Consonance conrep
Mar. 14th, 2005 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksWell, how do I begin? Warning. This may sound whiny, but I swear, I had a good time in the balance of things. It's just that there were little hiccups, and you know how I like to kvetch, even though I know it's no big deal.
My flight out of Atlanta Hartsfield was supposed to leave on the Thursday at 9.53 am, which meant that I had to get there from Athens by about 9.00 am or so. Considering that at that time of day it takes about 90 minutes to get there, that figured that I had to leave by, minimum, 7.00 am. I was originally planning to call a shuttle service that has door-to-door pickup, but I found out the day before when I called that they didn't have any shuttles available until at least 8.00 am on the day. There's another shuttle that picks up from the Georgia Center at 6.45 am, but the problem was how to get from my apartment to there. With great trepidation, I called up![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niquildrvr to ask her if she would kindly give me a ride at that insanely early hour, and the incredibly wonderful amazing woman agreed. Thank you, Anita.
So, managed to get to the Georgia Center on time, but there were about 10 people there as well - with reservations - and for a brief minute or so I was afraid there wouldn't be room for me. Thankfully, the driver managed to fit me into the last space he had left and we were on our way. Troubles didn't quite end there. One of the issues I have with my hypertension medicine is that I need to keep my blood sugar up when I take it early in the morning or else my pressure dips and if I sit still for too long, I go pale, feel faint and nauseous. Well, forgot to eat breakfast (d'oh!) and that coupled with the bus ride... but I managed to hang on by taking short naps and managed not to go into a coma until we got to Hartsfield. Walking around pumped up my energy level enough for me to check in and after that I made an immediate beeline for Wendy's in the airport atrium.
The flight over to San Jose was quite pleasant, as far as Delta goes. Four hour flight and three hours behind, so we reached there just after noon, local time. The flight actually left on time, which should have cued me for some karmic retribution later on, but I didn't think much about that. I spent it listening to the Paul McGann remake of the unfinished Doctor Who story "Shada" on my iPod, not bothering to pay attention to the in-flight entertainment (I think it was Bridget Jones 2, which I didn't even like the sequel novel of, so why bother?). Flying in over San Jose, on the West Coast for the first time since December 1991, my first impression was - "Holy crap, it looks exactly like SimCity 4." I'm serious. The way the city is laid out, the commercial blocks, the low-density residential. Swear to God. San Jose International is in the middle of the city, too, and as my friend Tom commented later, my first thought should also have been, "Holy crap, we're really flying low!"
But I digress. We landed, and I made my way to baggage claim, and then I realized that I had completely forgotten to arrange for a pick-up to the con. Mea culpa entirely.patoadam had told me to get in touch with figmo for that little detail and it had slipped my mind. Never mind. I whipped out Cassandra and got on the airport's wireless network to get some phone numbers. After confirming with cadhla that probably nobody was showing up, I picked up the courtesy phone next to baggage claim and called for the hotel shuttle. While waiting for that, I met and hugged Kathleen Sloane, who was going to spend time with her aunt before the con.
I checked into the Crowne, and got up to my room - a very nice little room, by the way, with this huge bed and lots of pillows. I set up Cassandra, and found that the free high speed wireless in the room was pretty much crap. They have a desk which is just perfect for a laptop, and pretty much that's where the signal peters out. You'd think they'd at least spring for a Wireleass Access Point in the rooms, or alternatively an ethernet port, but noooo. And of course the spot where the signal is strongest didn't have a convenient power socket, so in the end I had to snake my power cord across the floor and balance Cassandra on the bed. I wandered over to the huge strip mall across the road from the hotel which was chock full of Asian places. It was weird seeing so many Asian faces around after living for nearly two years in Georgia, I can tell you. I found a place called "Penang Garden" where the menu actually had stuff like Bak Kut Teh and Hokkien Mee (Malaysian kind, not Singaporean). I could sense the manager was indeed Malaysian Chinese by his grumpy look, the test was whether the kitchen was any good. I ordered the Hokkien Mee, and sad to say while their heart was in the right place - and the prawns were indeed proper prawns, not the shrimpy kind - they didn't have the right noodles or the right spices. They used udon for the noodles, which is exactly not the right texture, and it just didn't taste lardy or soy-saucey enough. Points for effort, though.
I then took a shower and a nap. At about 7.00 pm, I think it was, I got a call fromjohno - apparently there was a dinner for the guests with the concom, and this was really the first I heard of it. Not a problem. The dinner was marvellous - a steak dinner at this Angus place, where I had a New York Steak with garlic mashed potatoes, a garden salad and sauteed onions and mushrooms. Met up with most everyone, including chaoswolf, her folks, adamselzer, Kathy Mar and mroblivious and other people whose name I can't remember. Fully satisfied, I slept the sleep of the jet-lagged.
I woke up early on Friday and sought breakfast at the Asian mall. It was raining, and the only place open that early was TK Noodle and I ordered their wonton noodles. It was an odd fusion of Chinese and Vietnamese influences, with the Vietnamese style broth and Chinese noodles. The wontons were pretty good, though, and I had lunch there later, too. Most of Friday was spent withfigmo and adamselzer. We were driving around Milpitas and its environs. I had to get a replacement keyboard for Cassandra (which eventually cost me a pain inducing $140... and I decided to get a raised laptop platform to cope with overheating as well), and that mission was accomplished. We then drove around trying to get stuff for the consuite; my wasabi peas, adamselzer's chocolate-covered cranberries and Juanita Coulson's TAB. Costco provided two filled sponge cakes, and by the time we got done (with a side trip to the Egyptian Fry's), it was about 5 pm. We caught dinner at this salad place whose name escapes me and got back in time for the Consonance Sweet Sixteen party at 7.30 pm, where I caught up with mrlogic and his girlfriend, who had just driven in. I attended his concert later, and it was a complete blast as usual... Blake's a rare talent, and I'm just sorry his daughters (who are just as talented) couldn't make it this time around.
Tom also stopped by and we spent a large portion of the evening before Blake's concert comic geeking. Now, you have to realize I have not read comics or paid much attention to what's been going on since last summer when I was working at the Comics Mart, so you should understand that a lot of the responses to Tom's telling me what was going on, with "Identity Crisis", with "Sins Past", with "Avengers Disassembled", and so on were variations on: "They did wha...? With who...? What the fahhh...? What did you say...? How did they...? Holy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!" I put in an appearance at the Spaceship One circle and played "Spaceship Yourself", and then decided to call it a night.
Saturday really was con proper. I woke up and headed to the consuite, where I spent a large part of the chatting, playing a bit of guitar, and snarfing down snacks. I was waiting until the Asian supermarket was open so I could go to their "deli" section for a rice and two dishes lunch box. I also discovered that the first episode of the new "Doctor Who" series had been leaked on the internet, so I trolled alt.binaries.drwho until I found the bits and I set up my newsreader to download them. Took a shower in preparation for my concert later that night and was done just in time as Tom knocked on my door to take me to dinner. We just walked across to the mall and I had my first bowl of pig organ congee in a damn long time. It's still not a patch from the stuff from Tiong Bahru Market back home, though. We continued to comic geek until I had to get back to change into my Nth Doctor outfit and get ready for the 9 pm concert. I also remember attendingadamselzer's concert at one point, as well. Concert went well, although I had a mistuned string through most of "Banned From Arkham" (*wince*). They were kind enough to film it and make a DVD of it for me, so that was really cool. After that, I put in an appearance at the circles and listened to various people until I got too tired.
Sunday morning I woke up to attend the Cthulhu Cabaret rehearsal. That wasn't going well - we expected people to get songs in before the convention so I could try to weave a narrative around it, but we only had like two songs to work with. Withcadhla's help, we managed to rope in a few more songs, Blake and Mud even wrote new ones, and in the end the set was truncated but pretty good. I got another lunchbox from the Asian supermarket and set myself up in the function room with Cassandra. I spent the rest of the day listening to the various two-fers and then Ookla the Mok's concert, while continuing to download the bits of the new "Doctor Who". Before dinner, itainteasy hosted a Rock Jam, with Ooka, the Bonhoffs, adamselzer, Tony Fabris, Escape Key (I'd never heard Tony and Escape Key before and they are pretty awesome... there was such a wealth of talent there I felt quite inadequate) and some others, including Bob Kanfesky, in attendance. We played a couple of blues riffs, but the highlight had to be when we launched into "Hey Joe", forgot the lyrics and then started putting the words to "Gilligan's Island" to the tune.
Tom showed up for dinner as the massive group headed for sushi, which was good, but expensive. I sat with Blake and Jennifer, Rand Bellavia,adamselzer and Tom, and much good conversation was had. I made arrangements with Tom for him to pick me up the next morning as I was going to bunk at his place before the Tuesday flight, and settled into the circles. I did sneak out at one point, because - YES! - all the bits of the new "Doctor Who" were in and so I settled down in a quiet corner and watched it while the circle was dealing with shipwreck ose, as it turned out. I've already talked about "Doctor Who" in a previous post, so I won't rehash that here. After that I stayed in the Dead Dog circle as long as I could, but finally had to crash.
Monday morning, checked out, got picked up by Tom, who drove me over to Google where he worked. Aside from Tom, one of my best friends from high school, Piaw, worked there too, so we had lunch. I can't tell you a lot about Google, because if I did, I'd have to kill you, but I have been authorized to say that the free food there is super-amazing-fantastic. They have kitchenettes on every floor, they have their own chef, and what essentially is a food court. For lunch I had miso chicken, sea bass and fried rice, with apple crumble for dessert. Dinner was bubble and squeak, veal and collared greens - and remember, this was from a wider selection. Tom said that he was considering unplugging his refrigerator because he never used it anymore, and I can see why. I wonder if Google needs a corporate historian?
I spent the afternoon catching up with Piaw, and also finding out that an old net-friend, Chade Meng, worked there too. After Tom got off work we went back to his place, watched an episode of Jeopardy, some of the special features on the Star Trek TOS DVD sets, and I basically attacked his piles of comics to catch up on the highlights of what I've been missing. Predictably, my responses were "They did wha...? With who...? What the fahhh...? What did you say...? How did they...? Holy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!" I can say though, that I officially hate Brian Michael Bendis. The man can write, but he has no freaking idea what he's doing with the Avengers. But that's another rant.
On Tuesday morning, Tom and I drove back to Google for a quick lunch - stuffed trout was my choice - before he took me to the airport. My long journey home has been chronicled already. I finally made it back to Athens on Wednesday night, and collapsed into bed, snoozing the snooze of the extremely shagged out. And so it is. It was a marvellous con, and it was really nice being Cosonance's GOH, and I'd like to thank everyone involved for making it a great experience despite all the hiccups around it (that had nothing to do with the concom, I emphasize). It's going to be the last con I make it too for quite a while, so I'm glad it was a good one.
My flight out of Atlanta Hartsfield was supposed to leave on the Thursday at 9.53 am, which meant that I had to get there from Athens by about 9.00 am or so. Considering that at that time of day it takes about 90 minutes to get there, that figured that I had to leave by, minimum, 7.00 am. I was originally planning to call a shuttle service that has door-to-door pickup, but I found out the day before when I called that they didn't have any shuttles available until at least 8.00 am on the day. There's another shuttle that picks up from the Georgia Center at 6.45 am, but the problem was how to get from my apartment to there. With great trepidation, I called up
niquildrvr to ask her if she would kindly give me a ride at that insanely early hour, and the incredibly wonderful amazing woman agreed. Thank you, Anita. So, managed to get to the Georgia Center on time, but there were about 10 people there as well - with reservations - and for a brief minute or so I was afraid there wouldn't be room for me. Thankfully, the driver managed to fit me into the last space he had left and we were on our way. Troubles didn't quite end there. One of the issues I have with my hypertension medicine is that I need to keep my blood sugar up when I take it early in the morning or else my pressure dips and if I sit still for too long, I go pale, feel faint and nauseous. Well, forgot to eat breakfast (d'oh!) and that coupled with the bus ride... but I managed to hang on by taking short naps and managed not to go into a coma until we got to Hartsfield. Walking around pumped up my energy level enough for me to check in and after that I made an immediate beeline for Wendy's in the airport atrium.
The flight over to San Jose was quite pleasant, as far as Delta goes. Four hour flight and three hours behind, so we reached there just after noon, local time. The flight actually left on time, which should have cued me for some karmic retribution later on, but I didn't think much about that. I spent it listening to the Paul McGann remake of the unfinished Doctor Who story "Shada" on my iPod, not bothering to pay attention to the in-flight entertainment (I think it was Bridget Jones 2, which I didn't even like the sequel novel of, so why bother?). Flying in over San Jose, on the West Coast for the first time since December 1991, my first impression was - "Holy crap, it looks exactly like SimCity 4." I'm serious. The way the city is laid out, the commercial blocks, the low-density residential. Swear to God. San Jose International is in the middle of the city, too, and as my friend Tom commented later, my first thought should also have been, "Holy crap, we're really flying low!"
But I digress. We landed, and I made my way to baggage claim, and then I realized that I had completely forgotten to arrange for a pick-up to the con. Mea culpa entirely.
patoadam had told me to get in touch with figmo for that little detail and it had slipped my mind. Never mind. I whipped out Cassandra and got on the airport's wireless network to get some phone numbers. After confirming with cadhla that probably nobody was showing up, I picked up the courtesy phone next to baggage claim and called for the hotel shuttle. While waiting for that, I met and hugged Kathleen Sloane, who was going to spend time with her aunt before the con. I checked into the Crowne, and got up to my room - a very nice little room, by the way, with this huge bed and lots of pillows. I set up Cassandra, and found that the free high speed wireless in the room was pretty much crap. They have a desk which is just perfect for a laptop, and pretty much that's where the signal peters out. You'd think they'd at least spring for a Wireleass Access Point in the rooms, or alternatively an ethernet port, but noooo. And of course the spot where the signal is strongest didn't have a convenient power socket, so in the end I had to snake my power cord across the floor and balance Cassandra on the bed. I wandered over to the huge strip mall across the road from the hotel which was chock full of Asian places. It was weird seeing so many Asian faces around after living for nearly two years in Georgia, I can tell you. I found a place called "Penang Garden" where the menu actually had stuff like Bak Kut Teh and Hokkien Mee (Malaysian kind, not Singaporean). I could sense the manager was indeed Malaysian Chinese by his grumpy look, the test was whether the kitchen was any good. I ordered the Hokkien Mee, and sad to say while their heart was in the right place - and the prawns were indeed proper prawns, not the shrimpy kind - they didn't have the right noodles or the right spices. They used udon for the noodles, which is exactly not the right texture, and it just didn't taste lardy or soy-saucey enough. Points for effort, though.
I then took a shower and a nap. At about 7.00 pm, I think it was, I got a call from
johno - apparently there was a dinner for the guests with the concom, and this was really the first I heard of it. Not a problem. The dinner was marvellous - a steak dinner at this Angus place, where I had a New York Steak with garlic mashed potatoes, a garden salad and sauteed onions and mushrooms. Met up with most everyone, including chaoswolf, her folks, adamselzer, Kathy Mar and mroblivious and other people whose name I can't remember. Fully satisfied, I slept the sleep of the jet-lagged.I woke up early on Friday and sought breakfast at the Asian mall. It was raining, and the only place open that early was TK Noodle and I ordered their wonton noodles. It was an odd fusion of Chinese and Vietnamese influences, with the Vietnamese style broth and Chinese noodles. The wontons were pretty good, though, and I had lunch there later, too. Most of Friday was spent with
figmo and adamselzer. We were driving around Milpitas and its environs. I had to get a replacement keyboard for Cassandra (which eventually cost me a pain inducing $140... and I decided to get a raised laptop platform to cope with overheating as well), and that mission was accomplished. We then drove around trying to get stuff for the consuite; my wasabi peas, adamselzer's chocolate-covered cranberries and Juanita Coulson's TAB. Costco provided two filled sponge cakes, and by the time we got done (with a side trip to the Egyptian Fry's), it was about 5 pm. We caught dinner at this salad place whose name escapes me and got back in time for the Consonance Sweet Sixteen party at 7.30 pm, where I caught up with mrlogic and his girlfriend, who had just driven in. I attended his concert later, and it was a complete blast as usual... Blake's a rare talent, and I'm just sorry his daughters (who are just as talented) couldn't make it this time around. Tom also stopped by and we spent a large portion of the evening before Blake's concert comic geeking. Now, you have to realize I have not read comics or paid much attention to what's been going on since last summer when I was working at the Comics Mart, so you should understand that a lot of the responses to Tom's telling me what was going on, with "Identity Crisis", with "Sins Past", with "Avengers Disassembled", and so on were variations on: "They did wha...? With who...? What the fahhh...? What did you say...? How did they...? Holy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!" I put in an appearance at the Spaceship One circle and played "Spaceship Yourself", and then decided to call it a night.
Saturday really was con proper. I woke up and headed to the consuite, where I spent a large part of the chatting, playing a bit of guitar, and snarfing down snacks. I was waiting until the Asian supermarket was open so I could go to their "deli" section for a rice and two dishes lunch box. I also discovered that the first episode of the new "Doctor Who" series had been leaked on the internet, so I trolled alt.binaries.drwho until I found the bits and I set up my newsreader to download them. Took a shower in preparation for my concert later that night and was done just in time as Tom knocked on my door to take me to dinner. We just walked across to the mall and I had my first bowl of pig organ congee in a damn long time. It's still not a patch from the stuff from Tiong Bahru Market back home, though. We continued to comic geek until I had to get back to change into my Nth Doctor outfit and get ready for the 9 pm concert. I also remember attending
adamselzer's concert at one point, as well. Concert went well, although I had a mistuned string through most of "Banned From Arkham" (*wince*). They were kind enough to film it and make a DVD of it for me, so that was really cool. After that, I put in an appearance at the circles and listened to various people until I got too tired.Sunday morning I woke up to attend the Cthulhu Cabaret rehearsal. That wasn't going well - we expected people to get songs in before the convention so I could try to weave a narrative around it, but we only had like two songs to work with. With
cadhla's help, we managed to rope in a few more songs, Blake and Mud even wrote new ones, and in the end the set was truncated but pretty good. I got another lunchbox from the Asian supermarket and set myself up in the function room with Cassandra. I spent the rest of the day listening to the various two-fers and then Ookla the Mok's concert, while continuing to download the bits of the new "Doctor Who". Before dinner, itainteasy hosted a Rock Jam, with Ooka, the Bonhoffs, adamselzer, Tony Fabris, Escape Key (I'd never heard Tony and Escape Key before and they are pretty awesome... there was such a wealth of talent there I felt quite inadequate) and some others, including Bob Kanfesky, in attendance. We played a couple of blues riffs, but the highlight had to be when we launched into "Hey Joe", forgot the lyrics and then started putting the words to "Gilligan's Island" to the tune. Tom showed up for dinner as the massive group headed for sushi, which was good, but expensive. I sat with Blake and Jennifer, Rand Bellavia,
adamselzer and Tom, and much good conversation was had. I made arrangements with Tom for him to pick me up the next morning as I was going to bunk at his place before the Tuesday flight, and settled into the circles. I did sneak out at one point, because - YES! - all the bits of the new "Doctor Who" were in and so I settled down in a quiet corner and watched it while the circle was dealing with shipwreck ose, as it turned out. I've already talked about "Doctor Who" in a previous post, so I won't rehash that here. After that I stayed in the Dead Dog circle as long as I could, but finally had to crash.Monday morning, checked out, got picked up by Tom, who drove me over to Google where he worked. Aside from Tom, one of my best friends from high school, Piaw, worked there too, so we had lunch. I can't tell you a lot about Google, because if I did, I'd have to kill you, but I have been authorized to say that the free food there is super-amazing-fantastic. They have kitchenettes on every floor, they have their own chef, and what essentially is a food court. For lunch I had miso chicken, sea bass and fried rice, with apple crumble for dessert. Dinner was bubble and squeak, veal and collared greens - and remember, this was from a wider selection. Tom said that he was considering unplugging his refrigerator because he never used it anymore, and I can see why. I wonder if Google needs a corporate historian?
I spent the afternoon catching up with Piaw, and also finding out that an old net-friend, Chade Meng, worked there too. After Tom got off work we went back to his place, watched an episode of Jeopardy, some of the special features on the Star Trek TOS DVD sets, and I basically attacked his piles of comics to catch up on the highlights of what I've been missing. Predictably, my responses were "They did wha...? With who...? What the fahhh...? What did you say...? How did they...? Holy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!" I can say though, that I officially hate Brian Michael Bendis. The man can write, but he has no freaking idea what he's doing with the Avengers. But that's another rant.
On Tuesday morning, Tom and I drove back to Google for a quick lunch - stuffed trout was my choice - before he took me to the airport. My long journey home has been chronicled already. I finally made it back to Athens on Wednesday night, and collapsed into bed, snoozing the snooze of the extremely shagged out. And so it is. It was a marvellous con, and it was really nice being Cosonance's GOH, and I'd like to thank everyone involved for making it a great experience despite all the hiccups around it (that had nothing to do with the concom, I emphasize). It's going to be the last con I make it too for quite a while, so I'm glad it was a good one.
