Short version:

1. Most of y'all know that pied_piper70's lovely wife, Miss Rachel, passed away last Sunday. Monday night the comedy benefit for her & pied_piper70 went on as planned. In a fitting tribute to Rachel we all laughed our butts off for two hours.

2. Wednesday I had my mid-term for Interpersonal Communications. I got 89% on it, so a B, but only one point shy of an A. Should still pull off an A for the class.

3. Thursday afternoon was the memorial for Rachel. I saw many people I don't see often enough.

4. Thursday night was the INXS concert. It had originally been scheduled for the beginning of February but the lead singer had gotten bronchitis and so the Mpls show was rescheduled.

5. bleaknimue came into town for MarsCon and was staying at our house. We came home from the concert to find her in the dining room getting her root things ready for the art show.

6. Friday evening hellbob & I headed out to the convention. We met Dean Haglund and I got his photo with Moose. We also had tickets for his hilarious improv comedy show. hellbob headed home early and I spent a few more hours wandering the convention & parties.

7. Saturday we spent the whole day at the con. I got Gigi Edgely's photo with Moose & my Chiana. I also got to spend a lot of time chatting with various people.

8. Sunday was my cousin's baby shower out at my mom's house. I saw my aunts & my cousins & my monkeys. technomonkey_m even picked me over grandpa at one point! I win!

9. Sunday night was the Oscars. We had a pretty full house for them, and hellbob used a trick picked up from Cheb's movie parties and put a tv in the dining room that was hooked to the livingroom one so that we had room for an overflow of people.
And that's what I've been up to...

Long version:

1. I never got to know Rachel very well because I rarely saw her, and I only knew Scott slightly more, but I still felt the loss. Rachel was always smiling every time I met her. The comedy show was brilliant. The three groups that performed were Five Man Job, The Scrimshaw Brothers, and Idiot Box. I'd only seen the Scrimshaws before and not nearly as often as I should have. All three groups were so funny. My face hurt at the end of the night from smiling so much. My absolute favorite part was one of the Scrimshaws doing an interpretive dance to Toby Keith's Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.

2. I was hoping I'd do a bit better on the test, but considering that this was my first 'read the book and remember stuff' test in over 10 years, I'm pretty darn happy with 89%. Plus, now I'm on spring break which just means that I don't have school on Wed or Thurs this week.

3. I saw Becky & Tyler, who I hadn't seen since Becky's birthday dinner. I also saw Cyd, who I didn't realize knew Scott. silmarian had flown out from Washington, although wiredferret wasn't able to come with him. I talked to him for a while, and since he was out for the weekend he said he was going to be at MarsCon. I also talked to Nathan for quite a while. Since he's one of the rare people who isn't on LJ I usually only see him once a year - at OmegaCon. He's the one who got me addicted to Killer Bunnies. All of you who I've infected? You can blame him.

4. The INXS concert was that night. I took a few pictures... Yeah, I know. Go figure. Marty Casey and Lovehammer opened. They were all right. Marty is pretty. The only songs I knew that he sang though were Ring of Fire and Trees. As for INXS, I thought J.D. did a good job. I'd never seen the original INXS in concert so I have no basis for comparison, but it was fun. I get the impression that he's a cocky bastard, but if you were in the same position, wouldn't you be? After the concert Marty was signing autographs in the lobby. No pictures though so I couldn't get the picture of him with Moose that I was hoping for.

5. I'd called bleaknimue friend's cell phone and left instructions of where to find the spare key so that they could get into our house. They only got there about an hour before we got home from the concert. Jane had her root things out on the table getting them ready for the art show, writing tags up and pricing them. There were a few new ones that I took pictures of for her. Her root things are way cool and one of them is an acorn thing named Green Pants. His secret name is Francois, and he didn't go back to Madison. He stayed here and is sitting on my fireplace mantle! bleaknimue was sculpting some new ones on Saturday and Sunday and one of them was white and looked very sad and/or scared. He told me his name was Jeremiah and Jane agreed that it fit him. Yay! I got to name one!
It was great fun having Jane stay with us. She's a spaz, but that's ok because we like her that way!

6. When hellbob & I checked into the convention on Friday, Dean Haglund was sitting at his table chatting with people and signing autographs. He was telling someone about his Chill Paks that he invented. They asked if he had many of them with and he said "Just a few." I pulled one out of my computer bag & said "That's why I brought mine from home to get it signed." He looked very pleasantly surprised. Especially when I handed it to him and it was cold. I'd pulled it out of the freezer just before leaving. I told him that I'd originally heard about them on the Slice of Sci-Fi podcast.
So I got his signature and we got our tickets for the comedy show picked up and Rick & I started wandering off. Then I realized that I had never gotten his pic with Moose! Ack! So we stopped back & I got the picture.
Then we went to check out the dealer's room. There was a guy who had both puppet Angels! hellbob wouldn't buy either of them for me. :( We did some wandering, checked out the art show, talked to some people. Then it was opening ceremony.
After that we were back out in the hall while they set up for the comedy show and Gigi Edgely was at her table signing stuff. I got my Farscape postcard signed and talked to her for just a little while before we went in to the show. Dean was funny as hell again, just like the last time we saw him. It hurt from laughing so much. Then hellbob was tired and genevra was heading home so she dropped him off and I stayed at the con.
I ran into silmarian in one of the party rooms and spent most of the night chatting with him. I also ran into bleaknimue who wanted to know if she could just ride home with me & come back with us the next day so she wouldn't have to worry about getting lost on the drive back. Turns out it was a good thing we established that plan since she had left her lights on and the car battery was dead. (Turns out that suibhne_geilt who had her car back in Madison did the same thing. The dangers of driving someone else's car...) While we were wandering about on the party floor I also ran into my favorite RollerGirl, Sayonara Pussy, aka Crystal. Her hair is blue now, and she has new tattoos, and new ear piercings. I hadn't seen her in FOREVER! Then I was getting tired and so bleaknimue & I headed home.

7. We got back to the con shortly after noon on Saturday and went on in to Gigi's Q & A session. She's so darn cute! Afterwards when we were waiting to get her picture taken with my laptop, Chiana, the line was moving super slow because she was talking so much with everyone. Rick wanted to go to some guy's panel so he got out of line about 15 minutes before I got up to the front. So he missed out on the Gigi time. I got an 8x10 signed by her, and then the pic of her with Chiana and Moose. Around that time I was starting to get hungry and I had run into bleaknimue & silmarian at the art show so we decided to hit the hotel restaurant for lunch. I ran in to tell hellbob where we were going so he could join us, and we headed down. romeoa also joined us. We ended up down there for about 3 hours. The we were talking to davedujour, jmanna and someone named Dean. The masquerade line was forming and we saw mle292 with vanaabegra. mle292 was looking very hot in a tiny green dress! Masquerade didn't even seat until over 1/2 hour late, then even though it was starting late they still had the belly dancers perform for 45 minutes. Then they still didn't start the masquerade because they couldn't find some woman who when they did find her just said "hi. This guy is going to MC the show." So I really don't get why they had to wait for her. The masquerade was ok, but not great. We could have probably found better ways to spend our time. Then it was on upstairs for the party wander. Nothing too incredible exciting. I definitely prefer the open cabana atmosphere of CONvergence's hotel to the Hotel hallway feel that you can't avoid when you have, well, a regular hotel hallway.

8. Sunday morning was me finishing cleaning the house. hellbob chipped in to help out. Then I rushed out to Lindsay's baby shower. Since it ws at my mom's house I came home smelling like a dirty ashtray. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home for provisions.

9. I was home about 45 minutes before people were expected to arrive. I got the Tivo set and got the crock pot stuff ready to go. We had a pretty good turn out for the Oscars. bleaknimue, gingerpook, gunthar, lucky13charm, snoopygirl_niki, snoopygirl_nikihusband, michaellee, frozendragon, and genevra were all in attendance. Hellbob had a second tv set up in the dining room hooked up to the living room one so that people could watch from either room. Brokeback mountain won some awards including Best Director, although they didn't get any of the acting ones. Crash got Best Picture. A lot of people were surprised by that, like it was a big upset, but a lot of the pre-Oscar buzz had been saying it had a good chance. Most of us hadn't seen as many of the movies this year as we would have liked. Jon Stewart rocks my world. But I did a post already of my random thoughts during the Oscars. Go read that one if you want more thoughts because now it's time for me to go to bed. I have to go back to work tomorrow. :(