tiredAfter closing Site Selection, Raven O'Neill helped me take the Cart o' Stuff back up to my room. By then it was close to time for the SF & F Masquerade to open. There was a queue that stretched down the stairs and toward the Dealers' Room entrances, so Raven and I sat down and waited until the queue started to move before heading in to find seats on the wings. Everyone who wanted a seat got one.
Masquerade MC
johnnyeponymous was obliged to vamp for a while before the show started. My experiments in available-light photography with my camera led me to conclude that while I can shoot without a flash, I can only do so if people hold still, and holding still is neither Chris' long suit or the likely way the Masquerade participants would be. I therefore gave up any hope of shooting photos during the event. As it happened, the scrum outside the even was so big that I only managed a few photos (all in the collection), along with a few photos of people in costume who were not in the Masquerade.There were 48 entries in the Masquerade, and the standard of costumes was very high. Alas, there were quite a few tech glitches (which the chair and event director apologized for at the conclusion of the awards), through which participants gamely worked. The audience was in a good mood and seemed to go with the flow and was sympathetic.
I'll leave further reporting on the actual results to others, mainly because I didn't undertake to be a reporter on this one.
After the first run through, I realized that I hadn't eaten a whole lot since breakfast (although I did have several small snacks throughout the day) and made for the Coffee Garden lest I keel over. Raven had bailed out about 2/3 through the event for similar reasons. I went back upstairs as the ancillary awards were being presented, and stayed through the end of awards. The event ended just about the stroke of midnight, and I and the other half-dozen or so people who had volunteered to help went downstairs to help tape a string of lights to the other stage being used for Sunday's "runway show."
Then it was up to the parties for short while, but it was after 1 AM and I was fading out, as I am now, but I wanted to get these photos online before going to bed, so I went downstairs to use the internet. I'm going to post this and get back upstairs and in to bed.
