12/13/99

So, I went to the big Northern California Diarists' Gathering yesterday.

Jane had kindly offered to give me and Jay a ride to the event. I told Jane to just pick us up at Jay's place so that she would only have to make one stop. I left my house early, anticipating the usual Sunday-morning-public-transportation-in-SF nightmare, and I wasn't disappointed. I should have just walked there. I walked 15 blocks to the bus stop, waited 30 minutes for a bus that never came, finally decided to take another bus which was going to the same basic area but about 10 blocks out of my way, got off the bus to see the bus I was supposed to transfer to speeding away, and just decided to walk the rest of the way. Bleah.

I hadn't met Jane before, but I'd e-mailed with her quite a bit over the past couple of years, and one of the people who works in my lab is a former housemate of hers. But I think she was really most excited to meet Jay, so I encouraged him to sit up with her in the front seat, because otherwise he would have just fallen asleep in the back and not talked to us at all on the ride over.

The gathering was held at Rachel's boyfriend's house in the remote wilds of the Berkeley hills. Well, OK, it seemed remote compared to San Francisco. It took us more than an hour to get there, but we left early, so we were there just a few minutes after 1. I thought we'd be the first people there, but we were actually one of the last groups to arrive. Rachel was already there of course, as were Jolene, Stasi, Bellatrix, Mimi, Eleanor, Kathy, Sunshyn, Wendy, and Beth.

I've met a lot of journallers before, but this was by far the largest journal gathering I'd ever been to. It was also a bit odd, since in the past, I'd mostly met journalers whom I'd read before and who had also read my stuff. This was not the case at yesterday's gathering. I'd tried to read a couple of entries from all the attendees, but it's hard to really get a sense of someone from such a cursory look at her site (almost everyone there was female), so I gave that up pretty quickly. It was OK, though, because most of the people there didn't know who I was either, so it was all pretty reciprocal.

The first hour or so mostly consisted of people introducing themselves and eating and talking about the food. I find introductions to be a boring but necessary evil, but I sure enjoyed the eating part--the food was all really good.

Jay seemed to not be having such a great time, but I didn't really expect him to. He's very shy around new people, especially in big groups--in fact, I was really surprised that he wanted to go to the gathering at all. As soon as we got there, he took off to join Mimi and Bellatrix on the smokers' porch. He spent most of the rest of the time sitting in various remote corners of the room and seemingly trying not to be noticed.

As the afternoon went on, a few more people showed up: Karen, Catherine, Heather, Lucy, and Miles/Lew.

I was going to try to write an integrated paragraph with my impressions of everyone, but instead I'm just going to be lazy and make an alphabetical list, because I know everyone likes to read what people have to say about them:

Bellatrix: Part of the Sacramento cabal. I didn't really get to talk to her much...she spent a lot of time out on the porch and then left relatively early. I hope she didn't think I was serious when I tsk'ed at her for threatening to beat Beth up and steal her boots.

Beth: I was really excited to meet her. She seemed really cool, but was much quieter than I'd expected given her outspoken online persona. Her vegetarian stuffed mushrooms were also really good. Also, contrary to what her current journal name would indicate, her hair looked really good.

Catherine: I really didn't get to talk to her at all. She arrived relatively late and left early.

Eleanor: Had all the good qualities actors often have (charming, funny, outgoing, entertaining) without any of the bad qualities they tend to have (hammy, annoying, won't shut up).

Heather: admitted that she sexually harasses the accountants who work at her company (hehehe).

Jane: She was pretty quiet at the gathering itself, but we got to talk in the car. She was very nice, even though I ended up accidentally stealing half of her memento book.

Jay: Like I said, he hid in the corner the whole time. Here are two pictures of him...click on them to see big versions:

Jolene: Another Sacramento cabal member. She seemed like a very outgoing and fun person, and later in the day even abandoned caution and admitted her diary guilty pleasure to us.

Karen: Gave me the opportunity to spout some of my vast knowledge of diary gossip, including what Gus is really like and whatever happened to Melody (although Lucy had to help me out on that one).

Kathy: Didn't get to talk to her much, either, but I got to see pictures of her cute puppy.

Lucy: I'd met her before, but hadn't seen her in a long time. She wasn't there for very long.

Miles: I didn't realize it until this morning when I read Beth's entry, but I actually had a big lengthy debate with him about the rights of animals in Beth's forum last month. I wish I'd known that it was the same guy or I would have made more of an effort to talk to him!

Mimi: It's too bad she's moving back to Virginia next week, because she seemed like a really cool person. Also, she showed me something I'm not allowed to tell you about!

Rachel: She was also much quieter than I expected, given her vocal presence on diary-l. She was a really good hostess.

Stasi: Another of the Sacramentoans. I think she got sick of having to tell everyone "it's STAH-zee, not Stacey!"

Sunshyn: Her name is appropriate...Sunshyn seemed very bubbly and friendly and outgoing.

Wendy: I felt really sorry for her, not being able to eat all those desserts! I was really impressed by her restraint.

The gathering got to be much more fun towards the end. I'm not sure if it was because people had had a few glasses of wine, or because we were all starting to feel more comfortable with one another, or if it was because some people had already left and the group was smaller and less daunting. It was probably a combination of the three.

Our conversation mostly centered around girl stuff (weird new feminine hygiene devices, bras, and grotesquely large penises) and diary stuff. We spent a long time talking about our guilty pleasures (those links are to my guilty pleasures, so if you're upset about being referred to as a guilty pleasure, you only have me to blame, not anyone else who was in attendance) and other diary gossip.

I don't know if it's because I had a couple of glasses of wine or what, but by the time we left, I was really exhausted. Jay came over to help me change the light bulbs in my kitchen (I've been without any kitchen light for more than a week now--the bulbs burned out within a couple of days of one another and I'm not tall enough to change them, even with a stepladder). After that, he immediately fell asleep in my bed, and I checked my e-mail and watched TV. Jay woke up again by the time The Simpsons came on (it was a rerun of the one where they go to Japan), and we ordered in some mediocre Chinese food because we were too lazy to go out to dinner.

All in all, the gathering was good, but I think that if we have another one, it will be better now that we all feel a little more comfortable with each other.

So, now I've met a total of 35 diarists: Alan, Amy, Andrew, Bellatrix, Beth, DLJ, Eleanor, Gershom, Gus, Heather, Helen, Jane, Jay, Jolene, Jon, Karen, Kathy, Kymm, Lance, Lucy, Lunesse, Michael, Miles, Mimi, Nelson, Nigel, Rachel, Sara, Satya, Sei, Stasi, Sunshyn, Tori, Tracing, and Wendy. Then there are the two diarists who I knew before they were diarists, Brad and Jen, so I'm not sure if they count. But by any count, I've met a lot of diarists.

I'm hoping to post more pictures from the gathering later, but I wanted to make sure people were OK with my posting their images first. Maybe tomorrow if I can get my act together.