Baycon

[jenk]

Friday morning I was pleased that the new bag worked as I thought it would: I'd packed an outfit for Friday in one of the side compartments & put toiletries in the other. The vast majority of my clothes stayed folded in the center compartment. I even got the computer out from under the stack with no worries. Even having the separate CPAP bag didn't drive me nuts. It was kind of a bonus to be able to pull out the CPAP without digging through clothes. (CPAP's bag is padded, but when it's not in its bag, I pad it with clothes. This is fine if I'm unpacking anyway, but a pain if I'm not.)

We were on the road around 9 or 10ish with native guide skydancer at the wheel. Found the hotel with little trouble and got checked in. The lobby, bar, and restaurant were all standard "hotel", but the hallways upstairs were ... well, see photo at right. My first impression was the twisty maze of passages in the department store basement where Rose first met the Doctor. But no, it wasn't concrete, it was light blue and sandy-striped wallpaper that somehow looked dingy and concrete-like. Strange. This picture at the right is of the party floor, but every floor I saw was like that.

vixyish compared the rooms to Ikea, and yes, there was birch and laminate. It also had a bit of a Japanese feel to it, especially the sinks. (No, I didn't take my camera. Flickr is my friend.) The picture at left is the same layout as the one I shared with jw1776 & skydancer, but it's actually zyxwvut's room during the eric_in_elevatr party. (I'm the one twittering on the bed in purple tie-dye and shorts.)

For me was mostly a music and socializing con. jw1776 was doing the "Let's Make A Movie" track. skydancer did a lot of music too and was also an extra in the movie.

Some of my con highlights:

• Dinner and catching up with Aahz
• Dinner with skydancer's brother
• Jeff & Maya Bonhoff's concert (I have CDs now, yay!)
• Tres Gique's concert
• Vixy & Tony's concert
• Avalon Rising's concert (I have another CD now). Kristoph sang "Wild Thing" with Cat doing the "da duh da duhhhh" guitar part on violin. I die happy now.
• Seanan's concert. gaaneden was drawn into the concert (I guess she walked by at a lucky time?) and afterward told me to get runnerwolf to bring Seanan up for norwescon next year. I replied "I don't know if she's coming for Norwes, but she's GOH at next year's Conflikt".
• Eric in the Elevator party. I hadn't seen most of elphie's bits before, including the Kum-Bah-Yah fun.
• Listening in the filk circles
• Watching the debut of "Cult of the Giant Brain"
• Chatting (briefly) with lenniersd

There was also a fire alarm, which turned out to be a false alarm, around 1AM Friday night / Saturday morning. We were most definitely NOT pleased. Fortunately it was only one false alarm with only one apology. It would also have been nice if the hotel had communicated (say, at check-in?) that wifi and wired access would be removed from our hotel bill before checkout. Fortunately I discovered that through word-of-mouth.

Finally, I am compelled by ZOMG TEH CUTE! to link to these costumes: Little Pink Vader & Cyberboy Enjoy!