Intercon H - Heaven and Hell (Part 2: The rest of the stuff)
So, we last left our heroes stumbling into bed sometime around four Sunday morning...
...and then the alarm woke us up sometime approaching nine. Okay, so we tried to get at least five hours of sleep but that wasn't going to work.
I got into the shower a little before nine and noticed it was pretty tepid. No surprise, I thought, there's a lot of people up and going this early for morning events. I fumbled around a bit and slowly encouraged citabria to wake up because we wanted to get to the Sunday breakfast. (I promised her bacon--unfortunately, the hotel was serving sausages instead.)
Unfortunately, the water was even colder when she finally rolled out of bed. (There are many things that can be tolerated as long as there is hot water. A full weekend so far of working one's ass off should not be rewarded with a cold shower.) Nothing to be done about it because we wanted to eat so we headed down to the breakfast.
Breakfast was a little skimpier than the last few years. Not sure why that was but the food was hot and didn't suck too much. We had breakfast with a bunch of friends and traded anecdotes but all I remember is that I hadn't had enough coffee. :-D
After breakfast, we went upstairs. I got a few minutes with sophistbastard to chat about LARPA stuff and with Dr. Nik about TotalCon stuff. There were several other people I hadn't had to chat with that I caught then, too.
Around noon, things started getting busier as people came out of the Sunday morning LARPs and I helped out in Con Suite again for a while. I also had to get the NEGC award out of my room for the presentation at closing and before we knew it...
...it was time for Closing Ceremonies. I didn't notice it at first but it was a little more sparsely attended than in years past and afterward found lots of knots of people socializing. That's cool, but it suggests that Closing is not so good for some reason. (Four years ago we got rid of Opening Ceremonies--the last one had a grand total of four people attending.)
bleemoo thanked everyone, introduced natbudin, and was then cut down by the gang from Mythical Journeys in the fine tradition. (And I remain the ConChair Unslain! Bwah-hah-hah!)
After that, I was up first to re-present zrealm, of Foam Brain Productions, with the New England Gamers Choice award that I presented at Total Confusion last weekend and took the opportunity to talk about the award a bit and the goals of it.
Later, I was able to plug OGC Con in Nashua for a bit. (Unfortunately, I didn't have any fliers or anything because of a miscommunication.) There were a lot of plugs this year--which is cool because there's that much LARP (and related things) going on.
doompuppy seemed to have the raffle locked up buying an enormous number of tickets. I bought a bunch on Friday but forgot to leave them in the bucket. I was hoping to get some of the prizes from Alleged Entertainment. Oh, well. And then Closing ended...
...and we broke up and said more goodbyes and started cleaning up the con. After a bit, I got the cargo van pulled up to the main doors and was able to not work too hard on the cleanup as there were some great people (whose names I did not get) helping out citabria in the prep room.
By time we were finished, like, fiveish, nearly everyone was gone. (bleemoo was there, of course, but he was heading home to be with his SOs.) I had gotten the van closed up and parked but was beat and hungry, and citabria was doubly so. Fortunately, doubleplus and anthro_geek came along and had us join vortexofchaos and senormysterioso for dinner at Bertucci's. That was a great idea and spent a lot of time reminiscing and talkinga about LARPing and stuff and then we headed back to the hotel.
Once there, citabria filled up the tub. (We thought that the water problems were over.) She ended up taking a well-deserved bath and fell asleep in it. I was drifting in and out catching up on some email. Eventually we both fell asleep around ten for a deep sleep...
We got up Monday and found out that there wasn't any hot water again. We called the front desk and they sent someone up who came back later and sheepishly explained that one of the boilers were out. (Maybe. I'm about 35% cynical that the hotel just actually turned down the heat for the weekend.) Whatever. Did some packing but then got down to breakfast to find the usual crowd of people staying over having breakfast.
Lots more chatting and anecdotes and goodbyes and then packing our stuff from the hotel room into the van and we drove off. (Again, apparently, one of the last to leave. Not sure if that's a good habit.)
And, since we had a van at our disposal, we did a little shopping for the condo. citabria wanted to get a table for her office and we needed some bulky things for the bathroom. We made good time back and got the van unpacked at home and turned in the van.
Then, we went to a restaurant for dinner so that citabria could be served for a change. :-D Then we came back and fed bunnies and sat on the couch and veg'd out for the rest of the night.
Intercon is one of my favorite weekends even though it's a lot of work. I've got a bunch of notes of things to remember for next time. (There's always something. Actually, a few things we forgot from last time.) But the LARPing and the people make it worth it.
I also took random pictures of things during Intercon and I'll have them posted up tomorrow.
...and then the alarm woke us up sometime approaching nine. Okay, so we tried to get at least five hours of sleep but that wasn't going to work.
I got into the shower a little before nine and noticed it was pretty tepid. No surprise, I thought, there's a lot of people up and going this early for morning events. I fumbled around a bit and slowly encouraged citabria to wake up because we wanted to get to the Sunday breakfast. (I promised her bacon--unfortunately, the hotel was serving sausages instead.)
Unfortunately, the water was even colder when she finally rolled out of bed. (There are many things that can be tolerated as long as there is hot water. A full weekend so far of working one's ass off should not be rewarded with a cold shower.) Nothing to be done about it because we wanted to eat so we headed down to the breakfast.
Breakfast was a little skimpier than the last few years. Not sure why that was but the food was hot and didn't suck too much. We had breakfast with a bunch of friends and traded anecdotes but all I remember is that I hadn't had enough coffee. :-D
After breakfast, we went upstairs. I got a few minutes with sophistbastard to chat about LARPA stuff and with Dr. Nik about TotalCon stuff. There were several other people I hadn't had to chat with that I caught then, too.
Around noon, things started getting busier as people came out of the Sunday morning LARPs and I helped out in Con Suite again for a while. I also had to get the NEGC award out of my room for the presentation at closing and before we knew it...
...it was time for Closing Ceremonies. I didn't notice it at first but it was a little more sparsely attended than in years past and afterward found lots of knots of people socializing. That's cool, but it suggests that Closing is not so good for some reason. (Four years ago we got rid of Opening Ceremonies--the last one had a grand total of four people attending.)
bleemoo thanked everyone, introduced natbudin, and was then cut down by the gang from Mythical Journeys in the fine tradition. (And I remain the ConChair Unslain! Bwah-hah-hah!)
After that, I was up first to re-present zrealm, of Foam Brain Productions, with the New England Gamers Choice award that I presented at Total Confusion last weekend and took the opportunity to talk about the award a bit and the goals of it.
Later, I was able to plug OGC Con in Nashua for a bit. (Unfortunately, I didn't have any fliers or anything because of a miscommunication.) There were a lot of plugs this year--which is cool because there's that much LARP (and related things) going on.
doompuppy seemed to have the raffle locked up buying an enormous number of tickets. I bought a bunch on Friday but forgot to leave them in the bucket. I was hoping to get some of the prizes from Alleged Entertainment. Oh, well. And then Closing ended...
...and we broke up and said more goodbyes and started cleaning up the con. After a bit, I got the cargo van pulled up to the main doors and was able to not work too hard on the cleanup as there were some great people (whose names I did not get) helping out citabria in the prep room.
By time we were finished, like, fiveish, nearly everyone was gone. (bleemoo was there, of course, but he was heading home to be with his SOs.) I had gotten the van closed up and parked but was beat and hungry, and citabria was doubly so. Fortunately, doubleplus and anthro_geek came along and had us join vortexofchaos and senormysterioso for dinner at Bertucci's. That was a great idea and spent a lot of time reminiscing and talkinga about LARPing and stuff and then we headed back to the hotel.
Once there, citabria filled up the tub. (We thought that the water problems were over.) She ended up taking a well-deserved bath and fell asleep in it. I was drifting in and out catching up on some email. Eventually we both fell asleep around ten for a deep sleep...
We got up Monday and found out that there wasn't any hot water again. We called the front desk and they sent someone up who came back later and sheepishly explained that one of the boilers were out. (Maybe. I'm about 35% cynical that the hotel just actually turned down the heat for the weekend.) Whatever. Did some packing but then got down to breakfast to find the usual crowd of people staying over having breakfast.
Lots more chatting and anecdotes and goodbyes and then packing our stuff from the hotel room into the van and we drove off. (Again, apparently, one of the last to leave. Not sure if that's a good habit.)
And, since we had a van at our disposal, we did a little shopping for the condo. citabria wanted to get a table for her office and we needed some bulky things for the bathroom. We made good time back and got the van unpacked at home and turned in the van.
Then, we went to a restaurant for dinner so that citabria could be served for a change. :-D Then we came back and fed bunnies and sat on the couch and veg'd out for the rest of the night.
Intercon is one of my favorite weekends even though it's a lot of work. I've got a bunch of notes of things to remember for next time. (There's always something. Actually, a few things we forgot from last time.) But the LARPing and the people make it worth it.
I also took random pictures of things during Intercon and I'll have them posted up tomorrow.