We arrived at starmalachite's parents' house late Wednesday night. I crashed pretty soon after we brought our overnight bags and electronics in from the car. The next day, we had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner (us, her parents, and her grandfather, who's doing very well for 90-something). I settled into a turkey-stuffed torpor for a while and settled in to watch The Incredibles and then do some minor tech support on the computer (checking a few things and then starting a defrag cycle).

We got on the road to the con at about noon, and arrived with plenty of lead time to get checked in before our Friday events (starmalachite particularly wanted to catch the 4:00 dance; I was helping nosebeepbear with gaming and had a scheduled game at 7). I went to the early dance session, and then set up for a scheduled Ninja Burger game. Unfortunately, I only got one taker. We played a couple of quick games while waiting to see if anybody else joined in, but Ninja Burger is not really a good two-person game. Most of the rest of the evening I alternated between free-form gaming and filk; I turned in relatively early to get up for my 10:00 Munchkin game.

I was pleasantly surprised to get four players for a game that fully embodied the munchkin spirit and took the whole two-hour slot. I played a few other games (including an interesting card game called "Dominion" in which the players keep adding cards to their decks -- some of them are necessary and useful during the game; others are just dead weight during the game but are the only ones that could for scoring at the end), picked up one or two things in the dealers' room

When we both had a gap in our schedules, we headed out to grab some subs at Quizno's. We were slightly late in executing that plan -- the line for the Clam Chowder concert was nonexistent when we left, and already fairly long 10-15 minutes later when we returned. Fortunately, we got reasonably good seats anyway; most of the people ahead of us went to the left-hand side of the room so we veered right before anybody else noticed that there were much closer seats available there. As always, the concert was entertaining, and the money raised for Children's Medical Center was $4500+.

The Saturday night filk had the usual problem of competing with the traditional carol sing; I hung out in gaming until the caroling ended and the two groups merged. By that time, I was starting to get sleepy, and turned in fairly soon.

Sunday was mostly hanging around the con, doing last-minute dealers'-room checks (including picking up a bottle of Auntie Arwen's catnip to placate the furballs for being abandoned again). Originally, we'd planned to have dinner with blackpaladin, but after hearing the weather reports for the Pittsburgh area he thought it prudent to start for home ASAP. Since we were headed south into wet but not icy weather, we decided that waiting for traffic to thin out would be the best policy, so we hung around the con suite long enough for a Settlers of Catan game. It was about 8:00 when we finally took our leave, and got dinner at Carraba's, then stopped at Wegman's to pick up a few things.

We made a brief stop at stevenjoel  and museinred's place to deliver a lost-and-found item, and finally got home at 11-something. I'd arranged to take today off, and decided to actually go ahead and do it so I could sleep in.