Vagantes went well. I spent a year dabbling in its preparation, and so was particularly relieved to see it going so smoothly. Based on folders collected, about 110 people attended the event, twice the attendance from last year (which was its first year). One came from England for it, others from all over the US and a scattering of non-Toronto Canadians. The quality of the papers was high, and the conference fed its attendees well between breakfasts, lunch, and lots of snack breaks. The banquet was well-attended, and the keynote speeches engaging. The tours even went well.

The conference was held at the same time as Ad Astra, a science fiction fantasy convention. Friday night was all of Ad Astra I could attend, but not only was it worth it, both socially and for content, but it quieted my itchings to go see more of it, much as this means I missed the opportunity to hear Tanya Huff speak on her work, among other people. Jason Taniguchi performed Attack of the Clones again, but as an entirely different show, this time based on the actual movie (as opposed to anticipating how the movie might go). It was funny, it was good. It was slightly long, but this also shows just how many scenes and plot complications the movie had. safranjan has now been to her first conference, and Christopher has a Brian Froud autograph. C. now has two more companion anthologies to the one he picked up at last year's convention, and I have a magnet of a charming frost dragon. *

cliosfolly and safranjan both stayed with me last weekend, and I even managed to send off an abstract for the syllabus-writing workshop over the course of the weekend. All in all - busy, exhausting, but good.

The frost dragon is from the online comic Dragon Mango, which I hadn't read before I bought the magnet. Now I'm halfway through Chapter Two.