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At least I didn't blow my diet...
Feb. 20th, 2007 03:04 pmIt was an interesting weekend. IN the chinese curse sort of interesting kind. As earlier mentioned, I was running the con suite at Boskone 44 this past weekend. New hotel, everything doesn't quite fit, and things are not always where we would hope that they are. *shrugs* I knew that part coming in.
First whammy, the valintines day slushstorm on the day that we are loading the truck at the nesfa clubhouse. Many fewer folks showed up than usual, but there were just as many contradictory opinions as usual on the optimum way to load a truck with all the stuff we bring to boskone.
The second whammy, the next day, it got cold, very cold. all that slush froze in interestingly sloped slippery surfaces on all vaguely horizontal surfaces. I'm surprised that nobody at the con slipped and fell, injuring themselves. This made load in and my shopping expedition after work on the way into the hotel rather slower. And, oh yeah, the latch that allows me to remove the rear seat from the minivan, it froze too, cutting into my cargo capacity substantially. ( I was able to get it removed friday morning, Ran an extension cord out the driveway and used my hot air gun on the joints to thaw them. ) I got to the hotel loading dock thursday evening after the truck was empty, so ended up unloading it alone.
I was able to bring in my square blueberry pies. I'll see if I can find some public image hosting site so I can put up the picture. Carved into the crust of the pie was the mathematical formula for determining the area of a circle. This was inspired by a rant I overheard a few weeks ago by Deb Geisler that pie are not square, pie are round. When I showed one to Deb, she said "Bite me." *laughs* That was, as it turns out, the best part of the convention for me personally.
Whammy the third. I feel my chest getting congested a bit on thursday, but I try to ignore it, other than taking some of the cold preventive supplements. (airborne, in this case) Friday morning I'm out kneeling on the cold ice thawing out my back seat and getting that removed. then I go to BJs and Resturant Depot to buy soda pop and perishables for the con suite. I run out of room in my minivan before I run out of shopping list. No biggie, I sez to myself, I'll get more tonight when I'm putting my car into cheap parking for the weekend. Oh yeah, skipped breakfast and missed lunch, which turned out to be a good thing, later that evening.
I get to the hotel, some random hotel employee blocks me from unloading in the hotel loading dock. fuckit, I sez to myself, and go park in the hotel parking garage. Well, it turns out the loading path from the parking garage to the con suite room uses two elevators and rolling the carts across the front lobby of the hotel. *sighs* One thing and another consumes my time and I end up taking more than the three hours in the garage. Since cost in the hotel garage is $24 for three hours, and $27 for 24 hours, I sez to myself, fuckit, I'll move my car tomorrow morning and get some shopping done then. Dinner was a pair of hard boiled eggs and some cranberry juice. (drinking lots of cranberry juice to fight off the illness I'm coming down with. )
By friday at 9pm, I'm running a nice fever, feeling really shitty, and I leave the con suite in the blessedly capable hands of Rachel, Kevin, and friends, and go crawl into my hotel bed where I spend the next 10 hours alternately sweating and shivering, with breaks for vomiting and diarheaa. *ugh*
Around 8am saturday, I give up my struggle to get some sleep, shower and dress to go down and open up the con suite. I'm still feeling shitty, and I'm not doing any food handling except for stuff like coffee which self sterilizes with brewing. I know I really don't want to pass this illness around the con. Kevin, Rachel and friends trickle in, and I let them know that I'm not handling any food, so they will have to do that for me. Fortunately they are willing and able to do this. The usual struggles of morning in the con suite ensue, mostly revolving around the ability of our members being able to drink coffee faster than we can brew it up. One of the coffee pots that I had borrowed for the weekend sprung a leak, so I only had one 40 cup sized pot for brewing coffee in, and each pot took about half an hour to brew up. Next year, another coffee pot is definitly in order. Having the airpot thermoses did help with being able to immediately decant the pot when it was brewed and start the next one up right away.
Made up a shopping list for our food shopper. Unfortunately, she was driving a borrowed car with limited cargo capacity, and did not get everything that I ordered. Thus we ran out of stuff saturday evening.
Whammy number four. The hotel did not have any easy access inexpensive food places. Also the con suite was really the central focus of the convention in a people flow sense. So food and drink demand on the con suite was noticably higher this year. For instance, I doubled the number of hard boiled eggs from last year, and they still ran out just as fast. Went theough the first 15 dozen in the first three hours the con suite was open. The other 15 dozen were then rationed out over the duration of the convention. If I increase them more, I'm going to have to recruit additional folks just to hard boil the eggs.
Saturday I went back to bed around noonish, emerged from my womb for a couple of hours in the early evening, and crawled back to bed around 7pm. Still alternating sweats and chills, but since I'm not eating anything but juice and water at this point, the vomiting and diarheaa have stopped.
Sunday morning, I staggered forth and opened the con suite, shuffled through my coffee making dance, and got things going. Rachel had given a shopping list to Rick K, and he brought in much needed supplies for the con suite later that morning.
Viable Paradise was doing their wonderful array of baked goods in the con suite that morning, and this helped a lot, reducing demand on other con suite foodstuffs.
Sunday I managed to stay upright, having felt a bit better, even to the point of eating a small sammich from the staff den and keeping it down. Sunday afternoon, went through till closing time at 4pm, and cleaned things up, got ready for reopening at 9pm for the dad dog party, and cleaning and packing up as much as possible to go onto the truck that was already loading.
Dead dog party was much smaller than I expected, only a couple dozen folks there in the now largely empty ballroom. It was enjoyable to chat with David Gerrold, our guest of honor, in a relatively small group. He was impressed by the exotic chocolates brought back from the mideast by TR, who is currently stationed with the UN peacekeepers in the Sinai desert.
At 130 am, the hotel power management system turned off all the room lights on us, which effectively killed the party for the last few die-hards. Putting the last few things over to the other part of the ballroom, becasue the space I had been in all weekend was being rennovated first thing in the morning. Then I stumbled off to sleep, and managed to actually get a few hours of sleep inbetween coughing bouts.
Monday, I pack up the last few things, check out of the hotel room. Put my stuff into my car, which has been in the hotel garage all weekend racking up parking charges. Oh yeah, I can't put the parking charge on the hotel bill, gotta pay the parking attendant instead. *sighs*
And all I have left to do is wait for the couch company to come and pick up the couches. and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.... Calling the couch rental place, they apologize and say that they had it written down for a pickup between noon and 2pm, not 9am and noon as I had put on the form. So the hotel garage got another day of money out of me for parking an extra hour or two. *sighs*
First whammy, the valintines day slushstorm on the day that we are loading the truck at the nesfa clubhouse. Many fewer folks showed up than usual, but there were just as many contradictory opinions as usual on the optimum way to load a truck with all the stuff we bring to boskone.
The second whammy, the next day, it got cold, very cold. all that slush froze in interestingly sloped slippery surfaces on all vaguely horizontal surfaces. I'm surprised that nobody at the con slipped and fell, injuring themselves. This made load in and my shopping expedition after work on the way into the hotel rather slower. And, oh yeah, the latch that allows me to remove the rear seat from the minivan, it froze too, cutting into my cargo capacity substantially. ( I was able to get it removed friday morning, Ran an extension cord out the driveway and used my hot air gun on the joints to thaw them. ) I got to the hotel loading dock thursday evening after the truck was empty, so ended up unloading it alone.
I was able to bring in my square blueberry pies. I'll see if I can find some public image hosting site so I can put up the picture. Carved into the crust of the pie was the mathematical formula for determining the area of a circle. This was inspired by a rant I overheard a few weeks ago by Deb Geisler that pie are not square, pie are round. When I showed one to Deb, she said "Bite me." *laughs* That was, as it turns out, the best part of the convention for me personally.
Whammy the third. I feel my chest getting congested a bit on thursday, but I try to ignore it, other than taking some of the cold preventive supplements. (airborne, in this case) Friday morning I'm out kneeling on the cold ice thawing out my back seat and getting that removed. then I go to BJs and Resturant Depot to buy soda pop and perishables for the con suite. I run out of room in my minivan before I run out of shopping list. No biggie, I sez to myself, I'll get more tonight when I'm putting my car into cheap parking for the weekend. Oh yeah, skipped breakfast and missed lunch, which turned out to be a good thing, later that evening.
I get to the hotel, some random hotel employee blocks me from unloading in the hotel loading dock. fuckit, I sez to myself, and go park in the hotel parking garage. Well, it turns out the loading path from the parking garage to the con suite room uses two elevators and rolling the carts across the front lobby of the hotel. *sighs* One thing and another consumes my time and I end up taking more than the three hours in the garage. Since cost in the hotel garage is $24 for three hours, and $27 for 24 hours, I sez to myself, fuckit, I'll move my car tomorrow morning and get some shopping done then. Dinner was a pair of hard boiled eggs and some cranberry juice. (drinking lots of cranberry juice to fight off the illness I'm coming down with. )
By friday at 9pm, I'm running a nice fever, feeling really shitty, and I leave the con suite in the blessedly capable hands of Rachel, Kevin, and friends, and go crawl into my hotel bed where I spend the next 10 hours alternately sweating and shivering, with breaks for vomiting and diarheaa. *ugh*
Around 8am saturday, I give up my struggle to get some sleep, shower and dress to go down and open up the con suite. I'm still feeling shitty, and I'm not doing any food handling except for stuff like coffee which self sterilizes with brewing. I know I really don't want to pass this illness around the con. Kevin, Rachel and friends trickle in, and I let them know that I'm not handling any food, so they will have to do that for me. Fortunately they are willing and able to do this. The usual struggles of morning in the con suite ensue, mostly revolving around the ability of our members being able to drink coffee faster than we can brew it up. One of the coffee pots that I had borrowed for the weekend sprung a leak, so I only had one 40 cup sized pot for brewing coffee in, and each pot took about half an hour to brew up. Next year, another coffee pot is definitly in order. Having the airpot thermoses did help with being able to immediately decant the pot when it was brewed and start the next one up right away.
Made up a shopping list for our food shopper. Unfortunately, she was driving a borrowed car with limited cargo capacity, and did not get everything that I ordered. Thus we ran out of stuff saturday evening.
Whammy number four. The hotel did not have any easy access inexpensive food places. Also the con suite was really the central focus of the convention in a people flow sense. So food and drink demand on the con suite was noticably higher this year. For instance, I doubled the number of hard boiled eggs from last year, and they still ran out just as fast. Went theough the first 15 dozen in the first three hours the con suite was open. The other 15 dozen were then rationed out over the duration of the convention. If I increase them more, I'm going to have to recruit additional folks just to hard boil the eggs.
Saturday I went back to bed around noonish, emerged from my womb for a couple of hours in the early evening, and crawled back to bed around 7pm. Still alternating sweats and chills, but since I'm not eating anything but juice and water at this point, the vomiting and diarheaa have stopped.
Sunday morning, I staggered forth and opened the con suite, shuffled through my coffee making dance, and got things going. Rachel had given a shopping list to Rick K, and he brought in much needed supplies for the con suite later that morning.
Viable Paradise was doing their wonderful array of baked goods in the con suite that morning, and this helped a lot, reducing demand on other con suite foodstuffs.
Sunday I managed to stay upright, having felt a bit better, even to the point of eating a small sammich from the staff den and keeping it down. Sunday afternoon, went through till closing time at 4pm, and cleaned things up, got ready for reopening at 9pm for the dad dog party, and cleaning and packing up as much as possible to go onto the truck that was already loading.
Dead dog party was much smaller than I expected, only a couple dozen folks there in the now largely empty ballroom. It was enjoyable to chat with David Gerrold, our guest of honor, in a relatively small group. He was impressed by the exotic chocolates brought back from the mideast by TR, who is currently stationed with the UN peacekeepers in the Sinai desert.
At 130 am, the hotel power management system turned off all the room lights on us, which effectively killed the party for the last few die-hards. Putting the last few things over to the other part of the ballroom, becasue the space I had been in all weekend was being rennovated first thing in the morning. Then I stumbled off to sleep, and managed to actually get a few hours of sleep inbetween coughing bouts.
Monday, I pack up the last few things, check out of the hotel room. Put my stuff into my car, which has been in the hotel garage all weekend racking up parking charges. Oh yeah, I can't put the parking charge on the hotel bill, gotta pay the parking attendant instead. *sighs*
And all I have left to do is wait for the couch company to come and pick up the couches. and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.... Calling the couch rental place, they apologize and say that they had it written down for a pickup between noon and 2pm, not 9am and noon as I had put on the form. So the hotel garage got another day of money out of me for parking an extra hour or two. *sighs*
