would have been looked over and only the best shown. Well I suppose that was a sort
of dumb idea to get since it would be a very easy way of insulting a lot of people
but on the other hand a lot more people got bored. Now if somebody had told me that
I didn't have to sit through the whole masquerade but only through the final run
through I would have been saved a lot of idleness. As it was Valma and I got bored
and went off and fed our faces just over the corridor and came out just in time to
see some of the costumed people appearing out of the door of the hall (and to get
moved on by one of the committee members as we were blocking the road which was'
already blocked by hundreds of other yobs, and we must have been standing in the one
place for all of five seconds (ten at the most). I was a bit annoyed at the fellow
but then he was trying to keep a convention running so I really don't blame him too
much, I'll probably be worse next year.
The main event of that evening was, as I said
before, the TAFF/DUFF Party, and thanks very much Dick for thinking it up.
On the
next day we'd promised Susan Wood that we'd go and see the panel she was going to be
on about academic stf (or something like that). The adventure wasn't that informative
or educational but that was probably because the event was called to a close almost
before it had a chance to get going, and I'd imagine that a lot of people in the
audience who were particularly interested in the topic would have been a bit
disappointed.
Never mind, the next event was the banquet, and I can't say that I .
wasn't warned, though most of the warnings had concerned the food which was almost
edible. It was the whole business of the speeches and the awards which was off-
putting, the honourable toastmaster went on and on and then there ware all those
awards with nobody to pick them up. l was a bit amazed that things didn't run a bit
more smoothly. To say the least, it was a relief to get out of the room after the
end of it all.
The next thing that happened was that there was this AUSSIECON party,
see, and Valma and I had bought this bottle of Jim Beam all the way from Australia
for Bob Tucker to demanstrate Smoooooooooooth with and we got to doing it a lot and
some tea after that it was Sam and I had to be up at 10 so I grabbed an hour and a
half sleep and was 'up fresh as a vaulted cabbage to attend a TUCKER FUND auction at
which I spent my $10 for a copy 'of Ethel Lindesay's TAFF report and dozed fitfully.
After they wound that up I got the distinct impression that I wandered over to where
the business session was being held but quite honestly I wasn't up to that sort of
excitement so after a while I tottered off to the AUSSIECON table to sell lots more
memberships, which had a certain excitement value of its own.
And I think that that
was about all the official programme that I got to see, and it was probably just
about all the convention, I got to see apart from all those parties that seemed to be
happening all over gust about all the time. Some were small and nice and some were
big and nice and they all filled in the time in an enjoyable nature and that's about
the most that one can expect, I expect.
And since there are a lot more pages yet: to be
filled up I suppose I night as well go back and mention the highlights of downtown
Albuquerque. Well all we saw of that area was from inside Bob Vardemanb car but after
we'd been in the city for four or five days I thought that it was about time that we
did the city the honour. The downtown wasn't too much to speak of:but the main
reason for getting to look at it was because I had had the impression that the
area around the Holiday Inn was the beautiful downtown area and it was a bit sparse
on things like shops but then I wasn't familiar with tha ways that you US citizens
conduct business and maybe that's what your central business districts were like.
So on the day before we left to get to DISCON Bob put us in his car and drove us
over quite a bit of.the top half of New Mexico and we saw Los Alamos and some ruined
Indian cave dwellings and the grandure of Santa Fe and then back to Albuquerque where
we ate Italian food in a STRANGE place (by Australian standards) and then got
driven downtown and uptown and all about and the city impressed me very much and
though I've now discovered that I like Minneapolis and Providence (RI) I thought
Albuquerque was a pretty marvellous place.
It occurs to me that I may as well up-date
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