How I Spent my Memorial Day Weekend

[lillian13]

I flew out to California last Thursday morning to sell t-shirts at Fanime, an anime convention in San Jose. The World's Best Niece took me to the airport, and even though there were at least 4 very small children on board, there were no screamers. I watched 3 episodes of Torchwood on my iPod and was content.

I managed to get from the Oakland Airport to the San Jose Convention Center with minimal fuss, using BART and the bus. It helped immensely that the temps never broke the low 70s with almost no humidity. On the BART, there was a large-ish group of developmentally disabled folks, plus their--what's the phrase? handler?. She was awesome, keeping the gossip going, deftly keeping arguments from getting loud; you could tell they all liked and respected her.

Setup was nice and easy, even though FedEx managed to lose the box with the backdrop/t-shirt hangers. We were able to borrow some from another vendor, though. Discovered that taking the VTA train got us to within 2 very long blocks of our hotel. Spent far too much for steaks at said hotel (and they weren't very good), and started our string of Bad Waiter Karma that would dog us all weekend. (First waiter: very un-full restaurant, we have to wait forever for our drinks and salad, gets the salad order wrong, brought check with no pen, etc.) 

Also, that night the hotel started what became a very un-fun tradition: kicking me out of their network. I was on the phone with tech support twice that night, and they practically accused me of being a spammer. I'm so sorry I sent out an email to 25 people to let them know Robert Asprin died! Really! I linked up to 3 other networks that weekend and never had a whisper of a problem.

Up bright and early the next day (Friday). Siobhan picks us up, and I am instantly jealous. She's 6 feet tall, blue eyes, in great shape (she practices capioera 5 days a week), smart, funny.... oh, well. We get everything set up and discover that we both love Pocky, and fruit gummies. We are so in synch about cute guys it's amusing. I'd say "Three o'clock", and Siobhan would know exactly who I was talking about. That was also the Day of the Dancing Samurai--one of the sword vendors was dressed in Japanese robes, etc., had a bokken across his lower back...almost every time we looked over at him, he'd be dancing to the J-pop blasting from a booth nearby. It was frighteningly cute and funny and we wished we had a video camera. (Second waiter: we ate at Johnny Rockets and got the one who doesn't multitask, very slow on getting us our order and drink refills--with no explanation--and tried to charge us for an extra burger.)

Saturday was a pretty busy day, though not as busy as we had hoped. Vendors who had been there before told us the gate was way down. Very few sucky customers; though a lot of guys were hitting on Siobhan. She bought a corset and was wearing it, which might have had something to do with that, though. :-) 

I managed to sit down just to the left of my chair and landed solidly on my butt. Very embarrassing. The samurai was dressed as a Jedi on Saturday and we only caught him dancing once.

(Third waiter: Food was excellent, but he didn't bring olive oil for the bread until we were done with the bread basket, had to flag down a bus boy for both more bread and drink refills, etc.)

Sunday was relatively busy too. Saw some really awesome costumes, including a great Domo and a guy in pretty authentic samurai armor/helmet (plus, he was cute). Dancing Samurai had moved to black ninja-wear, and back to dancing. It was awesome.

We broke our waiter karma, finally. Siobhan took us to this hole-in-the-wall pizza place in her neighborhood and it was excellent. The waitress was great.

Sunday was teardown, which was pretty easy. (Then we had to go back and forth to Oakland and San Jose, but that particular story still makes me furious, so I'll save it for later.) I got to eat at In-N-Out that night and now I can hardly wait for them to come to Austin!

On the flight back, I managed to spill orange juice all in my lap. I got none on my neighbors, and the steward got me an enormous quantity of napkins to clean up with. The Evil Seat AC was useful for once; it dried me out in record time! I did manage to get 2 drops of juice inside the phone, which necessitated a trip to the phone store for a cleaning. It works now! Yay! I watched almost 4 episodes of Torchwood. I luv my iPod.

Got home early, paid off the World's Best Niece in t-shirts and VooDoo Babies. The AT&T guy came and installed U-Verse. It took a couple of hours, mainly due to my TiVo box. Finally I told him to hook up their DVR, since I can always reactivate the TiVo account if I need to. Made the best phone call ever to Time Warner Cable. Did laundry. Bought milk. Fell into bed.

How was your weekend?

Comments

[ms-hooligan.livejournal.com]

Is In-N-Out Burger actually coming to Austin, or are your just daydreaming? We were thinking of them over the weekend, since we watched The Big Lebowski again.

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing rumors. I know they were planning on expanding into Texas this year, but who knows, with the economy the way it is?

It might be for the best for my hips if they don't. Those fries....mmmmmm.

[alycorn.livejournal.com]

It was the Cursed Weekend of No Backdrops...we strung ours together in the van on the way to Animazement.

I wish you'd had a video camera for the dancing samurai/ninja/not-dancing-jedi! I hope his antics brought him joy and customers, hehe.

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

He was made of awesome. He works for Jones Bones, the sword dealer. Keep an eye out for him this summer. It was the Asian guy, not the Caucasian guy with the shaved head.

[chickwriter.livejournal.com]

Torchwood + iPod = Best Travel Companions, ever.

The con sounds pretty cool. I like that part of CA.

Voodoo babies: best pressies!