Technicon arrival
I’m in my hotel room in Blacksburg. The plan was to check in, and do a little shopping for a few things, but impink and kittykatya were in the hotel lobby, and we stopped to chat… looked up and half the con was there. The “Meet and Greet” started hours before the official panel time, but it’s cool, I got to see friends I haven’t seen since last Technicon, and others I haven’t seen in many years. I’m having a good time!
I has another Guest badge. I’m kinda enjoying my slowly-building collection of those.
Okay. Brain shutting down on it’s own. I feel better than I did this time last year, so fingers crossed that I don’t collapse tomorrow. Night!
Ice skating with assault rifles
Shadowrun went pretty decent last night. We finished a big fight with some corp-type security guards, and the group is set up for the finale confrontation next session. The webcam link to Amy functioned pretty well, and there were albino gluten-free cookies for all. Now I have two synopses to type up 🙂 One pitfall which urban-fantasy GMs must always be aware of: while fantasy-game swords kill slowly, guns are instantly lethal, which can sometimes be a challenge to the game.
Our players arrived to a less-than-spotless house. Starr and I had a rare weekend where neither of us worked or had any social commitments, so we spent a lot of personal time together, which meant I didn’t do any cleaning in the living room or kitchen over the weekend. Last night I had to get the place presentable in about 90 minutes time, which I think I managed sufficiently. Luckily my friends aren’t Better Homes and Gardens reps.
Midori started the evening off fairly relaxed, but started panicking once the room filled up, and took a completely unprovoked swipe at Jesse’s face. Luckily, Jesse’s all right, but I’m pretty cheesed at our little evil bitch cat right now. MistyMina, on the other hand, cuddled on ptownhiker‘s and lewisw‘s laps all night, racking up cute points until time for all to leave.
That, by the way, is indeed the new kitten’s name. We tried Matisse, which didn’t work, and then we tried Misty, which almost worked. Starr suggested Mina, the name of a friend, and about then the kitten knocked yet another something over. So we named her MistyMina, for her criminal behavior, and that stuck.
Tonight will be Technicon travel prep. I feel like I know what I’m going to to be doing on Saturday night now, so my main jobs are laundry, repairing a prop, and picking costumes for the weekend. I have four candidates, and only two days of convention 🙂 Really looking forward to seeing everyone!
Inspiration finally showed up
Wow, I just had an idea for the 10:00-10:45 Saturday night panel that I wish I’d had three weeks ago. It’s better than what I’ve got, but will require more late-in-the-game recruiting. I’ll probably go with it though, if I can find some willing souls who are (a) staying up that late and (b) aren’t already involved with something else.
If you’re interested, aren’t on my lifestyle filter, and are fine with whatever weirdness might show up on my lifestyle filter, let me know.
In other news, we are definitely Shadowrunning tonight. Google Calendar is supposed to be sending out reminders, and my own reminder emails will be sent out as soon as I can do so. I’ll also have a synopsis of last session up as soon as it gets written.
Daft music, schedules, and composing
Now that I’m digging the Daft Punk, everyone’s been saying over and over that I needed to get the Alive 2007 album. Picked it up this weekend, finally listened to it with the speakers turned up on my morning commute. That’s some fine commuting music, that is.
It looks like Starr won’t be making it to Technicon Last; she can’t get out of working that weekend. Her shifts are crazy – it’s a regular thing for her to have five days off in a row, but somehow her scheduled weekend shifts always fall on convention dates. It annoys us both. She has more than enough PTO to cover it if she took off, but that requires a great deal of shift-trading, and for some reason few of her co-workers want to work extra weekend shifts. Can’t imagine why.
I may have a very memorable con costume this year.
I like Twitter because it provides useful writing exercise in expressing onself succinctly. I shouldn’t fret, though, if I miss a few dozen because I’m away from a ‘Net connection. Most of the stuff I’ll want to know shows up in LiveJournal, and LJ’s much easier to keep up with. (Blogging of any kind forces me to keep in mind two good practices: try to avoid that cursed passive voice, and don’t write a novel where a couple of paragraphs will get my point across better.)
The Last Days of Technicon 25
My Sunday Technicon experience was brief and poignant. Reluctantly awake by 10:00, and out of the Microtel by 11:00, I headed back to McBryde for a final time.
My plan was to leave Blacksburg by 1:00, thereby getting home around 6:30-7:00 and having time for dinner and decompression, so my time was brief and rushed. I got to catch up briefly with nanoreid, had my picture taken with ranchonmars‘ Skull plush, and won an awesome Thunderchild print from rattrap. (It’s based on a plastic model I designed and we built many years ago.)
I finally had a few seconds to stop into Spiel, where I talked to jsciv for the only time during actual con hours. Touched base with rubinpdf, too; I hear ashoemaker was there, but I didn’t see him, though I did see markush on the way out. Since auction pickup hadn’t yet started, shrewlet offered to collect the print for me so that I could get on the road, and as I left the auditorium where the auctions were held, it seemed like half the con called out goodbyes. Just a little tiny bit verklempt, I was.
I drove home on 460 rather than battle the interstates; I got a far more peaceful drive for my trouble. Faint rain misted my windshield most of the way back, but posed no driving hazard, though I more than once encountered the damned “I refuse to be passed by a Hyundai, even if I was 15 miles under the speed limit!” attitude. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was so bushed that I sat a couple inches lower in the car seat, making the hood seem to disappear behind the dash.
Finally, I made it home. Starr and Midori were most pleased to see me. I presented Starr with the custom art I commissioned from rainbowsaber, and heard happy squees for the rest of the evening.
Sleep came upon me with no trouble at all, that night; and thus endeth the story of a happy Technicon. I’m already looking forward to next year’s: Jerry’s a good man who knows a thing or two about making a con happen, and I’m already tagged to do my shtick again. And this time, I’m bringing Starr!
(Say, who’s FanGOH for 26? And who’s got pics online?)
