The Nerdy Bird Flies to Australia & New Zealand! Literally!

Jill Pantozzi | March 18th, 2016

Hi, I don’t know if you’ve met me but I’m a huge nerd and OH MY GOD IT’S ALL HAPPENING I’M FINALLY GOING TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND!!

The world is changed. Or at least it will be for me once I return. In case you’ve missed my mentions of this big event on social media or this post here, I was asked to be an International Guest of Honor at Contact2016, the 55th Annual National Speculative Fiction Convention along with some other great folks. I was blown away by the prospect when they first asked, then didn’t think I’d be able to say yes because travel (especially international travel) is difficult for folks with mobility issues. But the convention organizers told me they’d be able to send me and fiancé and finally it became an actual reality.

I leave on Monday March 21st and don’t return to the U.S. until April 14th. As you can see in the graphic below, the convention itself is only taking place next weekend but since it takes a lot of effort and time to get to Australia, we’re extending out trip as sort of a pre-honeymoon for ourselves and will be visiting Sydney, Australia as well as Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. Yes, I will hug a koala. Yes, I will drink at the Green Dragon.

I’m going to be on a lot of really interesting panels and workshops at Contact2016, and I hope I see some of you there! I know I have a lot of international followers but I never know where anyone is for sure. Regardless, you can keep updated via the Contact2016 Twitter account. And once again, if you live on the Eastern coast of Australia or the Northern Island of New Zealand, please reach out as I may be trying to meet up with some folks while I’m there.

I was going to try and do up some news today (like Entertainment Tonight getting the exclusive that Amber Heard is going to play DC’s Mera in Justice League/Aquaman or that Starz’s American Gods cast Emily Browning as Laura Moon) but then I realized I still had a crap-ton of stuff to get done before my trip so I hope you’ll forgive me. We’re not going to be using our phone service while we’re gone but will be checking in on wi-fi when we have access. What that means is there won’t be any posts going up here for a while (Patrons will see their donations paused for the month of April if I can figure that out) but definitely keep an eye on social media. For one, I’ve got a tumblr queue set up for the entire trip so you folks don’t forget about me. I’ll also be posting to Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat as wi-fi allows.

There’s also the small chance I’ll be too mesmerized by the beauty around me to bother going on the internet. I’ll catch you on the flip side! :)