Mythcon and Hot Springs trip

I returned last night from the trip, after a wonderful time and adding three states to the list of those I have visited: Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.On the way to Mythcon, Stephan and I celeberated our 10th wedding anniverary by staying one night in a lovely Bed and Breakfast in Springfield, the Mansion at Elfindale. I highly recommend it. We had the tower room with our own little sitting room at the top! Stephan gave me an iPod as a gift, which is a wonderful new toy I would have never gotten around to buying for myself! I've already got gigabytes of music on my hard drive, but had never made it portable. I decided to download a few things from the road. I suppose it says something about my eclectic musical tastes that the first things I downloaded were a CD of Prokofiev's 1st and 5th Symphonies with the Lt. Kije suite (a CD I once owned and missed severely), "Beginning to See the Light" by the Velvet Underground (I loved that record in high school), and "John Henry" as sung by the fabulous Odetta.We had a blast at Mythcon. Oklahoma was hot but dry, and the Norman campus is nicely laid out so we didn't have to spend much time outside in the heat walking from place to place. The food was excellent, as was the company. This Mythcon was not as heavily attended as the previous two, so some of the papers and presentations did not have a large audience. I hope nobody got up to present and had no audience at all!I enjoyed meeting Lois McMaster Bujold and getting to hear her read, and talk informally about writing. I really must get her new book as soon as it comes out. I won the author guest of honor clerihew contest, for which I am now 2 and 2. The prize was a bottle of invisible champagne, which I set down in the con suite and promptly lost track of. Oh well, I hope somebody enjoyed it.I participated in a reading along with Jane Bigelow, who was a pleasure to meet and read from her novel, Talisman, which is published by a small press. I bought a copy and am enjoying reading it. I read chapter 5 and part of chapter 6 of The Willow Maiden, which were well received. I still have some things to tweak but had simply ran out of time. Gwenyth Hood, the editor of Mythic Circle, gave me a couple of good suggestions which went right along with what I already felt I needed to do.We had our banquet in the natural history museum right next to the photogenic T-rex, Sue! Before the banquet there was time to browse some of the galleries and I was nearly drooling over the fossils. What interesting dinosaurs and other creatures!Amy Sturgis, the scholar guest of honor, gave a great talk about Native Americans in fantasy which was quite thought provoking.I could go on and on about Mythcon and about Hot Springs, Arkansas, which we visited on the way home (it was HOT!), but I will save that for another time. I am glad to be home with my cats and have a little bit of time before the semester starts up again and my entire life gets crazy.