Saturday had a very good lineup of concerts, and a showing of some of Brian Richardson's DragonConTV videos. After the batch of 2x10 (two songs/ten minutes), there was a break for people to get ready for the banquet. As usual, the banquet entertainment was excellent; I only joined in one dance myself, but there was generally as large a crowd as the portable floor (that had to be moved back into place a couple times as it drifted too close to the control board) could accomodate.

I don't recall the exact amount raised by the Interfilk auction (but it was fairly substantial); the item that particularly impressed me was the calligraphic rendering of "Rich Fantasy Lives" (autographed by the authors, filkertom  and partiallyclips ) went for (IIRC) $300.

The Saturday night open filk went fairly strong until about 4 AM, with occasional pauses into chatting mode toward the end. A guitar and bag was left in the room; the folks in the other room weren't completely sure but thought it belonged to filkerdave; starmalachite and I took it to our room and she left messages with every known contact route for him.

I got up around 11:00 Sunday, and just after I got dressed filkerdave called and confirmed that it was his guitar and bag. He dropped by to pick it up; then I finished getting myself together and headed down to programming (after going back to the room to get my checkbook to prereg for next year, and then back again because I'd forgotten something else -- I forget what).

People hung around chatting for a while between closing ceremonies and dinnertime. During a conversation in the hall, a bit of techno-neepery broke out, and partiallyclips   let us take a look at his Wing (one of the possible phone/PDA combination devices we've been considering now that our current T-Mobile phone contract is up). The features look good; on the other hand, he mentioned that the batteries tend to run out fast; on the gripping hand, I doubt that I'd be using it nearly as intensively as Rob does (e.g. "...adding a couple more CD sales to the FuMP records... go over the next section of Jillian's backstory... etcetcetc...").

We joined a dinner party to a local barbeque place (I'll just refer you to thatcrazycajun  's description, since he sums it up so well). Afterwards, we settled down for the dead dog, which ran well past midnight before the last remnants (including me and starmalachite ) broke up.

Monday morning, starmalachite   and I checked out and hung around the lobby with a few of the folks who were still around (including the Bohnhoffs and Peter Beagle) until we caught the airport shuttle and left the hotel to the upcoming convention of card shuffling experts. There was still plenty of time before Peter Beagle (and his companion whose name I'm blanking on) and the two of us had to catch our respective flights, so we had lunch at the Chinese place in the Councourse A food court. Afterwards, we made the long march down to our gate and caught our flight and got home without incident (except that  starmalachite  's filk-gear bag lost a wheel -- not a major loss, as it was starting to fall apart anyway).

starmalachite   went to Monday night dance group; I stayed home partially to soothe the cats' wounded psyches and partly because I was starting to crash out (I ended up going to bed before she got back).

 

starmalachite and I caught our flight (the timing was a bit close for comfort, but we didn't run into any snags and got to the gate just as boarding was beginning). I was a bit worried that we'd have to wait for our luggage, but it showed up normally.

We got to the hotel and met some of the other early arrivals. Then, we went back to the room for a while; starmalachite took a nap while I worked up a LOLpic from an idea I'd gotten on the flight. (The image is from the latest page of the webcomic Erfworld, and the humor of the pic, such as it is, probably doesn't work all that well if you aren't familiar with that context.). I then returned to the function space and picked up my badge, There was still a bit of time before opening ceremonies, so I played a game of Thurn and Taxis with mnemex and mrgoodwraith.

I met starmalachite at opening ceremonies. Con attendance this year looks pretty heavy, judging from the crowd there (and the fact that some people I knew were coming hadn't arrived yet). After the ceremony was the traditional GAFilk quiz show and instafilk writing entertainment, followed by filkertom's concert (which was excellent even by the standard I expect from him).

The con then broke into open filk mode over several rooms. I wandered a while, but was starting to fade out and crashed around 1 AM.

After finishing up our packing while being pestered for attention from three cats who had figured out that The Humans Are Leaving, starmalachite and I headed for the Metro station and from there to National Airport to catch the morning flight to Columbus. Fortunately, the trip went off without any interesting incidents; I mostly zoned out until we landed.

While I was watching out for the shuttle, someone else noticed starmalachite  with the luggage and asked if she was headed to the same hotel. She turned out to be a relative newcomer; we (mostly starmalachite , really) chatted about some of the people she'd heard of and described a few other items of interest and general Filk 101 pointers.

We checked in, took a brief swim in the hotel pool, and then took a nap until dinnertime. After that, the con proper got underway. As usual, the Pegasus concert went very well (I thought the brief intermission was a good idea for letting people who were still pondering their votes recharge their mental batteries). Open filk Friday went on until about 3 AM (as far as I recall); I was still awake enough to hang out and chat with partiallyclips and maverick_weirdo until the breakfast buffet opened at 6:00, (IIRC, maverick_weirdo turned in before breakfast, but jannyblue joined us at the restaurant.)

I spent about as much time wandering around as I did at the various concerts Saturday afternoon. I enjoyed the Pegasus banquet, with hearty congratulations to the winners. The Interfilk auction had one T-shirt I was briefly tempted to bid on, but before I decided to jump in the bids had gone a bit above my temptation level. As usual, open filk ran later Saturday night, with about a dozen survivors heading for the breakfast buffet when it finally wound down. (AFAIK, I was the only one who kept awake through breakfast both days. That surprised me, actually; the last few cons I've been at I conked out by 3:00 or so).

Sunday had a few events leading up to the traditional jam session, followed by a mass exodus to BD's Mongolian for a dinner run and then the dead dog party, which was still going on when I finally crashed out at about 3:30.

I got up at about 11 Monday morning; we packed up and headed for the lobby (we were lucky enough to get a room on the ground floor right near the rear lobby entrance), where we met Kathy Mar and split a cab ride to the airport. There was one disconcerting moment when we got back to Franconia/Springfield station and couldn't find our car at first; it turned out that it was around a corner from where we first looked for it. That problem solved, we headed home.

Tired now.

Went to see Stardust with starmalachite last night. I'll concur with what seems to be the general consensus -- not quite up there with The Princess Bride (the obvious point of comparison) but definitely worth seeing.

Also finished up an Erfworld filk (somewhat spoilery, as it describes a subplot about halfway through the projected length of the the current storyline).

Next: Sunday, The Wedding, and post-con homecoming and recovery.

I'm currently sitting at the Conterpoint registration desk improvising temporary badge holders until starmalachite returns with an additional supply.

I'd thought a box of 100 and a supplemental packet of 24 was going to be overoptimistic. May this be the biggest problem at your convention.