Your regularly-scheduled domesticat entry shall not appear here this evening, canceled due to sadly extraordinary life events. After a good bit of cross-checking with friends, we still don't know much about what happened, but what we do know is this: someone whom my friends and I have worked with on dragon*con tech staff, someone whom I probably would've called a friend on staff, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Let's not kid ourselves: dragon*con's annual Dawn contest is a brilliant excuse for some red-headed T&A for several thousand sex-starved male geeks.

For the rest of us, it's a chance to stand around for an evening, shake our heads in shock/derision/disbelief, and snap lots of photos for the folks back home who really haven't the foggiest idea of the enormity of what they're missing.

The first set of photos from the madness that is working tech staff at dragon*con…

If I tell you that, right now, I'm sitting at Suzan's computer, nestled into a comfortably cluttered computer room in a small house outside of Atlanta, Georgia, you know where I am. If I tell you that I'm in my pajamas, with my hair disheveled and eyes still heavily shadowed with dark circles, you know how I look. If I tell you that my throat is painfully raw, and that most of my muscles are aching, you know how I feel.

While making my packing list for dragon*con on Monday afternoon, I began thinking about what clothes I wanted to take. They needed to be comfortable, easy to move in, sweat-absorbing (because anyone who thinks they won't sweat while racing around to set up for the enormous costume contest is seriously deluded), and somewhat funky.

Just about every story told by anyone who has ever worked retail in this side of the galaxy begins with the phrase, "There was this guy…"

With it comes the unspoken understanding: Don't be that guy.

Given the way this universe works, it seems highly likely that "that guy" doesn't actually exist. Instead, what we're likely to be dealing with is a highly invasive microorganism which jumps to host to host, infecting them with a strange kind of temporary insanity that compels them to go to the nearest grocery store.