meeting Sal Towse, OVFF, Filkcontinental

(Updated to include important chocolate bar info from Lyanne!)

Had to interrupt my trip report to say how delighted I was to finally meet Sal Towse, my markets editor from Inkspot days and well-known personality on misc.writing. We had e-mailed back and forth quite a bit for years, but never met in person.

I was supposed to meet with her back in March, but had to cancel my California trip because of my sprained elbow. Then I thought I wasn't going to meet her this time either, because the mystery convention Bouchercon was scheduled for the same weekend as Canadian Thanksgiving. But it turned out that Jeff and I would still be around on Thursday after all, yay! (To Gary: Sorry I was too late to hook up with you...hope you're having fun at the convention)

I was concerned about how we were going to recognize each other on the street, but when I arrived at our meeting place, she was wearing the Inkspot.com jacket I had given her for Christmas way back. :-)

SO great to finally chat with her in person. I embarrassed myself by frequently interrupting the conversation to suddenly exclaim, "I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE!" and hugging her way too many times. Sal was so incredibly helpful and supportive during Inkspot.

To you writers out there: be sure to check out Sal's wonderful link resource for writers, which was selected by Writer's Digest last year as one of the best sites for writers.

Speaking of the Internet, I'm doing a chocolate bar swap with Rand's New Friend Erin (check out Erin's entertaining post about the quandary of romantic relationship terms), whom I hope to meet in person someday. She's sending me Fast Break chocolate bars for Jeff (which we can't get in Canada), and in return I'm supplying her with Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut bars. Thanks, Erin! :-) (Later note: Lyanne has pointed out that Fast Break bars are available in Canada as Sidekick. This means, of course, that Jeff and I have to do a careful taste test of both types to compare.)

Had fun hanging out with Allison and Jodi last night at the Frog & Firkin, celebrated their birthdays. We're looking forward to attending OVFF in a few weeks! Some people have asked me if we're going to be performing. We'll be doing a children's concert with Ookla the Mok, which should be fun, as well as performing "The Lady" in the Pegasus Nominees Concert (Jodi's song was nominated, and we've been nominated as Best Performer). And of course we'll be in open filk on Saturday night and probably Friday night. Unless we're guests, Friday night at filk conventions has always been a "catch up with friends we haven't seen in ages" time. :-)

And of course we talked about how great it is that WE DON'T HAVE TO HIDE THE FACT THAT WE'RE GUESTS OF HONOR AT FILKCONTINENTAL IN GERMANY NEXT YEAR ANYMORE, WOOHOO! I am -so- hyped. Now the agony of waiting for the actual convention begins. I hope my head doesn't explode before next October. (I was going to post a cartoon of this, but it looked far too gruesome (though my friend Andy would find it funny, I'm sure))

Phil Allcock recently posted some photos of the convention and area and Kirstin Tanger has posted lots of photos in her Let's Filk About page. Wow, gorgeous scenery. Here are some of the Filkcontinental reports I've found, in case any of you are thinking about going but want to know more:

Phil
Lissa
Zander (one of the Guests of Honor this year):
  Part 1 | Part 2
Ju


And thanks for all the interesting comments about travel, everyone. Fascinating to compare different travel outlooks and strategies.

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