Post by Matthew on Sept 12, 2005 14:21:17 GMT -5
Eighty Million Dollars.
Why is this number important? We'll get back to that. If you get bored at any point, just scroll down to the part where I have a one-line paragraph stating "Here is the interesting part"
Kent and Sarah arrived at my house on Thursday evening (well, actually, Friday morning,) at midnight-oh one or so.
As we had planned to leave at around one a.m. I was not quite ready yet. Kenton had called me a few hours earlier to tell me that I was not gonna be the last pickup, as is normal, but the next-to-last, so I had to be ready by twelve, rather than the one a.m. slot, which Cat had reserved. This would have worked out fine, save for the fact that my cat bite on my hand was all swollen, and I spent an extra half-hour in the shower dealing with that, and having a minor panic attack.
So anyways, at twelve-thirty, we set out toward Cat's house: I've followed tradition from years before, and we have spiritual guidance with us, in the form of a stuffed animal: my orange Prognathous Rex doll, Bob, who makes the most horrible squashed-goose roar when you squeeze him. He is really ridiculously hideous, what with the googly eyes and all. So, with Bob up on the dashboard, we get to Cat's house, and pack the airbed for our fifth party member, Hillary (who will be meeting us at the hotel), and the various luggages and ramen noodles and such for our nutrition during the trip.
We set out, following the Redneck Highway through Northern Florida and Southern Alabama, with me navigating, as it's the way we always went to North Georgia my entire life. There's a road called State Highway Fifty-five that runs from just west of Andalusia to just east of Interstate Sixty-five. Connected at both ends by little tiny feeder roads, so it's like a mini-interstate with no real facilities or access routes. Very odd, but speeds the traffic along nicely.
We get on the interstate, and stop for gas just south of Montgomery, at a truck stop, where we meet a couple of guys heading south on Sixty-five, bound for Gulfport, Mississippi. They've got a truck entirely filled in th back with Jerry cans of gasoline, and ask us if we know of any clear roads down near Gulfport.
While Kenton gasses up the Essuvee, I get out the atlas I've just bought, and go over their route with them: turns out that they should be able to get there by following I-65 down to where it joins I-10 west of Mobile, which is just as well, as the tunnel under Mobile Bay isn't at the moment. We exchange hurricane horror stories, and we wish them well on their journey down to bring gasoline for their sister's generator.
Back on the road again, and we listen to music on Sarah's I-pod that she won from a local television station, hooked up to the radio via a mini-broadcaster. It doesn't work that well, so Sarah spends most of the trip in the "Statue of Liberty" position, to get the best transmission effect.
Holy crap, just saw my first Non-sci-fi-channel ad for "Serenity" Awesome!!
So, after several more hours and another stop at a Waffle House for breakfast (another tradition), we make it into Downtown Atlanta. It's been a while since Kenton's driven this route, so I'm navigating. We get to Peachtree Center Avenue (which is just east of, and parallel to, Peachtree Avenue) and I direct him onto it. "Which way? towards the right?" "No, Kent, into the oncoming traffic. it's one-way.This is the east street our hotel is on, between it and the Marriott Marquis" "Oh"
So we go down past the Benihana (which will figure into things later), and stop briefly at the motor lobby of the Hyatt, where the attendant tells us they are full up, to go down a half block and park in the Suntrust bank garage, where they have overflow parking. We note this, but we still have to drop off our crap, so we head down the street.
Kenton misses the turn to the west at the next block, and we have to go two more blocks before we can turn left again (one-way streets every which way) and finally gets to Peachtree Avenue. We cruise back to the hotel, but it turns out that Kenton has an issue with turning left across solid yellow lines. So we head south for a while, and wind up, eventually, back on Peachtree Center Avenue, driving past the Peachtree Center Mall, next door to the Hyatt, and I see the Benihana sign again, and Cat and I from the back seat pop out with "hey kids! Big Ben! Parliament!"
After more story than anyone wants to read, we wind up at the front entrance of the hotel. We offload our crap, and Kenton bugs off with the essuvee to park it in the Suntrust lot down the next street, whilst Cat, Sarah, and I head inside to check in.
We've got big translucent sacks of Ramen noodles and Gardettos and such festooning our cart, when the first thing we notice is an ornately caligraphed sign that says "No Outside Food or Drink allowed on the Hotel Premises" So I toss the blanket over the dangling prohibited items, and set Bob on the top of it all to act as a guard dinosaur.
We get our room, which is a real surprise, as it's ten o'clock in the morning: they usually aren't ready until one or so. Cat and I head up and see to the installation of our crap while Sarah waits for Kenton. Our bellman
hands us three sacks brimming with food off the cart, and I say to him "you didn't see that" and he replies very gravely "No, sir, I didn't see a damn' thing" and grins at me. He knows he's getting a good sized tip.
Kenton and Sarah arrive as Cat and I are setting the room up for multiple-person occupancy. It feels practically deserted with only five of us in there, as opposed to other years, when we've had as many as twelve in one of these rooms. Using some pocket tools and ingenuity, we finally get the broken balcony door open, and set up the smoker's lounge out there (overlooking the front of the hotel) with one of the chairs and a small end table. Hillary's bed is inflated, and Hillary herself then arrives, so then we set off to find the Con registration.
Down in the lobby, we are wondering whereinhell the con registration is, and I figure it out by the expedient of buttonholing the first badge-wearing person that walks past and asking him. He points off to the east and says "Hilton" which is flabbergasting for Kenton and I, as the Hilton swore they'd never TOUCH us again, after they stopped dealing with us for having a bagpiper playing in the men's restroom at two a.m., about ten years ago.
We decide to hamster-tube it down there, rather than taking the direct route, to show Hillary the byways and such that connect the hotels. (There are Habittrails crossing most of the downtown streets in that area: very nice for when it's raining). We walk her through the Marriott Marquis, and tell her about the time that we had a blind-people convention at the same time as DragonCon. They were in the Marriott, because it has talking elevators.. but the floor plan. My god. We'd spent an hour leading several people to the elevators from where they'd been tapping their ways around the hotel, and finally had to leave, because otherwise we would have spent the entire day there.
So, through the Marquis and down to the side entrance of the Hilton, where registration was set up. Nicely done, with tape on the floors in various colors, indicating pre-reg, ticketmaster, on-site purchases, etc. I get my badge and am through the line in about three minutes, a new record for me, and everybody else shows up presently. (Anybody who had to pay on the spot had to wait about an hour, due to the dearth of cash registers and register operators, unfortunately).
Back to the hotel room to review the schedule, and for Matthew to nap. I get tucked in on the bed I'm sharing with Cat while everybody else looks through the schedule. Turns out that Hillary is a hardcore Browncoat, so I crack open the tattoos and give her a few.
Sleep wins the contest for me between it and the first of the Serenity panels, so Kent and Sarah lead Hillary off to show her where to go for her first Con event, and Cat bugs off to the gaming level to look up the White Wolf people and her other old gaming contacts from when she lived in New Orleans. And I pass out for several hours.
That evening, I wake up to the sound of Cat exploding her stuff all over the bed and the room (she is a scatterer: her crap winds up on every flat surface in the hotel room.) I get up, and go help her shave her skull for the dragon painting that she's got Sarah talked into doing for her. It comes out wonderfully, and she wraps herself in her kimono, and hands me an obi, and tells me in the vaguest possible ways how to tie it.
So I muck about with the fifteen feet of green fabric for about ten minutes before I say "Screw it" and go to the computer and google "Tying an obi." Five minutes later, we have Cat bundled up and ready for her first LARP(Live-Action Role Playing), and I escort her downstairs in time for the seven o'clock game, and then am sent back up on Cabana-boy duty to get the other two kimonos from the room to help with costuming the other LARPers.
That done, I'm free til about ten o'clock, when Cat will be showing back up for us to go to the Shindig. I load up my pockets with temporary tattoos, and go out photographing the oddballs and goths. Whenever I run across someone wearing the Special Hat or other Firefly-inspired costume, I hand them a tattoo or two, and tell them "compliments of 'Soulfulspike.com'"
Ten rolls around and finds me back in the room, with Kent, Sarah, and Hillary, when Cat shows up, and strips out of her kimono, and prepares for the Shindig dance.
We two go down to the ballroom where registration had been the previous year, and stand in line waiting to be let in. It's PACKED, and we find out the reason why when we get in. Adam Baldwin had already left, but there's some chick in a white tank top dancing up on stage (it's club music) and it isn't until she starts grinning that I realize it's Jewel Staite. This was after I'd wandered the crowd, and taken pictures of the tons and tons of browncoats all over the place, including at least two Kaylees in the Wedding Cake, and a passel of companions with chopsticks in their hair. Cat's peeled off to dance her way to the front of the crowd to find her old friend Chris, and his new wife Arwen (no lie, that's her given birth name). I spend some time bopping along to the music, and then bug off, leaving Cat to her devices, and take pictures all over the place, duck my head into the filk room and listen for a bit, chat with old acquaintances I've not seen since the previous year, and generally get back in the mood of being "home" amongst my fellow fen and geeks. And I take lots of pictures.
Eventually, I wind down, and head back to the room: Kenton, Hillary and Sarah are chatting and getting ready for bed, and I do the same, and we eventually pass out about three-thirty or so. Cat wanders in about five in the morning (I know this because she crawled into bed and plonked her FREEZING butt against the middle of my back, waking me up), all danced out and happy.
Why is this number important? We'll get back to that. If you get bored at any point, just scroll down to the part where I have a one-line paragraph stating "Here is the interesting part"
Kent and Sarah arrived at my house on Thursday evening (well, actually, Friday morning,) at midnight-oh one or so.
As we had planned to leave at around one a.m. I was not quite ready yet. Kenton had called me a few hours earlier to tell me that I was not gonna be the last pickup, as is normal, but the next-to-last, so I had to be ready by twelve, rather than the one a.m. slot, which Cat had reserved. This would have worked out fine, save for the fact that my cat bite on my hand was all swollen, and I spent an extra half-hour in the shower dealing with that, and having a minor panic attack.
So anyways, at twelve-thirty, we set out toward Cat's house: I've followed tradition from years before, and we have spiritual guidance with us, in the form of a stuffed animal: my orange Prognathous Rex doll, Bob, who makes the most horrible squashed-goose roar when you squeeze him. He is really ridiculously hideous, what with the googly eyes and all. So, with Bob up on the dashboard, we get to Cat's house, and pack the airbed for our fifth party member, Hillary (who will be meeting us at the hotel), and the various luggages and ramen noodles and such for our nutrition during the trip.
We set out, following the Redneck Highway through Northern Florida and Southern Alabama, with me navigating, as it's the way we always went to North Georgia my entire life. There's a road called State Highway Fifty-five that runs from just west of Andalusia to just east of Interstate Sixty-five. Connected at both ends by little tiny feeder roads, so it's like a mini-interstate with no real facilities or access routes. Very odd, but speeds the traffic along nicely.
We get on the interstate, and stop for gas just south of Montgomery, at a truck stop, where we meet a couple of guys heading south on Sixty-five, bound for Gulfport, Mississippi. They've got a truck entirely filled in th back with Jerry cans of gasoline, and ask us if we know of any clear roads down near Gulfport.
While Kenton gasses up the Essuvee, I get out the atlas I've just bought, and go over their route with them: turns out that they should be able to get there by following I-65 down to where it joins I-10 west of Mobile, which is just as well, as the tunnel under Mobile Bay isn't at the moment. We exchange hurricane horror stories, and we wish them well on their journey down to bring gasoline for their sister's generator.
Back on the road again, and we listen to music on Sarah's I-pod that she won from a local television station, hooked up to the radio via a mini-broadcaster. It doesn't work that well, so Sarah spends most of the trip in the "Statue of Liberty" position, to get the best transmission effect.
Holy crap, just saw my first Non-sci-fi-channel ad for "Serenity" Awesome!!
So, after several more hours and another stop at a Waffle House for breakfast (another tradition), we make it into Downtown Atlanta. It's been a while since Kenton's driven this route, so I'm navigating. We get to Peachtree Center Avenue (which is just east of, and parallel to, Peachtree Avenue) and I direct him onto it. "Which way? towards the right?" "No, Kent, into the oncoming traffic. it's one-way.This is the east street our hotel is on, between it and the Marriott Marquis" "Oh"
So we go down past the Benihana (which will figure into things later), and stop briefly at the motor lobby of the Hyatt, where the attendant tells us they are full up, to go down a half block and park in the Suntrust bank garage, where they have overflow parking. We note this, but we still have to drop off our crap, so we head down the street.
Kenton misses the turn to the west at the next block, and we have to go two more blocks before we can turn left again (one-way streets every which way) and finally gets to Peachtree Avenue. We cruise back to the hotel, but it turns out that Kenton has an issue with turning left across solid yellow lines. So we head south for a while, and wind up, eventually, back on Peachtree Center Avenue, driving past the Peachtree Center Mall, next door to the Hyatt, and I see the Benihana sign again, and Cat and I from the back seat pop out with "hey kids! Big Ben! Parliament!"
After more story than anyone wants to read, we wind up at the front entrance of the hotel. We offload our crap, and Kenton bugs off with the essuvee to park it in the Suntrust lot down the next street, whilst Cat, Sarah, and I head inside to check in.
We've got big translucent sacks of Ramen noodles and Gardettos and such festooning our cart, when the first thing we notice is an ornately caligraphed sign that says "No Outside Food or Drink allowed on the Hotel Premises" So I toss the blanket over the dangling prohibited items, and set Bob on the top of it all to act as a guard dinosaur.
We get our room, which is a real surprise, as it's ten o'clock in the morning: they usually aren't ready until one or so. Cat and I head up and see to the installation of our crap while Sarah waits for Kenton. Our bellman
hands us three sacks brimming with food off the cart, and I say to him "you didn't see that" and he replies very gravely "No, sir, I didn't see a damn' thing" and grins at me. He knows he's getting a good sized tip.
Kenton and Sarah arrive as Cat and I are setting the room up for multiple-person occupancy. It feels practically deserted with only five of us in there, as opposed to other years, when we've had as many as twelve in one of these rooms. Using some pocket tools and ingenuity, we finally get the broken balcony door open, and set up the smoker's lounge out there (overlooking the front of the hotel) with one of the chairs and a small end table. Hillary's bed is inflated, and Hillary herself then arrives, so then we set off to find the Con registration.
Down in the lobby, we are wondering whereinhell the con registration is, and I figure it out by the expedient of buttonholing the first badge-wearing person that walks past and asking him. He points off to the east and says "Hilton" which is flabbergasting for Kenton and I, as the Hilton swore they'd never TOUCH us again, after they stopped dealing with us for having a bagpiper playing in the men's restroom at two a.m., about ten years ago.
We decide to hamster-tube it down there, rather than taking the direct route, to show Hillary the byways and such that connect the hotels. (There are Habittrails crossing most of the downtown streets in that area: very nice for when it's raining). We walk her through the Marriott Marquis, and tell her about the time that we had a blind-people convention at the same time as DragonCon. They were in the Marriott, because it has talking elevators.. but the floor plan. My god. We'd spent an hour leading several people to the elevators from where they'd been tapping their ways around the hotel, and finally had to leave, because otherwise we would have spent the entire day there.
So, through the Marquis and down to the side entrance of the Hilton, where registration was set up. Nicely done, with tape on the floors in various colors, indicating pre-reg, ticketmaster, on-site purchases, etc. I get my badge and am through the line in about three minutes, a new record for me, and everybody else shows up presently. (Anybody who had to pay on the spot had to wait about an hour, due to the dearth of cash registers and register operators, unfortunately).
Back to the hotel room to review the schedule, and for Matthew to nap. I get tucked in on the bed I'm sharing with Cat while everybody else looks through the schedule. Turns out that Hillary is a hardcore Browncoat, so I crack open the tattoos and give her a few.
Sleep wins the contest for me between it and the first of the Serenity panels, so Kent and Sarah lead Hillary off to show her where to go for her first Con event, and Cat bugs off to the gaming level to look up the White Wolf people and her other old gaming contacts from when she lived in New Orleans. And I pass out for several hours.
That evening, I wake up to the sound of Cat exploding her stuff all over the bed and the room (she is a scatterer: her crap winds up on every flat surface in the hotel room.) I get up, and go help her shave her skull for the dragon painting that she's got Sarah talked into doing for her. It comes out wonderfully, and she wraps herself in her kimono, and hands me an obi, and tells me in the vaguest possible ways how to tie it.
So I muck about with the fifteen feet of green fabric for about ten minutes before I say "Screw it" and go to the computer and google "Tying an obi." Five minutes later, we have Cat bundled up and ready for her first LARP(Live-Action Role Playing), and I escort her downstairs in time for the seven o'clock game, and then am sent back up on Cabana-boy duty to get the other two kimonos from the room to help with costuming the other LARPers.
That done, I'm free til about ten o'clock, when Cat will be showing back up for us to go to the Shindig. I load up my pockets with temporary tattoos, and go out photographing the oddballs and goths. Whenever I run across someone wearing the Special Hat or other Firefly-inspired costume, I hand them a tattoo or two, and tell them "compliments of 'Soulfulspike.com'"
Ten rolls around and finds me back in the room, with Kent, Sarah, and Hillary, when Cat shows up, and strips out of her kimono, and prepares for the Shindig dance.
We two go down to the ballroom where registration had been the previous year, and stand in line waiting to be let in. It's PACKED, and we find out the reason why when we get in. Adam Baldwin had already left, but there's some chick in a white tank top dancing up on stage (it's club music) and it isn't until she starts grinning that I realize it's Jewel Staite. This was after I'd wandered the crowd, and taken pictures of the tons and tons of browncoats all over the place, including at least two Kaylees in the Wedding Cake, and a passel of companions with chopsticks in their hair. Cat's peeled off to dance her way to the front of the crowd to find her old friend Chris, and his new wife Arwen (no lie, that's her given birth name). I spend some time bopping along to the music, and then bug off, leaving Cat to her devices, and take pictures all over the place, duck my head into the filk room and listen for a bit, chat with old acquaintances I've not seen since the previous year, and generally get back in the mood of being "home" amongst my fellow fen and geeks. And I take lots of pictures.
Eventually, I wind down, and head back to the room: Kenton, Hillary and Sarah are chatting and getting ready for bed, and I do the same, and we eventually pass out about three-thirty or so. Cat wanders in about five in the morning (I know this because she crawled into bed and plonked her FREEZING butt against the middle of my back, waking me up), all danced out and happy.
