Behind in my posting already....

As 400 miles of travel in a day will do. Let's go back to Thursday- we do, after all, have a TARDIS here-



If last night was Red Shirt Friday, Thursday was all about the purple. There was no mistaking where we were meeting for the prayer vigil for Pastor Steve:



University UMC looks kinda cathedral-like from this view (and it is, strictly, the cathedral now, since the Bishop's offices are upstairs), but inside it's a much cozier and spiritual place than some of the overdone architectural bits.



There was plenty of local history inside those walls; I was next to a stained-glass panel funded by several generations of Chappells, a onetime Syracuse retail dynasty. Our "service" was more of a conversation than a liturgy, as several participants from clergy and laity simply told their stories and we then spoke with our pew neighbors about them.  One spoke about working with a group of disabled people at a Methodist camp and hearing their stories of bullying and shaming and shunning; the first noun to come up in our group after that was "parallels."  The speaker who moved me the most, though, said something along these lines:

We're not here today to convince the State to afford rights to people through acts of civil disobedience. This time, the State already "gets it." It's acts of religious disobedience that are called for.

Several people mentioned the fact that even Pope Francis seems to be moving to the side of righteousness on the same-sexuality issue. If he's not one to judge, why should we be?

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Through an odd series of coinkydinks (if that's what they are....), I will be back in that church tomorrow morning. Following the service (which was covered on YNN all over upstate cable television later Thursday) and a long rainy drive south to my sister's, I wound up with no internet to post with from there. Her house painters had lost the coaxial cable, so I couldn't reconnect her to her spanking new (XP;) computer. So I headed to Wegmans first thing yesterday to caffeinate and connect- and discovered, in the process, that my tablet had gone missing.  There were only three places I could've left it: my guru's where I picked up her new computer, my Rochester office, or the church.

I worked backward, and God moved in the usual way.  Within minutes, they'd found it, and I am delaying my return by half a day so I can reclaim it at their Sunday morning service. So I will be back at Donna's after all tonight- and I'll have another shot at reconnecting her to the Interwebs, since she found the cable had been shoved under her baseboard heater and should be good to go once I get there:)

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More from there later about today's extreme geekiness, and taking our lumps, and whatever today promises to bring- but suffice it for now that when I checked into the conference hotel yesterday, what was right across the street but an M&T Bank and, of course,....



Forget using the TARDIS to go back a day. I drove 600 miles to the east and south and I'm right back home;)

Puttin' on the Geek....

Only one other con-goer "got" the t-shirt.  It sorta makes sense, since the punch line was on the back, so who knows how much snickering went on that I missed?

Not the least bit disappointed- or unimpressed, though. Friday was a beautiful day to drive, I only got stuck in a PENNDOT traffic maze once, and I made it to the northern edges of Bawlmer by late morning.  I checked in at the convention hotel to sign up for the day; this was parked next to me:



Plenty of clever license plates and bumper stickers all around- and I wasn't even inside yet.

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Even though programs wouldn't formally begin for several hours, there were plenty of earlybirds all about- most in the kind of over-the-top costumes you'd expect. (I didn't take any pictures except of actual performers; some cosplayers are touchy about not being filmed without permission, and since this is a crowd quite likely to be packing sharp objects in their boots, I erred on the side of caution;)  I then headed to check into my own hotel and meet my longtime friend Tink, if anything a geekier geek than I am. We had lunch at a place in her neighborhood that serves a crabmeat delicacy called "lumps" that are to die for, and she then wound up at the evening's activities with us, joining in the celebration of fandoms and creativity that was all about.

Panels began at 5, and we took in two of them- one on the possible redesign of the TARDIS, and a thoroughly enjoyable one by three well-known sci-fi authors speaking on humor in the genre. Two of them are published by a relatively new imprint called Crazy 8 Press, which was co-founded by Howie Weinstein of my very own high school. The only sad of the night was that he wasn't there signing at the end of the evening, but I did pick up one of the featured author's books-



(Oops, I didn't get part two. But otherwise it's the cover.)

I also am coming home with bling for Emily and a surprise for an LJ friend- I saw it on a table and just hayyy-ad to have it:)

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And, finally, the show:

Luna-C is a sketch comedy group with two friends of mine from here and Facebook; they've been performing at cons for years and I've always wanted to check one out. This year did not disappoint; everything from Trek to Potter got run through their sabre-toothed skewer, but the star of the show by the end was clearly Jayne. And Jayne. Jayne Jayne Jaynes- the men they call Jayne. Kaylee had a lit-tle accident with the replicator, and before you know it we were swimming in orange knitted hats....

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And now it's back north.

Only other glitch from the travels was the hotel I stayed at, writing down the wrong room number on my keycard. I stood outside 442 for 15 minutes before the guy came up and realized I was actually booked into 224. I got a free breakfast out of it, though, and I'm now back in PA, waiting for a very longago friend (I can't remember if I last saw him in junior high or even elementary school) to come over from the Gettysburg area. We're meeting at a mall, of all places- and there's not a lot of really exciting commerce in York, I assure you....

Couple of other options past that, but I'll be back in my home state by tonight at the latest:)