Well, Ad Astra was a thumping success- not only was it more useful to me (as a writer), but the crowd was considerably older and more mature, and what can I say, it's a convention that revolves around books. I'm a book nut.
Speaking of books, I picked up a random assortment of pined-for and not pined for titles, including a very sizable anthology of Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music), a large volume of Romantic literature (thanks Michelle, it's from the same series as my eighteenth century literature anthology), a copy of Jordonsky (sp?)'s "Megalex"(in english this time), a collected edition of "Crisis on Infinite Earths", a Rob J. Sawyer novel (I can't think of the name just now, but it was cheap), and a couple of Gordon R. Dickson novels. I also replaced my beat up copy of The Gunslinger with a nicer, less beat up copy, and picked up a few literary magazines that I found in the dealer's room as well. You can never have too many of those.
I met a lot of fun people at the con, and also saw a lot of familiar faces. Wierdly enough, I felt right at home at this convention, despite the fact that it was my first time. I attended the Poetry Round-robin, even though I don't have much in the way of sci-fi or fantasy poetry. Magnetic poetry kicked ass though.
To top it all off, I have rediscovered my appreciation for classic science fiction and fantasy, an appreciation which, I guess, was never gone in the first place. Practically all the fiction I wrote in highschool was either horror, fantasy, or science fiction (not to be confused with sci-fi?).
And oddly enough my muse, fiction-story-wise has done its darnedest to point me back in that direction. Maybe it's time to revisit my beginnings. There are some ideas that reach far out of that realm, and into the realm of the fantastic.