Saturday, October 5, 2013

10:30 AM : Woke up too late to make it to the breakfast buffet, which mysteriously ends at 11 am instead of the much saner hour of 1 PM like a normal place. Whatever happened to brunch? I am really more of a brunch person. We night owls love brunching. It’s everything that is good about breakfast, but later.

Guess I will be dining a la Chez Hospitality today. It’s a good thing I am the sort of person who is just as happy with sandwiches as I am with eggs and bacon.

12 PM : Brunchfast turns out to be two pre-made roast beef sandwiches snagged just before the lunch rush hits. Oh, but I am a clever one. I feed the Alien Head a few bucks, and Hospitality feeds me. Boffo. Feeling almost human now.

I peruse the mendacious program book and discover there is nothing I really care to attend until 3 PM, when there is, of course, three different things. Isn’t that always the way? Either nothing, or too much.

Beret of purpose, I decide to return to home base and go back up to Chez Nous with no particular agenda. When in doubt, return to home base, I guess.

1 PM : I return to our room to find Joe is there, freshly awoken. After a few minutes chat, I get a great idea, and ask Joe if I can borrow his laptop so I can write a blog entry for the day. This turns out to be a more complicated procedure than I had anticipated, as it requires Joe to make an account for me on his computer, and so I feel a little guilty for putting him through all that trouble.

Still, mission accomplished. I log into my website and tappity type away my one thousand words for the day. I had expected to be unable to blog during the festivities, so this is a pleasant bonus. I have blogged at least a thousand words a day for years now, so it is far more than a habit and something a lot more like a need.

1:30 PM : Having done my writing for the day, I catch a little extra sleep. Conventions are like being in the Army. You learn to take sleep whenever you can.

3 PM : After much agonizing, I decide to go to the Justify The Science Flaw panel, mainly because I went to it last year and it was a hoot. The basic idea is that Karl Johnson brings a list of example of blatantly wrong science in popular media, and he, the panel, and the rest of us nerds in the audience try to come up with explanations of why that isn’t really a flaw.

It echoes the Marvel No-Prize, which Marvel used to award (or non-award?) to fans who came up with justifications for seeming errors in continuity, science, or whatnot in Marvel comics.

The real fun comes in the ridiculousness (not to mention flimsiness) of the justifications required to cover up some of the most egregious flaws.

And, despite back pain problems (damn this getting old thing), I have just as much fun this year.

4 PM : Ah, the Elrons, the always hilarious “awards” bestowed by the inimitable (but very imitworthy) R. Graeme Cameron every year to targets which richly deserve it, one way or another. They are a highlight of the convention every year, and extremely popular, a fact which seems to have escaped the convention planners because the room booked for it is tiny and cramped and many people, including my dear friend Felicity Walker, simply cannot get in to see them. This was a crushing blow to those who did not make it in, and I am very upset at this oversight. I really hope it never happens again.

Seriously, with his dry wit and stentorian voice, R. Graeme is like a rock star to us local fans!

5 PM : Regroup at our room, AKA Chez Nous, for the usual confab about dinner plans. Felicity has discovered that the TV in our room no longer gets Channel 30, her favorite. It got it just fine the previous evening, but now we get nothing but static. She calls down to the front desk to tell them about it, and they deny ever having had a Channel 30, or indeed to know what this “tell ee vish un” we speak of might be. Felicity manages to convince them of the existence of both, so they send up a tech, or at least, a worried looking Asian dude in a white dress shirt. He tries the denial trick too, but we see through it. He eventually leaves while mumbling something about checking “the box” somewhere. Well, we did what we could.

5:30 PM : Dinner at ABC Country Kitchen restaurant, another of our favorite local haunts. That’s what is great about a convention that is practically in your own back yard. You already know all the good place to eat.

7:15 PM : I catch 3/4 of the Video Game History panel. Learned tons of cool video game history trivia from the man, Ryan Cousineau, who curated the video game history exhibit for the VAG. He really knows his stuff!

8 PM : A panel intriguingly titled Are We Your Bitches? It is based on a comment Neil Gaiman made to a bunch of unruly fans that George R. R. Martin is “not their bitch”, and it was about the eternal question “What, exactly, does an author owe their fans?”. Very interesting to me as both an enthusiastic fan and an aspiring writer.

I figure all authors owe their fans is quality product and politeness in interaction. The rest is negotiable.

10:30 PM : Felicity and I head out into the night for a supply run. We return with some McD’s, a lot of food from 7-12 that I should NOT be eating, various beauty supplies (not that she needs them), and a gassed up car.

12 AM : Felicity and I settle back and get comfy Chex Nous, and unwind from the day’s activities with our old friends, television and junk food. Hope I sleep better tonight.

Friday, October 4, 2013

(NOTE : This year’s convention theme was “pirates”.

2 PM : Jolly Joe DeVoy, Ruthless Julian Castle, and I depart from our home port of Seafair on the isle of Lulu for the nearby port of Sea Island, to partake of a three day grapple with fellow buccaneers. Our hold is laden with provisions for the trip, and we look forward to this break from the open seas, and chance to trade our doubloons for luxuries important from distant lands.

3 PM : The trip was short and uneventful. We arrived early but the harbormasters were kind enough to let us weigh anchor in slip 522 regardless. We stowed our gear, made ready for the grapple, and after a brief pause to catch the wind in our sails once more, proceeded to the main event.

(————Piratey talk ends HERE———————–)

(Felicity, feel free to format the above demarcation however you like when you put in in BCSFAzine. You get the basic idea. I leave the exact form it takes up to you. )

While waiting for our room, we had the pleasure of meeting Ryan Hawe, his lovely wife Jen, and their little bundle of sweetness and joy, baby Evelyn. Ryan and Jen are former roommates of ours and it was great to catch up with them and see little Evelyn.

Our room is pleasant in that detached way that the hotel industry has down to a science. I am disappointed at the lack of a microwave in the room. Seems I brought my Orville Redenbacher micro-pop for no reason.

4 PM : Having managed to locate Registration (and a lovely lady who knew where I got my nickname from), I am now a full fledged congoer, and after a brief search and some basic detective work, I manage to locate the panel about how to make your own eBook.

However, after settling down and chatting with some very nice people in the room, I discover that this is not, in fact, the room for the panel eBook making, but the one on the subject of that miracle ingredient of all those awful tasting energy drinks, taurine.

It is at this point that I get my first hint that the program book (ha!) is a pack of lies and only the pocket program guide is to be trusted.

However, by that point I am comfortable and enjoying the company, so I decide what the hell, I will do this panel about taurine instead.

And it was very fun! Turns out taurine is a basic amino acid, but not one of the ones used to code proteins. Instead, it seems to enable other processes to do their jobs. Fun fact : nobody is sure that putting taurine in an energy drink even does anything. It’s the caffeine and sugar that does the trick! All those people, drinking awful tasting overpriced drinks when they could go to Starbucks and get the same thing in a much tastier form, and for around the same price.

5 PM : The only programming on right now is the opening ceremonies, and I am really not a “ceremonies” kind of guy, so instead I ascend to the 8th floor and the Hospitality Suite. I enjoy an hour of hanging with my fellow nerds and grazing on the munchies. But only after dutifully dropping $3 in the alien’s head. Hospitality runs on donations, after all!

6 PM : Went to a panel about how to make your own audio kit on the cheap. Most of it was way over my head and hence not all that useful for a non-techie like me. I mean, they expected me to learn to solder! Not gonna happen. I would have been better off going to the panel after this one that tells you how to use the darn stuff. Still, I enjoy anything hosted by Dara Korra’ti.

7 PM : Up to our room to regroup with La Gange (Joe, Julian, Felicity, and I) and formulate a strategy for getting dinner done. Our usual urge to chat with one another gets in the way, but eventually we formulate a plan and get our rear ends moving.

7:45 PM : We investigate the hotel restaurant and discover that it is both extremely pretentious and extremely expensive. Why do those always coincide? Thank goodness they post a menu outside the restaurant so we didn’t have to find all this out after we were already seated. Time for Plan B!

8 PM : Plan B is the local Denny’s, a popular hangout with La Gange and pretty much the exact opposite of the hotel restaurant in all ways. It’s relaxed, unpretentious, reasonable priced, and the people there already know us and give us a warm welcome when we show up. It pays to be not just regulars, but NICE regulars.

Also, somewhere along the way, we pick up Chris, AKA RainRat, a local furry whom I had not seen in ages, and our friend Amos, freshly back from a long trip traveling across the USA to fly the BDSM flag everywhere he can.

10 PM : Back to the hotel room to relax with La Gange, hang out, snack, and watch TV, which is more or less what we always do on Friday nights. There are room parties going on, but despite how I sometimes come across, I am an introvert, and my social batteries are totally dead. So we just hang out till we get sleepy and then drift off to bed. It’s sort of neat to watch television with friends in what is, for the weekend, your bedroom. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but it’s nice for a change to not even have to get up and go to the bedroom when the night’s festivities are over.

1:30 AM : Time to sleep! Thank goodness I brought my sleeping pills. Surely this time, unlike my VancouFur experience when I forget said pills, I will fall asleep easily and sleep soundly!

4 AM : Despite my sleeping pills, it takes this long for me to finally fall asleep. I guess the excitement of the day is still keeping my mind all wired up. Oh well, conventions aren’t for sleeping anyway!