Book reviews and happy leap day.

To everyone, happy leap day yesterday. I hope everyone who had their birthday ysterday had a really nice celebration.

I just finished reading, and rereading Wen Spencer's new novel, ENDLESS BLUE. (hardcover, Baen books, december 07) Looks like she has hit another home run. Nice characters, spaceships and interstellar war, genetically engineered slaves and marooned survivors in a pocket universe. A hugo award worthy effort. Even better, it's not part one of the dreaded trilogy, stands alone very nicely. Highly recommended.

Boundry, by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor. (hardcover, Baen books, march 06) Hard science, politics, NASA, spaceships to Mars, aliens and archeology. A fine book, I enjoyed it. Buy the paperback and enjoy.

Early happy B-day to Talliy, hope you are staying safe and accomplishing your mission in Iraq. Crossing my fingers for your safe return.

Here in Boston, we got six more inches of that white shit last night, and I'm typing this while I'm sitting in the debriefing for Boskone. *yawns*

Boskone con suite report.

Boskone 45 Convention hospitality suite report.

We had a Boskone, and there was a con suite in the same location as last year. Next year we are moving to a not yet built portion of the hotel, so any layout issues are to be taken with that in mind. Thanks to Rachel, Mali, Jonathan, and the other folks whom I cannot remember their names who helped work on the con suite.

Overall, things went pretty well. The bad things were mostly invisible to the members of the convention, just making my life harder. Praise bob that I did not fall ill again this year. I suffered a mental lapse and forgot that con suite opened at 9am, not 930 am as my memory told me.

Food: We had four drive-by breadings over the weekend. Vicki S. had access to leftovers from a high end bakery, and a whole foods supermarket. She came by twice on Saturday and twice an Sunday with cart loads of bread and fruits. Much appreciated and totally a surprise. I hope this happens again. This did reduce the amount of stuff that I had bought that got consumed. The Viable Paradise folks brought over piles of yummy stuff on Saturday morning.
I had too much cake. The friday night reception and the saturday night event served cake, so I should no have gotten any for con suite. That money should have gone to other foods.

Beverage. We had bought the leftover soda from Arisia, so we had way more coke and diet coke than needed. We have lots that is in the clubhouse now, available for 50 cents a bottle, along with some other con suite leftovers. Lots of compliments on the large selection of herbal teas, which was larger than intended due to a happy accident, I didn't spot the container of leftover herbal teas from arisia con suite, so bought a goodly selection this year.
Overall, beverage consumption was down from last year. I attribute this to two factors. The hotel was much better this year about keeping the water setups filled. And the weather was not so bitterly cold and dry as last year so folks were not as dehydrated.

Budget: I went over my budget, how much TBD by how much leftover items for sale. I asked for extra money from the chair on saturday, and got $300 from her contingency budget.

Logistics: Getting the truck from logistics Thursday night for my Friday morning shopping run worked well. I needed to have a helper with me Friday morning, as BJ's failed to do the shopping list for Friday morning. I needed to have my shopping list much more set in stone and the costs nailed down. Consider doing my shopping run at Costco instead of BJ's next year. Restaurant Depot stuff worked well. Couple of things we got from Resturant Depot were moldy, one spotted by the cashier at checkout and replaced on the spot, the other found in a sealed package at the con.

Room layout: Swapping the coffee and food corners worked much better. Next year, consider laying out the coffee with the brewers kinda behind a table and put the pumps on a front table, with service space behind the coffee table.

Storage at NESFA: The storage space at the NESFA clubhouse was cleaned out somewhat before the convention, and I found a bunch of disposable cups that I had bought a couple years ago. Thus much of the hot and cold cups I bought this year were not opened, and have been stored for next year. The grey storage tubs helped a lot. I needed more of them on the truck on my Friday morning shopping run.