BayCon -- Friday Evening
May. 26th, 2007 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeAfter a relatively spartan dinner (sandwiches from the fixings we bought at Trader Joe's earlier), Lisa and I (and Kuma Bear) donned our WSFS uniforms and went to the Meet the Guests reception.
Lisa took this photo, which I think is among the better ones of me in my WSFS uniform.
And here's Lisa with the Bear-o-Metric Rocket Pack in which Kuma Bear rides. Alas, all of the photos of Bear in the rocket pack were out of focus, so Lisa later took one back in the hotel room:
The Meet the Guests reception was sponsored by Google, who provided a dessert table that I decided wouldn't actually kill me, although probably I shouldn't have ate that slice of cake, if only because eating anything with chocolate sprinkles is a bad idea when wearing a white uniform. Fortunately, the spots weren't very noticeable.
They kicked people out of the room for a while after the ceremony ended so they could turn the room for the Swing Dance/Casino Night, so we wandered away. There were lots of people in costume, some of whom we took photos and some of whom wanted their photo taken with me. I include one of these photos only because of the mystery on which it bore later.
A bit later, when offered yet another ribbon, I realized that most of my ribbon stack was gone. Lisa said, "check the photos," and by doing so, and looking at the photo above -- in which you may be able to see that ribbon stack has gone missing -- we could bracket the time (and thus places) when and where the ribbons must have detached themselves. Unfortunately, while we retraced our steps through those areas, we were unable to find the ribbons in question, so I'll had to start over.
We then made our way to the party floor, stopping at the Loscon and BASFA parties and poking our heads into a few others before fetching up in the Fanzine Lounge, where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melchar was on duty. Here Raven O'Neill found us, and she showed off her latest acquisition.
We sat and chatted for a while before a loud, obnoxious, and not terribly clueful fanboy began, and I disengaged us from the room on the pretext of wanting to put the camera away and go to the casino night. This had the virtue of being true.
After returning the camera to the room, we did go down briefly to the casino, but being held in the same room as the Swing Dance, it was much too loud, so I ended up spending no money after all, and we went back to the Fanzine Lounge, and Raven found us again, so we resumed the conversation where we had left off.
Although it was not yet midnight, I was starting to fade early, so we headed back "home" for the night, stopping by the Other Change of Hobbit's 30th Anniversary party, which was held in one of the wonderful loft suites. These are two-story suites, with the parlor on the main floor and the bedroom upstairs in a loft overlooking the main floor. Lisa and I contemplated what sort of party we could hold in one of these suites. Alas, neither we nor the Montreal bid can at this time justify the expense of one of these rooms for the bid party we plan to hold at Westercon.
So we got back to the room before midnight and into bed before 1 AM, which should have led to a relatively restful night. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Around 1:30 or so, I heard a strange electronic sound. It sounded like one of those toy ray guns, and I thought maybe someone was playing around outside our room. Then I looked up and saw a red light blinking out of the top of the plasma TV that I hadn't noticed before. I disconnected from the CPAP and got up to investigate. As I looked in at the top of the TV, suddenly the fire alarm in our room went off!
Lisa lept out of bed, and I flipped on the lights as we started our evacuate-the-room routine. (We've been to enough conventions that having to evacuate in the middle of the night is almost old hat.) But the alarm cut out very quickly. I called the front desk and told them what happened. They asked if there was smoke in the room (no), and said there was no general fire alarm, and that they would take care of it and we could go back to bed. I later remembered that one of the challenges of the remodeling of this hotel has been a bunch of false fire alarms.
But going back to sleep after that injection of adrenaline was pretty difficult, and it wasn't until after 2:30 that I finally wound back down sufficiently to sleep.
Despite not having got to bed as early as expected, I woke up fifteen minutes before my alarm. I remembered that we had cereal, milk, and bowls, and therefore we don't have to content with the restaurant this morning, so I had enough time to compose this longish journal entry about last night.
Now we need to get our acts together and move down to the Montreal table. Saturday, of course, is Match Game day, so I don't know if I'll have another chance to post anything.
Lisa took this photo, which I think is among the better ones of me in my WSFS uniform.
And here's Lisa with the Bear-o-Metric Rocket Pack in which Kuma Bear rides. Alas, all of the photos of Bear in the rocket pack were out of focus, so Lisa later took one back in the hotel room:
The Meet the Guests reception was sponsored by Google, who provided a dessert table that I decided wouldn't actually kill me, although probably I shouldn't have ate that slice of cake, if only because eating anything with chocolate sprinkles is a bad idea when wearing a white uniform. Fortunately, the spots weren't very noticeable.
They kicked people out of the room for a while after the ceremony ended so they could turn the room for the Swing Dance/Casino Night, so we wandered away. There were lots of people in costume, some of whom we took photos and some of whom wanted their photo taken with me. I include one of these photos only because of the mystery on which it bore later.
A bit later, when offered yet another ribbon, I realized that most of my ribbon stack was gone. Lisa said, "check the photos," and by doing so, and looking at the photo above -- in which you may be able to see that ribbon stack has gone missing -- we could bracket the time (and thus places) when and where the ribbons must have detached themselves. Unfortunately, while we retraced our steps through those areas, we were unable to find the ribbons in question, so I'll had to start over.
We then made our way to the party floor, stopping at the Loscon and BASFA parties and poking our heads into a few others before fetching up in the Fanzine Lounge, where
melchar was on duty. Here Raven O'Neill found us, and she showed off her latest acquisition.We sat and chatted for a while before a loud, obnoxious, and not terribly clueful fanboy began, and I disengaged us from the room on the pretext of wanting to put the camera away and go to the casino night. This had the virtue of being true.
After returning the camera to the room, we did go down briefly to the casino, but being held in the same room as the Swing Dance, it was much too loud, so I ended up spending no money after all, and we went back to the Fanzine Lounge, and Raven found us again, so we resumed the conversation where we had left off.
Although it was not yet midnight, I was starting to fade early, so we headed back "home" for the night, stopping by the Other Change of Hobbit's 30th Anniversary party, which was held in one of the wonderful loft suites. These are two-story suites, with the parlor on the main floor and the bedroom upstairs in a loft overlooking the main floor. Lisa and I contemplated what sort of party we could hold in one of these suites. Alas, neither we nor the Montreal bid can at this time justify the expense of one of these rooms for the bid party we plan to hold at Westercon.
So we got back to the room before midnight and into bed before 1 AM, which should have led to a relatively restful night. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Around 1:30 or so, I heard a strange electronic sound. It sounded like one of those toy ray guns, and I thought maybe someone was playing around outside our room. Then I looked up and saw a red light blinking out of the top of the plasma TV that I hadn't noticed before. I disconnected from the CPAP and got up to investigate. As I looked in at the top of the TV, suddenly the fire alarm in our room went off!
Lisa lept out of bed, and I flipped on the lights as we started our evacuate-the-room routine. (We've been to enough conventions that having to evacuate in the middle of the night is almost old hat.) But the alarm cut out very quickly. I called the front desk and told them what happened. They asked if there was smoke in the room (no), and said there was no general fire alarm, and that they would take care of it and we could go back to bed. I later remembered that one of the challenges of the remodeling of this hotel has been a bunch of false fire alarms.
But going back to sleep after that injection of adrenaline was pretty difficult, and it wasn't until after 2:30 that I finally wound back down sufficiently to sleep.
Despite not having got to bed as early as expected, I woke up fifteen minutes before my alarm. I remembered that we had cereal, milk, and bowls, and therefore we don't have to content with the restaurant this morning, so I had enough time to compose this longish journal entry about last night.
Now we need to get our acts together and move down to the Montreal table. Saturday, of course, is Match Game day, so I don't know if I'll have another chance to post anything.
