I skipped the parade this year; tempting though it was, I realized the vendor area would be most navigable during that period and headed that direction. On the way I got to check out the gaming area and found windows to get a few parade pictures. For posterity. In Vendorland I bought a few gifts, checked on art progress (squee!) and took pictures of things I might buy online later. Then I headed back to the Hyatt for a tasty lunch, a couple of panels, and work shift in the Armory. Good times.Creating an Alien: another crowd-sourcing brainstorming session, this time led by scientists & hard science fiction creators. Here's a pic of a thing I might purchase online later. Within 10 minutes we have an aquatic predatory creature that flies via hydrogen floats like a dirigible and hunts by launching off waterfalls and hitching rides back upstream via an upstream  species to which it provides some benefit.And then it got really weird.At one point it was a rocket-propelled manta-shaped dirigible flyer with filamentary trntacles, possibly one that excretes its skeleton from graphene and impales its prey on a spike and then envelops it... Oh, and it has a multi-stage life cycle wherein its earlier stage is prey for the adult. I will spare you the details of the digestive system and reproduction and life cycle....but they were amazing.Also we developed how this creature's evolutionary development and biological imperatives would affect the psychology and culture of a sentient edition. Have I mentioned how much I love being the stupidest person in the room?

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The second program covered synopsis writing, and it will get its own post at some point. It was worthy, and Esther Friesner was on the panel. So. It was phenomenal goodness.

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Work shift was great, with a visit from Paula my co-worker and her daughter Brittany, here for their FIRST DRAGONCON, a great docent lecture on the evolution of armor, and then some fab song-singing, snack eating and after-work relaxation in the Armory. Here, have some pics of all that:

Even if you want to know about the dirty filk song session, I'm not telling you. When next we meet in public,  ask me about the dead monkey, "I helped" and "ta-dah!"And that's a wrap on Saturday.

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Hey, look. Books. These can be bought for a song and some money. I'm still writin' em.

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