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Pemmi-Con Day 0: Setting Up
Jul. 19th, 2023 11:27 pmAt Lisa's advice, I did not set an alarm today, and consequently got a solid nine hours of sleep. I needed it. Lisa and made breakfast in the room (having a hot water pot, not just a coffee maker), helped a lot. I then drove the Astro over to the auto repair shop that said they could do work on the air conditioning. I showed it to the owner, gave him my phone number, and he said that he would call me when he had a diagnosis. I also told him that I'm not in a rush because of the convention I'm attending. If I don't hear from him by EOD tomorrow, I will call him on Friday to make sure how we stand, but even Monday would not be a problem. If really necessary, he could have it until we get back from Churchill, but that would complicate our moving out of the hotel on Tuesday for certain. In any event, every day he has the van at his shop is a day that I'm not spending CA$20 on parking.
The walk back to the hotel was just over 2 km and was no big deal.
Because there was no guest laundry at the Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, Lisa and I needed to deal with doing laundry today. Fortunately, the Delta has a guest laundry, and while there is but one washer and one dryer, they are free to use. Unfortunately, while Lisa had backed laundry detergent, she'd left it in the minivan, and I did not really feel like walking another 4 km to retrieve it. But there's a Rexall in the shopping center diagonally across the street, so Lisa and I went there and bought a small package of Tide pods. We did a couple of loads of laundry, which we needed after the past six days on the road.
Around this time, the three of us (including Kuma, who has a Stuffie badge) registered for the convention.
Lisa is working for Exhibits here, and she went and helped with setup there. After dealing with the laundry, I went back to the hotel room and caught up on bookkeeping and bill payments. (Life goes on while traveling.) That took longer than I expected, but after it was done, I went back over to the RBC Convention Center exhibit hall. Lisa was tired and hungry after the work she was doing, so we returned to the hotel room.
Just before 6 PM, I dashed over to Rexall to buy some more milk, and made it with only two minutes to spare. When I got back to the room, I ordered pizza for Lisa and me. There was a big pre-convention food event happening, but Lisa and I did not feel up to going to it. When the pizza came, I had to pop down to the lobby to collect it, because the delivery people can't come upstairs. You have to have a room key for the floor to which you are going in order to activate the elevator buttons above floor 2.
After dinner, I turned my attention toward getting ready for our first WSFS function: validating advance NASFiC site selection ballots. In this case, I'm merely working as staff for Site Selection administrator Sharon Sbarsky. I had previously received the mailed-in ballots from Jannie Shae. Sharon had printed the emailed ballots received before she left home, and I printed the two of them received this afternoon. Jannie was eventually able to get the hotel to unlock the Fort Garry Room to give us a place to validate ballots in peace. We were joined by representatives of the Buffalo bid and Sharon's assistant.
Around this time, I realized that I'd lost my membership badge! I distinctly remember wearing it when I went to Rexall at 6 PM, but I can't remember anything after that. It might have blown off on my way back from the store, or when I went down to get the pizza. We looked all over the room: nothing. This is annoying and embarrassing, and I hope I'm able to get the badge replaced in the morning.
We did not receive a lot of advance ballots; however, it took a lot longer to validate them than expected due to some annoying technical issues with the convention registration database. We did manage to sort most of them out, and everyone seemed satisfied.
I have most of the site selection equipment. Sharon asked me to meet her tomorrow morning and we'll take it all over to the convention center and get things set up for a Noon opening.
I'm up later than I wanted to be tonight, but I don't have to be up at dawn tomorrow. And we have lots of food in the room, so it should be easy enough to get moving on Thursday.
The walk back to the hotel was just over 2 km and was no big deal.
Because there was no guest laundry at the Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, Lisa and I needed to deal with doing laundry today. Fortunately, the Delta has a guest laundry, and while there is but one washer and one dryer, they are free to use. Unfortunately, while Lisa had backed laundry detergent, she'd left it in the minivan, and I did not really feel like walking another 4 km to retrieve it. But there's a Rexall in the shopping center diagonally across the street, so Lisa and I went there and bought a small package of Tide pods. We did a couple of loads of laundry, which we needed after the past six days on the road.
Around this time, the three of us (including Kuma, who has a Stuffie badge) registered for the convention.
Lisa is working for Exhibits here, and she went and helped with setup there. After dealing with the laundry, I went back to the hotel room and caught up on bookkeeping and bill payments. (Life goes on while traveling.) That took longer than I expected, but after it was done, I went back over to the RBC Convention Center exhibit hall. Lisa was tired and hungry after the work she was doing, so we returned to the hotel room.
Just before 6 PM, I dashed over to Rexall to buy some more milk, and made it with only two minutes to spare. When I got back to the room, I ordered pizza for Lisa and me. There was a big pre-convention food event happening, but Lisa and I did not feel up to going to it. When the pizza came, I had to pop down to the lobby to collect it, because the delivery people can't come upstairs. You have to have a room key for the floor to which you are going in order to activate the elevator buttons above floor 2.
After dinner, I turned my attention toward getting ready for our first WSFS function: validating advance NASFiC site selection ballots. In this case, I'm merely working as staff for Site Selection administrator Sharon Sbarsky. I had previously received the mailed-in ballots from Jannie Shae. Sharon had printed the emailed ballots received before she left home, and I printed the two of them received this afternoon. Jannie was eventually able to get the hotel to unlock the Fort Garry Room to give us a place to validate ballots in peace. We were joined by representatives of the Buffalo bid and Sharon's assistant.
Around this time, I realized that I'd lost my membership badge! I distinctly remember wearing it when I went to Rexall at 6 PM, but I can't remember anything after that. It might have blown off on my way back from the store, or when I went down to get the pizza. We looked all over the room: nothing. This is annoying and embarrassing, and I hope I'm able to get the badge replaced in the morning.
We did not receive a lot of advance ballots; however, it took a lot longer to validate them than expected due to some annoying technical issues with the convention registration database. We did manage to sort most of them out, and everyone seemed satisfied.
I have most of the site selection equipment. Sharon asked me to meet her tomorrow morning and we'll take it all over to the convention center and get things set up for a Noon opening.
I'm up later than I wanted to be tonight, but I don't have to be up at dawn tomorrow. And we have lots of food in the room, so it should be easy enough to get moving on Thursday.
