Finally, my Dragon*Con report

[lillian13]

My Dragon*Con report has no celebrity sightings, no panels, no elevator stories.

You see, I go there to work. To sell t-shirts, to be precise. It's a lot of hard, sweaty work, and I almost never get away to do anything fannish. BUT, I do get paid, which makes up for a lot.

Day One (Thursday): Up at 3:30 am. urk. (I did go to bed early, though, so I had about 6 hours of sleep.) My amazing niece picks me up at 4:15--the plane leaves at 6 am. Check-in and security are smooth. I doze on the short leg to Dallas. Meet a woman named Angel who is also going to D*C; we chat while waiting for the flight. I doze and read on the flight in (I love my iPod!). Try to get a ride in from Angel but they're not going in until that evening. Grab the MARTA and trek to the Hilton. The MARTA ride is fun; my car is full of D*C folks.
Load-in is well underway. April, Alan, Russ, Art, and Scott are already there. The Hilton has a) no freight loading dock accessible by cars/vans and b) only one freight elevator. We are unloading two full-sized cargo vans. It takes a while. We have to push our carts uphill, you see...
I see some folks I know--Butch and Susan Honeck, other vendors I only see at these things, Ingrid Neilson...once we get loaded in, we have to set up. Extra tables have to be added, shirts unpacked and put into rough categories, the hat display has to go up...it takes a while. 

sandy_s tries to get hold of me for dinner, but we finally get done about 10 pm. (I did get a DQ burger for dinner.) Then we all go back to our hotel (much cheaper Marriott several blocks away) and shower and collapse.

Day Two (Friday): Up at 8 am. The Marriott has a breakfast buffet (waffles! omelets!), and they manage to find the 10 boxes that were shipped to us. The hotel staff is so embarrassed (they kept telling us that the boxes weren't there) that they put them in a van and take them over to the hotel for us. Score! And I discover that while the hotel charges for wireless in the rooms, there is a business center with a couple of computers and nobody cares how long you use them. 
The exhibition halls open at 1, so we head over there at 9, because we still have to set up the backdrops with all the t-shirts hanging on them, and the larger of the two booths needs a lot of work. (Yeah, two booths. We're crazy.) As usual, we're still getting things done at 1, but we're ready to greet the crowds. I have changed into my good SAS shoes for the duration, and boy, am I glad. Neither Scott nor Russ packed foam for behind the tables, and by the end of the day my feet are not happy. It's a short day, but we have Ralph too, so both booths are fully manned. The room closes at 7. 
Sales are not what I consider D*C levels. I think this is mainly due to the hotel change. You see, the Exhibitors Hall and the Dealer's Room are normally over at the huge Marriott across the street from the Hilton. However, they're undergoing renovations, so for this year we're displaced. The normally single-room Exhibitors Hall is divided into 2 rooms (the one I was in had a low ceiling and crappy lighting), and we were 2 floors up and across the street from all the autographings, which hurt us a lot.
Anyway, we went to the Metro Diner and had a decent dinner and took enormous pieces of cake back to the hotel rooms. I get some more reading in, and we all collapse again.

Day Three (Saturday): Up at 7--the hall opens at 10, we need to be there at 9, and we need to eat. I'm so used to sharing a room with Scott by this time we can plan our morning routine pretty much to the minute! Yet another box has arrived, which we decide Ralph will carry, by virtue of being the youngest. I am able to check my email.
The parade is that morning, so we see a lot of cool costumes on the way to work, including an amazing Darth Vader/Stormtroopers made out of cardboard boxes! We add lights to the booth, which helps immensely. Did I mention the crappy lighting?
It's a long day. My feet are still not happy. I take some pictures of various girls, mainly for my nephew, and also because the cute guys won't stop long enough for me to take their pictures! There's an absolutely scorching Justice League (based on the cartoons) wandering around, with a Green Lantern I want to tie up and take home with me. Sales are very good, finally at D*C levels.
The Troma Pictures booth across from us is almost unbearably annoying. They play the promotional video for Poultrygeist over and over and over...talk to a lot of very nice people. Finally see ltlj after her plane woes. (Luckily I didn't catch her husband's stomach bug!) Got out of the booth for 20 minutes. Bought a book from Larry and Sally Smith. See more vendors I know, and some give me things! The room closes at 7. We decide to treat ourselves by eating at The Fire of Brazil, where they feed you meat until you burst, and the salad bar has things on it like steamed mussels and perfectly blanched asparagus...the biggest hit for our table is the grilled pineapple!

Day Four (Sunday): Pretty much a repeat of Saturday, except my feet are really starting to tell me just how much they hate me. It's a very long day, but I sneak in a little shopping. I never make it downstairs to see the big Dealer's Room. Ah, well. Talk to Aaron Williams for a while. We go back to the hotel to order pizza...which takes an hour and a half to arrive. They sent him to the wrong Marriott. But we have fun shooting the shit with a couple of other vendors. I find out that there will be a Fangoria convention in Austin in January. With Jared Padalecki. I may have to go...

Day Five (Monday): Last Day! Room closes at 5, should close at 3, since that's when everyone leaves. I see Bill Fawcett and Jody Lyn Nye. Far too many people ask me if I give last day discounts. When I tell them the business does 70 shows a year, most folks get it. This is not some operation run out of a garage. 
One very weird thing--the paramedics show up. Later on we find that an urban legend has come to life--some dipshit put quick-set epoxy on one of the men's room toilet seats, and they had to take the seat apart to get the victim out. Ouch!
We pack. Once again, load-out is annoying, made even more so by a certain dealer taking over the freight elevator with his three enormous pallets of crap. I stay with the booth, guarding our stuff and loading the carts as they are brought up. We finally get done about 10pm, and there are still dealers loading up. We head out to the hotel that Alan and I are to stay in that night, which is much closer to the hotel and much cheaper. However, the hotel person cannot give accurate directions, and after quite a bit of flailing around, we finally arrive about 11. We're dropped off so Russ and Scott can start driving back to Texas, and after we order food and read our email, we crash about 1 am. We get up about 4, since Alan's flight leaves at 7 and mine leaves at 7:50. 

And some pictures!

My view from the booth.



Behind the booth. That's Scott.

And it took a week before my feet stopped hurting.