MOOP!

It's Balticon! How did I get to Balticon you ask, when I had two separate ride-structures fall apart on me and couldn't leave Boston until about 4:00 PM? WELL LET ME TELL YOU!

See, about ten days before the con, I posted on my Facebook being all "boo, my second ride-structure has fallen apart I just don't think I can go since every method is too expensive right now".

And then my friend Dan posted a comment. (paraphrasing) "Well, Abby and I have been meaning to go to Balticon for forever, why don't you fly down with us."

Fly. Because Dan, in addition to being good at tech and photography, owns a plane. And he's been offering to take me up for a right age, we've just never made it work out. So here we go, I have an opportunity to get to the con I love above most others, and an opportunity to fly with a pocketknife. HELLS TO THE YES ON ALL ACCOUNTS.

So at about six thirty this evening, I was sitting in a teeny-tiny four person one propeller plane --the interior is smaller than the minivan I grew up in-- about to take off. I don't think I stopped smiling until the sun set and I immediately conked out because I do not have enough sleep in me.

It was _glorious_. It was so extremely glorious. The windows are so SO much bigger than on a commercial jet, and I can twist around and see out of all of them, even out of the back a little. We cruised at about 6,000 feet the whole way, close enough to see trees and rivers and mountains and farms --David reported on which farms had red barns. We flew over the Hudson and Mount Monadnock and watched a just _beautiful_ sunset.

(and I get to do it all again on Monday, squeeeEEEEE!)

This was the best fucking trip to Balticon I have ever taken, beating out (by far!) the year where I arrived on Thursday through a hilarious series of transportation options and beat everyone else to the con by a full hour. Riding in a tiny plane has done nothing to dissuade me from the opinion that planes are the Very Best Things.

I want to learn how to fly. I still can't afford to learn, but it's on the list, and higher than it was before.

***

As far as the con itself is concerned, well...

The Hunt Valley Inn was bought a few years ago. Between last year and this year, they...redecorated. It is _very_ awful. I described it as "the sort of hotel people who like the place I grew up in go on vacation". Galia described it as "do you know how many little girls are going to have their Bat Mitzvah's here?". It's...insipid and boring and drab. The new scheme is slate grey, cream, and navy. It's grown-up, in the worst way possible.

I miss the ugly carpets from hell. I miss them so _very_ much.

The only upshot of the redecoration is that they have started up this fabulous horse theme, and like all the art hangings are these vaguely sensual close-up pictures of horses. It's completely disturbing and utterly hilarious, and I am SO SAD I did not bring my Equius cosplay, because can you even _imagine_ how much fun that would be to play with?

Anyways, I'ma get Galia to help me take a video of me doing an appropriate big-no vis-a-vis the carpets. She seems to be the only one who feels the depth of my pain (I knew there was a reason she was my favourite robot).

***

I arrived at the con a bit after 10:30 at night, which was very late. I dropped stuff off, wandered around, and was just...home. I haven't managed to find Kitty-Aaron yet, but I played Junglespeed (with breadMarc and Sonya and Tucker and other people who I should remember the names of) and chatted with Lanthir and Ian-Beastie and Galia, and did my push-ups with Galia's encouragement and got some lascivious hugs from the pervy artist, and oh, it is wonderful.

About the only thing I haven't managed to do yet is dance with Larry or Chort --they weirdly frontloaded on the dancing this year, so I think I've missed the swing dance (BOO!) and the time travelers ball was more'n halfway through by the time I stopped by (I was just too late to get into a quadrille) and the teen/college club dance required you have a special thing on your badge --I have no badge, so none for me.

People are friendly and wonderful. I am happy. Even if the new carpet is the most boring and awful carpet ever. The older carpet may have been ugly as sin's baby, but at least it had character and was interesting! This is so very derivative and insipid I don't even know where to start.

Hope all y'all are okay.

~Sor
MOOP!

This is further Balticon con-reporting. Also, if you haven't bothered to click on the cut from my last entry, it's probably worth it. Slutty but Sweet and all that.

Part One

( Tweets are still in italics )

And this last tweet has nothing to do with Balticon at all:

23 days. Twenty three days, two hours five minutes. Oh my god. This is suddenly actually Real.

It is. It is absolutely positively real. And it is also 21 days 23 hours and 51 minutes.

~Sor
MOOP!

Hokay. So. I was at Balticon this weekend.

The really really REALLY quick conreport?

1) Fun fact: Number of hours Sorcy spent sleeping from Thursday to leaving the con on Monday: 10.5

2) Fun fact: Number of hours Sorcy spent playing Are You A Werewulf during the con: 12

3) lonebear, I was given a present by marcmagus to pass on to you. When are you coming over next, and are you bringing your most excellent geetars?

4) I've been promised a ride and a badge in exchange for working tech at Philcon. Yay for making friends with TD's. :D

5) I have a new Boston mommy named Persis (spelling?), who I will add to my flist once I stop being lazy.

6) Scritchies good.

7) If you have two esclators with the railings travelling in opposite directions, right next to each other, you can pull off some pretty cool OkGo style stunts.

8) If you've never seen the OkGo video with the treadmills, you NEED to click on the above link. It is *awesome* (Magus, I think I'm directing that at you --were you the one who said you hadn't seen it?)

9) The invention of the con suite was one of the greater inventions ever.

10) I apparently make a pretty good werewulf, seeing as I won both times it happened. Being a seer is just really REALLY bad for me though...

11) Never ever ever EVER ask who the Seer is.

12) JungleSpeed is a truly awesome game. It is a combination of Egyptian Ratscrew and Blink, and I think that Veronica may be the only person I know who knows both of those games.

13) Hand rolls(?) of sushi are awesome. They are a cone of seaweed with sushi inside. It's a sushi ice cream cone, and possibly the second greatest thing I got to eat during the con.

14) Baguette + cream cheese + really really squishy good smoked salmon = amazing. Thank you Persis.

15) Origami dodecahedrons make AWESOME conversation starters. Also, NTS: Make more segments with my e-mail address on them to pass out to all the people who ask how they're made.

16) Werewulfs that DON'T lynch the seer are morons. Really truly, people.

17) Favourite phrase this weekend: "I'd love to buy that, but I'm currently as broke as a Windows machine." (Me)

18) Moooooooon, I bought you a trinket! It is small, but I think you will very much love it.

19) Parents who are fannish, and have friends who are fannish and have watched you grow up rules, mostly because I have a steady flow of people to adore me and make sure I've hit such basics as "eating" and "drinking more water"

20) I, of course, don't have a voice.

21) Jannyblue continues to be just about as awesome as can be, including giving me a box of random awesome trinkets, INCLUDING about two dozen of the little origami dragons she folds so I can learn how. Incidentally, Janny, mum says hi to you, and after learning that you were connected to Rob, says hi to him too. (She's in love with his parody of Skullcrusher Mountain)

22) And for the record, mum says hi to Magus too, who is also awesome, and has an "Orc and Pie" shirt, damn him.

23) I get to GRADUATE today! Oh JOY!! [/sarcasm]

24)
Never before have I found a comic in the dailies that fit me so perfectly. And the fact that it's today, on graduation day...beautiful.

25) I will post a proper con report soon, what with chronological order and squeeings and the like. As for now, I am going to go work on the current Neopets plot some more. They have given me a puzzle. I must solve it.

~Sor
MOOP!

P.S: I'ma going to ORIGINS this year! Finally! *squeeeeee!!*

Original Tags: links, food, conreports, graduation, games, comics, jannyblue, neopets, conventions, games-larp, games-card, games-party, magus