As I said to the_muppet above: "You know, this meme makes me want to have a giant party with my flist. Just invite everyone over for pizza or something. In a lot of ways it's *totally awesome* that fandom is filled with people from all over the world but sometimes you just wish that we were all closer."

I'm totally going to keep an eye out for those US cons close by to you. Not that I'm going to have any vacation time after the week off in August, but there's always next year!