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Tried to fly into Des Moines on Wednesday. United stranded me in Chicago overnight; got a very early flight into Des Moines on Thursday morning. Des Moines has a cute little airport
ann_totusek wasn't feeling great, so we spent part of Thursday hanging out with her and watching her bake cookies for the convention. I brought her some blue cheese that she'd liked from Wegman's when she visited; I kept it on ice as best I could. Fortunately blue cheese is, by definition, already moldy, so it doesn't really go bad quickly. When her son ("M2") came home from school, we talked for a bit. He speaks softly and I maybe don't hear that clearly in his voice range, or maybe I just couldn't assimilate the words correctly, but I heard "Do you want to see again?" when it seems he said, "Do you want to see my father's gun?" Well, I said "Okay." He brought it out and was showing it to me, reciting the rules he'd been taught. I kind of didn't react as I had no cultural context for this. Ann was fairly surprised when she came back into the room. Apparently one of the rules M2 had been given was "never handle a gun without adult being present." This rule got changed afterwards to "never handle a gun without Mommy or Daddy being present. Afterwards, we had an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Never got to Ames, as I'd been hoping.
The convention itself was a bit of a blur for me. marahsk , Ann, and I got there in the early afternoon. I helped with registration, then I sat at the volunteers table for about an hour. Marah helped set up the art show, and I ran a bunch of very minor errands which mostly served to remove what would have been distractions for Ann, to allow her to do a lot of more substantive things.
The TICC show on Friday evening, "Studio 6 on the Demicon Strip", was hilarious and really well done. Writing, music, performance, and staging came together better than quite a lot of things I've seen. Given that this was both contemporary parody, play-within-the-play, and live performance, I thought it was amazing. Have to get this crew to any Worldcon that comes near the Midwest.
Saturday was another collection of small tasks. I helped the blood drive get set up, then I helped with the volunteer lounge; in the afternoon I actually gave blood. The evening is a slight blur. I got to see
weirdchic862 in passing several times. I helped with the DMSFS table for a couple hours; they use a Filemaker application for cash sales which is intuitive in most respects.
We went to the Raccoon River brew pub adjacent to the hotel a couple of times. It's very good. I had a break on Sunday and tried to go, but it was closed; I tried walking around the block, which was much less intuitive than I'd initially hoped. I was out of sorts on the Sunday, but helped Ann and Marah close down the volunteer room. Tadao had brought some stuff for volunteers; I was coveting the Pets.com dog puppet so Ann gave me that. She also gave me a "Build Your Own Stonehenge" kit that I have not yet dared to open.
Monday went better. We found a nice Italian place (with the generically trendy name Centro), then Ann dropped us off at the airport. We talked in the bar there for a while until we had to get our planes (Marah's was first). Fortunately the airport was so small that it took no time to get anywhere. Including the security check it was maybe five minutes from the bar to the gate. (When I got to the security line, there were like four people ahead of me.) Tadao was on the same flight to Chicago, though obviously we went in separate directions from there. My flight from Chicago to Washington was delayed an hour and a half, no big deal.
ann_totusek wasn't feeling great, so we spent part of Thursday hanging out with her and watching her bake cookies for the convention. I brought her some blue cheese that she'd liked from Wegman's when she visited; I kept it on ice as best I could. Fortunately blue cheese is, by definition, already moldy, so it doesn't really go bad quickly. When her son ("M2") came home from school, we talked for a bit. He speaks softly and I maybe don't hear that clearly in his voice range, or maybe I just couldn't assimilate the words correctly, but I heard "Do you want to see again?" when it seems he said, "Do you want to see my father's gun?" Well, I said "Okay." He brought it out and was showing it to me, reciting the rules he'd been taught. I kind of didn't react as I had no cultural context for this. Ann was fairly surprised when she came back into the room. Apparently one of the rules M2 had been given was "never handle a gun without adult being present." This rule got changed afterwards to "never handle a gun without Mommy or Daddy being present. Afterwards, we had an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Never got to Ames, as I'd been hoping.
The convention itself was a bit of a blur for me. marahsk , Ann, and I got there in the early afternoon. I helped with registration, then I sat at the volunteers table for about an hour. Marah helped set up the art show, and I ran a bunch of very minor errands which mostly served to remove what would have been distractions for Ann, to allow her to do a lot of more substantive things.
The TICC show on Friday evening, "Studio 6 on the Demicon Strip", was hilarious and really well done. Writing, music, performance, and staging came together better than quite a lot of things I've seen. Given that this was both contemporary parody, play-within-the-play, and live performance, I thought it was amazing. Have to get this crew to any Worldcon that comes near the Midwest.
Saturday was another collection of small tasks. I helped the blood drive get set up, then I helped with the volunteer lounge; in the afternoon I actually gave blood. The evening is a slight blur. I got to see
weirdchic862 in passing several times. I helped with the DMSFS table for a couple hours; they use a Filemaker application for cash sales which is intuitive in most respects.
We went to the Raccoon River brew pub adjacent to the hotel a couple of times. It's very good. I had a break on Sunday and tried to go, but it was closed; I tried walking around the block, which was much less intuitive than I'd initially hoped. I was out of sorts on the Sunday, but helped Ann and Marah close down the volunteer room. Tadao had brought some stuff for volunteers; I was coveting the Pets.com dog puppet so Ann gave me that. She also gave me a "Build Your Own Stonehenge" kit that I have not yet dared to open.
Monday went better. We found a nice Italian place (with the generically trendy name Centro), then Ann dropped us off at the airport. We talked in the bar there for a while until we had to get our planes (Marah's was first). Fortunately the airport was so small that it took no time to get anywhere. Including the security check it was maybe five minutes from the bar to the gate. (When I got to the security line, there were like four people ahead of me.) Tadao was on the same flight to Chicago, though obviously we went in separate directions from there. My flight from Chicago to Washington was delayed an hour and a half, no big deal.