So yesterday, I did a suicide run out to spend one whole day at High Voltage Confusion. I say suicide run because it involved getting up at 5am and not getting home until after 1am.

It was a heck of a trip, and I had a heck of a time, starting with the privilege of being invited by Bill Shafer to join the Subterranean Press breakfast (thanks again, Bill! It really meant a lot to me!). I sat between some dude named John Scalvi and Tobias Buckell — to whom I totally embarrassed myself by not remembering the name of his book (Ragamuffin) which I own, but have not yet read. Must remedy that!

At breakfast, Anne Murphy invited me to join her and Kristine Scalzi on a panel about Giving Clear Signals at Conventions: essentially tips on initiating conversations and interpersonal relations. It turned out really well, actually — and was quite well attended. We even veered off into full-blown relationship etiquette, from protection preparation to breakup advice (yes, you can ask why, but no, you cannot argue).

Then I had two art panels, one on creating Jam Comics, then a break, then another life-drawing panel where we all worked for five minutes, then got up (leaving our paper behind) and moved one chair to the left, where we continued the other person’s drawing, and so on, for thirty minutes. The model (in swim trunks, thanks) actually turned out to be the husband of a friend of mine (Hi, Maggi!), which was cool, because I’d never met him — or their new daughter — before, and got to catch up with all three of them. Almost nobody showed up for the two panels, which was fine because that just meant that all of us artists got to circle the wagons and neep out about art, life drawing, techniques, and how nice it was to finally just sit down and do some life drawing or cartooning. It was fun, and I also finally got to talk with Erin McKee, a longtime SF and wildlife artist who was a huge influence on me when I was just getting started.

For the rest of the time, I just wandered around, catching up and talking to people, which was really nice. I got to corner Chuck F. for the first time in years, and we laughed and hugged and reminisced and got caught up on each other’s lives, which felt really good and was long overdue. Chuck is really just one of the best people I know, and it is such a great feeling to just be able to pick up right where we left off. It’s a real treasure having friends like that.

Chuck and I practiced some swing moves in the hotel hallway — even going so far as to tape up the soles of our shoes to make them more slidey — in hopes of cutting a nice figure at the masquerade dance that night. Unfortunately for us (but good for the gothlings), they were playing exclusively techno — and mixy techno without a steady beat that would’ve allowed us to fake a techno-swing to, darnit. So we settled for doing a polka in the lobby. Everyone clapped along, so I guess we did all right.

I also got caught up with Mike and Shalla, Treebones and Andy, Jim H., Kathy B, Anne M., and had dinner with Dave and Diana Stein, Mark Bernstein, and Chris and his wife and kids, along with R, Steve MacD’s daughter and a couple other girls I didn’t know. Somewhere along the way we got on the topic that Kalamazoo’s Civic Center Theatre is debuting the new community-theatre version of Avenue Q. The next thing I knew, we were singing choruses of “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today,” and, of course, “The Internet is for Porn,” and freaking out the rest of the restaurant. Ah, life among nerds is good.

And then I drove home, but not before Gary and Russ and Geoff showed up, which was great because I was sad at not seeing them before I left.

So yeah, a great time, and it made me realize how much I missed everyone on that side of the state. Yay, ConFusion.