Three conventions, no waiting

Coming Soon to a Convention Near You Rennie, the official Reno in 2011 carpetbag created by Brad Foster made his/her/its debut on Memorial Day weekend as TR Renner and Mark Herrup launched the first of many (many!) Reno in 2011 bid parties.

Are you heading to ConRunner, Midwestcon, or ApolloCon this weekend? Reno in 2011 agents will be in England, Ohio, and Texas, listening, talking, and partying with fans. They'll gladly take your money, too. :-)

Look for our UK Agent, Steve Cooper, at ConRunner in Wolverhampton. It's the first non-US convention we'll be at, but it's far from the last! The vote is in Montréal, after all....

On Saturday night, Jim Mann, Laurie Mann, and Ben Yalow are hosting a Reno party at Midwestcon in Cincinnati. Look for flyers announcing the room number, or just ask -- last year, three different people I didn't know each told me where the Montréal and Australia parties were. Nice!

ApolloCon Fan GoH Anne KG Murphy is representing Reno in Houston-- we'll likely post a special report about our activities there sometime on Saturday. Maybe even with a picture or three....

If you're like me and spending the weekend at home, wishing you were at any or all of the above, please take a minute and swing by the Reno in 2011 website for a quick convention fix. We've updated it with links to pictures and mini-reports from Balticon, BayCon, ConQuesT, Marcon, WisCon, and Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. There are a few other new things, too -- where we'll be next, an updated supporter list, agents' names, and such. As always, we'll gladly take your money on the website, too.

Seriously -- many, many thanks for the active, positive support we've received this past month, the first month of the bid. The Reno in 2011 Worldcon bid already has over 160 Supporters, Friends, and Really Close Friends. Your contributions make the parties and other fun surprises possible. I'm looking forward to helping us all have a mountainous good time in Denver.

See you on the Funway!

Quick apology, and other notes du jour

Oops -- that post about this weekend's Reno in 2011 activities was supposed to go on the Reno in 2011 community rather than here. My apologies to all who end up seeing it twice as a result.

In other news, the septic tank turned out to have only three covers rather than six -- there's one large center cover and two smaller covers at each edge. Work is underway to have risers installed on the two covers we can get to without cutting five feet into the concrete apron that's most likely been in place ever since the house was built. I could spend more money and have a third riser installed as well. That would be the safest approach, providing easy access to every point that the system might clog, but it's also the most expensive. And a snake out from the pipe in the basement or underneath the garage is likely to deal with that problem...if it ever arises.

So I'll take my chances, keep the cost as low as possible now, and do what most needs doing, which is pumping the tank out and making sure we have access to pump it out regularly in the future.

In other, other news, it's been a roller-coaster of a week -- lots of hard news, lots of fun and good news, all coming one after the other, back and forth and back again, loop de loop all week long. I'm a bit dizzy and exhilarated from the ride, and hope the weekend brings a few quiet joys my way. I have rather a lot that needs working on, as usual. But it's all rather fun stuff, so that's a win. In addition to the PROmote work, I'll also be turning more of my design attention to the Hugo program booklet for this year, the one given out at the ceremony that lists the nominees and such. Reminder to all that the Hugo Voting Deadline is just 10 days away -- midnight PDT, Monday, July 7th. For details, see the Denvention 3 Hugo page. Vote soon, rather than at the last moment, to minimize the risk of delivery failure.