Tag: See Also: LiveJournal

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The cold that had been threatening me all last week finally hit on Friday morning, and I’ve spent the last four days in haze induced by a mixture of the cold and DayQuil. I actually went home early on Friday, dropped onto the couch, watched some Netflixed Justice League, and felt like I was staying up late when I went to bed at 9:00 or 9:30.

Out of sheer determination I dragged myself to Worldcon/L.A.con IV on Saturday. Katie stayed home since her main experiences with SF-themed cons were a few post-millennial Loscons, and Loscon was really going downhill at the time. Fortunately, this was more like I remember past Worldcons and earlier Loscons.

Classic Star Trek CostumesMy parents are SF fans, and they regularly brought us kids along with them to conventions. As far back as I can remember, it was a Thanksgiving Weekend tradition to visit family on Thursday, have Friday free, then go to Loscon on Saturday and Sunday. As for Worldcons, I’d been to three before: L.A.Con II in 1984, ConFrancisco(?) in 1993, and L.A.Con III in 1996. (Hey, if Worldcon is on the order of a 10-mile drive, you may as well take advantage of it.)

So I staggered through the dealer’s room, the art show, the exhibit hall with original Star Trek costumes, genre cars like the Batmobile and the DeLorean from Back to the Future, mock-ups of the lunar lander and rovers. I went to some panels on things like “What will future historians get wrong about our time,” the rise of theocracy, fixing things that go wrong in space, and what past sci-fi got wrong about the present.

There was a group (IIRC, from a local college) with a bunch of remote-control robots. As I walked by, there was a college-aged group sitting and eating lunch from In-N-Out, one of whom had placed her hamburger (still mostly wrapped) on a little remote-control car, and was driving it around the floor, dodging obstacles (like feet). Then tragedy struck, and the burger fell off.

While I was in the art show, someone started up music nearby. The song sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it until it reached the chorus. It was the “Make your own kind of music” song that was used in last year’s Lost season opener! The music turned out to be the accompaniment to a dueling artists bit.

Cardboard box with rocks: Pluto thanks you!Someone had responded to Pluto’s demotion to “dwarf planet” and set up a display labeled Pluto Needs Rocks, all about a campaign to collect rocks and launch them at Pluto to increase its mass so it can clear out its orbit and get its status back as a planet. Yes, there was a collection box beneath the display. And yes, it had rocks in it.

I ended up running into my parents and some family friends, and we set up a time to meet and go to dinner. I figured I had enough time to drive home, pick up Katie, and come back, as long as we met outside the convention. Unfortunately, the freeway was backed up, and I realized there was no way we could have made it back in time. (One of the family friends had something to go to after dinner.) I called to cancel, and by the time I got home, I began to realize I wasn’t really in shape to continue driving. I realized later I’d been running on DayQuil and willpower, and my willpower had just run out for the day. So I ended up collapsing on the couch as soon as I walked in the door.

Current Mood: 🤒sick

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I’ve been zombie-fied.

Comic-Con was fun, but exhausting. Add that to staying up too late last night and not being used to the heat…

You see, downtown San Diego was fairly nice all week. According to weather.com it only hit 83, which was uncomfortable when carrying a heavy backpack (or in Katie’s case, wearing a heavy pirate costume) in the sun, but quite comfortable in the shade or with a breeze. We got our first taste of what things have been like back home when we stopped for a bathroom break near the Irvine Spectrum area around sunset last night. It felt warmer at sunset in Irvine than it did in mid-afternoon in San Diego.

I don’t think the bedroom ever really cooled off last night, even with a fan running in the window all night.

Then after a night of “sleep” I got into work and I started hearing about temperatures hitting 108. It’s just… astonishing.

Anyway, I’m currently on twice my normal daily dose of coffee and I’m still spacing out and mistyping stuff.

(Originally posted on LiveJournal.)

Current Mood: 😴tired

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Woke up early (well, early for me) so we could get out and hit the polls before work. I was amazed that there was only one person in line ahead of us. Not only that, but there was only one line, not three or four broken up by last name.

Well, it’s a mid-term election. Plus it’s morning, and the last few years we’ve gone in the evening. (There was one year that I voted at lunch, but I had to drive Katie to the poll after work anyway, so it’s easier if we just both go at the same time.) It must have been last year that the line was so long that we got there at 6:30 or 7:00 and didn’t finish until after the polls “closed” — meaning they didn’t let anyone else get into line. (Sensibly, they allowed anyone who was in line by 8:00 to vote.) And there were a lot of people waiting behind us!

Now on to programming for a few hours until Microsoft kicks their patches out the door.

Current Music: Gettin’ Ready Rag (in head)

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Fact #1: During my three-and-a-half days at Comic-Con last week I frequently thought how odd it was that, unlike past years, I no longer had a list of old comics I was trying to track down, and in some ways it was too bad that I didn’t have a reason to trawl through the dealers’ room.

Fact #2: Every day, eBay sends me an email if new items have popped up on a set of saved searches. I’ve been trying for several months to track down the rest of the WaRP Graphics Myth Adventures series (an adaptation of Robert Asprin’s Another Fine Myth with art by Phil Foglio), and every day I’ve grumbled that all that shows up are the issues I already have or the Foglio-illustrated editions of the novels.

I just connected these two facts. >:-(

(Originally posted on Livejournal)

Current Mood: 😡annoyed

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There! Everything’s set for Comic Con. I had been really annoyed with myself last month when I pulled out the pre-reg forms only to discover I had missed the deadline by two days, meaning we’d have to… <reverb>STAND IN LIIIINE!!!!</reverb> *cue scream*

We had to stand in line for on-site registration a few years ago, and let me tell you, it was a near-disaster. We got there before the doors opened. By the time we got through the line, it was time for lunch.

The thing is, we’d been thinking about getting a hotel room in San Diego and going for several days, which would mean we could go through the registration line on a smaller day, with (we hoped) a smaller line. Combined with the fact that we haven’t really taken a honeymoon trip, we came up with this grand plan to take the whole week off, go to San Diego, do the touristy thing for several days and wander in and out of Comic Con at the end of the week. Various things conspired to cut this down, and we ended up planning half a week.

And of course the hotels are all booked.

I went back again tonight, to see what might have opened up and to look farther out. There are places charging $150/night for Wednesday and then $750/night for Thursday through Saturday. There are places charging $200 during the week and $1000 on weekends. The price difference is just insane! I almost wanted to sign up with one of the nice hotels for the first night or two and then head over to someplace else when their rates changed. [Edit: It occurs to me that this price difference probably isn’t an insane markup for weekends/a big convention weekend. More likely it’s the difference between a standard room and a deluxe suite, and while standard rooms are available for Wednesday, they’ve all been snapped up for the weekend, leaving only deluxe rooms open.]

The really cool thing, though, is that when I checked back at the Comic Con website for hotel info, I discovered they had added ONLINE REGISTRATION. *cue choir*

So we’re pre-registered after all (even if the form does arbitrarily choose who the primary contact is when you list more than one person. I filled out myself, then Katie and it tried to use her for the credit card info and email contact. So I started over, filled in her first, then me, and it used me for billing and listed my address for email contact… but it sent her the confirmation email.)

The hotel we ended up with — after a number of false starts that ended in “sorry, no rooms available” — isn’t fantastic, but it at least looks like it isn’t a total fleabag, and it’s reasonably close to the convention center. [Edit: It was the Super 8 in Little Italy.] We could probably walk if we had to, and it looks like we ought to be able to take the trolley, except for the fact that the %^$# trolley map is so abstracted I can’t actually tell whether there’s a stop nearby. (I figure driving on Saturday, at least, won’t save us any time.)

Vacation time? Check.
Registration? Check.
Hotel Reservations? Check.

Whew!

(Originally posted at LiveJournal, and brought over here because the rest of my con posts are here, and it’s an interesting look back at a time when you could get tickets and a hotel for Comic-Con a week and a half before the event!)

Current Mood: accomplished

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