I Should Also Say...

...that I had a great time at Worldcon. I got to meet some fabulous bloggers for the first time - Charles Dodgson (who, strangely, I had always imagined looking a lot more like a Tenniel illustration), Charlie Stross, Trish Wilson - and also got to renew my acquaintance with others, like Mary Kay Kare of Gallimaufry (who throws a great party, and has excellent taste in single malts - not that it did me any good, alas), Kathryn Cramer, and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. (I met Patrick and Teresa for the first and last time three years ago - it should definitely be a shorter amount of time before we meet again.)

The unexpected thing about being at Worldcon was that I got to meet a bunch of my readers. See, in the back of my head I still think of this blog as something that's read by about two dozen people, all of whom know me personally. I know it's not true, but it's what my mental map looks like. So it was simultaneously strange and cool to have all of these strangers come up to me and say, "Oh, Respectful of Otters! I read you all the time!" In a weird way, I think it renewed my commitment to blogging. For most of the summer now I've been idly starting posts in my head, and then thinking "Ah, why bother." Now I have specific faces in mind when I think "why blog?" I hope that will help keep my posting frequency up.

Special mention goes to Xopher, who (a) is the only reader I met whom I am sure it's okay to mention by name, and (b) was officially the first person ever to rub my pregnant belly. (No, I'm not showing yet.)