Memeishness

[sraun]

Gacked from all over my friends list - I'm not much for asking, but willing to answer.

"The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really we know nothing about each other.

I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about.

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you."

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Did you hang out with PFRC when you were at Tech?

K.

[sraun]

Yep! I'm officially a member of ASAKCA. They dragged me (well, maybe not literally) to my first convention - which was Minicon in 1979.

I then made three cons a year with them for a year or two, then dropped out of MTU and moved to Minneapolis.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Do you have siblings?

[sraun]

Depending on how you count, one or six.

Brother Mark - two years younger.

Step-relations by my father's second marriage (kids from her first):
Janet - 46/47
Dale - 44
Sara - 43
Donna & David - mid-late 30's (fraternal twins)

I never can keep track of how old the twins are - they were in sixth or seventh grade when I went off to college. Donna was the cause of my first "I'm feeling old" moment - I hadn't seen her in several years, and all of the sudden I'm at her wedding. Now, she was still the little kid in my mind - I just hadn't seen her - and she was suddenly a grown-up getting married!

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Was Irene a SF fan when you met, and if not, have you converted her?

[sraun]

Yes, Irene was an SF fan when we met.

We are (in theory) one of those on-line match-making site success stories. The fact that neither one of us would really recommend using such a site is ... beside the point?

I won a free year on matchmaker.com - so I actually get 54 weeks (your first two weeks were free). I was in my last month, I'd been sending an average of 2-4 'hi there' messages per week. I'd had less than ten replies, I'd met one lady face-to-face. I was not going to spend money to continue being depressed by my lack of replies & meetings. Irene was in her two week free period, and had decided not to spend money on it.

She popped up on my query list, I sent her a 'hi there, you look interesting, please check out my profile and get back to me if you think I look interesting'. She got it just over a week into her two weeks. We traded e-mails, then e-mail addresses, and met face-to-face within a couple of weeks. She came to a Minn-StF meeting at my house on 1 April, we went out to mini-golf on 4 April, and were married six months later.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely story!

OK, I'll bite.

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

Have we ever met? I used to go to Minicon every year. I quit about 8 or 9 years ago when travel became too expensive and Minicon was in the throes of reinventing itself (and some of the people I went there specifically to see were also unable to get to it).

I am sure we've been in the same poolside cabanas simultaneously, and clearly we know a lot of the same people, including some GTers.

But I'm damned if I can remember talking to you IRL.

Re: OK, I'll bite.

[sraun]

I think we have? If you're the person I remember you being...

Did you help run the artshow for one of the big gaming cons in the early 90's? An Origins? It was in Philadelphia. My recollection is that - at the time - you were involved with someone that I got to know well during one of the long before-and-after Minicon party circuits of the late 80's / early 90's.

It would have been either that Origins or Minicon. If it helps your mental image any, at the time we would have met I weighed 325-350, instead of the 225-250 that my current pictures show.

I was fairly active in helping run Minicons from 1981 through the early 90's, I was probably renting rooms in Caryl Eschweiler's (then Caryl Dixon) house, I hung out a lot with Joel Halpern.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

When did you get involved with Mpls fandom, and how?

[sraun]

I went to MTU at Houghton, MI for college, and got involved with PFRC. They hauled me off to several conventions - Minicon 1979 was my first convention. Spring of 1980 I dropped out of college and moved home to Duluth. Fall 1980 I moved to the Twin Cities - Duluth was in a serious recession at the time, and so had no jobs and very little to tempt me in the way of social life or cultural events. After I moved to Minneapolis, I tracked down Uncle Hugo's and found out who the group was that sponsored Minicon, and when their next meeting was. IIRC, it was someone's house in Richfield (never recall going there again) in September 1980. I've been involved with Minn-StF ever since.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

What's PFRC?

[sraun]

PFRC is the Permanent Floating Riot Club - the MTU Science-Fiction Club (at least, that was the name of it at the time). They were the Fan GoH at Minicon 20 (1985).