Woke up at around 7:30 am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I figured I might as well blog. After all, today is the first day of Vcon, and I am going to be too busy to do it later.

I will probably post con notes here throughout the day, assuming I can get on the Sheraton’s WiFi.

It is going to be weird going to the con straight from class. It means that I might end up having to take all my clothes and stuff with me to school. Depends on whether I can find my other kitbag, the old one, or not.

I can put up with using that ratty old thing for one class if it means I don’t have to lug my cloths and other essentials around with me to class. If I find the old one, I can just put my clothes et all in my newer one and ask Joe to take them to our hotel room when he checks in.

Or maybe the other way around. Dunno.

I can say one thing without fear of contradiction : we have never lived this close to the convention before. It’s like six blocks away. So going back home for stuff we forgot to bring will never be easier.

This begs the obvious question : if we live so close, why the heck are we getting a room? Basically, because getting to stay in a hotel is part of the convention experience to us. And we really like having the security of knowing that we have a room right in the same building to go to when there’s no panels on that interest us or if we are feeling a little overwhelmed.

Okay, that last one is mostly me.

And I like staying in hotels. It makes me feel like a competent and legitimate adult for a change. Most of the time, poverty leaves me feeling like a failure. Not in any specific way, just in the way it leaves you out in the cold relative to the common pleasantries that most people take for granted. It makes you feel like an outsider, like you just plain missed the bus to life, and therefore getting to spend three days living as well as everyone else is worth the hundred bucks for a room share.

It really is that sad.

I guess the fact that I am a student now means I shouldn’t feel so bad about myself and my lot in life. But I have this stupid lack of ID thing hanging over my head and it’s keeping me from just relaxing and being a student and feeling like I belong there. I thought I would be done with all that falderol by now, but no, it will continue to oppress me till mid October at least.

Why is nothing ever easy?

Oh well, someday this will all be nothing but a memory, and I will laugh at how fucked it up it all was.

It does mean that I will, once more, be stuck convincing the people at registration that they should sell me a membership even though I have no ID. Knowing that is in my near future is going to do wonders for my social anxiety. Previous years, I just sort of cluelessly fumbled my way through it.

But school has raised my background tension level. Mostly because of the ID thing, honestly. I wish I could just relax about it, knowing it will all sort itself out in time. But I am not built that way…. not yet, anyhow. So it will just lurk there in the back room of my consciousness, in my mind even when it’s not on my mind, dragging me down.

Now it’s my fault that I didn’t get the whole birth certificate thing started until I was already in school and had been for a couple of weeks. I wasted a lot of time thinking I was somehow going to find a way around it. That’s why when I finally got around to it, I had to pay them a shitload of money to get it here in a reasonable time.

But I could never have seen the whole “it will arrive within three to four weeks via mail” bullshit coming. That’s just batshit crazy. I can’t be the only person who finds that a mite inconvenient.

I mean, I need my ID to get my student loan and student ID and such. But a lot of people need theirs to DRIVE.

I wish I had remembered to ask Joe what sort of room we have so I would know what I can reasonably bring with me in terms of foodage. Some hotel rooms are cool and have a microwave and a (non-mini) fridge and whatnot. Others, you are lucky if there’s a coffee machine. So it would be nice to know what I can bring.

Oh well. As usual, my budget goes like this : $75 for membership, $75 for meals.

That means the weekend will be $150, and my weekly budget is normally $100, so this WILL take a bite out of the rest of the month. I am hoping that this month’s GST cheque will be extra fat, so that I will have some left over after paying Joe back for my share of the room.

I would hate to have to pay him back partially and then pay the rest on my next check. But it may come to that.

At least this isn’t a five-week month, like other GST cheque months. That always feels like a kick in the nuts. Oh look, here’s extra money…. and here’s the extra week between cheques that has arrived to devour it! Because FUCK YOU.

I was so worried about that happening this month that I checked the calendar again and again, convinced that it really was a five week month and I somehow wasn’t seeing it.

But no. Normal four week month. I think. Probably. The math works out, anyhow.

I better try to get a little more sleep. I will talk to you nice people again sometime soonish. I will do my best to blog from the convention, but it probably won’t be 1000 words a day because I will be typing on the virtual keyboard and that sucks.

Love you all! See you soon!