day one
thus begins my chronicle of shore leave 26, star trek convention and second home to my geek-lovin’ heart. silentwalker and i have been coming to this baltimore con together for several years; JLS and angie joined us a couple of years ago.
i’m in the lobby of the hotel waiting for them, here on the first evening. on the way up, we encountered a police funeral; traffic was backed up for about 5 miles. ironic that the processions for our honored dead could very well cause traffic fatalities – thankfully, we were inconvenienced at worst, and lost about an hour. silentwalker proved his navigational skills by getting us to the con by the route less taken.
checked into the hotel, picked up our badges, and searched (successfully) for dinner. returned to the con, wandered the dealer rooms. no exaggeration – every year, the slash fiction tables increase in number (google it if the term is unfamiliar).
talked to a bootleg DVD vendor who i’d met at origins, who said he’d actually been kicked out; apparently the powers-that-be felt his offerings were offensive and should not be there. this, as customers are frantically buying as many DVDs from him as they can while the security guards are waiting to escort him and his wares out of the con. hopefully he’ll do better at shore leave – though admittedly, i can download pretty much anything he has.
from there, we attended a couple of science panels concerning the latest information from the Mars missions, and a nice presentation on the wonders of amateur astronomy.
i made a failed attempt at hacking the hotel’s pay-to-play wifi point; unfortunately chronos, my usual operator with the uber kung-foo, was out for the evening; i’ll check in with him tomorrow for ideas. meanwhile, an accapella group called ‘luna-c’ sang a great many old songs to great effect in the ballroom nearby.
i briefly joined the aforementioned amateur astronomists on the tennis courts for some stargazing, but the leader had forgotten a key element of her telescope, so we had to make do with binoculars and enthusiasm. i shared my stories of the big nightsky in the grand tetons, and we discussed comets the size of cities that occasionally sail by our tiny planet.
back to the subjective present: angie and JLS arrived at around 10:30, and were soon joined by silentwalker. we took a seat in the bar, as is our usual; however, we were disappointed to note that the mos eisley feel of the past parade of stormtroopers and klingons was not in effect this year. instead, we had the more typical barflies and bad 80s music. still, we had a good time with our own company, comprised of cigars, people watching and heated discussion of an upcoming road to glory / hand of shiva crossover.
after retiring to our rooms, neal and i walked out onto our tiny balcony, and observed with bemusement that the pirate party was once again right below us. this year’s theme: ‘space pirates’. tomorrow night’s theme: ‘togas and bikinis’. who says trekkies are boring? truth be told, such parties are mostly comprised of larpers, buffy/angel fans and generic gothkids. at this hour, trekkies in general tend to be asleep by now, or haunt the video rooms.
to bed with this trekkie.
