What do Catherine Asaro, Frederik Pohl, Neil Gaiman and One Ring Zero have in common?

I saw them all over the course of the weekend and they were all interesting, thought provoking and entertaining in different ways. Plus we have stupid annoying security measures, breaking cars, Atomic Books, and stupid brain tricks to talk about. So let's get started! Cullen and Cam and I wanted to get to the National Book Festival on Saturday early enough to have a hope of Neil signing Violent Cases for Cul and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish for Cameron. We were going to take the Metro from New Carrolton station to Smithsonian but I got kind of worried about time and decided to spend the money on parking and drive in. I've driven to that are a million times because it is just a few blocks from my office and I tend to be running late or I have gotten to the Metro station when there are no parking spots left many, many times. I started working at home two years ago when I was so sick and have had this unfortunate series of further illnesses in the meantime so I think it's probably been a couple of years since I drove in. It's for sure been at least a year. Still I have been in many times post 9/11 so what happened next came as a big surprise to me.

I decided to park in a garage in the Ronald Reagan building. I used to walk down and have lunch in this building all the time and the security was never a problem. This time there were huge barricades blocking the entrance to the garage. I thought at first the place was closed down but then a guard came out and asked for picture id. She then searched my van. This is the third time my van has been searched this week. The first time was when the kids went over to Fort Meade, the second when Chris went to NIH to see about selling his wisdom teeth extraction and then this time.

The security guards acted like I was a huge inconvenience to them. Maybe I was. My decision to park in their garage made them get up out of their little shack and walk around my van.

I started the van back up and heard this terrible noise. It was a grinding, tearing, screeching, squeaking, scraping noise. I had been worried because I couldn’t see one of the security guards who had been practically under my car when the other guard wanted to me drive on. He insisted she was clear of the car but for a moment that noise made me think she was trapped under the car and she had turned into a metal woman who was now being torn apart.

I wanted to park and get out as soon as possible to see what was wrong but the majority if the garage was closed off and we had to keep driving and twisting around finding a spot. Just as I pulled into an empty space my “check gages” light came on and the hood started jumping around and this noise like the creature from Tick Tock was in my engine started up.

We were afraid to open the hood but we did it anyway. The coolant in the overflow tank was boiling like mad. The really queer thing is that the car next to us had also overheated and there was coolant under that car. It was such a strange coincidence that I couldn’t even figure out what had gone wrong. It seemed like the guards had done something to my car and this car that caused them to overheat but what? It made no sense.

After much fretting I decided to leave it be for now and go on to the Book Festival. It was a couple of blocks away but the Festival itself is spread out over a seven block area. That should be a meaningless distance but since I got this stupid brain disease it’s like walking ten miles used to be. I had to stop and rest before we got to the science fiction and fantasy tent. Never mind the book signing tent; that was clearly out of the question. By the time we cleared the insane security walking out of the garage and got to the SFF tent it was 11:30. Ridiculous.

I don’t even understand the point of most of this security. Why do I show picture id? Nobody checks my id against anything so what exactly is happening here to make the world safer? All it does is show I have access to something that cane make me look like I have a driver’s license. Actually at one check point I was so pissed off I gave them my library of congress reading card and a look that dared them to question it.

By this point I was really sick again. The tiniest bit of stress and I start throwing up. My head hurts like it is caught in a vice and I get dizzy and my vision starts to go. I decided to get a good seat in the mostly empty tent and just stay there until Neil spoke. Thank goodness I did because I was lucky enough to see some amazing speakers.

Coming up, romance in Science Fiction, the man behind the institution, feeling sorry for Neil and the quirky One Ring Zero. Also the suspense of whether or not I throw up on anyone famous or on the Metro train on Sunday.