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Okay, I'm semi-awake -- so let me tell you about JournalCon
2004..
Last night I posted a couple of pictures of
The Matthew Show (I believe he has some sound files on his Web site if you wanted to hear what he sounds like). However,
in between the complementary champagne and The Matthew Show was maybe an hour and a half of mingling and chic-chatting and
reunions of people who knew each other from previous JournalCons and oh-so-that's-who-you-are greetings between people who
only knew each other through the Internet. Nancy and I didn't know any of these people (well, especially true for Nancy,
who does relatively little reading of online journals) -- but I introduced myself to Bozoette and was looking around trying to read name tags -- which often contained URLs or journal
names -- note to future JournalCon organizers: use large bold type for this so that (depending on whether nametags
were pinned on or worn on lanyards) they could be more easily read without giving the appearance that you had an
unseemly interest in people's boobs or stomachs. Someone began talking to us and I instantly knew without reading
her nametag that this had to be Cosmicrayola
(another Rhode Island journaler whom I had never met even though we must
live only fifteen or twenty miles from each other)
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Anyway, we wandered through the cocktail lounge into an outdoor courtyard
where clumps of jounalers were in intense conversations -- two women waved
us over to join them at their table -- so we got to meet
Danielle and Lobsterchick
(this picture was taken later that evening at dinner). Danielle is a teacher
so I think she and Nancy had to fight a temptation to slide off into shop
talk. The four of us had a very pleasant conversation, varying from online
journaling to living in upstate New York vs. Rhode Island vs. the greater
metro-DC area to trying to write novels as part of
NaNoWriMo . |
Bozoette was attempting to organize NaNoWriMo
survivors to go out to dinner (she has published
the novel she wrote for NaNoWriMo). The four of us joined the group and about a
dozen of us headed off to Logan's Pub (or some similar name) a few blocks
from the hotel. It was at least nine o'clock when we got there and the
place was very full and very busy -- we were told that there would probably
be a half an hour wait before they could seat a group our size. Okay, no
problem for me... I went to the bar and got a beer. When I came back I
found that the decision had been made to split up in order to get faster
seating. I would have preferred waiting to get a table for twelve but I
figured Nancy must be very tired and probably hungry as well... but the
food was tasty and the four of us enjoyed ourselves.
Okay -- here are some of the others who went out to dinner Friday night -- although reading certain
journals *grin* confirms that at least some
of these people got pretty drunk Friday night, I only had a couple of glasses
of champagne and three beers and yet I could not properly label this picture
(thank you Bozoette Mary for helping me get the names straight). There are five and a half people in the
picture (hey, I started with all
six in the viewfinder but then Ethne leaned back out of the frame to take
a picture herself) -- anyway, we have half of Ethne and
then Bellwether and Jeanene and Bozoette and
Petrouchka and Minerae.
| Note: Many of these links no longer work; you will only get bogus advertising
pages, etc. (Thus, if I am not telling you here that their old address
is still good or that they have a new good address, don't bother clicking
on their old links unless you really feel like reading advertisements for
online gambling, etc.) Danielle still writes at the same address. Lobsterchick
has not updated in years.. Some of these people dropped their pages for
a while and may have restarted, but I have lost track. Bozoette has switched
to using Typepad and you can find her at her
Red Nose site. Dan and Whitney (see two paragraphs down) are still online and their
links still work. Miriam is also still online but she has stopped updating
the site linked to below and is now blogging as
Fauxklore at Livejournal. The wise and witty Cosmicrayola (in the photo at the end of this entry) died in
June of 2009. Diane (summer-gale) is now writing as
H2Odragon at Diaryland, but has been letting long periods of time pass between entries..
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Saturday began with coffee and juice and pastries (3 cheers for the JournalCon organizers!) and then a
general session ("State of the Union") intended as an ice breaker. (No, I don't always babble as
incoherently when talking to a group as I did then -- I really am accustomed to public speaking -- No, really,
I am....) That was followed by a panel discussion on personal and professional writing by four people who are
professional freelance journalists (one of them is also a business reporter for a national newspaper) and who
also have online journals or blogs. I won a copy of
The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing
Success, co-authored by one of the panelists. (I've already read a large chunk
of it -- It's well-written and it strikes me as providing very useful and
practical advice.)
Went to lunch (hiked up to Dupont Circle, to a book store that is also a restaurant --
good food) with Miriam (see picture) and
Whitney and Dan. (Dan, by the way, came close to keeping me from being the oldest attendee at JournalCon,
but he is a month younger than me.)
Three very interesting lunch companions... Dan, a retired rocket scientist
(really), and Whitney, a witty and amusing young mom who does both blogging
and journaling, and Miriam, another rocket scientist (well, close enough,
she has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering) whose hobbies include traveling
to interesting places around the world.
Then back to the Hotel Helix for the afternoon panels. (Meanwhile, Nancy
was off enjoying museum heaven.) |
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Afternoon sessions were cool [note to future JournalCon organizers: have
coffee available for afternoon sessions, for many attendees this is somewhere
between a medical necessity and a religious mandate] except since there
were two different sessions going on simultaneously (without TiVo) which
meant having to choose between political journals/blogs and secret journaling;
between legal issues and sex journaling; between search engines and weight
loss. (I selected the first option in each pairing.) I'm not going to attempt
to summarize three different hour long panel discussions. I will just mention
that I still feel like a fool from when, in the political session, I framed
a question that referred to Glenn Reynolds (
Instapundit) but I confused everyone by repeatedly calling him Gene Reynolds either because
I was conflating his name with that of Eugene Volokh
and/or
Bill Reynolds (who is a sports columnist for the Providence Journal). Duh. (I told you coffee
was needed at the afternoon sessions!) Anyway, I have now ended up with a new political/current news blog
to follow, that of Kevin Aylward (who was one
of the political journaling/blogging panelists).
I blew off the Open Readings -- well, first I absolutely had to go down to the corner to a
Caribou Coffee shop to
get a cappuccino (with an extra espresso shot) -- and when I came
back they were not in the room indicated on the program and (although there
were only two other possible conference rooms for them to be in) I called
Nancy on her cell phone. She was at the Museum of Natural History and told
me that instead of closing at five, the museum would be open until 7:30
p.m. and that she thought I would like the In Stabiano exhibit (all about
excavating and restoring the villas at Stabiano (which,
like the better-known Pompeii and Herculaneum, was buried by the
first century Vesuvian eruption). So I scurried on down to the Mall and
met Nancy by the elephant in the rotunda. The Stabiano exhibit was, indeed,
worth seeing. After the museums closed we made our way back to Dupont Circle,
did a little shopping in a CVS (I needed new batteries for my digital camera,
etc.), ate some dinner...
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Stopped at Caribou Coffee where Nancy had some kind of green tea slushy
with a shot of cherry juice and I (who, except for an occasional cappuccino,
am strictly a black coffee drinker) got something the barista recommended
that included coffee and whipped cream and blueberry syrup and... well,
I'm not exactly sure, but it was delicious. (It's a good thing there is not o
ne of these places in my neighborhood.) |
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I understand that there were both organizational and technical difficulties with the Karaoke session at H
amburger Mary's, but we skipped that so I only have
hearsay to go by. On Sunday morning breakfast was followed by a session of invited readings. I missed the beginning but
enjoyed and appreciated all of the ones I heard. This was followed by a choice of two panel discussions -- one on parenting
and journaling and the other on website makeovers. I think there was a business session following that (dealing with the
process of bidding for JournalCon 2005) but I had to check out of the hotel, get our suitcase and my backpack to Union
Station (to be stored for three hours) and then get to the Air and Space Museum to meet Nancy. She was touring the museums
with her brother and his wife plus a
niece and her husband and their three kids. We connected up, had
some fun, then Nancy and I had to get to our train (stopping on the way
to take a quick look at the Postal Museum, located next to Union Station).
Just two more pictures --
Cosmicrayola and summer-gale in front of
the hotel -- and, on the right, a picture of the Hotel Helix.
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