Update to youngwizards:

Diane and Peter have safely arrived at CopperCon, albeit sleep-deprived and no little loopy. Due in part to misplaced signage, the Thursday night pre-registered guests only signing was spottily attended. Word to the wise: any attempts to drive or eat in Tempe on the same weekend as a big ASU game will encounter inevitable delay. I am informed that Peter's sense of humor grows keener when he's not half-asleep. Bystanders sensitive to puns may tremble in fear!

The con will run through Monday afternoon.

Got there a bit after five. Traffic around the area was horrendous; I then learned there was an ASU game on. I went in the wrong entrance at first -- today I wasn't a hotel guest, just a con attendee. I turned around and looked for actual parking. I was in luck, and found one very close to the actual side entrance of the hotel close to the con area. East-dwellers (Mudd-East, not East Coast-East) would recognize the type of entrance, as it was like that little covered hallway thing that's right by the lounge on each side.

I came at five. That was when pre-reg fun & games were supposed to start. Of course, given that we are operating on Fandom Standard Time here, that meant that people with Con Business were starting to set up, not that it was All Set Up and Ready to Rock and Roll. I chilled.

At length, after much wandering between locations, testing the microphone, putting stuff back in the car, and jittering, there was programming. I wandered into the Movie Room, and instantly changed the gender ratio from 100% male. The male nearest my age struck up Conversation. ...Either that, or I struck it up. I'm not sure which. His Harlan Ellison story involves being in a vile mood, and nearly plowing down a guy who did not get out of his way. "Don't you know who I AM?" No, he did bloody not, and the guy was still in his way. ... He later learned that he was the toast of the con, and sheepishly apologized to the guy.

The movie room was way too cold. Air conditioning cranked up to arctic makes sense for cons, but does not make for comfort when there are four to fifteen people in a decent sized partition of the ballroom.

I wandered off after all that in search of the Diane Duane and Peter Morwood signing. The room it said it was going to be in on the .pdf had other people in it, and a notice on the room name plate saying that the 7pm signing had been delayed until 8pm. The older fella who (IIRC) had welcomed me to my first con and hadn't realized that it was my first con did some digging about, and turns out they'd been moved to another room.

The panel that wasn't the signing started mentioning the "greying of Fandom", and that while it's true that older forms of fan stuff aren't attracting the kids these days, that other forms are up and coming. Like anime! My hair color was pointed out as a counterexample to the greying. Yay blue hair!

There was another girl there who'd been looking for the same signing. And while our knight in shining sneakers was off looking for a Real Con Person, we sat and got to know each other a bit. She mentioned casually that she'd brought up dduane coming to this con on the forums, and only one person had responded and said they'd be there.

"What forums?" I asked.

"The livejournal community," she said.

"Hi, I'm azurelunatic," I returned. We'd already met, it seemed.

We eventually did get pointed to the right room, the one that was set up with a table and name tags and everything. Table, name tags, the works -- just no Guests of Honor. They'd been sent off for dinner, but no one in that party had a cellphone, so they were MIA, presumed fed. We socialized while waiting. And they did show up. I mentioned that Allegra had saved the sanity of the household, and that the battery life was just about right for hcolleen's waiting for work. petermorwood shared his run-in with the increased security (in a far more expanded form than at the link), to general hysteria.

Evidently they do not have a volunteer coordinator this year. Therefore, the con committee are going to be massively overworked. "Maybe someone will volunteer to do that," I said in jest. Evidently the likelihood of this happening is laughable. Little gears started turning in my head, in the way that meant I'd be getting some brilliant idea a few hours later.

One of the con-people had piles upon piles of books to be signed. People who couldn't make it had sent their collections to get autographed. (I was first up, and awked and eeped over my name. Am I really more Joan or Azz? In the end, I went for Joanie.) There was commentary about the cover art. Oh, was there commentary about the cover art. There was one with a person facing a dragon. Nice, except for the fact that there's no dragon in the book, and the protagonist's armor doesn't leave his butt bare like that. (Thong armor. Ow.) And then there was the one with the sword through the horse's head...

I was developing a headache. I went home. Once I got home, the headache faded. I deeply suspect that the wig was to blame. Dammit. So I'll be wearing my own hair for the con, not short blue hair.