I'm back, I'm bad, I'm Nationwide...
Nov. 20th, 2006 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Last year I complained about how much it cost me to park over the weekend while I was away at Midwest Furfest, and said that next year I would use Shuttle Express, which several people had said was much, much cheaper.
Well. That may or may not have been true for a person living in Seattle... but it's clearly not true for a person living on the outer edges of Auburn. I spent $55.00 (plus we tipped) to have Shuttle Express pick the three of us up at my house and take us to the airport. I spent another $35.00 (plus a $5.00 tip) for Shuttle Express to drive me back to my apartment. They even had another couple that was just two and a half miles further out, and the driver was from Auburn himself. Who'd a thunk it?
Total cost: in excess of $90.00. And how much did I pay last year for parking, that I was complaining about? According to my post from this time last year, the cost for parking was $45.00 total. So my "cunning plan that cannot fail" made to save me money wound up costing me about twice as much. Le sigh!
Well, the service was good. But unless I'm leaving town for a good week or two, parking (off site parking) is my best option.
I said more than once to my two friends today that I was leaving right after 3 pm. I said this because I knew they were getting into their costumes again and were not going to be around when I left, but they were so busy doing the costume thing that they really didn't hear me. (Although they did hear me when I said the Dealer's Room was closing at 3 pm. It said 4 pm in the guidebook, but it was really 3pm. Good thing I mentioned this, they wanted to hit it and buy some stuff, but were planning on doing that as late as possible.)
Last I saw of them, they were in the dealer's room trying to squeeze in a whole con's worth of purchasing in the last 30 minutes before the room shut down. I went back to the room, got my bags, left my keys on the bed, and had the front desk call a cab. I know they'll be disappointed that we didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but what can you do?
For the second straight year I was invited to be on a panel that I couldn't attend. Twice they've scheduled me for panels at 3 pm on Sunday, and both times I've been flying out of O'Hare around 6 pm and didn't have time for the panel. I think if they ask me next year I need to say something about this, or maybe I need to fly out on Monday. But I do like being home already with time to relax and unwind.
Today I hit the dealer's room not long after it opened and sat down and wrote on my Christmas ghost story some more. I also wrote on it while waiting to board my flight, and then wrote on it for about an hour while on the plane. I only have three small scenes left, and then it's finished... although I'll almost certainly need to go back and rewrite sections. But I'll have something I can read from beginning to end. I don't have to worry about whether I can finish the story in time now... I'm sure I'll have it done this week.
After noon I walked to the mall with Mike and did the three things I'd intended to do. I hit up Teavana and bought some more tea. Their tea is looseleaf and very, very good. First, I bought two more ounces of the Mango Ceylon, and also two ounces of Rasberry Black. I got two tins to put that in. I wanted to buy more, but each new flavor would have required another tin, and just those two purchases will take me a while to use so I limited myself to just those.
Second, I bought a unicorn plushie for my niece, like the one that Adam had bought for me (it's purple and pink, and my character in Second Life has a white unicorn avatar with purple and pink hair.) Anyway it's very cute and my niece adores cute plushies. They also had a moose plushie, which I bought for Ali. I'd been wondering what to get him -- I don't know him as well as Nara, and Nara is easy because he raises sled dogs. But Ali had been saying that he never saw a moose his whole tim up in Alaska (nearly two weeks) and so he didn't believe they existed, and it had been a bit of an ongoing joke all weekend, along with just saying "moooose" in a funny voice. So the plushie moose was perfect.
Third, I got a nice philly cheesesteak sandwich for lunch from one of the other places I'd wanted to try. Michael got three sandwiches for himself, Gene, and Sky. The sandwiches were good, the french fries were soggy -- but I didn't order fries so I guess I got off lucky.
Another thing I figured out today was that, while I could plug my iPod into my laptop, I couldn't charge it up. Apparently the laptop will charge it for a minute or so and then decide that USB slot isn't being used for anything important, and it shuts it off. There's no way to change this behavior -- I asked Mike for help but the things he tried I'd actually already thought to try myself. It's just a feature of the laptop itself, not a part of the operating system.
The upshot of this is that I hadn't really charged my iPod to full before leaving Seattle (it hadn't looked full, but I had figured it was really full and just displaying "almost full" or something). After using it on the trip out, I hadn't used it for a couple of days, so when I tried to charge it Saturday night, I didn't check it until Sunday as I was heading out for the dealer's room. That's when I figured out I had a problem. Ali gave me one of the two battery things he'd bought at the airport -- 8 hours of energy for an iPod, from a device that plugs into the slot on the bottom. Unfortunately, this device was too big for my Nano -- to plug it in, I had to remove the headphone jack. So I couldn't have a fully charged iPod Nano and actually use it at the same time.
I wound up charging it in Gene & Mike's room. Both Mike and Sky have the chargers that plug into your iPod and directy into the wall. Mike says they're about $10 so I need to make a trip to Fry's to pick one up. Screw trying to plug it into my laptop!
Back at the dealer's room, I used my last half hour before it closed to pick out a duplicate of the picture I'd bought from Dark Natasha earlier. This is a picture of a dragon in shades of purple and violet and lavender -- very beautiful. I decided to get the second one as a gift for Legend. I don't really know what he might like or not like, other than he likes wings and dragons and gryphons and other mythical creatures. A really nice dragon print seemed like a good bet. I'm not even the one he made the tails for, but he did it for free, and also invited me over to his house twice and fed me and showed me movies and stuff, and then took all of us on a tour of WotC and then out to a very nice (and expensive) lunch/dinner, and I wasn't sure that Ali or Nara were going to remember/have the time to buy him anything. So I took the initiative.
When I walked over to Dark Natasha's desk, there were other people milling about and I accidentally started looking at Heather Bruton's print book instead. I only had a few minutes to get what I was there for before the place closed... but the first page in her book was fantastic. I had to get it. (And after getting it and showing it to Nara, HE had to get a copy too!) Then while paying for that, I noticed that she had a bunch of fridge magnets for sale too, two for $5.00, and some of them were dragons. It seemed a cinch that, even if Legend didn't know what to do with the art print I was buying, he could always use a nifty dragon magnet on his fridge. So I picked up one of those for him too -- and another that I have to decide whether it's for me or whether it's a Christmas present for someone. ^_^
That was about it. As Keith said, the con went by fast, and now it's over. I get tomorrow off, and then I work two days, get paid, and drive to Longview for Thanksgiving. ^_^
In the meantime I continue to read The Order of the Stick and die of laughter...
Well. That may or may not have been true for a person living in Seattle... but it's clearly not true for a person living on the outer edges of Auburn. I spent $55.00 (plus we tipped) to have Shuttle Express pick the three of us up at my house and take us to the airport. I spent another $35.00 (plus a $5.00 tip) for Shuttle Express to drive me back to my apartment. They even had another couple that was just two and a half miles further out, and the driver was from Auburn himself. Who'd a thunk it?
Total cost: in excess of $90.00. And how much did I pay last year for parking, that I was complaining about? According to my post from this time last year, the cost for parking was $45.00 total. So my "cunning plan that cannot fail" made to save me money wound up costing me about twice as much. Le sigh!
Well, the service was good. But unless I'm leaving town for a good week or two, parking (off site parking) is my best option.
I said more than once to my two friends today that I was leaving right after 3 pm. I said this because I knew they were getting into their costumes again and were not going to be around when I left, but they were so busy doing the costume thing that they really didn't hear me. (Although they did hear me when I said the Dealer's Room was closing at 3 pm. It said 4 pm in the guidebook, but it was really 3pm. Good thing I mentioned this, they wanted to hit it and buy some stuff, but were planning on doing that as late as possible.)
Last I saw of them, they were in the dealer's room trying to squeeze in a whole con's worth of purchasing in the last 30 minutes before the room shut down. I went back to the room, got my bags, left my keys on the bed, and had the front desk call a cab. I know they'll be disappointed that we didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but what can you do?
For the second straight year I was invited to be on a panel that I couldn't attend. Twice they've scheduled me for panels at 3 pm on Sunday, and both times I've been flying out of O'Hare around 6 pm and didn't have time for the panel. I think if they ask me next year I need to say something about this, or maybe I need to fly out on Monday. But I do like being home already with time to relax and unwind.
Today I hit the dealer's room not long after it opened and sat down and wrote on my Christmas ghost story some more. I also wrote on it while waiting to board my flight, and then wrote on it for about an hour while on the plane. I only have three small scenes left, and then it's finished... although I'll almost certainly need to go back and rewrite sections. But I'll have something I can read from beginning to end. I don't have to worry about whether I can finish the story in time now... I'm sure I'll have it done this week.
After noon I walked to the mall with Mike and did the three things I'd intended to do. I hit up Teavana and bought some more tea. Their tea is looseleaf and very, very good. First, I bought two more ounces of the Mango Ceylon, and also two ounces of Rasberry Black. I got two tins to put that in. I wanted to buy more, but each new flavor would have required another tin, and just those two purchases will take me a while to use so I limited myself to just those.
Second, I bought a unicorn plushie for my niece, like the one that Adam had bought for me (it's purple and pink, and my character in Second Life has a white unicorn avatar with purple and pink hair.) Anyway it's very cute and my niece adores cute plushies. They also had a moose plushie, which I bought for Ali. I'd been wondering what to get him -- I don't know him as well as Nara, and Nara is easy because he raises sled dogs. But Ali had been saying that he never saw a moose his whole tim up in Alaska (nearly two weeks) and so he didn't believe they existed, and it had been a bit of an ongoing joke all weekend, along with just saying "moooose" in a funny voice. So the plushie moose was perfect.
Third, I got a nice philly cheesesteak sandwich for lunch from one of the other places I'd wanted to try. Michael got three sandwiches for himself, Gene, and Sky. The sandwiches were good, the french fries were soggy -- but I didn't order fries so I guess I got off lucky.
Another thing I figured out today was that, while I could plug my iPod into my laptop, I couldn't charge it up. Apparently the laptop will charge it for a minute or so and then decide that USB slot isn't being used for anything important, and it shuts it off. There's no way to change this behavior -- I asked Mike for help but the things he tried I'd actually already thought to try myself. It's just a feature of the laptop itself, not a part of the operating system.
The upshot of this is that I hadn't really charged my iPod to full before leaving Seattle (it hadn't looked full, but I had figured it was really full and just displaying "almost full" or something). After using it on the trip out, I hadn't used it for a couple of days, so when I tried to charge it Saturday night, I didn't check it until Sunday as I was heading out for the dealer's room. That's when I figured out I had a problem. Ali gave me one of the two battery things he'd bought at the airport -- 8 hours of energy for an iPod, from a device that plugs into the slot on the bottom. Unfortunately, this device was too big for my Nano -- to plug it in, I had to remove the headphone jack. So I couldn't have a fully charged iPod Nano and actually use it at the same time.
I wound up charging it in Gene & Mike's room. Both Mike and Sky have the chargers that plug into your iPod and directy into the wall. Mike says they're about $10 so I need to make a trip to Fry's to pick one up. Screw trying to plug it into my laptop!
Back at the dealer's room, I used my last half hour before it closed to pick out a duplicate of the picture I'd bought from Dark Natasha earlier. This is a picture of a dragon in shades of purple and violet and lavender -- very beautiful. I decided to get the second one as a gift for Legend. I don't really know what he might like or not like, other than he likes wings and dragons and gryphons and other mythical creatures. A really nice dragon print seemed like a good bet. I'm not even the one he made the tails for, but he did it for free, and also invited me over to his house twice and fed me and showed me movies and stuff, and then took all of us on a tour of WotC and then out to a very nice (and expensive) lunch/dinner, and I wasn't sure that Ali or Nara were going to remember/have the time to buy him anything. So I took the initiative.
When I walked over to Dark Natasha's desk, there were other people milling about and I accidentally started looking at Heather Bruton's print book instead. I only had a few minutes to get what I was there for before the place closed... but the first page in her book was fantastic. I had to get it. (And after getting it and showing it to Nara, HE had to get a copy too!) Then while paying for that, I noticed that she had a bunch of fridge magnets for sale too, two for $5.00, and some of them were dragons. It seemed a cinch that, even if Legend didn't know what to do with the art print I was buying, he could always use a nifty dragon magnet on his fridge. So I picked up one of those for him too -- and another that I have to decide whether it's for me or whether it's a Christmas present for someone. ^_^
That was about it. As Keith said, the con went by fast, and now it's over. I get tomorrow off, and then I work two days, get paid, and drive to Longview for Thanksgiving. ^_^
In the meantime I continue to read The Order of the Stick and die of laughter...
