Packing list? This got far beyond a packing list at least a year ago.

Year one of dragon*con: toss your toothbrush, toothpaste, and a spare pair of underwear into your backpack, while keeping your camera in your hand. Six days later, acknowledge the clothes that you're wearing are disgusting, and cannot be saved. Burn them. Vow to do better next year.

Total spams received in absence: 163.

Two hours into the drive home. Silence. After so few hours in the car, have we managed to say everything there is to say?

Three dragon*con staff meetings down, none to go. Last night, everyone marveled that dragon*con was already upon us, a sentiment made even more absurd by the frequent follow-up: "It's been so long since I've seen you!"

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.