ayup, arisia

[kirkcudbright]

1. Not having learned to keep my mouth shut, or to say no when I open it, I agreed to take over Sign Shop 5 days before the con. This meant I was operating in triage mode the whole time.
   
   
2. Thanks to miss_chance for being anal-retentive about inventorying the signs and supplies last year, and for the archive of Illustrator files for generating signs. Unfortunately, not having done the job before, I didn't know how many of which signs we actually needed, in what sizes, etc. So I spent literally all of Thursday night at her house, abusing the medium-format color laser printer.
   
   
3. Muchas gracias to miss_chance for the LJ icon sticker for my badge. That totally rocked an otherwise tedious evening.
   
   
4. 11"×17" looks big when you're used to dealing with 8½"×11", but it's really pretty small for a sign. In general, we had too many, too small signs. It was like driving into Logan Airport, where everything is signed, but it doesn't work anyway.
   
   
5. Friday was a cluster-fuck from beginning to end. Saturday was pretty quiet, with a few one-offs. Sunday was complicated by auxiliary snow-related signage, and by having to collect, inventory, and pack the signs.
   
   
6. And yes, I guess I am responsible for the "Arisia '05.1" designation.
   
   
7. I have no desire to do this job again, but I have some ideas about how to improve it. I know where this path leads...
   
   
8. The Artist Guest of Honor was really pleased with how the souvenir book came out. This really pleased me in turn, and vindicated the time I put into it. Thanks to bridgetminerva for showing me how. There's a reason she's listed in the book as Technical, Spiritual, and Menu Advisor.
   
   
9. Through a combination of serendipity and connections, we got front-row seats at the masquerade. Pock!
   
   
10. We watched the blizzard from the library of the Presidential Suite. White-out conditions over the Arlington Street Church, a short block away.
    
    
11. There was another fellow at the tech party who works at a used bookstore on Boylston Street. He remembers getting an order recently from the Park Plaza for 40 shelf-feet of hard-covers, any subject. Guess where they ended up?
    
    
12. I finally bought a Utilikilt (workman, black). This is only remarkable for being so unremarkable. It's practically the uniform of Arisia.
    
    
13. I started out wearing it in...the traditional way, but it started chafing badly after a couple hours. The underwear stays on until it's broken in.
    
    
14. The roads were clear enough that we could have left the hotel last night, except by that time we'd already extended our reservation, and I hadn't packed the sign shop. So it was a leisurely, extended con, with extra smoffing (and the last of the tech party scotch) and extra good-byes. Very pleasant. Plus, we got to clear the 2½ feet of snow out of the driveway in the morning, instead of at 10:00 at night.
    
    
15. Thanks to quietann, we had a plush room on the concierge floor. By itself, it wasn't worth the 100 hours that I put into the con, but it was a nice perk.
    
    
16. At breakfast this morning, we were sitting near Barbara Hambly (writer GOH), who was being eited by her airline. Due to the airport closure and the continued cleanup, she was rescheduled to Tuesday afternoon. This gave her an extra 36 hours in an unfamiliar city where she didn't know anyone, at a time when it was cold and windy and difficult to get around outside. She was taking it well, but was clearly unhappy, and treating it as a learning experience: don't go to cons in the northeast in the winter. Did I mention that she's a southern California native? It didn't help that we explained that, sure, it usually snows at some point during Arisia, but usually not quite this much. Or that it was 60° on our usual weekend.