Crazy Busy but Fun Weekend

I was super busy the first weekend of May, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

It started with the ultimate Frisbee beach tournament Saturday morning and early afternoon.  Fortunately, the friends I carpool with and I all had first round byes.  Even with only six teams (and the three of us only one two of them), what are the odds of that?  And my team won!  We only lost one game all season, and we won all the games during the tournament to win the entire thing.  I can’t remember the last time I was on a team with a winning record, much less a team that won the tournament.  The wind was blowing pretty strongly during the finals game, so it wasn’t as fun as it could have been.  But we won!!!

Then that night, I went down to Glendale to see The Importance of Being Ernest at Glendale Centre Theatre.  I love that play.  I’d seen them do it before, and I was delighted they were doing it again.  The cast was wonderful and the laughs were plentiful.  I went with my friends Ann and Angelique.  One of the actresses in it was on a cast recording for the musical Snoopy that I’d bought years ago (before I was even going to GCT).  I finally remembered to bring it with me when she was in the cast, so I was finally able to get it signed!

Sunday started with church as usual, but instead of playing ultimate Frisbee, I headed to the book launch party for Nadine Nettmann’s new book.  I’d actually read it on my way back from Malice, but it was fun to go and hear her talk briefly about it and chat with her.  I had thought that a couple of mutual friends might show up, and I was right.  I spent most of the time talking to RosaLinda and Ellen, which was fun.

RosaLinda was heading over to our friend Christy’s house to watch Once Upon a Time, so I crashed the party afterward and joined them.  That was an unexpected but fun way to end a wild, crazy, busy, and fun weekend.

Malice Domestic 2017

The last weekend of April, I was at Malice Domestic for the second year in a row.  This is the annual convention for writers and readers of the traditional mystery.  The most popular form of the traditional mystery these days is the cozy, you know the type of mystery I read 95% of the time.

The convention is always in Maryland right outside of Washington DC.  I didn’t try to add any days for sightseeing this year, but flew out on Thursday and back on Sunday.  I was also staying at the convention hotel this year, which was so wonderful.  I was leaving my books to get signed in my roommate and popping in there whenever I needed anything.  Yes, I was very spoiled.

Thursday, I did get together with some friends from the Trixie Belden boards who live in the area.  And another Trixie friend was actually coming to the convention, so I had breakfast with her one day and talked to her the next afternoon.

I said I was going to cut down on panels this year, but I didn’t.  There were too many I wanted to go to.  But I still managed to talk to the authors I had hoped to catch.  Some of them were only for a few minutes, however.  I really would have liked to chat with some of them longer.  There just isn’t enough time period.

One highlight was hanging out with a group of mostly authors after the banquet the final night.  We were hanging out chatting until midnight, when security asked us to move since where we were was right outside some rooms.  We weren’t being loud, but it was polite.  I went to bed at that point, which was good since I was trying to make the new author breakfast at 7 the next morning.

I even had three authors and two other attendees on my flight out and back.  We weren’t sitting near each other, but we did hang out chatting in the airport before our flights took off.

I had so much fun it felt like I was only there for one day at most.  It is a lot of money by the time you factor in airfare and hotel, but I really would like to go again.  We’ll just have to see if it works out next year.