'Given enough time, I could probably make any surface reflective.' by Kara
Monday, May 28, 2007 at 7:59 AM

Anyone who reads my rants enough knows that I actually value the occasional long, boring weekend. It allows me to clear out my immense to-do list and (hopefully) have more actual interesting weekends like the previous one. The three-day weekend is especially nice. I thought I would either be getting Griffon and Pirates under my belt on the weekend itself, or else going to Balticon, but it turned out I favoured the first over the second ... and then ended up doing those early, anyway. So while I've been a bit on the hikikomori side this weekend (complete with ramen), I'm happy to say that ConScrew 3 and Blacklight 1 (minus a blurb from the Co-Writer with the Bluest Liver) are in the chutes, and I'm slowly but surely actually getting ahead of my publisher. What a glorious feelin'.

The thing once again ahead of me now is con stress. No, the con's not this weekend, or even next. It's a couple weeks from now. I've decided to move my stress up a couple weeks instead of to the night before. Besides hosting karaoke, I'm not sure what I'll end up doing. Sometimes I judge stuff, sometimes I'm on panels all of a sudden, mainly because the people at AMA know me so well that they know I'll cause trouble if they don't keep me busy.

So karaoke. I hosted it last year, and it was six kinds of disaster. They'd tucked us away in a panel room, and of course the turnout was big. I wheedled my way into Main Programming again this year, which is going to make things easier in the long run ... but now there's a stage, and now I'm attempting (as has been done at other cons) to make a proper event of it. Karaoke tends to be sparsely attended as compared to, say, the cosplay, which kind of strikes me as a shame. It's a lot easier to last-minute a karaoke, granted ... but not everyone does. Like me, which is pretty sad. I plan ahead and make costumes now.

With the stage and attempts to make it worthwhile, I'm getting a bit of stage fright. Which is silly. I've been doing something onstage nearly constantly for the last 20 years, and yet I still get edgy before I step on. The Co-Writer with the Longest Hair had to booze me before I hosted a cosplay once (hush, it was barely any). And I know, much as he reminded me then and as others will likely have to say to me, that it'll go away once I'm up there and get a minute or two out from under me. It's just that first little point in time where the adrenalin hasn't kicked in.

Other point of nervousness? Gotta finish my costume before the night before, because I'd like some sleep. Also, I finally found some bright orange holographic fabric (it's taken me about a month), but have been told there's only two yards left and none being ordered. I should be glad there's any at all. I think I can make do with that, but I'm not happy about it.

I do hope anyone attending actually comes to karaoke. Gotta make this worth the effort that I'm putting into it (and that others are, too). If you have been, of course not.