Back to Third Day
A sad day, as I knew I was going to have to say goodbye to Lu. *sniff* We packed up (I was shifting rooms that night, moving into the Canadian Crypt with Bev, Anne Marie and Johanne) and trooped down to the lobby for coffee and overpriced orange juice, then checked out (which took forever to sort out the bill), took one last tour of the marketplace before they started packing up, and then Lu and Elizabeth went away. *loud honks*. I had such a good time with them, and it was wonderful to finally meet Lu after so much correspondence and cofluff. And yes, Adrian and Sofi will be back. :-)
Left alone, I wandered disconsolate down to Subway and got the chicken salad, then came back to eat my lonely meal in the hotel lobby. I couldn't find anybody to sit with, a lot of people were leaving. Elaine Bergstrom came over and talked to me for a bit, then Jeanne Youngson did, then the Saberhagens. Mrs. Saberhagen is a doll, she practically adopted me, and told me they hadn't been in Canada since before I was born--1965. I started laughing. :-) ("No, sorry, but I was around, and was about 7 or 8..."). He was nice, too, but starting to look a little tired. I was starting to get pretty blasé about eating meals with my personal heros. :-)
Not seeing any sign of Bev or the others since Johanne had given me her spare key to the Crypt so I could shift my luggage, I attended two last panels (one more on vampire detectives, with Pat, who kept looking at me and breaking up for no reason; and one on humour in vampire fiction, both very good panels for the last day) and, I admit it, one last run at the dealers (I bought something, some Dracula 100 souvenir pins to give to Bloofer); and I checked out the auction of Dracula's treasure, which seemed to go for fairly good prices. Again Mr. P. was very funny and charming, conducting the auction with great humour. Then I went up to the room and finally found the other Canadians. We went to the plenary session with Katherine Ramsland, which I didn't get much out of because I don't read Rice, but it was interesting to hear some things like how she works real life tragedies into fluff, just like I do. (Uh-oh. . .) We kidnapped Norma Rowen, a prof at York here in TO, and made her come with us and Brigid to one last dinner at Denny's, where we had a great time and didn't get thrown out. We moved out to the courtyard when we got back to the hotel and talked with Patrick, who was still there, then Anne Marie, Johanne and I retired to the room while the ever-tireless Inksucker went out partying to a goth club with a lot of other convention folks. And believe it or not, she reports that "Break a Heart in Every City" Benjamin Leblanc ended up girlless for the evening! Couldn't happen to a nicer guy! :-) Before Bev left, Bloofer came up to the crypt and we sat and talked, assuring her we'd all had a great time and that we thought the academic portion of the programme had been really well run, which it had.
Anne Marie is coming to Toronto in the fall, so we talked over some ideas for when she gets here, then tried to get some sleep. I once again mostly failed, being doomed to never sleeping in that bloody hotel. . . but oh well.
Thus endeth the fourth day.