Terminus: the night before

[bronze_ribbons]

The reading at Quimby's was a blast! I got to the neighborhood an hour early, so I wandered around for a bit -- there's a hair salon called Art & Science I might go back to try...



...and a bookstore called Myopia, where I splurged on three manga (two volumes of Fake and You Higuri's Gorgeous Carat) and Ogai Mori's Vita Sexualis)...

and then headed the wrong way down two other streets before finding Q's. nimrod_9 was also there early, so we got to chat for a bit. westernredcedar, she recognized the necklace I was wearing as one of yours:




ravenna_c_tan got delayed by airline mayhem, but there was a standing-room-only crowd by 7 p.m., so we started out with everyone present introducing themselves (all 40+ of them, including a half-dozen non-online locals who were clearly wondering what they had come into the midst of.. and more people kept arriving...) and Mijan trying to get hold of her partner (who had the copy of her fic). Then I began with Hard (and was rewarded with appreciative laughter right with the opening line. That's such a great feeling...), and then gateway_girl read, and then Mijan, and then Kabal, and then me (the other two pieces I read were "Handled" and "Seared"), and then Ravenna:



[Info about her EWE shirt is here.]

Everyone picked great excerpts -- the audience was fabulous too, they laughed a lot and applauded heartily -- and then there was socializing and door prizes and purchasing the zine. Folks I got to meet included leni_jess, drusillas_rain, amanuensis_1, snottygrrl (sp?), r_grayjoy, and a host of others.

Then marginaliana and I headed down the street to Zen Noodle (she had potstickers and noodles, I had mango bubble tea and greens) before catching the Blue Line back to the Loop; as we waited for the train, we encountered sister snupin100er LJ:shipchan and LJ:seawitch-I-forget-the-number-sorry!, and it was fun chatting with them when we could hear each other over the rumble of the train.

After saying goodbye at the conference hotel, I meandered up Michigan Avenue and around River North for a while. The city is so beautiful at night, and so much fun -- there was a gaggle of Filipino women who were thrilled when I offered to take their picture outside of the consulate; there were the window-box-tenders and arch-washers outside of the Cultural Center...



... there were people making out by the bridge, as well as people going home from work and people touristing about. There were guys in an auto body shop near LaSalle working into the night. There were cops on Segways and bicycles. The hotel bar was still open when I finally got in, so I treated myself to a really potent Rob Roy (whisky + vermouth + bitters), which could probably be blamed for some of the giddiness of this post, but as some of the people at the reading can now tell you, I can be pretty hyper without any alcohol in me whatsoever. :-D



In other news, I committed another Haru wo Daite ita drabble before I caught the train. It's here...

ETA: Ravenna's writeup is here. Reading it, it reminded me of Mijan's comment about how she hadn't realized that she would have to read her NC-17 Draco/Harry fic while dressed up as Harry. When I told her I'd assumed she'd done it on purpose, her response was something like, "I'm a kinky bitch, but not that kinky!" Hee!...

Comments

[bronze_ribbons.insanejournal.com]

Glad you're enjoying them -- and I do wish you were here! *HUGS BACK*