WinchestMidwest 6 -- Day 1
This is the first year the con hasn't been held a short drive from my apartment, due to the Ryder Cup people taking up all available hotel space in the Greater Chicagoland area. We're currently in Madison, Wisconsin. This is actually okay with me because I live just a couple of miles down the street from the Ryder Cup venue and my neighborhood has been a three-ring circus all week because of it. Too bad traffic on I-90 sucked so hard. There was a solid 62 mile segment that was under construction, followed shortly by a lane closure because someone had spilled something fluorescent yellow all over the road. The two hour drive took me four and a half hours. Hopefully, it won't be as bad headed home on Sunday.
We had enough new people this year that the con opened with people bingo. You know, that getting-to-know-you game where you find people to sign off on squares that describe them until you have signatures in a solid line across your card? I hate people bingo, but here it was kind of easy. It's a small con and many of us know each other from previous cons, so I was able to fill in five squares and get my bingo when there were only six people in the room.
We're also a small enough con that we started late waiting for some attendees to show up. I bailed on the first panel just after it started to watch Grimm, only to discover that NBC, and only NBC out of all the major networks, was running a debate between Wisconsin political candidates. What's wrong with these people? Don't they know it's the first new episode of Grimm in three weeks? ;-)
On the plus side, that means I didn't miss much of the first panel, which was on the cracktastic history of Supernatural fandom. That was followed by us turning out the lights and telling tales of supernatural things that have actually happened to us. My story is kind of a buzzkill because it has a rational explanation, but it's interesting in that I was once actually present at the birth of a ghost story.
In my twenties, I spent three years working the midnight shift as a public safety officer at a hospital. You wouldn't think it, but hospital nurses on the midnight shift are some of the most superstitious people on the planet. One night when I reported for my shift, I only got about two steps in the door before a nurse grabbed me and asked if I'd heard about the ghost. She told me that the ghost of a lady in red had been seen floating up and down the back hall on the ground floor the previous night and that Public Safety had looked everywhere and couldn't find it. My first thought was 'that's funny--I was on last night.' It's a small hospital with only two public safety officers on duty at any one time, so if anything happens, we both respond to back each other up. That's when I realized what had happened.
There was indeed a lady in red. She was an elderly woman in a red pantsuit who had come in with her husband, who was having chest pains. The husband was admitted to the ICU, and while she was waiting to visit him the woman decided to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine on the ground floor. Between her unfamiliarity with the hospital, her worry for her husband, and it being about 2:30 in the morning, she forgot she'd come down one floor and was walking up and down the hallway on the ground floor directly under the hallway where the ICU actually was on the first floor. That same ground floor hallway was also where our switchboard room was. The switchboard operator, who was not used to seeing people down on the ground floor at night, saw the woman and panicked. The operator barricaded herself in the switchboard room and called Public Safety. My partner and I responded, but we didn't find the woman because the woman had since run into the woman who did our computer tape back-ups at night, who directed her back to the ICU waiting room. My partner and I never saw her because she was going up the elevator as we were coming down the stairs. And somehow in the space of 24 hours, one lost little old lady looking for the ICU waiting room turned into the ghost of the lady in red. Go fig.
After the true tales of the supernatural (or not necessarily supernatural in my case), we wrapped up the evening with all seven Supernatural blooper reels, plus a video of Jensen and Steve Carlson performing "Angeles," and a fan-made vid. Supernatural has the best blooper reels of any show out there. Even though I've seen them all before, I still laughed until my face hurt.
And now I need to got to bed so I can get up in time for the first panel in the morning.
We had enough new people this year that the con opened with people bingo. You know, that getting-to-know-you game where you find people to sign off on squares that describe them until you have signatures in a solid line across your card? I hate people bingo, but here it was kind of easy. It's a small con and many of us know each other from previous cons, so I was able to fill in five squares and get my bingo when there were only six people in the room.
We're also a small enough con that we started late waiting for some attendees to show up. I bailed on the first panel just after it started to watch Grimm, only to discover that NBC, and only NBC out of all the major networks, was running a debate between Wisconsin political candidates. What's wrong with these people? Don't they know it's the first new episode of Grimm in three weeks? ;-)
On the plus side, that means I didn't miss much of the first panel, which was on the cracktastic history of Supernatural fandom. That was followed by us turning out the lights and telling tales of supernatural things that have actually happened to us. My story is kind of a buzzkill because it has a rational explanation, but it's interesting in that I was once actually present at the birth of a ghost story.
In my twenties, I spent three years working the midnight shift as a public safety officer at a hospital. You wouldn't think it, but hospital nurses on the midnight shift are some of the most superstitious people on the planet. One night when I reported for my shift, I only got about two steps in the door before a nurse grabbed me and asked if I'd heard about the ghost. She told me that the ghost of a lady in red had been seen floating up and down the back hall on the ground floor the previous night and that Public Safety had looked everywhere and couldn't find it. My first thought was 'that's funny--I was on last night.' It's a small hospital with only two public safety officers on duty at any one time, so if anything happens, we both respond to back each other up. That's when I realized what had happened.
There was indeed a lady in red. She was an elderly woman in a red pantsuit who had come in with her husband, who was having chest pains. The husband was admitted to the ICU, and while she was waiting to visit him the woman decided to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine on the ground floor. Between her unfamiliarity with the hospital, her worry for her husband, and it being about 2:30 in the morning, she forgot she'd come down one floor and was walking up and down the hallway on the ground floor directly under the hallway where the ICU actually was on the first floor. That same ground floor hallway was also where our switchboard room was. The switchboard operator, who was not used to seeing people down on the ground floor at night, saw the woman and panicked. The operator barricaded herself in the switchboard room and called Public Safety. My partner and I responded, but we didn't find the woman because the woman had since run into the woman who did our computer tape back-ups at night, who directed her back to the ICU waiting room. My partner and I never saw her because she was going up the elevator as we were coming down the stairs. And somehow in the space of 24 hours, one lost little old lady looking for the ICU waiting room turned into the ghost of the lady in red. Go fig.
After the true tales of the supernatural (or not necessarily supernatural in my case), we wrapped up the evening with all seven Supernatural blooper reels, plus a video of Jensen and Steve Carlson performing "Angeles," and a fan-made vid. Supernatural has the best blooper reels of any show out there. Even though I've seen them all before, I still laughed until my face hurt.
And now I need to got to bed so I can get up in time for the first panel in the morning.