Con? What Con?

More like con-medy of errors. Here's the most concise version I can deliver:

My wife, Terry, called me in Richmond and asked me to come home early from RavenCon (which, in three years of cons she has never done before). She had taken my daughter, Katrina, back to the doctor for a follow up visit Friday afternoon (she had broken her arm on Wednesday) and the doc said the xray had been misread the first time and they needed to cut her out of her original cast and put her in one with a different alignment.

Within a few hours, though, Katrina was in so much pain that she went off on her own and somehow got herself out of this second cast (which I never saw, but Terry described as 3/4 cast and 1/4 straight-arm splint). So Terry wakes up the next morning to find Katrina has put her old cast back on (it had been neatly cut in two pieces and she saved it because her friends had written all over it), using an ace wrap to hold together.

So now Terry finds an orthopedic specialist who had office hours on Saturday (how's that for a minor miracle?), who re-xrays the arm and tell her BOTH of the first two diagnosis were wrong and they need to put her in a third cast. (This is the point where Terry called and asked me to please come home.)

In the mean time I'm at RavenCon, losing things left and right because of the pain medication I'm on after the root canal the dentist did on Thursday. Those meds just took my brain and threw it out the nearest window, then ran out into the street where the brain landed and jumped up and down on it. Thank God I carpooled with James Maxey, who did the driving; I really didn't belong behind the wheel of an automobile. Unfortunately I had to ask him to cancel his book signing so we could leave early. I didn't mind too much about canceling my own stuff, but I hated having to ask him to do so. He was extraordinarily gracious about it.

Somewhere in there I did manage to do a few panels and see a few friends. Went out to dinner Friday evening with authors David Coe, Dennis Danvers, and Gail Martin (when we were done I made them wait while I hunted all over the restaurant for my sunglasses, which it turned out I had never taken into the restaurant in the first place). Went back to the con hotel and lost a few more things. Then I did two or three panels Friday night, and a workshop and a panel on Saturday before I left. At least I think I did. Could just be the drugs talking...

At least I was home for Katrina's birthday party, which we held despite everything else that happened. Bad enough to break your arm, but lose a birthday party too would have just been wrong.

So how was your weekend?