Senticon 2003 ============= Thursday -------- Pam and I arrived in Chicago on Thursday, Feb 27th, at around 2:30pm. And, yes, I do realize that I'm a damn lucky bitch re: having a hanging out companion who lives so close AND is willing to travel with me and put up with my fickle fannish babbling. We flew American because of the price and because we could get a non-stop out of Long Beach and they were... okay. I sure wish JetBlue flew more places though; I missed my TV! There's just something more than a tad appropriate about being about to watch documentaries on A&E, History nd Discovery while on your way to babble about characters like Blair and Daniel. At least IMO. We met Mary over at baggage claim (we didn't check any - gasp! - but this whole 'only ticketed passengers can get near the gate' thing sucks... and not in a good way), then headed out to brave the weather. Which wasn't anything we needed to be brave about, really. It was a lovely sunny day, fairly warm and not even very windy. Huh. Go figure. There was this funny cold white stuff piled up in corners of the parking lot though. Pam had never been around it before, so I of course had to immediately treat her to a quickie snowball thwap. Which made me remember exactly why I packed gloves. That stuff starts to do a number on your hands damn quick! After unpacking Darwin from his travel box (he had a serious case of 'box hair', which makes 'hat hair' seem mild by comparison), we started out for Grand Rapids, with Mary driving, Pam chilling in the back, trying to fix 'the hair', and me navigating. *snicker* Sure... let the Sandburgian one navigate. I guess Mary never saw that episode. Luckily we didn't end up '40 miles in another direction'. Mapquest is beautiful thing. We stopped somewhere along the way and I got to try White Castle burgers for the first time. I've seen them on documentaries, but never got the chance before. They're cute... and surprisingly filling! Unbenownst to us, Grand Rapids is actually in another time zone compared to Chicago, so the 3.5-hour drive didn't get us to the hotel until 7:30pm, at which point we met up with the Rentgirls (squealing and hugging and babbling in the lobby, much to the amusement of the desk clerk), checked in, did a quick change, then headed out for large portions of dead cow. We spend the next couple of hours catching up and 'freaking the mundanes' at Outback Steak House. It's amazing the conversation five slashers can have over dinner... and how many different waitresses come to your table as word spreads. And they always walked up at the most opportune moments, like when we were discussing leg spreaders. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off and picked up snacks for the consuite and misc forgotten items (I swear... before the next trip, I'm making a computerized list!), then headed up to the Rentgirls' room to jaw, watch vids and swear at their DVD remote for not working. Somewhere around 1am, Pam, Mary and RG2 headed out for a walk (!!), while I stayed in the room with RG1 watching Escapade 2002 vids. It was neat hearing a vidder's perspective on them. Me, I only know what I like, which usually tends to me my pairing/fandom, or anything that makes me laugh, or something that recruits me into a new fandom (although I do tend to bitch and moan at the time). After a couple of hours and still no sign of the rest of the team (it turns out they were in the lobby, amusing the night desk clerk and doing more catching up), I headed down to our room to decorate our door. I ended up crashing a bit after 3am and sorta/kinda heard Pam and Mary come in shortly afterwards. Friday ------ Since the con registration didn't start until 11am, we slept in a bit. Personally, I think the whole 'cold weather' deal put me into hibernation mode, because I've never gotten *that* much sleep at a con before. It was nice... like an actual vacation. Not that it made me want to actually go to work on Monday or anything ;-> Pam -- being a dear and far more of a morning person than I -- went with the Rentgirls to grab coffee, muffins and bagels from a nearby shop while Mary and I did the whole 'prep for the day' thing. Darwin was already dressed in his Switchman outfit, so he was good to go. Even his hair had mostly recovered from the trip. I had originally only planned on taking him to the slumber party, but ended up taking him to all the panels as well. I figure it would be a shame to waste his various outfits on just us, right? Plus how often to I get to be *that* big of a dork? Well... and not get teased for it. Friday we hit all the panels (AUs & Crossovers, Fanon vs. Canon, Woobies & Pookies, Due South, Smallville) and our woobie/pookie discussion seemed to go over well, with people easily being able to apply it to virtually every fandom. Oh, and I won a mug that I'd been previously *very* tempted to buy (the 'Daniel/Blair/I like them brainy' one), so that rocked. I'm so woobie-whipped. Pam and I also won Smallville posters, one of which immediately got added to our door display. After the panels ended (5pm), we walked over to the deli to pick up dinner, then ended to the pool room to eat, which allowed me to breath air that actually had some moisture in it, which was a very Good Thing by then. It's been a long time since I've been around snow and I'd totally forgotten that it was the dryness that bugged me more than the cold. After food we headed back to the room for a quick nap, knowing that we'd be up late watching episodes and talking. By 8pm we were happily ensconced in the vid room watching a RayK Due South ep. From 9 to 9:30 or so we participated in the scavenger hunt, then settled in our room to watch the last hour of the series finale of Oz together. Kinda fitting, considering that's how we met, after all ;->. We skipped the Vecchio Due South ep and Starsky & HUtch in favor of more hanging out, then wandered back to the vid room for the B/K clips I'd tossed together. Then we crashed. Unlike Escapade, Senticon is a very quiet, laidback con (at least in my limited experience); there weren't any publically-posted room parties, for example, whereas Escapade tends to have 4 or 5 to choose from. Saturday -------- We meant to get up at 9am and make it to the 10am panel (Zine Publishing) but -- whoops! -- got up at 10am instead and only made it for the last 15 minutes or so. I never will figure out how I can get up at 6am and be on the road by 6:15 here at home, but act like a caffeine-deprived Muse while on vacation. Oh, and while we were getting dressed, I changed Darwin into his flannel shirt and hiking boots. Hmmm... camping! Gotta get back to writing fic someday.... At 11am we did our Oz panel, which was positively sedate compared to the Escapade 2002 attempt, then at noon Mary took part in the LOTR trivia game. I discovered that I know a wee bit more about the books than I thought and way less about the movies... very strange, considering how much I dislike Tolkien's writing style. After that came the LOTR panel, which was interesting because of the range of experience they had -- some of the people up there read the books annually and/or have seen the movies more than 20 times each (eep!), while one gal is just now reading the books for the first time and therefore had a totally different perspective of the movies. At 2pm they played/performed the very last Sentinel Family Feud game, which was part game, part skits and a hell of a lot of laughs. Sentinel Jeopardy came next, but totally failed to hold my attention, which was actually kind of convenient because it gave us a little free time to eat and shop. Actually, shopping ran kind of long, so we showed up late to the Rentgirls' 4pm vidding panel. Whoops again. It just wasn't a good day for that whole 'on time' thing. But I did pick up a pretty new keychain for work. It's called 'whispers' and it has Jim & Blair on one side and Jack & Daniel on the other. After the vid panel we got 90 minutes of some *very* yummy vids, including some premieres. Keep an eye out for P.R. Zed... she's new and does an excellent job. At 6:30 they kicked us out to prep for the party (which was really an awards ceremony, costume contest and art auction more than an actual 'party'... after all those cool songvids, I wanted music and dancing, like at DUG. Or at least some free-form hang-out time. Oh well), so we went and changed into our jammies (including Darwin, since he and I matched... that's Dork with a capital "d," thank you kindly), rounded up the Rentgirls, then headed back. Not very exciting, although the winning fics were read aloud, so that part was fun. And the food was good. Oh, and Mary won a Mountie and a turtle in the raffle, so that was oh-so appropriate. When the art auction started (scary, scary photo manips!!), we went back to our room to dish some more. There was a connecting door to the next room, which happened to belong to Stormy (formerly of Blackfly/currently of Duet Press), so we opened that up and did the suite thing. It was wonderful to get a chance to talk to her; we'd met briefly at Escapade last year and she was one of the folks I'd really wished I could've spent more time with. Sigh. I need to be independently wealthy and go to more cons! 10pm -- the con organizers live local and were kind enough to run back home Saturday AM to pick up a tape of Friday night's Stargate ep, which just happened to be Michael Shanks's first guest appearance this season. Being a brand new Daniel fan, I was a tad, uhm, bouncy. I'm hoping I didn't give Mary bruises, what with all the excited arm-grabbing I did. At one point I even dropped my can of soda, but fortunately it had been empty for some time by that point. The guy who play Teal'c (Christopher Judge) actually wrote the ep and did a *wonderful* job IMO. It had an AU within an AU and kept me guessing. And it had Daniel. ;-> After the ep, we headed over to the bar (still in our pajamas), but had to leave when the bad, bad karaoke started. It was snowing by then, so Pam and I just *had* to go outside (yes, still just in pjs... it's amazing what downing a glass of wine very quickly will do to my brain) and experience getting snowed on. Well, again, in my case, but... it had been a while. And I was sober the last time. Around midnight we wandered back to the vid room to watch 'Sorority Boys' (Michael Rosenbaum, aka Lex, in drag). Pam and I had seen it before, but there really is something special about watching this stuff with a roomful of fen... especially slashers. After that we went back to our room to watch TV/read/chill before dozing off in mid-conversation. Again. Sunday ------ Knowing that we had to leave by noon (11am, Chicago time), we spent the AM hanging out with Stormy and her roomies and the Rentgirls, trying to figure out which cons to meet up at later this year/next year. Distance sucks. We need teleportation, dammit. Bascon, Mediawest and Dragoncon are all possibilities, although I have my doubts about my ability to stay out of trouble at non-slash cons. Well, other than Fan Odyssey, cuz the guys are actually there and that kinda makes me behave. At least during the day ;-> After a drive back in snow flurries (snow is just too weird for me... I'm used to needing to use windshield wipers when stuff is falling on my car!), we took off from Chicago at 4:30. We ended up having to change planes in Dallas (yet another reason American is *not* my favorite airline... they cancelled the non-stop we were supposed to go back on) and got back home to Long Beach at around 9:30pm LA time. Overall, Senticon gets a fairly high rating from me, but it's not something I'd go to without knowing at least a couple of people in advance. The panels and shopping were good, there was no feeling of "I'm missing something" because the panels don't overlap, the vid room had a good selection, yadda yadda... but it was the company that *really* made the weekend a blast for me. Now if only we could've talked Mary into coming back to LA with us....