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Now we're home again.

I had a good time at Balticon, though it was more of the quietly-hang-out-and-game-and-see-old-friends variety, and not the bustle and excitement of a Penguicon. I think there were all of 10 parties throughout the three days of the convention, 6 of which were on Saturday night.

There were panels, but a look at the panel list turned up nothing that inspired me to go attend.

As usual, the Dealer's Room was excellent, in both quality and quantity--it is large, and features a big variety of dealers who carry interesting wares. The Art Show was also large and very good as Art Shows go, but I've seen so many art shows that it's rare I see anything in any of them that impresses me anymore.

There was an anime room and a room showing old SF movies, but I was too busy gaming to stop by.

The gaming room, as always, had a great selection of games loaned by local fen, but was too small and thus too hot a lot of the time. (Not that this stopped us from spending a lot of time there. I don't think we went to bed before 3 a.m. any of the three nights of the convention.)

The con suite, which continues to be housed in an unused hotel restaurant styled like a 1950s diner, was more than large enough but didn't have enough comfy seats to be a good hang-out place.

As we were heading out of the hotel to head home on Monday, I overheard someone remark to another fan nearby that the same old gripes are made at every year's gripe session, e.g., "They didn't have raw vegetables when I was there!" (though raw vegetables were clearly stocked--I saw some when I stopped by last night). No wonder the con is changing so little from year to year. I wonder what would happen if I stopped by next year.