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Catching Up: Boise, Tampa, Louisville, Indianapolis, & Vancouver
Well, it's official -- I really do suck at updating my LJ. Of course, I could probably plead off a little since I really haven't been home much in the month of July, and for at least part of that time I was without the use of my laptop (it's in the final throes -- being nearly four years old, which is truly ancient for a laptop).
So, to briefly catch up... the short version:
We flew down to Boise for Independence day weekend, rented a car, and hit first one family reunion in Mountain Home (where my uncle retired -- it's a bit odd to do reunions for that side of the family in Idaho, since they're mostly from California) then another the next day in Idaho Falls. The second one was a bit disappointing since I was the only one of the grandchildren who showed up -- it was just my grandmother, my dad and step-mom, and my aunts and uncles (it actually irks me a little, since aside from one cousin who recently moved to Alaska I'm pretty sure we have the furthest to go, yet always manage to be there).
The evening before we flew out Miggy picked us up at our hotel and we went out to dinner at the Macaroni Grill. Good food and the conversation was dominated by BtVS and Spike (of course). I think my husband may have been getting a little bored with it all, but it's hard to tell -- he's a pretty big fan of the show too. Had a wonderful time chatting, though (as I'll talk about below) I'm always intensely nervous and shy about meeting online friends in person.
Heading down to Tampa:
I had already planned on going to GenCon the weekend after Vulkon and when I was making arrangements to pick up Shaddyr at the bus station (so she wouldn't have to find her way from downtown Seattle to the airport at 1:00am), it only took a small amount of coercing to get me to look into going to Tampa. The weird part is that it only cost an extra $12 to add a stop in Tampa to my itinerary... and so I was off! I actually did have a good time, although I've come to the conclusion that I have *got* to get over the wretched shyness that always overtakes me when meeting people I know online. There were tons of people I wanted to meet who were at Vulkon, but I was never able to get up the guts to introduce myself or, once introduced, I couldn't fight the feeling that I was imposing. :-(
I did hang out a bit with Shaddyr, and had a chance to meet Jerry (had a wonderful time talking "Firefly" with him the night I arrived (all bedraggled and tired from a day of traveling and flight delays) and wish I could have had more of a chance to chat, but I really didn't see him again the rest of the weekend),
Chen, Colleen, Bubonic, Sandy, Chris, Alane, and Crystal (meeting up with Crystal was one of those odd serendipitous moments... it turned out she and her husband were sitting right in front of me in the Ballroom (I'd even talked to her husband the first day, not realizing who they were)) -- as well as a whole slew of other people I'm probably forgetting at the moment (sorry!!). However, once again, I couldn't beat the shyness down enough to spend much time with anyone (and a big thank you to Crystal and her husband for inviting me up to the room party, or I probably would have wound up back in my hotel room reading that night instead of being out having fun).
You've probably read all sorts of other reports about the Tampa Vulkon, so at this point it's probably not worth going into the actual con events, except to say that I really liked how Vulkon was manage -- a "corporate" convention with a lot of fannish input. It's a good combo. My favorite part of JM's Q&As was when someone asked him "Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?" and he erupted with "Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo!" going on to do the perfect imitation of Luke's whining from A New Hope: "But I was going into Tashi Station to pick up some power converters." Hee!
From Tampa I flew to Cleveland -- and it turned out (serendipity strike #2) I was on the same flight with Crystal and her husband --
Then on to Louisville:
I've made some pretty good friends online over the years, but I am so infinitely happy I met Nmissi. I always have a fantastic time visiting with her and really wish she didn't live clear on the other side of the continent. She even tolerates my obsession with White Castle whenever I'm in town (though, trust me, I'd likely almost never eat there if we had one just down the street).
This time out I got to see something I'd only ever heard of... lightning bugs. Those things are so freakin' cool!!! I think I greatly amused Nmissi, standing out in her front yard watching these ember-like sparks of light floating up all around me... it lent an air of magic to everything (I even noticed it when we were driving around in the evenings). Absolutely beautiful and possibly one of the neatest things I've ever seen.
At the end of the week Nmissi and I drove up to Indianapolis for GenCon:
Briefly, I had the best time at GenCon... hanging out with Nmissi and meeting a bunch of her Star Wars fandom friends... some of whom turned out to be people I'd "met" online in other fandoms (BtVS and X-Files). It's a surprisingly small world still in fandom, despite (or maybe because of) the internet. I'd paid for admission to GenCon, but wound up not really doing any official GenCon events aside from the Dealers Room... the gathering of the Star Wars crowd (they were having their own Mini-Con in tandem with GenCon) was way too much fun. I learned how to make an origami X-Wing fighter, made a ton of friends, and made a grass skirt for my Spike doll (when I mentioned that my Spike doll was still shirtless (I need to dye a t-shirt black for him) someone asked "Who are you, Marti Noxon??" Hee!!).
I'm leaving out a ton of stuff, I know, but this entry is already going to be hellaciously long. Suffice it to say that fun was had by all and Nmissi and I staggered home, exhausted beyond belief after a late night showing of Pirates of the Caribbean and a drive home through an absolutely scary lightning storm.
Timing things just right, my flight home landed at 5:30... giving me just enough time to have dinner with my husband there at the airport before he caught a flight out to Las Vegas for the Black Hat Conference (and oooo... was I jealous). I spent the next few days trying to recover from the massive sleep deprivation I'd experienced over the previous week and a half.
I picked my husband up from the airport on Friday and we headed up to... Vancouver, B.C.
Actually, it was Blaine, Washington that night -- my husband had won a night's accommodation and dinner for two at Semiahmoo Resort in a drawing a few months ago. It's a beautiful resort on a tiny spit of land in a bay right up at the Canadian border... I don't know if I would have been able to justify the expense if it had been coming out of our own pockets (I'd spend the entire time thinking about the things I could have upgraded on my computer with the money), but it was still fun to indulge.
It turned out, though, that we had picked pretty much the worst time possible to head to Vancouver -- it was a big three day holiday weekend and all the tourist spots were filled with vacationing Canadians. :-p Plus bits of downtown were blocked off for festivals and fireworks later that night, which meant traffic was an absolute nightmare. We finally wound up just wandering around some malls and grocery stores, getting the stuff we love to buy in Canada: Junk food. And let me tell you, we get the strangest looks when we declare it at the border -- "yes, we bought cookies, chips, crackers, soda and lots and lots of chocolate."
Oh, and I had gotten a book on tourist sites in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle from Ww1614 just a week ago or so, which we took along to give us some ideas of what to see (although, as mentioned above, everything wound up being too packed) and it also contained the only map of Vancouver we had with us. We eventually termed it the Wholly Inadequate Map -- it was really only meant to be a vague guide of where things were, not a specific map of streets within the city, but we were too stubborn to stop and buy a regular map.
Husband: "So where are we?"
Me: "Well, the WIM shows us as being here, but it doesn't look like this road is supposed to exist."
It just added to the fun. :-p
So, now I'm home again, and have been for a few days, recovering from a sinus infection -- my first major one in about a year (since I started in on my new allergy medication) and I'm putting it down to the fact that I just spent the last two weeks running myself ragged. I can't believe I'm seriously considering going to DragonCon at the end of the month.
So, to briefly catch up... the short version:
We flew down to Boise for Independence day weekend, rented a car, and hit first one family reunion in Mountain Home (where my uncle retired -- it's a bit odd to do reunions for that side of the family in Idaho, since they're mostly from California) then another the next day in Idaho Falls. The second one was a bit disappointing since I was the only one of the grandchildren who showed up -- it was just my grandmother, my dad and step-mom, and my aunts and uncles (it actually irks me a little, since aside from one cousin who recently moved to Alaska I'm pretty sure we have the furthest to go, yet always manage to be there).
The evening before we flew out Miggy picked us up at our hotel and we went out to dinner at the Macaroni Grill. Good food and the conversation was dominated by BtVS and Spike (of course). I think my husband may have been getting a little bored with it all, but it's hard to tell -- he's a pretty big fan of the show too. Had a wonderful time chatting, though (as I'll talk about below) I'm always intensely nervous and shy about meeting online friends in person.
Heading down to Tampa:
I had already planned on going to GenCon the weekend after Vulkon and when I was making arrangements to pick up Shaddyr at the bus station (so she wouldn't have to find her way from downtown Seattle to the airport at 1:00am), it only took a small amount of coercing to get me to look into going to Tampa. The weird part is that it only cost an extra $12 to add a stop in Tampa to my itinerary... and so I was off! I actually did have a good time, although I've come to the conclusion that I have *got* to get over the wretched shyness that always overtakes me when meeting people I know online. There were tons of people I wanted to meet who were at Vulkon, but I was never able to get up the guts to introduce myself or, once introduced, I couldn't fight the feeling that I was imposing. :-(
I did hang out a bit with Shaddyr, and had a chance to meet Jerry (had a wonderful time talking "Firefly" with him the night I arrived (all bedraggled and tired from a day of traveling and flight delays) and wish I could have had more of a chance to chat, but I really didn't see him again the rest of the weekend),
Chen, Colleen, Bubonic, Sandy, Chris, Alane, and Crystal (meeting up with Crystal was one of those odd serendipitous moments... it turned out she and her husband were sitting right in front of me in the Ballroom (I'd even talked to her husband the first day, not realizing who they were)) -- as well as a whole slew of other people I'm probably forgetting at the moment (sorry!!). However, once again, I couldn't beat the shyness down enough to spend much time with anyone (and a big thank you to Crystal and her husband for inviting me up to the room party, or I probably would have wound up back in my hotel room reading that night instead of being out having fun).
You've probably read all sorts of other reports about the Tampa Vulkon, so at this point it's probably not worth going into the actual con events, except to say that I really liked how Vulkon was manage -- a "corporate" convention with a lot of fannish input. It's a good combo. My favorite part of JM's Q&As was when someone asked him "Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?" and he erupted with "Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo! Han Solo!" going on to do the perfect imitation of Luke's whining from A New Hope: "But I was going into Tashi Station to pick up some power converters." Hee!
From Tampa I flew to Cleveland -- and it turned out (serendipity strike #2) I was on the same flight with Crystal and her husband --
Then on to Louisville:
I've made some pretty good friends online over the years, but I am so infinitely happy I met Nmissi. I always have a fantastic time visiting with her and really wish she didn't live clear on the other side of the continent. She even tolerates my obsession with White Castle whenever I'm in town (though, trust me, I'd likely almost never eat there if we had one just down the street).
This time out I got to see something I'd only ever heard of... lightning bugs. Those things are so freakin' cool!!! I think I greatly amused Nmissi, standing out in her front yard watching these ember-like sparks of light floating up all around me... it lent an air of magic to everything (I even noticed it when we were driving around in the evenings). Absolutely beautiful and possibly one of the neatest things I've ever seen.
At the end of the week Nmissi and I drove up to Indianapolis for GenCon:
Briefly, I had the best time at GenCon... hanging out with Nmissi and meeting a bunch of her Star Wars fandom friends... some of whom turned out to be people I'd "met" online in other fandoms (BtVS and X-Files). It's a surprisingly small world still in fandom, despite (or maybe because of) the internet. I'd paid for admission to GenCon, but wound up not really doing any official GenCon events aside from the Dealers Room... the gathering of the Star Wars crowd (they were having their own Mini-Con in tandem with GenCon) was way too much fun. I learned how to make an origami X-Wing fighter, made a ton of friends, and made a grass skirt for my Spike doll (when I mentioned that my Spike doll was still shirtless (I need to dye a t-shirt black for him) someone asked "Who are you, Marti Noxon??" Hee!!).
I'm leaving out a ton of stuff, I know, but this entry is already going to be hellaciously long. Suffice it to say that fun was had by all and Nmissi and I staggered home, exhausted beyond belief after a late night showing of Pirates of the Caribbean and a drive home through an absolutely scary lightning storm.
Timing things just right, my flight home landed at 5:30... giving me just enough time to have dinner with my husband there at the airport before he caught a flight out to Las Vegas for the Black Hat Conference (and oooo... was I jealous). I spent the next few days trying to recover from the massive sleep deprivation I'd experienced over the previous week and a half.
I picked my husband up from the airport on Friday and we headed up to... Vancouver, B.C.
Actually, it was Blaine, Washington that night -- my husband had won a night's accommodation and dinner for two at Semiahmoo Resort in a drawing a few months ago. It's a beautiful resort on a tiny spit of land in a bay right up at the Canadian border... I don't know if I would have been able to justify the expense if it had been coming out of our own pockets (I'd spend the entire time thinking about the things I could have upgraded on my computer with the money), but it was still fun to indulge.
It turned out, though, that we had picked pretty much the worst time possible to head to Vancouver -- it was a big three day holiday weekend and all the tourist spots were filled with vacationing Canadians. :-p Plus bits of downtown were blocked off for festivals and fireworks later that night, which meant traffic was an absolute nightmare. We finally wound up just wandering around some malls and grocery stores, getting the stuff we love to buy in Canada: Junk food. And let me tell you, we get the strangest looks when we declare it at the border -- "yes, we bought cookies, chips, crackers, soda and lots and lots of chocolate."
Oh, and I had gotten a book on tourist sites in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle from Ww1614 just a week ago or so, which we took along to give us some ideas of what to see (although, as mentioned above, everything wound up being too packed) and it also contained the only map of Vancouver we had with us. We eventually termed it the Wholly Inadequate Map -- it was really only meant to be a vague guide of where things were, not a specific map of streets within the city, but we were too stubborn to stop and buy a regular map.
Husband: "So where are we?"
Me: "Well, the WIM shows us as being here, but it doesn't look like this road is supposed to exist."
It just added to the fun. :-p
So, now I'm home again, and have been for a few days, recovering from a sinus infection -- my first major one in about a year (since I started in on my new allergy medication) and I'm putting it down to the fact that I just spent the last two weeks running myself ragged. I can't believe I'm seriously considering going to DragonCon at the end of the month.