The morning started too early. I decided to go back to bed for an hour after the 7 am alarm, an hour being plenty of time to get ready for the 9 am earliest possible mattress delivery. I was up and prepped and dressed by 8:15. The truck arrived at 8:30.
They had not trouble with my request to haul away all the old stuff, including the ugly broken headboard. They were done in 10 minutes. I made the bed before I remembered I had left Domino locked in the office (the litterbox it there, but not food & water). She was parked in her usual spot for when I'm on the PC:
It's also her fave spot to sun herself.
SInce I had gone to bed late and gotten up early I decided to try out the new bed, after going online and seeing that the talk I wanted to go to at Convolution was not till 4 pm. It takes 45 minutes to get to the convention hotel from my place on a weekend. Weekday is more like 90, since it is one exit from SFO.
Managed to get some sleep, but the mattress is a lot more firm that the one in the showroom, and I don't think it is really the model they had in the sleep clinic. I'll give it a few more days before hunting for a softer one. Posturepedic has three models, and I am not sure which one the sleep center had. It's also possible my mattress cover is the culprit. I got up to work on the PC for a bit, and the fixit guy came to collect his blower. This meant finding something to wear in a hurry. I also had him look at the toilets, he agreed they are not doing the job.
On the road a little after 3, but the parking garage was big, the walk to the registration desk was long and there were no signs, and the registration setup was for a convention which was only expecting one walk-in every 10 minutes. So I got to the talk with 3 minutes to spare.
It was worth it.
kproche is an excellent speaker, he had understandable Powerpoint slides, and had a backup plan for when he found out that the convention's program rooms had no internet connection. The talk was 90 minutes (I was thinking 60) and it could have gone longer. Somewhere late in the talk some ringer came in who started asking questions he already knew the answers to. Annoying. I asked a couple of stupid questions, and got smart answers. Bottom line: I learned stuff.There were no panels/talks after 6, and the only place in the hotel serving food was the overcrowded, noisy bar. I sat under an aircon vent, the only seat available, and was eventually served a pretty good fish & chips with garlic fries while watching USC not quite be a match for Oregon.
The only party advertised was the Klingon Dark Hole, which I went to for about 15 minutes. There were only two places to sit, and those were taken. Small room. I saw a tweet from
johno which got me making the 2-mile hike to the pool pavilion for the Doctor Who themed burlesque show. It was packed, I found a seat by the back door. The good news is there were a series of very clever striptease skits which all had a legitimate Whovian hook. The bad news (YMMV) is all the performers were plus+-sized women, well beyond Rubenesque, which I do not find attractive. The rest of the audience loved it, though. I left to go to the masked ball, on the opposite side of the hotel, scheduled for 9 pm, but at 9:15 no one was there, there was no music, no nothing. Everyone must have been @ the burlesque show. So I paid the exorbitant parking fee and drove home.
This con is an attempt to salvage the fandom which Baycon has managed to alienate. I think it was a good first try, but they really need to find a 3-day weekend for it, get a Big Name or two as guests of honor, and fix some of the newbie mistakes like lack of signage, under-equipped/understaffed registration desk, too many panels crammed into too short a time frame, and insisting the hotel keep their café open for dinner. Oh yeah, and fix the wi-fi in the events areas.
Home, I watched some college football, gave Domino her whipped cream treat which she barfed a few minutes later, played on FB and wrote this.
Plans for tomorrow:
Shop for see-though drawers of shelves or racks to fit in a 3-foot-wide space in the bedroom so I can finally empty some boxes of things like sweats, linens and electricals which had a home in the old apartment but not here.
Identify & Practice my audition piece
Audition
Meet Janice for coffee
Maybe something after
