Wiscon, Day Four and After

[pantryslut]

I did not attend any regular programming on Monday. Instead, I met Melodie Bolt at the door to the "Writers in Mid-Career" Living Room, and we retreated to the Green Room to discuss administrative details about next year's Writer's Respite. (so many capitals!) I'm taking suggestions now...

I missed lunch. I missed saying goodbye to many friends. I missed "Culture Is What We Make It." There's a hole in my memory here. I went to the post-mortem and discussed more administrative details that will probably interest no-one now.

Next year I'm going to be sitting up on that panel, ain't I?

Took a nap and headed to the Dead Dog Party in the bar, where we read the surveys one by one. My favorite portion of the evening, for sure.

The one tragic flaw of this day was that Cafe Montmartre was closed. Steven and I discovered this little place, just around the corner from the hotel, a few years ago. It's a French-style cafe with dark wood interior, gloomy light, lots of wine and beer, plus good sandwiches, pizza, salads and appetizers. And every year before this, it's been open on Labor Day. But not this time! Argh!

We were able to get back to it on Tuesday for second lunch, fortunately. (First lunch was at the L'Etoile Cafe. Steven had one of their market buns with ham, cheese of some sort (gruyere?), and dijon bechamel. Heaven.) And the nice guy gave us a whole basket of bread and some oil after we'd eaten our food, because we looked hungry and because they were out of our first choice, the baked brie. We had crostini with roasted red peppers and goat cheese instead. Wisconsin has fabulous goat cheese. Whatever this stuff was, I want more.

To get back to Monday dinner, a bunch of us ended up at the other Italian place (off Capitol Square, not on State Street), whose food is just like the place on State, but somehow better. The place is airier, too, which adds to its charm. This dinner is becoming a tradition, and it was fun to once again dine and chat with brisingamen and Paul, who are goofy with each other in ways that are quite reminiscent of me and Steven. She was quite amused when I said, after watching the two of them together, "I like you. You make me feel normal." That's as in "I've found my clan," not as in "you're way more weirder than me."

brisingamen abjures all responsibility for our sharper bantering and teasing, however. Well, now, doesn't everyone?

And after that, the con was over.

I failed to get in the pool all weekend.

But I didn't fail to buy books. Usually, we spend most of Tuesday after the con browsing the used bookstores -- this way we don't have to cram in the time in between programming events at the con. Madison is full of delightful used bookstores -- our favorites are Shakespeare Books and Avol's, but trust me, there's plenty to choose from. We had a very restricted budget this year due to Steven's unemployment, so I ended up writing a lot of books down in my notebook for future reference.

I've already mentioned my great find of this day, The World and its Peoples. Which I didn't buy. Yet.

I did buy a couple anthropology monographs and other obscure goodies.

This was also the day I experimented with Claritin, and it seemed to work, thus confirming my allergies suspicion. I combined it with an Excedrin, though, so it wasn't a scientific experiment. This is also when I discovered that Bayer makes an acetomitaphen-free aspirin and caffeine blend ("Bayer Aches and Pains Formula"), which I've been pining for, but the caffeine content is way too low for my purposes (migraines), I fear.

I like having the extra day to wind down and ease back into the world. We stopped by the hotel several times before it was our turn to go and chatted with stragglers, but by the time it was our turn, there was no-one left. We were the last to leave Wiscon.

And I'm probably also the last to write it up.