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Jan. 16th, 2018 08:37 pmI am back from Arisia.
Last year, my chief regrets were that my knee was ^%$&0(*^ed up, so that I couldn't go dancing (or swordfighting), that I didn't volunteer more, and that I didn't get smooches.
Well, I fixed two of those this year. I took nine hours of vacation time to go in early and help with unloading, did most of the gruntwork for Access[ibility], and then stayed 'til the Dead Dog party yesterday helping tech. pack up. I also spent part of yesterday trying to figure out who from ops. was trying to find me, only to eventually discover that it was in fact the con. chair looking to give me my "Arisia Hero" ribbon, for the aforementioned "take over a bunch of access stuff after my boss got the death flu" bit. I didn't feel like I really deserved it, of course: I mean, Arisia was paying my hotel bill;* it was the least I could do.
And I danced so much Saturday night that my sweat-soaked pants rubbed my skin raw, and then I came back Sunday night and danced some more; went to two panels on swordfighting (also in an excessively small room) and a broadsword lesson, and took a quarter-hour out from coiling electrical cables to hit people with bop swords. (And actually managed to land some hits, which felt damn' impressive given that all of them do HEMA as a hobby; though I figure that with anything more resembling a real weapon, they would've kicked my arse even harder than they did...)
Let's see...and I tried out a new card game and wandered the art show and people-watched in the lobby and went to three song-sings (including the one in the pool) and wound up at a late night debrief about the bawdy song session, which definitely did NOT take place over single malt in the Program Nexus.
I did NOT make it to any other parties, nor to enough friends' panels. Maybe I'll do more of that next year. Or maybe not, because it was a pretty awesome con.
Even though I didn't get smooches.
A couple of weird anecdotes:
At various points, I listened to a disfunctional polymath talk about how he hacked his brain into think in N dimensions and a member of the Dorsai reminiscing about how he used a hypothetical scenario about zombies to save a bunch of people's lives.
Both of these were the sort of stories that, from anybody else, you'd have figured for complete BS, they were that amazing.
But perhaps the weirdest moment happened after I wandered down to Registration one morning, and bumped into a fellow alum. who was at Arisia for the first time, and we chatted for a moment and then she went to get in line...a line that was quite long and rapidly growing, and at that point I decided that Reg. might be in need of an extra warm body and I wound up handing out badges.
And that was thus that I wound up uttering the phrase, "Wait, are you former MIT student Dave Barker?!?"
* At the overflow hotel, admittedly, with two other roommates in a room that wasn't exactly huge, but still.
ETA: What I should also have said: that the one other drawback of this weekend was that it pretty much didn't involve sleep. OK, OK, that's an overstatement, but I *am* pretty dead, at this point...
ETA 2: Oh, and I think I have con crud. Though I'm hoping it's just "Ate too much chocolate and drank to much coffee, which is arguably not unrelated.
Last year, my chief regrets were that my knee was ^%$&0(*^ed up, so that I couldn't go dancing (or swordfighting), that I didn't volunteer more, and that I didn't get smooches.
Well, I fixed two of those this year. I took nine hours of vacation time to go in early and help with unloading, did most of the gruntwork for Access[ibility], and then stayed 'til the Dead Dog party yesterday helping tech. pack up. I also spent part of yesterday trying to figure out who from ops. was trying to find me, only to eventually discover that it was in fact the con. chair looking to give me my "Arisia Hero" ribbon, for the aforementioned "take over a bunch of access stuff after my boss got the death flu" bit. I didn't feel like I really deserved it, of course: I mean, Arisia was paying my hotel bill;* it was the least I could do.
And I danced so much Saturday night that my sweat-soaked pants rubbed my skin raw, and then I came back Sunday night and danced some more; went to two panels on swordfighting (also in an excessively small room) and a broadsword lesson, and took a quarter-hour out from coiling electrical cables to hit people with bop swords. (And actually managed to land some hits, which felt damn' impressive given that all of them do HEMA as a hobby; though I figure that with anything more resembling a real weapon, they would've kicked my arse even harder than they did...)
Let's see...and I tried out a new card game and wandered the art show and people-watched in the lobby and went to three song-sings (including the one in the pool) and wound up at a late night debrief about the bawdy song session, which definitely did NOT take place over single malt in the Program Nexus.
I did NOT make it to any other parties, nor to enough friends' panels. Maybe I'll do more of that next year. Or maybe not, because it was a pretty awesome con.
Even though I didn't get smooches.
A couple of weird anecdotes:
At various points, I listened to a disfunctional polymath talk about how he hacked his brain into think in N dimensions and a member of the Dorsai reminiscing about how he used a hypothetical scenario about zombies to save a bunch of people's lives.
Both of these were the sort of stories that, from anybody else, you'd have figured for complete BS, they were that amazing.
But perhaps the weirdest moment happened after I wandered down to Registration one morning, and bumped into a fellow alum. who was at Arisia for the first time, and we chatted for a moment and then she went to get in line...a line that was quite long and rapidly growing, and at that point I decided that Reg. might be in need of an extra warm body and I wound up handing out badges.
And that was thus that I wound up uttering the phrase, "Wait, are you former MIT student Dave Barker?!?"
* At the overflow hotel, admittedly, with two other roommates in a room that wasn't exactly huge, but still.
ETA: What I should also have said: that the one other drawback of this weekend was that it pretty much didn't involve sleep. OK, OK, that's an overstatement, but I *am* pretty dead, at this point...
ETA 2: Oh, and I think I have con crud. Though I'm hoping it's just "Ate too much chocolate and drank to much coffee, which is arguably not unrelated.
