Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I mentioned in a reply elsewhere, I ducked out of the Survivors' Brunch a little early in order to go put in a mile on the treadmill, and got a satisfactory blood sugar reading for my efforts. I incidentally weighed myself when I got home, and I somehow seem to have managed to lose almost ten pounds in three days, which seems hard to believe. (Update: It was.)

During the Brunch, we toasted the many memories of the hotel, and many of us (including me) stood up to say a few words. I have relatively few memories of the property, having only attended Norwescon's Alternacon and CascadiaCon in it. As I've mentioned, I've stayed there twice when it wasn't hosting a convention -- once when bumped off an Alaska flight after a Doubletree-based Norwescon, and once when Lisa and I visited Seattle just for tourism reasons. I thanked the organizers for putting on this event, and confirmed that I was the most-out-of-town attendee, having been the only one who flew in. (Lisa, who drove from Mehama, was second-furthest. She also had attended more cons in that hotel than I had.) I understand the sentiment, however; it's roughtly the equivalent to what Bay Area fandom would feel if the San Jose Doubletree (ex-Red Lion) was to be closed and leveled so as to build a light rail branch into San Jose Airport (which, although unlikely, isn't impossible).

After getting out stuff out of our hotel room, Lisa and I made a last walk through the halls of the hotel, so sort of say a final goodbye to it. While doing so, we encountered some debris left behind from the Democrats' meeting over the weekend, and we now have a PELZ political campaign lawn sign. I expect I will find a reason to bring this to Anaheim with me.

Then it was time to put away our con badges and check out. The convention name badges had a picture of a tombstone on it, labeled "Here lies..." and the name of the member. A nice touch, that. I appreciate good badges.

( Heading home, and a gripe against Alaska Airlines )

I got home just before 10 PM, a bit later than I'd hoped, tired, but relatively relaxed. And hey, it was a relaxacon, right?

After my last post, I went to the Chaps room, where the historical exhibits of past Hyatt/Quality Inn/Radisson-based cons were on display. (For several years, the hotel was split in two, with one wing being a Quality Inn. I stayed there once, and not for a con, but from a trip to Seattle that Lisa and I made for tourism. Not a happy weekend; someone broke into Lisa's van and stole my briefcase. But I digress.) The other half of the room was the "casino night," which was a do-it-yourself affair. I ended up helping organize a Texas Hold-Em tournament. Alas, not enough people were willing to play for money; not even $5. So we played for fun, but that changes the dynamics.

Lisa turns out to be a decent player, at least under these circumstances, and ended up winning the tournament. (No prize except pride of course.) The evening was still young, so we put out a call for another tournament and got a full table of ten people. Big blind progression was 2/4/10/20/50/100 (every 20 minutes), with people getting 205 in starting chips. At just the 2/4 level, mayhem erupted. Five players were eliminated on the same hand. It took about ten minutes, it seemed, to work out all of the side pots, but in the end it didn't matter, as the same person won all of them. I was one of the people eliminated. My "wheel" (A-2-3-4-5 straight) lost to a 3-4-5-6-7 straight -- and one of the other eliminated players had a "wheel" as well. I would have bailed out of the hand, except that I was the one who pushed the action with a big bet and found myself pot-committed. Oh, well.

I stuck around and acted as tournament director until they were down to two players, but realized that it was getting on to 11 PM and I had not had anything significant to eat since about Noon. Bad Boy. I went and found Lisa, who had gone back to the room shortly after the first tournament, and we went down to Denny's for a late dinner.

Tomorrow morning is the "Survivors' Brunch," and then it will be done; the final chapter in a significant piece of Pacific Northwest fannish history.

( Travel Tales on Alaska Airlines )

Last Guest Con is a minor event in the hotel this weekend. It looks like there is a meeting of the local Democratic Party here. (I guess it's the state central committee meeting, based on Googling for it -- the Washington State Democratic Party website is not saying directly if something is happening today that I can determine, but you can figure it out indirectly from statements elsewhere on the site.) It looks more like an SF convention than you might expect. There are people at tables handing out paperwork, people wearing membership badges with strange stickers on them, and party flyers up on the walls. Yes, party flyers. Apparently these events have room parties the same way SF cons do, to promote various people or causes. And here hotels keep trying to tell us that nobody ever does room parties and we SF fans are strange for trying to them. We passed people with carts hauling in cases of beer -- more beer than I normally see at an SF con party.

A somewhat spooky element to me was that one of the stickers people were wearing was to promote the candidacy of Dwight Pelz for state Democratic Party Chairman. It was strange to me to be in a hotel I associate with SF conventions surrounded by people with bold "Pelz for our Party" stickers. I'm sure Bruce would have been amused.