was already doing signage. They put piles of cotton fluff "snow" over the tops of cabinets, signs, and shelves. I grew up with snow, and I regard it as an abomination. Why would they want to give a tropical-themed store a coating of fake snow? It makes my brain hurt to see representations of palm trees, Hawaiian beaches, and snowdrifts in the same display.

Posted at 3:42 am | link