The weekend officially begins
I drove back to Blacksburg in a much happier car. On the way, jsciv called and set up a meet, wherein I found that for $10 more a night I could have had a suite twice the size (not that I would have used it for much). We hit Christiansburg’s new Panera with Lucy, and talked a lot of game industry shop. Joe seems to be doing quite well for himself these days, which is great; we made hyper-flimsy plans for a Disney run out there sometime in the hazy future. (Flying. Not driving.)
Made it to the con, and picked up my Staff badge. I think I’m permanent TCon staff now… not that I mind, it’s a pleasure every year, but it amuses me nevertheless. I did not recognize tltrent at first, gomen, gomen! But I traded a lot of greetings with lots of great folk in those first minutes. I remember yubbie looking quite distracted, for reasons I would later discover…
I spent most of Friday re-learning my way around McBryde Hall on the Virginia Tech campus, location of many VTSFFC and USS McKay events. I socialized quite a bit, catching up with long-time fandom friends. In a lot of ways, Technicon for me is like getting to be 25 again, and getting to spend time with all these fun, intelligent people without being a broke, know-it-all slacker fanboy. I don’t miss that aspect of myself much!
Dwight’s Friday night dance was short and unfortunately-scheduled, turning more into an excuse to play exotic cuts really loud in a University auditorium while the iTunes Visualizer hypnotized the small crowd. nius‘s quote, “We’re rocking McBryde 100, bitches!” ended up on buttons for him and Dwight and me.
Shut down con and move to the Microtel conference room, where I snagged ursulav, Meche, and Bert for Saturday night’s panels, and finally caught up to shrewlet. First, colleenk and I got some long-awaited personal chat time – let’s not make it so long before the next one! – and then Cindy and I got a little conversation in before she had to take a guest home for the evening.
An excellent Technicon Friday! Saturday would be a bit rougher…
TCon Saturday – The Crud Strikes Back
Saturday I woke at 8:30, thought to myself “no way, not on a night where I have to stay up ’till 2” and went back to sleep. I woke again at 10:30, went to sit up and was assaulted by nausea and headache. Not, “Oh, I feel like crap, oh well,” but “oh God I think I may need to run for the bathroom RIGHT NOW.” In the hopes that more rest would help, I rolled over until noon. Couldn’t put it off any longer at that point, and made it to McBryde in time for kittykatya and impink‘s Fragile Gravity (http://unseenllc.com/) panel. That was fun, especially when Barb had to change a DVD and Chris was forced to improvise for several minutes. I look forward to Book 3!
Well, you know you’re at a real con when two good events are going on at the same time, and much as I wanted to see the General Webcomics Panel, the Spin Doctor had a date at Filking 1025. (Tech uses 4-digit course numbers.) I contributed a couple lines to the weekend’s official filk, which we actually finished nice and early! What a concept! An impromptu rendition of “The Dragon and The Lady” followed (NSFW), with joking comments about the fact that the local fandom children are being raised on this stuff. To quote a song that Keith often covers, we’ll have a generation of well-rounded outcats.
I dropped by rattrap and drich‘s “First Ones” panel – they are the only attendees who’ve attended every Technicon. I’d prepared a button that read “Technicon Fourth One” (the best I could do). Lots of old memories flew around that panel; hard to believe the con’s 25 years old. I’m fairly sure that’s a Virginia fandom record, unless you count RoVaCon / Rising Star as one entity. Still, though, the pain, nausea, and light-headedness continued to build. Barb and others started telling me to Go Lie Down. I talked to Starr a bit – she was having appliance issues at the house right before she had to attend a wedding – and finally gave in and went back to the hotel.
Good news of the evening? While I was semi-comatose, colleenk gave birth to a little boy. Gratz to her and yubbie! (Unsurprisingly, this made the con accountant unavailable for the rest of the event.)
I really regret missing the Costume Call and southernsinger‘s performance. Every few years at Technicon, I seem to come down with something on Saturday; perhaps I need to start over-medicating the week before, or something. I wasn’t the only one, either: shrewlet had a rough day, and there were bleary eyes elsewhere at the con. However, with modern technology, it’s likely that the evening entertainment was all taped, and I’m hoping that someone posted pictures somewhere.
Fortunately, I woke up in possession of a far stabler head and stomach before my evening panels, and headed down to the Microtel conference room. Those panels… are a filtered entry.*grin*
Technicon 25 Pre-Show
I have driven to Orlando. I have driven to upstate New York. In neither of those cases was I responsible for the steering wheel the whole time, if at all; so, yes, a five-hour drive can absolutely wear me out!
Since NASA Langley is practically sitting on I-64, I packed the car on Wednesday night and headed right to Blacksburg from work Thursday. 64 and I-81 aren’t too unpleasant on a Thursday evening; my CD player may be broken, but the iPod plays through it nicely except for the pauses when it tries to eject nonexistent CDs.
Unfortunately, my transmission started throwing fits around Afton Mountain (who could blame it?) slipping and locking into third gear three times on the trip down. Pulling over for 10 minutes each time seemed to reset things, but that’s no way to run a railroad.
I made it safely to the Microtel, where I was informed that the wireless access was a bit spotty on my floor 🙁 Nevertheless, in an effort to adjust my sleep rhythms for the weekend, I stayed up for a couple hours unsuccessfully farming Primals in Zangarmarsh, only getting kicked off the server three times.
Friday I headed down to see my Mom (one of the main reasons for my Thursday travel), which was lovely. We traded Xmas presents and had good conversation over a mildly disappointing lunch. Interestingly, I’m still on a hot-rodded Mac G4 tower, and she’s got the latest and greatest iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, which she took great glee in showing me.
Went to the lube place, got the transmission flushed, and had them look at my rear tires, which were making unhappy growly noises. Yep, they needed replacing. Technicon was getting expensive already…
Brief updates
- 09:43 Thought of first thing I forgot to pack for TCon. 90-minute side trip this afternoon not worth it. #
- 21:40 Sitting in the smallest hotel room I’ve rented in 20 years. #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
Microtel Base reporting
Five-hour drive to Technicon – not from home, mind you, that would have been six – from NASA Langley. (This is why the car was packed last night.) I might have shaved off half an hour were it not for some kind of road work happening on I-81 between Roanoke and Blacksburg. But it’s no big deal. I am super special-plus tired though.
The Microtel is well named. This may be the smallest hotel room in which I’ve stayed, though it’s nice and clean. Glad I’m not trying to run any con events in the room. The good news is that the clerk said that wireless was “spotty” on the third floor, yet I seem to be getting a fairly good signal. So that’s nice.
I am here today because I promised I would show up, and because you, my fandom friends, are awesome people whom I miss. I don’t drive five hours for just anything 🙂
{wakes} Huh? What just happened?
It’s Wednesday night, and everything for the con is packed in the car except for toiletries and pyjamas.
Clearly, there’s an impostor in this apartment, cunning but not quite cunning enough to impersonate me properly.
(Thanks to panels, did not manage to pack light particularly. Also, someday need real travel gear rather than leftover Decipher gaming bags.)
Catching up
Good morning, all.
My apologies for leaving everyone in suspense about Starr. I’ve pretty much had no Internet access since my last post. (It wasn’t down, I have just had higher-priority matters to handle. Given how high-priority I usually make the Internet, that’s saying something. But anyway.)
Starr is back from the hospital and is doing quite well – well enough to wear me out this weekend staying up late and getting up early. She’ll probably be back at work tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest – I think she’s pretty excited about it. Her doctors say that her condition has probably been present since she was little and masked by other issues, so her treatment might actually leave her healthier than ever. Part of the priority issues from the last week was me being a bit of a jerk – I’ve not been handling events too well the last fortnight, and I needed a bit of a talking-to – but I think I have it under control now. Saturday night we were having a good time together, and she looked happier than she has in a long time. (The hew haircut’s darn nice too!)
I’m preparing for Technicon – as I’ve said, I refuse to do seat-of-the-pants this year – but just last night got a new schedule change, and am trying to adjust for that. (I actually agree with the reasoning behind it – I’m just laughing at Murphy.) There will be a post with further discussion of the TCon panels under my Lifestyle filter. I’m kinda hoping to get a little gaming in this year with jsciv – last year I was so busy, I barely laid eyes on the man. It’ll be awesome getting to see everyone who can attend.
