Worldcon/DFW Travel Update
Hey LJ-using friends:
I was indeed rather impacted (mostly in lost time, not quite as badly in injury or property loss terms) by the flash floods in Dallas/Fort Worth this past week. Oddly enough, the bigger damage to the new chez de foxmom in the area was from some earlier rounds of severe thunderstorms that made us lose power for many hours and Internet service for nearly a week, but August has turned out to be quite a terrible month for having good productive time to write poetry, blogs, reviews, or code. So, yeah: by my accounting (and an accountant) I'm out about the equivalent of my total income last year just in recovering from the two COVID-19 cases in Dec/Jan and June and dealing with the issues at the new chez de foxmom this month.
I had previously been booked to be in New Orleans this week and in Chicago next week for ChiCon8/Worldcon but that is very much in doubt now. I think that things have settled down well here in well north of Fort Worth proper, but I'm waiting on hearing back from some other people before rebooking my travel for the Nawlins and back to either AZ or NYC swings of this fall travel season.
The good news, though: I was announced as a Women in Games Ambassador for 2022, which is actually a pretty big deal. I was supposed to be able to travel to their main festival/gathering/networking and speaking event in the UK early next month, but this series of COVID and natural disasters in AZ/TX has made that impossible. Luckily there's some virtual attendance options for that. I'm looking forward to that, and hopefully I'll still be able to be a virtual attendee or virtual volunteer for ChiCon8.
Speaking of: they need more volunteers, especially virtual volunteers! See their volunteer form here: https://chicon.org/home/volunteering/volunteer-opportunities/ If you're used to being a host/moderator for online sf/f or fantasy/comics events, think about volunteering! If you're going to be at WorldCon/ChiCon8 and have some spare time, if you volunteer before Saturday there's still time to get trained to help out on the virtual side.
Otherwise: holy shit Monsieur DeGrom. Already DeGOAT. Let's Fucking Go Mets!