Worked Better Than I Expected

I was actually able to get to bed and to sleep before 7 PM last night, which surprised me. I had a bit of a fright when I woke up, saw that there was light outside, looked at the clock, and thought "Oh, no, the alarm didn't go off!" However, I realized quickly enough that it was 8 PM and went back to sleep. When the alarm went off at 2:30 I bounced out of bed much peppier than I should have done. Now I have a bit more than an hour to shower, eat breakfast, and otherwise convince my body that it's 6 AM instead of 3 AM or thereabouts.

Assuming there is internet connectivity from the hotel in Columbus at a price I'm willing to pay, I'll be online this weekend when I get the chance.

Probably Better That I Didn't Notice

As planned, I caught the early train from Fremont and was on the first AirBART bus of the morning (5 AM), so I was at the airport about 5:15 and dropped my bag about 5:25. They told me my flight would be boarding in a few minutes. Really? While standing in the long queue for Terrorization, I looked more closely at my boarding pass. The flight was scheduled for a 6:00 AM departure, and here it was about 5:35 AM.

( Yikes! )

When I arrived at Columbus and claimed my luggage, the driver was waiting for me and for one of the convention's other guests: Rebecca Forstadt. I didn't recognize her name or voice, but mentioned that I was "married to an anime character -- Lisa Hayes" she pointed out under the name Reba West, she was the voice of Lynn Minmei from Robotech. I was somewhat embarrassed that I'd not recognized her, but said that Lisa and her had probably met, years ago at a convention, as Lisa has the uniform of her namesake character.

With luggage and guests secured, our driver took us downtown to the Hyatt Regency, where the GOH Coordinator, Jennifer Bohn, met us and made sure we had no troubles checking in. More in my next entry.

Arrival at MARCON

When I arrived at the hotel for MARCON, Lisa was waiting for me, having arrived earlier in the day. Later, she explained her route since I last heard from her. It's a good thing we've been keeping track of this, because MARCON needs to know the mileage for reimbursement purposes, and the odometer on Lisa's truck isn't working properly.

Neither Lisa nor I had had a whole lot to eat today, although I had at least had a chance to have breakfast/lunch at SLC and I'd had a couple of food bars on the flights, so we got our luggage up to the room, Lisa had a quick bath, and we set out to find some dinner. There are a fair number of restaurants within an easy walk of the hotel, and we went to BD's Mongolian BBQ, a midwestern chain that I like but that Lisa wasn't terribly enthused about. BD's uses a different way of doing sauces, and doesn't have the sweet, thin sauces to which Lisa is accustomed. Still, we both ate our fill.

Having had all of that food, we needed to walk, and we walked some around the area, which has been extensively redeveloped. Unfortunately, as the sun was setting, it was starting to get cold, and we didn't have a jacket for Lisa, so we had to head back to the hotel, pausing at the parking garages where her pickup is parked to collect a few additional things. We'd been told that there was a pre-con reception happening downstairs, and it seemed the right thing to do to go there, so we headed there after a brief stop at the hotel room.

Very Sad News from MARCON

[Note that my previous two entries were composed retroactively, after I'd heard the news below, but I wanted to try and preserve their tone without coloring them with the following bad news. I did not log in earlier because internet access is $9.99/24 hours and I was being a little cheap.]

While Lisa and I were hanging around the pre-con reception, we were informed by several people of some terrible news. Somewhat later, convention chair Dale Mazzola made an official announcement: Robert Asprin, Author Special Guest of MARCON, was found dead a few hours ago. Reportedly he suffered a massive heart attack.

As some of you know, I was the founder and for more than five years was President of the MythAdventures Fan Club. While I'd actually only met Bob a few times, I was really looking forward to seeing him again for the first time in many years. This is a very sad day.

Beyond the immediate tragedy, I find myself thinking like a conrunner about this: Author Guest of Honor Jody Lynn Nye (Bob's collaborator) and Editor Special Guest Bill Fawcett (Bob's business manager and close friend) will also not be attending on account of Bob's death this afternoon. My sympathies to them and to everyone else who was close to Bob, but my sympathies also to the MARCON committee, who will have to cope with having a major guest die the day before the convention and the resultant disruption.

And here I was mildly grousing pre-con that Bob and I weren't scheduled for any panels together. It shows how petty my concerns can be sometimes.

Edit, Friday 15:55: Fixed spelling error. Even when I ran the club, I was prone to the name error.