During dinner break, I hung out in the hospitality suite with Monica. This turned out to be excellent because (a) they had tons of free food up there, and (b) coloring, and (c) games going on. Since Monica’s business is games (she and her husband have a game store in SoCal), this seemed quite appropriate. You also meet interesting people while hanging around up there.

After dinner, I went to a very strange class called “The Limpia: Cleansing the Mind, Body, and Spirit.” I didn’t really know what the hell this was, but it was being taught by Katrina Rasbold, an entertainign and sassy Southern lady who puts on the PanGaia festival here that I’ve been to a few times, and once I actually made it out to her store in Roseville. I guess she’s moved stores since then because now her store is in Shingle Springs. Sometime when I have nothing else to do I should haul ass out there and check it out.

Anyway: she does hoodoo and conjure and is a bruja and all that kinda stuff. This is a technique in which you do the following to clean out one’s curses, hexes, bad juju, angst, whatever for $65:

(a) Talk about whatever’s bugging you.
(b) She sages you with sage.
(c) She vigorously rubs an egg all over you to pick up whatever bad shit is in your body.
(d) She vigorously brushes you with a broom or feathers or whatnot to clean you off.
Then she talked about cracking the eggs into a jar and then seeing the weird shit the eggs do to indicate whatever weird crap was pulled out of you.

Whether or not you believe this (I dunno, I don’t come from a world where I think curses exist too much, but clearly she does, more on this later), it sounded interesting, albeit complicated. I went to a ton of conjure/hoodoo classes this weekend--frankly, some of them I didn’t even KNOW were such, but surprise--and the thing I notice overall is that boy, do they have a lot of props/fairly specialized items that you’re supposed to use in specific ways.

I feel like I should mention this to Redhead Sarah, somehow. I don’t think she can afford spiritual cleansing or whatever, but she might want to go over there and just talk to the lady, because I know Sarah’s got enough crappity going on in her past that could use some purging.

I also got some texts from Laurel during the day, as apparently she wanted to leave a Valentine on my door. Which is sweet, but I pointed out that I am gone for the weekend. She did it anyway. Hope nothing’s stolen, right? (Writing several days later: nope, it was fine.)

After that, the last class I attempted to go to was a storytelling class. However, it sucked. It started out with one guy saying that when he taught creative writing in high school and it was senior ditch day, students would actually COME to his class and the history teacher’s class, because the history teacher would tell stories, especially about who slept with who.

This sounds promising, except then he turned the stage over to his friend to tell a story. I don’t think his friend was the history teacher friend, because she straight up read aloud a lecture, NOT story, about the Trail of Tears that bored me to tears. Not that that’s a fun story I’d want to hear about anyway, but it was so NON story that I felt like these people were missing the point of the entire class. I strongly suspected this class was going to turn into “Talk to your partner,” and before that went down, I walked out and went back to my hotel to move my stuff in.

Picking up ribbons is A Thing at cons, and this year was very, very good for me. I found a lot on free tables and the info booth in particular.

Free ribbons I picked up that day:
* Weiser Books
* “So long, and thanks for all the fish”
* “I went to the last Pcon and all I got was this stupid ribbon.”
* “Penis Penis Penis LOL”
* “Show Me Your Kitties”
* “I’m A Ribbon!!!”
* Not One Drop (Discworld).

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