WorldCon is large and serious. There were a few costumes -- ball gowns, Klingons, and fuzzy ears -- but far fewer than I expected. In fact, I felt like I had to wear my own fuzzy orange ears just to help lighten the tone.

The panels and readings I attended, however, were excellent: Cory Doctorow, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Connie Willis read chapters from the books they're working on; Dr. Demento and David Malki (of www.wondermark.com) discussed humor and science-fiction; Jay Lake repeatedly threatened to sing during the Hugo Awards ceremony; and Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, explained what he means by "hard science-fiction" and his philosophy for encouraging promising writers. I don't know if I'll ever succeed in selling a story to Analog, but I learned this week that I've been coming closer than I thought. In fact, when I met Stanley Schmidt at one of the evening parties, he even recognized my name from all the submissions I've sent him over the years. I think I'm still in shock from that. He's been the name written on rejection slips that keep me writing short stories (as opposed to switching entirely to novels) for the last eight years. A mere scribble of ink. Then, suddenly, he was a real human being, leading panels with giant audiences, surrounded by people, and terribly important. But when I had the chance to introduce myself to him... he already knew who I was. Maybe it's silly, but that small amount of recognition really means a lot.

The other high point came when I went to collect my left-over books from the dealers' room. (I sold half of the books I brought with me to the convention!) As the bookseller was handing me back my leftover copies, a young boy -- probably about twelve -- came over to compliment my ears. He transitioned from complimenting my ears to trying to acquire them rather quickly, but I insisted they weren't for sale. As a consolation, I offered the boy an "Otters In Space" bookmark. When he realized that I had copies of the book right there, he asked how much they cost. I could see from his expression that $6 was a little rich for his pockets, but he cleverly offered to trade me a bushy, stripey tail he had. Apparently, he'd already acquired an upgrade tail -- that better matched the ears he was wearing -- during the con, so he didn't want his old one any more. And given that I had ears but no tail, this seemed like a pretty good deal to me. We made the trade and he took off, but moments later he came rushing back for my autograph. I hope he enjoys the book, because he absolutely made my day. Best sale ever.

Now that the con is over, we have one more evening in the surreal land of flashy lights and machines-begging-us-to-gamble before making the long drive back to normal life. Being shy, I have mixed feelings about cons -- they're exciting but they're also overwhelming. Part of me is sad to see the con end, but I'm also looking forward to getting back to my quiet, animal-filled house where I can settle down to working as hard as I can at writing short stories that interest Stanley Schmidt and novels that interest random twelve-year-olds wearing fuzzy ears.

Things you hear during your day when you have a three-year-old in the house:

"Hey, everybody!!! Four plus two is six!!! Four plus two is six, everybody!!!!"

"I want to be a DRAGON!" (Followed by the child appearing in a dragon costume.)

"Toy Story is an ooooooold movie."

Elaine loves math.

Tonight, we gave her a bowl of strawberries. As she was arranging, rearranging, and counting the strawberries in the bowl, I saw her realizing something. She tried to voice this complex idea that had occurred to her.

"Three plus three and five plus one..." She said this a few times, clearly having trouble working out the number "six" at the same time as holding the two equations that added up to it in her head. So, I helped her out, offering up the number she was looking for: "Six."

Elaine was delighted to have discovered there are multiple ways to reach a single number through addition. She immediately pulled out her crayons and started making piles to shove together and count -- this is the strategy Daniel taught her a few weeks ago for doing simple addition. Only this time, she was making more than two piles at a time.

After experimenting with all the ways to separate five crayons into different piles and then shove them back together and still have five crayons, Elaine wanted me to teach her how to draw a five. From there, we moved fairly quickly to my writing out sheets of equations like I remember in early elementary school for her:

1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
1 + 3 = 4
1 + 4 = 5 etc...

Each time I finished writing out a sheet of about ten simple addition equations, Elaine would get really excited and say, "Oh! Let's read that!" Then she'd read through the page, from the bottom to the top, declaring each of them "a good story" at the end.

Daniel told her that her Grandma Janet, who's an accountant, spends all day adding different numbers together for people, and Elaine was clearly impressed that her very own grandmother has such an important and exciting job. Elaine says she wants to be an accountant too when she grows up. (Of course, yesterday, she said she planned to be a kiwi popsicle when she grew up.) As for tonight, she rolled all the pages of arithmetic up like scrolls and took them upstairs to bed with her, clutching them tightly and insisting that her daddy read at least three of them to her as a bedtime story before she goes to sleep.

When Elaine wants a treat, she spells out random combinations of letters, hoping to stumble upon a magic password like "C-A-K-E", "P-I-E", or "I-C-E C-R-E-A-M." Sometimes, the combinations of letters she chooses are interesting... Today, in all seriousness, she sweetly asked me for a "P-H-D" and has followed up by stomping about the house declaring, "I want a P-H-D! I want a P-H-D!"

My three-year-old has discovered the concept of infinity. And strenuously objects to it.

The conversation started with her asking me, "How many numbers are there?" I told her there were infinitely many and began trying to explain that idea. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot who clearly hadn't understood her question. So, she started counting, and, as usual, needed my help after the number fourteen. When we got to twenty-seven, she declared, "That's it. That's all the numbers!"

I told her about twenty-eight.

She tried her assertion again: "THAT's all the numbers!"

We went on like this for a while. (Though, my counting sped up.) When we got up above one-hundred, she started giggling. When we got to two-hundred, she declared, "That's too many numbers! We only need a little bit of numbers!"

So, there you have it. Infinity has been put on official notice. When Elaine takes over the universe, we're scrapping it for a mathematics that's capped at twenty-seven.

I gave a reading at Orycon this year.

As a member of Broad Universe, I was invited to take part in one of their rapid-fire readings. This is where all the interested members join together to share a room and time slot for a reading, and every member gets a few minutes to take center stage.

The closest I've come to doing a reading before was a few weeks ago. The Wordos get together and read holiday themed pieces of flash fiction right before Halloween, and I happened to have a short enough piece that fit the theme. Now, when I did that reading, I'm pretty sure my hands were shaking badly enough that anyone in the room could tell I was nervous. For the Broad Universe reading, I was determined to keep my hands steady and hide my nervousness if possible. In retrospect, I'm not sure that was such a good idea... My hands stayed steady, but I think that the effort diverted blood from other, more important parts of my brain. For instance, the part that translates visual input from my eyes.

Fortunately, I'd practiced the excerpt of "Otters In Space" that I was reading several times earlier in the day. So, some of it was ad-libbed from memory. However, I could hear the audience laughing at all the right parts. Then, afterward, several people sought me out to tell me how much they enjoyed my reading. One man even sought me out the next day!

Overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

As I said, the last month has been all about writing. See, Elaine started going to preschool five mornings a week this fall. In honor of finally having a couple hours free every day for the first time in several years, I decided to devote pretty much every free minute I have (and some minutes that are not entirely free due to having a child bouncing around shouting, "Mom! Mom! Look at this!") to my writing. So, I've finished several short stories, and I hit the 30,000 word mark on "Otters In Space 2."

This was, apparently, not enough. So, as November -- and NaNoWriMo -- neared, I suddenly outlined an entirely new novel set in the Otters In Space universe. See, "Otters In Space" was originally started as a NaNoWriMo novel. I figured that no one would ever be willing to publish a piece of hard science fiction a la Arthur C. Clarke starring talking animals a la Brian Jacques. So, why not write it super fast as a NaNoWriMo novel? Except, by 15,000 words I realized I was writing something really special. So, I gave up on NaNoWriMo and gave "Otters In Space" the time and attention it needed to develop its full potential.

This means that 1) I have good associations with NaNoWriMo because I got "Otters In Space" out of it, and 2) I still haven't won!

So, I figured I'd try again this year, and either I'd finally win or at least get a good start. So far, I'm not quite 20,000 words into "Learning to Live and Love in a Dog's World," and it's going very well. I was even meeting my daily word count goals... until Orycon happened... which... of course... is when I burned out on "Otters In Space" in 2005...

Which brings us to Orycon...