Yay! It was fun. I didn't really meet a lot of new people this year, but I spent time chatting with a bunch of people I knew and getting to know some of y'all a little better.
I'll cut to spare any off you who don't care what I was doing the last few days...
On friday I had the day off work & so I got up to take the Saturn in to get looked at because the turn signals have been wonky. I lost track of time while getting ready for CONvergence though & missed my car appointment, so I called to see what time I could come in instead. 12:15. Bleah. I had planned to be at the hotel by then, but it was my own darn fault. So I finished folding some clothes, packed up my stuff & tried to make sure I remembered everything.
After I sat at the Saturn dealer for two hours, they came in and said that they couldn't replicate the problem and the car's computer didn't show anything wrong with it. Of course not. We're working with a deadline here. We have about 59,100 miles on the car and the extended warranty expires at 60,000. *sigh*
So I headed on home & found out that
hellbob was going to be home shortly also so I just finished getting ready while waiting for him. We threw our stuff in the car and hit the road. About 15 minutes later we were at the hotel and dropping off tables & chairs in the Cthulhu Coffee room. Then we ran into Nissa & Darek and declared them to be our minions. They grabbed some of our stuff from the car so we were able to make only one trip. We checked in to the hotel & learned that we were on the 8th floor of the North Tower! Yay! This is the nice part of the hotel. To even get to 7th or 8th floor in that tower you had to have a room key and swipe it in the elevator. We got a key for N & D also so that they could use our room to put their stuff in and to change.
Then we picked up our badges at registration and had just started to wander the dealer's room when Mark called to let us know that he had arrived. Our room was really big and really nice, but it also only had one king size bed. it did have a couch that folded out though so Rick ran home later and got our inflatable air mattress, which made the foldout tolerably comfortable for M. Once Rick showed him how to use the elevator & he got his stuff to the room, it was time for dinner.
We decided that walking across the parking lot to TGIFridays was the best option because we could start off our weekend with some real food. I love their Jack Daniels grill stuff! We used the dinner time to also look over the convention guide to see if there were any panels we just had to go to. Then we headed back on over for the opening ceremony.
As usual, the skit was funny. I'm sure I would have gotten much much more out of it if I had ever seen even one episode of The West Wing. As usual, the Mark Time awards also bored the heck out of me.
Then as the opening ceremony was wrapping up, the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate. As we were heading to the door of the hotel we learned that a sprinkler was gushing water and there was no fire so we didn't have to go out. (I later learned that someone was trying to move something that was too tall and they just sheared the sprinkler right off...)
Because we could not use the elevators during the alarm, we went to check out the art show. There was some very nice stuff there. At one point when Nissa, Darek & I were sitting down in the north tower atrium waiting for Rick & Mark, a guy cam in with an adorable dog. It was a little black, grey & white sheltie. Of course I had to get me the puppy love! The dog's name was Morgan, but I never caught his owner's name. The next day I ran into him at the art show & we were chatting again. Turns out he was
davidwilford, husband of the ubertalented Erin McKee.Friday night then consisted of much wandering & chatting until about 4am.
Saturday started at 9:30 am. I was the first one up and moving in the room so I headed on downstairs. More wandering and chatting was done. I ran into
7thstranger & vorrant and it was decided that we would make an attack upon Burger King for lunch. After that I went to the Firefly panel for a while, where I found Darek & Nissa again. Then when it was half over I snuck out to catch the second half of the Dr. Blink panel. Miss chebutykin generously gave me a copy of issue #1 (mine had been left at home) so I could have muskrat_john sign it. I wandered the dealers room again, but I never did spend any money in there this weekend, except at the table that had the old-fashioned candy sticks. I can't resist the root beer sticks! We had entertained the idea of going to the masquerade this year, but the lines quickly put the kibosh on that idea.
During the masquerade time we had sandwiches for dinner in the room, and watched The Addams Family Values. I'd forgotten how much I liked that movie. And not having watched it for a very long time, I didn't realize that Wednesday's friend at camp was Mr. Universe himself, David Krumholtz (he's also on the show Numb3rs.) Then when the snotty blond girl at camp was talking I said "Is that Harmony, from Angel? A really young Harmony?" They shot me down & said no, but when I checked IMDB later I saw that it was indeed Miss Mercedes McNab.
After dinner & the movie we headed on down to do the parties & I spotted Cyd in the bar & I chatted with her &
lady_gunsen for quite a while! Then it was off to wander for a while. Our friends Glen & Carol came to CONvergence for the first time, and Glen was all decked out as Captain Pike. It looked very cool. I talked cameras with montechristobo for a while. With all my talking & wandering & chatting I was up until 4 am again. We woke up at about 11:30, and even though the boys hit the shower first I was still the first one moving, packed & ready to go so I hit Dairy Queen for breakfast.After I hit one more panel Rick was ready to head home so I dropped him off. When I checked the mail at home I found Moose, safe & sound from his last international adventure! He came back to the hotel with me and posed for pictures with Len Wein, Marv Wolfman,
gingerpook, cajones and lexinatrix. And he also posed on the mainstage facade. Closing ceremony went off with no fire alarms. Afterwards
chebutykin lured me off to Olive Garden with a HUGE group of people and I got much wonderful chatting with my favorite librarian, dewey921. I think I even have her convinced to come to the Canadian National Expo in August. Upon returning to the hotel after dinner we changed and headed right to the hot tub!
wiredferret, silmarian, pied_piper70, jcoppercorn, and 7thstranger were there, among others. After the hot tubbing and swimming we gathered a crew of people to play Salad Bowl. Some of the people who played were
vorrant, 7thstranger, theseamster, jcoppercorn, mle292, geohard, and there were others. vorrant apparently knows the full names of everyone on the ConComm. One of the best lines was "Who's gonna tell Jody Wurl that her middle name is now Fuck You?" Yeah, I'm never letting vorrant know my two middle names... Luckily theseamster & vorrant were on opposite teams, as were me & 7thstranger. 7th was on a team of Next thing I knew it was 4 am again & I had to head home. All in all it was a good convention. I really didn't meet anyone new but I had lots of fun getting to know some people better.
I'm sure I forgot huge chunks of things & people in here...sorry!
