FiranCon: Success
FiranCon 2006 is over and it went very well.
In case you don't know, my wife stephdray and I run an online text game called FiranMUX for a few hundred core players. Every year for the past 8 years, we've hosted a small convention for Firan players. The first couple years, it was held in a rented VFW hall. Lately, we've reserved an entire floor (or floor-and-a-half) of a hotel and rented out the hotel ball room for certain events and taken everyone for a Greek lunch at the Acropolis in Baltimore. We got almost 70 attendees this year. The con is both a celebration of players and staff of Firan and also a party to celebrate our wedding anniversary (May 31).
Planning
Here's the breakdown of FiranCon. It all starts for me and Steph around December. That's when we start planning for the con, which is traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend. We choose a coordinator, who delegates responsibilities to a half dozen people and manages a project plan. Those people handle hotel selection and contract negotiations with the hotel and restaurant. They handle name tags and emergency contact lists and door tags and program advertisement and program printing and so on.
Registration
This year, I coded a simple PHP web site for registration with some MUSH softcode for generating reports off the SQL back end. That was back in November or December or something and it took me a few hard weekends. The site worked pretty well and I'll enhance it next Fall with some additional features based on lessons learned this year.
Firan Award Temples
A while back, we started giving out trophies to wizard-staff who had served for more than five years. haranalee designed a wooden statuette shaped like Firan's six-pillared temple logo. For the last few years, she and csthomas1311 have made them for us. This year, because we had so many to make, we offered to do the work. Well, they ended up doing as much work as us because we didn't know what we were doing, but we cut enough pieces for a couple years' worth and now I know the process. The roof pieces have a 30-degree slant or somesuch and they cannot easily be cut with normal tools. Chris has something like a DeWalt double-bevel compound miter saw and he made a little wooden jig; even with those tools, it was difficult to cut the roof pieces without slicing off our fingers. Anyway, we spent about 12 hours buying materials, cutting pieces, drilling out spools, filing down dowels to size, and gluing things together. The products are beautiful though.
Next year we'll give out our first 10-year award, and we need to figure out something special to do. Maybe cast it in plaster and paint it gold or something.
LARP
The other major project that Steph and I have to do ourselves is the LARP. Every year, we write an original LARP based on characters from the online game, but set 5-15 years into the future. It's entirely customized to the players. That is, they tell us a couple characters they'd like to play, and we pick one from each player and weave a story together that incorporates all of them. It's loosely based on How to Host a Murder Mystery party games, but with much more player agency. Oh, and it's for 70 people, not 8. Steph wrote the text of the entire LARP this year (about 60,000 words of background plot and character sheets) and I did some prop management, designed and wrote the combat rules, and created and assigned the one-shot "power cards" that give players special things their characters can do. I probably worked 100 hours on the game. Steph probably worked close to 600 hours. All for a 4-hour game.
Steph started writing in March. As she finished characters, I tried to read them and understand the plot. I didn't do a great job of this. I found it very difficult to keep all the plot threads in my head. Part of it is the way characters are structured. Each character's sheet is broken into four parts. The first page contains information that identifies the character (name, title, age, vocation, personality traits, a short background, a "statement" to be read aloud to the table at which the player sits, and a list of goals for the player to try to accomplish. The second page describes what the player knows about his character in Round 1 (of 3 rounds). There are two columns: "Reveal" and "Don't Volunteer." The player should work the "Reveal" facts into conversation. The player should try to avoid giving out the "Don't Volunteer" facts but cannot lie (but may avoid or mislead). The third page is given to the player in Round 2, and it's just more Reveal and Don't Volunteer facts, plus some new goals. The fourth page is given to the player in Round 3, and is structured like page 3. So, like the player, I learn the truth about what the character knows in three stages. This can be rather confusing when you're trying to get the big picture of the entire LARP. For instance, you might read in a character's Round 1 Reveal that he was in the noble woman's bedroom to deliver a wardrobe, but then you'll read in the Round 1 Don't Volunteer that he was really there to visit her to ask her some questions. And in Round 2, you might learn what the questions were, and in Round 3, you might learn that, really, you weren't there to ask questions at all; really, you were there to blackmail her and collect money. The information-hiding works really well in play but it's hella difficult to get the big picture of the LARP that way. And I needed that big picture to finish my card-writing tasks in a reasonable way.
Another of my jobs was to get all the props. Half the props were things like costume jewelry, plastic weapons, and stuffed animals. The other props were written documents. Steph helped me a lot with these and we also grabbed a bunch of FiranMUX players who would not be at FiranCon to help write them. Thank god. I spent an entire Sunday running around to every dollar store, Target, Goodwill, and Wal-Mart in the area to purchase appropriate props.
My biggest job was creating the power cards. These cards represented various things like the effects of potions and poisons, combat advantages, social skills like spying and deception, and immunity to other social cards. Each player got 10-20 of these, spread over three rounds. They also got 2 voting cards each round, so they could pick their favorite player. I created these cards on business card stock and printed them on a DeskJet printer (Steph's laser wouldn't pull the stock through -- it worked last year!). I basically had to take off work Wednesday through Friday before con just to get it all done.
My last responsibility was printing and assembling. I printed all the LARP sheets and written props and stuffed them into envelopes with four sheets of rules and cast lists and plot overview, plus fake money, power cards, and whatnot. There were three envelopes per player (one for each round). I also printed a complete copy of the entire game (all characters, all written props, all rules, and a lot of extra cards) and stuffed them into a box for reference, if necessary.
Miscellaneous
I helped out with printing and stapling the con program. The original plan was to do it at Kinko's but I decided to save money and do it myself. I also printed and punched out the con badges, since I had borrowed Lisa's DeskJet and she couldn't do it anymore.
I also had to pack and get myself to con. This year, because of Steph's fantastic planning and management (and her scary Control Journal she carried everywhere), we had a reasonably relaxing day before con.
Con Starts Thursday
FiranCon really starts on Thursday before the main event. A bunch of locals and the early arrivals meet at Legal Seafood for dinner, and some go out to a club after. Traditionally it's been limited to wizard-staff and a handful of locals but we opened it up to everyone this year. Steph and I got home around 1:30 AM and I finished up some printing and got to bed around 3 and talked and cuddled until way too late.
Friday
Woke up around 10 and packed, did some last minute stuff on the computer and packed the car full of five of those large plastic crates, two suitcases, several duffle bags, plus other random stuff. I think we managed not to forget anything important this year. We got to the BWI Ramada around 3:45 after getting lost a few times. Oh, we forgot directions; I guess that's important!
This year, our Friday "meet and greet" was in the two double-room con suites on the 7th floor instead of in the single, large ballroom. On the plus side, this meant everyone was close to their own rooms. On the down side, this meant people felt less obligation to just hang out and talk in a big room; people (myself included) tended to disappear and chat in smaller groups. Friday had a weird vibe, as small groups of people huddled together and there wasn't much meeting-and-greeting going on. Also strange: Despite us renting the two large con suites, people preferred sitting in the hallway to talk.
Like many other people, I spent some time with some close friends but I tried to bounce around a bit and see a lot of different people.
bluekitsune's plane arrived around 11:30 PM and I drove out to get her. We looked for folks to hang around with at the hotel, but people were either in small groups behind closed doors or had gone to bed. A few stragglers were partying in michaelmauzey's room so we drank a bit and some folks danced. Steph and I retired to bed around 3:30 AM.
Saturday
Saturday is the big con day. I woke up around 9:30 AM, showered and dressed, and tried to get a buckle re-riveted on the armor I wear as a costume for the Greek lunch. I don't know how the tradition of dressing up in costume started, but people have done it for years. I think the LARP used to be run in the same hall as the dinner when we held it at the VFW, and the tradition of dressing in costume for dinner stuck.
Dinner at the Acropolis was good, but I hardly ate. I rarely eat at that event -- I don't know why. I was hungry but had a small appetite, and I wasn't at all hung-over as I have been in previous years (I had a very small amount to drink Friday night). Steph's keynote speech was well received and I did the staff awards and took time to recognize how long everyone had played the game. I had everyone stand, then let them sit down in one-year phases. First the new players sat down, then those who had played for two years, three years, four, and so on. Eventually, only Steph, I, and Mike were standing -- we've been on the game for 9 years now. I recognized all the staffers present and told the audience the starting date as a staffer for each of them. We gave out five wooden trophies plus some gifts to staffers who had made con happen.
Other people ran fun little games and events at the Acropolis. There was the traditional "pentathlon" and "impersonate a Firan noble" contest. We did the Firan Academy Awards, too -- a new event where players on the game nominated other players for funny and serious categories like "Most Spectacular Death" or "Best Couple," then voted for the winner. And the kissing contest *ahem*. We handed out the Round 1 LARP packages and then took a group photo.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel. The couple hours between luncheon and the LARP are traditionally nap time. Steph and I cuddled but I didn't sleep long.
I can't remember when exactly this event was. Leah hosted her "Building a More Fuel-Efficient Firan" panel, focused on communicating with players about how to reduce staff workload and still make players happy. Or something like that. I missed the first half hour of the panel but jumped in and participated when I got there. It was a great panel and I think we got lots of good ideas from players.
At 5:30 PM, we headed downstairs to prepare the ballroom for the LARP. I moved tables, placed maps on each table, and helped Steph hide plastic snakes under tables and in lamp sconces. The secret title of the game was "Snakes on a Mother Fucking Ferry." The basics of the plot were that Clan Leader Nydiam had been assassinated at a recent party, but he'd suspected someone was trying to kill him, so he'd changed his Will to give his medallion (the clan symbol of office) to the person who caught his killer. He'd asked for his funeral rites to be at sea on a "party cruise" (on a pleasure ferry). A dozen or two people had a strong motive to kill him. One particularly crazy person had released poisonous spitting cobras on the boat, and they'd wake up as it got dark and come out and start attacking people. There were four characters who were deities temporarily inhabiting the bodies of mortals to chase down a magical artifact that they didn't want in the hands of the god-hating Lanesh cult. It was wonderful chaos.
We let players into the ballroom around 6:15, explained the rules, then started the game. Round 2 started around 7 PM, and Round 3 started around 8 PM or so. We stopped the game at 9:30 and did a wrap-up where we explained what was really happening and asked them to tell us what they did in the game, subplot by subplot. The players seemed to have a great time. By 10:30 or 11 PM, we were back upstairs in the con suites eating pizza and chatting.
Kate performed the in-character puppet show that she was asked to prepare for the LARP. Players had been too busy to stop and watch it during the game, so we asked her to do it in front of a couple dozen people crammed into the con suite. It was hilarious and Brent says he's going to turn it into a Flash animation some time.
I spent more time with various groups of folks, and ended up going to bed really late -- around 5 AM or something insane. Steph came to bed at 6:30 or so and woke me up and we chatted till around 7 AM.
Sunday
I woke around 11 AM and wandered to the con suite to find some snacks. Around noon, Brent and crew (Jon, Connie, Kate, Tori, Mark) put on their fantastic Firan Jeopardy, a spoof of the SNL Jeopardy skit using Firan characters. Many people nearly peed themselves laughing.
At 1 PM, I was supposed to run a playtest of Verge with five players. It didn't happen. I was 1) too tired, 2) interested in doing other things with more people, 3) not at all prepared to run it. Basically, the LARP had consumed all my time before con and I hadn't finished writing the rules. I could have tried to wing it, but there was no guarantee of fun for me or others and I wasn't willing to give up hanging out with other people for five hours for such a low pay-off. Instead, I went to the "War Season" panel and tried to help lead that somewhat chaotic discussion.
I hung out and cuddled with people for a bit. Sunday afternoons are traditionally fairly quiet naptime. At 8 PM, Steph and I hosted an "Ask the Chief Wizards" panel where we took on all-comers and answered their tough questions about our priorities for the game and its future. I want to do this every year! This was a lot of fun, even if people had hard questions with no good answers.
After that, there was carry-out Popeye's, cuddling, and chatting till the wee hours of the night.
Monday
Con officially ends on Monday afternoon. Hotel check-out was noon. I woke around 11 AM and started packing the car. I helped clean up the con suites. Around 1 or so, a group of about 25 of us headed over to the mall food court for lunch. Then we said goodbyes and headed home... but we took a dozen or so people with us. It's tradition to invite many of the stragglers back to our house while they wait for their flights home. We went home, napped on the futons and floor. Some folks stayed the night. At some point, we went to see X3, which wasn't that good, and had Chinese food.
Tuesday
By Tuesday afternoon, most everyone was gone. Lisa and SarahScott hung around and we all just vegged all day. Lisa left around 8 PM. The three of us ordered sushi and watched a movie. You can't quite FiranCon cold turkey... you have to ween yourself off it.
It's Wednesday and I went back to work today. Bleah. I'm jonesing for way-too-many people and Firan talk again but it's a whole year before I get another fix.
In case you don't know, my wife stephdray and I run an online text game called FiranMUX for a few hundred core players. Every year for the past 8 years, we've hosted a small convention for Firan players. The first couple years, it was held in a rented VFW hall. Lately, we've reserved an entire floor (or floor-and-a-half) of a hotel and rented out the hotel ball room for certain events and taken everyone for a Greek lunch at the Acropolis in Baltimore. We got almost 70 attendees this year. The con is both a celebration of players and staff of Firan and also a party to celebrate our wedding anniversary (May 31).
Planning
Here's the breakdown of FiranCon. It all starts for me and Steph around December. That's when we start planning for the con, which is traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend. We choose a coordinator, who delegates responsibilities to a half dozen people and manages a project plan. Those people handle hotel selection and contract negotiations with the hotel and restaurant. They handle name tags and emergency contact lists and door tags and program advertisement and program printing and so on.
Registration
This year, I coded a simple PHP web site for registration with some MUSH softcode for generating reports off the SQL back end. That was back in November or December or something and it took me a few hard weekends. The site worked pretty well and I'll enhance it next Fall with some additional features based on lessons learned this year.
Firan Award Temples
A while back, we started giving out trophies to wizard-staff who had served for more than five years. haranalee designed a wooden statuette shaped like Firan's six-pillared temple logo. For the last few years, she and csthomas1311 have made them for us. This year, because we had so many to make, we offered to do the work. Well, they ended up doing as much work as us because we didn't know what we were doing, but we cut enough pieces for a couple years' worth and now I know the process. The roof pieces have a 30-degree slant or somesuch and they cannot easily be cut with normal tools. Chris has something like a DeWalt double-bevel compound miter saw and he made a little wooden jig; even with those tools, it was difficult to cut the roof pieces without slicing off our fingers. Anyway, we spent about 12 hours buying materials, cutting pieces, drilling out spools, filing down dowels to size, and gluing things together. The products are beautiful though.
Next year we'll give out our first 10-year award, and we need to figure out something special to do. Maybe cast it in plaster and paint it gold or something.
LARP
The other major project that Steph and I have to do ourselves is the LARP. Every year, we write an original LARP based on characters from the online game, but set 5-15 years into the future. It's entirely customized to the players. That is, they tell us a couple characters they'd like to play, and we pick one from each player and weave a story together that incorporates all of them. It's loosely based on How to Host a Murder Mystery party games, but with much more player agency. Oh, and it's for 70 people, not 8. Steph wrote the text of the entire LARP this year (about 60,000 words of background plot and character sheets) and I did some prop management, designed and wrote the combat rules, and created and assigned the one-shot "power cards" that give players special things their characters can do. I probably worked 100 hours on the game. Steph probably worked close to 600 hours. All for a 4-hour game.
Steph started writing in March. As she finished characters, I tried to read them and understand the plot. I didn't do a great job of this. I found it very difficult to keep all the plot threads in my head. Part of it is the way characters are structured. Each character's sheet is broken into four parts. The first page contains information that identifies the character (name, title, age, vocation, personality traits, a short background, a "statement" to be read aloud to the table at which the player sits, and a list of goals for the player to try to accomplish. The second page describes what the player knows about his character in Round 1 (of 3 rounds). There are two columns: "Reveal" and "Don't Volunteer." The player should work the "Reveal" facts into conversation. The player should try to avoid giving out the "Don't Volunteer" facts but cannot lie (but may avoid or mislead). The third page is given to the player in Round 2, and it's just more Reveal and Don't Volunteer facts, plus some new goals. The fourth page is given to the player in Round 3, and is structured like page 3. So, like the player, I learn the truth about what the character knows in three stages. This can be rather confusing when you're trying to get the big picture of the entire LARP. For instance, you might read in a character's Round 1 Reveal that he was in the noble woman's bedroom to deliver a wardrobe, but then you'll read in the Round 1 Don't Volunteer that he was really there to visit her to ask her some questions. And in Round 2, you might learn what the questions were, and in Round 3, you might learn that, really, you weren't there to ask questions at all; really, you were there to blackmail her and collect money. The information-hiding works really well in play but it's hella difficult to get the big picture of the LARP that way. And I needed that big picture to finish my card-writing tasks in a reasonable way.
Another of my jobs was to get all the props. Half the props were things like costume jewelry, plastic weapons, and stuffed animals. The other props were written documents. Steph helped me a lot with these and we also grabbed a bunch of FiranMUX players who would not be at FiranCon to help write them. Thank god. I spent an entire Sunday running around to every dollar store, Target, Goodwill, and Wal-Mart in the area to purchase appropriate props.
My biggest job was creating the power cards. These cards represented various things like the effects of potions and poisons, combat advantages, social skills like spying and deception, and immunity to other social cards. Each player got 10-20 of these, spread over three rounds. They also got 2 voting cards each round, so they could pick their favorite player. I created these cards on business card stock and printed them on a DeskJet printer (Steph's laser wouldn't pull the stock through -- it worked last year!). I basically had to take off work Wednesday through Friday before con just to get it all done.
My last responsibility was printing and assembling. I printed all the LARP sheets and written props and stuffed them into envelopes with four sheets of rules and cast lists and plot overview, plus fake money, power cards, and whatnot. There were three envelopes per player (one for each round). I also printed a complete copy of the entire game (all characters, all written props, all rules, and a lot of extra cards) and stuffed them into a box for reference, if necessary.
Miscellaneous
I helped out with printing and stapling the con program. The original plan was to do it at Kinko's but I decided to save money and do it myself. I also printed and punched out the con badges, since I had borrowed Lisa's DeskJet and she couldn't do it anymore.
I also had to pack and get myself to con. This year, because of Steph's fantastic planning and management (and her scary Control Journal she carried everywhere), we had a reasonably relaxing day before con.
Con Starts Thursday
FiranCon really starts on Thursday before the main event. A bunch of locals and the early arrivals meet at Legal Seafood for dinner, and some go out to a club after. Traditionally it's been limited to wizard-staff and a handful of locals but we opened it up to everyone this year. Steph and I got home around 1:30 AM and I finished up some printing and got to bed around 3 and talked and cuddled until way too late.
Friday
Woke up around 10 and packed, did some last minute stuff on the computer and packed the car full of five of those large plastic crates, two suitcases, several duffle bags, plus other random stuff. I think we managed not to forget anything important this year. We got to the BWI Ramada around 3:45 after getting lost a few times. Oh, we forgot directions; I guess that's important!
This year, our Friday "meet and greet" was in the two double-room con suites on the 7th floor instead of in the single, large ballroom. On the plus side, this meant everyone was close to their own rooms. On the down side, this meant people felt less obligation to just hang out and talk in a big room; people (myself included) tended to disappear and chat in smaller groups. Friday had a weird vibe, as small groups of people huddled together and there wasn't much meeting-and-greeting going on. Also strange: Despite us renting the two large con suites, people preferred sitting in the hallway to talk.
Like many other people, I spent some time with some close friends but I tried to bounce around a bit and see a lot of different people.
bluekitsune's plane arrived around 11:30 PM and I drove out to get her. We looked for folks to hang around with at the hotel, but people were either in small groups behind closed doors or had gone to bed. A few stragglers were partying in michaelmauzey's room so we drank a bit and some folks danced. Steph and I retired to bed around 3:30 AM.
Saturday
Saturday is the big con day. I woke up around 9:30 AM, showered and dressed, and tried to get a buckle re-riveted on the armor I wear as a costume for the Greek lunch. I don't know how the tradition of dressing up in costume started, but people have done it for years. I think the LARP used to be run in the same hall as the dinner when we held it at the VFW, and the tradition of dressing in costume for dinner stuck.
Dinner at the Acropolis was good, but I hardly ate. I rarely eat at that event -- I don't know why. I was hungry but had a small appetite, and I wasn't at all hung-over as I have been in previous years (I had a very small amount to drink Friday night). Steph's keynote speech was well received and I did the staff awards and took time to recognize how long everyone had played the game. I had everyone stand, then let them sit down in one-year phases. First the new players sat down, then those who had played for two years, three years, four, and so on. Eventually, only Steph, I, and Mike were standing -- we've been on the game for 9 years now. I recognized all the staffers present and told the audience the starting date as a staffer for each of them. We gave out five wooden trophies plus some gifts to staffers who had made con happen.
Other people ran fun little games and events at the Acropolis. There was the traditional "pentathlon" and "impersonate a Firan noble" contest. We did the Firan Academy Awards, too -- a new event where players on the game nominated other players for funny and serious categories like "Most Spectacular Death" or "Best Couple," then voted for the winner. And the kissing contest *ahem*. We handed out the Round 1 LARP packages and then took a group photo.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel. The couple hours between luncheon and the LARP are traditionally nap time. Steph and I cuddled but I didn't sleep long.
I can't remember when exactly this event was. Leah hosted her "Building a More Fuel-Efficient Firan" panel, focused on communicating with players about how to reduce staff workload and still make players happy. Or something like that. I missed the first half hour of the panel but jumped in and participated when I got there. It was a great panel and I think we got lots of good ideas from players.
At 5:30 PM, we headed downstairs to prepare the ballroom for the LARP. I moved tables, placed maps on each table, and helped Steph hide plastic snakes under tables and in lamp sconces. The secret title of the game was "Snakes on a Mother Fucking Ferry." The basics of the plot were that Clan Leader Nydiam had been assassinated at a recent party, but he'd suspected someone was trying to kill him, so he'd changed his Will to give his medallion (the clan symbol of office) to the person who caught his killer. He'd asked for his funeral rites to be at sea on a "party cruise" (on a pleasure ferry). A dozen or two people had a strong motive to kill him. One particularly crazy person had released poisonous spitting cobras on the boat, and they'd wake up as it got dark and come out and start attacking people. There were four characters who were deities temporarily inhabiting the bodies of mortals to chase down a magical artifact that they didn't want in the hands of the god-hating Lanesh cult. It was wonderful chaos.
We let players into the ballroom around 6:15, explained the rules, then started the game. Round 2 started around 7 PM, and Round 3 started around 8 PM or so. We stopped the game at 9:30 and did a wrap-up where we explained what was really happening and asked them to tell us what they did in the game, subplot by subplot. The players seemed to have a great time. By 10:30 or 11 PM, we were back upstairs in the con suites eating pizza and chatting.
Kate performed the in-character puppet show that she was asked to prepare for the LARP. Players had been too busy to stop and watch it during the game, so we asked her to do it in front of a couple dozen people crammed into the con suite. It was hilarious and Brent says he's going to turn it into a Flash animation some time.
I spent more time with various groups of folks, and ended up going to bed really late -- around 5 AM or something insane. Steph came to bed at 6:30 or so and woke me up and we chatted till around 7 AM.
Sunday
I woke around 11 AM and wandered to the con suite to find some snacks. Around noon, Brent and crew (Jon, Connie, Kate, Tori, Mark) put on their fantastic Firan Jeopardy, a spoof of the SNL Jeopardy skit using Firan characters. Many people nearly peed themselves laughing.
At 1 PM, I was supposed to run a playtest of Verge with five players. It didn't happen. I was 1) too tired, 2) interested in doing other things with more people, 3) not at all prepared to run it. Basically, the LARP had consumed all my time before con and I hadn't finished writing the rules. I could have tried to wing it, but there was no guarantee of fun for me or others and I wasn't willing to give up hanging out with other people for five hours for such a low pay-off. Instead, I went to the "War Season" panel and tried to help lead that somewhat chaotic discussion.
I hung out and cuddled with people for a bit. Sunday afternoons are traditionally fairly quiet naptime. At 8 PM, Steph and I hosted an "Ask the Chief Wizards" panel where we took on all-comers and answered their tough questions about our priorities for the game and its future. I want to do this every year! This was a lot of fun, even if people had hard questions with no good answers.
After that, there was carry-out Popeye's, cuddling, and chatting till the wee hours of the night.
Monday
Con officially ends on Monday afternoon. Hotel check-out was noon. I woke around 11 AM and started packing the car. I helped clean up the con suites. Around 1 or so, a group of about 25 of us headed over to the mall food court for lunch. Then we said goodbyes and headed home... but we took a dozen or so people with us. It's tradition to invite many of the stragglers back to our house while they wait for their flights home. We went home, napped on the futons and floor. Some folks stayed the night. At some point, we went to see X3, which wasn't that good, and had Chinese food.
Tuesday
By Tuesday afternoon, most everyone was gone. Lisa and SarahScott hung around and we all just vegged all day. Lisa left around 8 PM. The three of us ordered sushi and watched a movie. You can't quite FiranCon cold turkey... you have to ween yourself off it.
It's Wednesday and I went back to work today. Bleah. I'm jonesing for way-too-many people and Firan talk again but it's a whole year before I get another fix.