Hold the mustard.
Okay, so I have been a tad busy. But today I was able to add my last 2 trips worth of photos to the gallery. I did this mainly because I know that when I get back from San Diego I will have a TON of photos to put up, so better be at least a little caught up.
June Philadelphia trip to Wizard World and the King Tut exhibit
Last day of the con and my alarm doesn’t go off when it should. My internal clock wasn’t far off though, so I was only 30 minutes over what I was shooting for. Boy was I tired though, it has been awhile since I stayed up that late.
Today is my totally free day at the show, and to start off I get to hang out with some of the North VA Firefly fans for a bit. They are a great crew and I am quite happy to have gotten a chance to know them. Looks like some of us may be going up to Phillie for a Shindig in a couple of months, should be fun.
I also, finally, get to sit in and see a couple of the guests speak. Paul (from Stargate) and Aaron (from Battlestar) are a blast. They kind of intermingled for awhile between their sets. Those Canadians are a funny bunch!
I started heading home just after 4pm, one of these years I hope to make the Dead Dog party…But I have an early Monday at 6am so I will not be able to hang out this time. And next year there is a distinct possibility that I will not be in country for the con, oh well.
Here is a pic of Paul up on stage, I will have the gallery updated soon with the pictures from the convention.
Today was a good day. Started it off with a delicious peach muffin from Wegmans (go there now and damn the calories). Got a call shortly afterward from Robert the he needed some help that morning on the Blood Drive table that morning. This worked well for me since I was already planning on covering for Janice while she was at the photo shoot anyway.
Janice is awesome, I worked with her last year and both her and her husband were enchanting to hang out with. She has this great costume that she made (and won with in the masquerade last year) of the gown that Spocks mother wore in one of the movies. This last Thursday the Baltimore Sun ran an article about the con with her picture in the gown.
I like working the blood drive, you get to meet a lot of people and help out the local Red Cross at the same time. We got another 24 units today and the nurses were very happy with the amounts we got for the weekend.
I really didn’t get to do much else today since I stuck around the blood drive most of the day, but I did get to wonder the art show a bit and check out the dealers room. Luckily neither tempted me this year so I was able to make it away without dropping any money.
Next up was the nice long autograph line. I needed to get sigs from the main three actors who came, Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from ST:TOS), Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol from the new Battlestar Galactica) and Paul McGillion (Dr Beckett on Stargate Atlantis). While waiting in line I had the luck of running into someone who had actually shared my space in line for he last couple of years, Angel.
I missed the masquerade this year, but I am not complaining. Next year I will see it, this year I was the luckiest boy at the ball.
Here is a pic of someone’s car in the parking lot. I think its supposed to be a Star Wars design.
Ahhh…Nothing like a good sleep on a cramped couch to really make you want to get up and start the day.
Today is the lightest day of the con. Things will start happening today in the afternoon, so this morning involves us finishing the setup for the blood drive. Plenty of moving around and a little bit of admin work to get things settled.
The afternoon consisted of giving blood and working the donations desk. Once again it was fairly painless but for this instance it was not quick. The nurse that was taking my information was a tad geographically challenged. When I told her that I was in China last year, she tried to pull up the map of South America. But other than that things went fine.
It was after 7 before the last person got off the blood mobile. Out of the 42 people that we sent out they got 30 pints of blood. The Red Cross did not seem to upset about the numbers and we definitely hit our goal for the day, even having 8 first time blood doners.
This evening consisted of a meet the Pros party. All the author guests were there and took over the main hallway for several hours. It is a very popular event and Walden Books shows up with all of the authors books and it was like Christmas for so many of these fans.
I was actually surprised to see Nichelle Nichols there, I was not aware that she had written a sci-fi book. She is still looking quite good!
Thursday and I am here at Shore Leave con in Hunt Valley, MD. This will be my fifth year at this show and the second to volunteer. It seems that when I left Oklahoma, I didn’t leave the con worker bug behind.
this year I show up a full day early. The deal I made with the volunteer coordinator was that I would come down and lend my back for getting things put together early, in exchanged for someplace to crash for the night.
Lord, did they get their moneys worth. I got a night on a 6 foot long couch (That’s 3 inches shorter then me) and they got about 5 hours of real labor out of me. So much in fact that I actually had to stop and hand the job over to someone else to finish the last 2 hours of it. I will of course blame the lack of dinner rather than my age.
Here’s a shot of some of the ladies putting together the program book packs (I was toting those boxes around).
