Hello, all!  This is Java's Significant Other For The Last Three Decades.  I kept talking and kept talking and KEPT talking about how awesome the weekend was, so Java suggested I write a guest post.  Cool of her.

Okay, first?  THANK YOU ALL for ... well, for just being flippin' amazing people.  I had never met any of you before.  Wouldn't have been able to pick anyone out of a lineup if my life hung on the outcome.  And yet, almost simultaneously with each meeting, each additional blogger, I felt ... welcome.  Almost as if I'd stepped into the home of an old friend.  You were the easiest bunch of folks to talk to (for the first time ever) that I'd met since attending AnthroCon in Philly in 2001 and meeting all the other writers who hung out on Planetfurry.  But, hell, if anything I felt even MORE at ease - more accepted - than then.  (That might be due to changes on my end, the last decade being what it was for us.)

We had the best time, the craziest fun, and the most relaxing few days in either one's memory.  My greatest regret is that the Bloggerpalooza only lasted two days (four would have been better).  I never did get to play any of the games that different ones of you brought, which is a terrible, terrible thing (I'm a hardcore gamer, and Java, shall we say, is NOT).  Of course that was because we were realizing so much entertainment just from sitting around and jawing with each other.

I mean it.  Damn.  You guys are gold.

We came away feeling more refreshed, more relaxed, more ... complete?  Fulfilled?  Sane?  Hell, all of the above.  More than we'd felt in a really long time.  We didn't want to leave.

Then, of course, Monday morning Java got some truly horrible news, and we hadn't even made it back to Greenwood.  So we drove nine hours that day, basically bounced off the house, and drove nine hours south the next day to be with her family in Gainesville.  It's still hard to think of Tom as "dead".  He simply wasn't supposed to die.  Not yet.  But surgery carries no guarantees, and this was one possible outcome, though a very, very rare one.

The family is coping.  Java and her brothers and uncle are helping clear things up and set them in order.  It's not easy.  But they are a hardy clan.  Still, there is a LOT to do.  She'll be back down here in three weeks or so for Tom's Life Celebration (no religion-based 'memorial service' for him ... he'd come back and haunt us if we tried that crap) and I'll be the one staying with Diva and Sproing while Twitch and Light tag along with Java.  Twitch has, believe me, had his FILL of looking after them.

One little side note:  I keep pretty regular hours at the gym.  I have to.  I was gifted with a ruptured lumbar disk in a car wreck a decade ago, and if I don't keep my core tight, I start to lose function in my left leg.  Discovered that the hard way when the therapist said I could start working out or I could get used to a wheelchair.  When stated in those terms, it doesn't so much present as a choice.  Anyway, I don't like to skip too many days in a row, so I looked up and found a local gym, and yesterday around 11:00 I walked over there.  It was about three miles and the weather could NOT have been more perfect.  When I got there, they told me a day pass was ten bucks, so I let the nice man swipe my card and I trundled on in.

Well, damn.  Looks like the local chapter of the Insanely Hot Body-Builders Association is having a work day.  Seriously.  Now, being, as I am, straight enough to use as a drafting tool, what runs through my head when I see these guys is, "Man, I wish I looked like that!  I wish I had the TIME to WORK hard enough to look like that!"  I'd say most of them were in their twenties.  There were a few older men, but I didn't see anyone I thought might be older than I am.  But, to a man, they were ripped, chiseled hardbodies, typically in tight shorts and tighter shirts.  And the majority of them were at least decent-looking.  So, following quickly upon my initial observation and muscle-envy was the thought that if the group I'd spent last weekend with were here, they'd each have to be issued a mop and a bucket just to keep up with their own drool.  (I'm going back tomorrow morning and if the Muscle Crew is still there, I'll try to take some pictures.)

Oh, yes, there were also some ladies that came in somewhat later.  The feminine version of the guys, in that they all looked like bikini models.  I'm also pretty sure any one of them could have taken me in a fight.  One of them, this petite little blond in a flower-print leotard that left damn little to the imagination, was benching 200 pounds.  She was there with her boyfriend (I assume) who I later observed doing lat pulldowns with 400 pounds.  A lot of lat pulldowns.

It was freakin' intimidating.

ANYWAY, thank you all again for a fantabulous weekend!  And thanks especially to those of you who talked me into joining you in that silly photo session.  I have hardly EVER liked the way I look in pictures, not being at all photogenic (to which Java will say, "But it looks just like you!" to which I respond, "That's my point, dear.") but that was just a ton of fun, and no mistake.

Still get the odd warm-fuzzy wafting across my brain when I think about it.

Cheers!
Concolor