Capclave 2013 - Columbus Day Weekend- Washington DC

[DaveAx]

Way too much fun. I am not yet recovered yet.

My bee-stung liver is still holding my brain hostage, and I can't even blame Pod.

Thanks again to all who came/helped/organized/ate/drank/cooked/cleaned/conversed...and generally served as a reminder of the plain simple unadorned fact that the BWB is one of the best reasons for con-going that this jaded fannish roué has seen in many a year.

House Bannister RULZ

[draft0]

This is a bit belated, but...

YOU GUYS ROCK!!!

I had an incredible time attending my first con. Hanging out in the bar. Stuffing my face with food. And meeting everyone that I've been spying on all these years...

GRRM even made fun of my name.

Yeah. We are a holy brotherhood. Let's do this again sometime.

[MercenaryChef]

a week gone and i am so glad. haha

actually i loved meeting, eating and drinking with the lot of you.

but, i am really glad my silly cooking event is over. i was telling my boss about it yesterday. he was laughing at it. some serious renegade cowboy shit was going down in that room. i had three portable burners, a small deep fryer and an immersion circulator. some serious hardware....yet no fan.

as the room began filling with the smoke of searing sausages, crisping pork belly and rendering bacon i was worried as fuck. i was already frazzled from lack of sleep, driving in the rain with a car full of food among assholes and having power issues for my equipment.

when xray had me deal with the hotel rooms manager i was going 'hm. party is over. time to get kicked out.' instead i calmly dealt with him. i agreed with everything he said. yeah. we are totally not allowed to be cooking in this room. sure, setting off a smoke detector would be bad. of course evacuating the hotel would be a big problem. all that said i kept cooking.

eventually they did shut us down. but, at least the food was done and folks were eating. huge thanks to bill for holding them at bay for a bit while i was able to finish.

con-goers, this was a one and done event! nothing of the sort will ever be done again.

bill! if i did not make my appreciation known enough...the merc chef dodo bird pint classes are fucking awesome!

[DreamSongs]

The funniest thing to me about dinner was the saran wrap. I'm from GA, and you go to the kitchen to borrow saran wrap, they give you the roll and you bring it back. I ran to the kitchen and ask for some and they gave me one piece. :( All I could think was...Bex, you aren't in GA anymore :p

[Isabella Stark]

Hey everyone,

It was my first con and I had an awesome time! Will have to go to more of these things.

It was great to meet you all and I intend to be more of a presence around these here parts.

At one of the panels I attended Saturday, I think it was the YA authors, they said something about a party they had the night before. I think they were the group in that room after our dinner. They said "the George RR Martin people left their wine and cookies behind!" They seemed to have really enjoyed both.

MC's meal was great. And I really enjoyed his panel on Sunday, which he managed to turn to cannibalism within 20 minutes. (by which I mean discussing cannibalism, not actual cannibalism)

Take care,

Didi

[draft0]

At one of the panels I attended Saturday, I think it was the YA authors, they said something about a party they had the night before. I think they were the group in that room after our dinner. They said "the George RR Martin people left their wine and cookies behind!" They seemed to have really enjoyed both.

Yep, I was there. We ate everything! I think one of the authors ended up drinking up the chocolate fondue, with mixed vegetables.

[Lily Valley]

Anyhow, the BwB doesn't dissappoint me and I hope nobody left dissappointed.

How could anyone? Pod, thanks again for letting me boss you into throwing a room party, and then waking you up at 5, and then blaming you for my wretched, miserable hangover. I learned a lesson on NOT trying to corrupt you again. Totally backfired. I didn't sober up until I transferred planes in Houston at around 10pm.

Come to ConCarolinas! It's at the end of May.

I was only disappointed that I had to leave Sunday and missed MC's panel. Otherwise it was a great weekend. I'm still tired.

Thursday night flew in

Friday 2am check in and wake up Cat, the most patient roommate ever.

Friday morning help with unloading the dealers and got to meet DaveAx and Pod.

Friday morning run in beautiful cool weather for an hour and then buy ciggarettes

Friday afternoon

volunteer and register for con, walk around and talk to strangers, find Bex and Maid, Ixodes, Naz, Xray, Mr. X, OneEyedRaven, Lany, Tripp, Frisco, Brock, JetBoyGirl and everyone I forgot and have a great time.

Friday afternoon get ready for dinner.

Friday night:

eat. OMG eat eat eat eat EAT. go to reading, go to panel on NASA and listen to awesome nerd talk. hang out in hotel bar, lose key to room, try to sweet talk concierge. Fail. Wake Cat up AGAIN.

Saturday Morning:

coffee, check volunteer hours, get one switched because it's during the reading

Watch Xray and Bill run like chickens with their heads cut off making sure the rest of us can have a great time.

Saturday afternoon

Go on a beer run with Frisco, hand beer to Pod and tell him he's having a room party and the beer won't put itself on ice. (You're a good sport Pod!)

make costumes, change, answer too many questions, silence noisy crowd outside of signing. (AHEM, the loudest people were BWB YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

Work line (OMG THAT WAS SO FUN!)

Get picture taken with George (OMG I COULDN'T STOP GIGGLING THAT WAS SO AWESOME!!)

Volunteer

Answer more questions

Saturday night

George and Howard show. Syphilis room lives in my head forever. You DON'T wanna know what happens in there.

Answer one question too many and require an immediate costume change and a beer.

Hang out in hotel bar and Pod's room until a million o'clock

Hang out with Tripp until 7am.

Go crashing into hotel room and wake up Cat (again)

Sunday

Wake up and OMG what time is it??

Freak out

Say goodbye to everyone

Fly home

Best vacation Ever. Thank you all so very much and I will see you soon.

Edit: When I got back to work, my boss asked me how it was. I told him that all of you were the kind of people who could do our job. He says he's going to try and make it to a con.

Edit II Many of you I didn't meet until late Friday or Sat. My fact checkers have told me so.

[naz]

I totally forgot to mention (and I don't think anyone else did either) that during one of George's readings, he mentioned a stocking stuffer book coming out for Christmas called The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister. It's basically a repackaging of great quotes from most fans' favorite character in a small book with cartoon-type illustrations, meant to be given as a gift. Personally, I don't go for that sort of thing, but.... well, it's a stocking stuffer, or what I like to call a "toilet tank book". He also mentioned that next Christmas, they would come out with the next edition - The Wit and Wisdom of Hodor. "It's a short book," he said, to huge laughter.

And, since everyone's giving their long con reports...

I drove into DC on Friday afternoon at the tail end of my Epic Road Trip (see other thread). I was staying in Northern Virginia and was settling into my friend's place when I got a text from Xray around 2pm asking for "arms" in the Seneca Room. Since I didn't know of any weapons-related activity we were doing, I assumed she wanted my hairy appendages for lifting heavy things. Unfortunately, I wasn't at the hotel, so I got ready and headed on over there as soon as I could. In the meantime, Xray asked me to get ice, which was an easy enough task for someone as inept as me to fulfill.

I got to the hotel room with my 5 bags of ice, which I "discreetly" brought up to the Seneca room and found that the room had pretty much already been set up, sans cooking equipment. I met Perianne on the way and then registered myself. I wasn't planning to attend the full weekend, but paid for it anyway because... well, I'm not sure why.

I met Pod in the hotel lobby, who I'd never met before, but recognized from numerous con photos of the past. He was a bit surprised, maybe, to have been recognized, but hey... it's Pod. Every board member should familiarize themselves with board legends in case they run into them in hotel lobbies.

By the time I got back to the Seneca room, Chef and kair were already setting up for dinner, Chef proudly identifiable by his ManBearPuig shirt and heavy metal beard. I did what little I could do to help, but mostly just got more ice when needed and met more BwBers as they showed up. I met another board legend in JetboyGirl, who, as I learned over the course of the weekend, is one of the coolest people I've ever met. I don't say that lightly.

I won't go into much detail about the dinner since that's already been covered, but I was fortunate enough to sit next to Parris and across from George and JetboyGirl. I'd "met" them before at Boskone and at a reading long ago, but this was my first time actually sitting down and talking with them. Parris is a gracious and lively person, as is George and we talked about many things like growing up in New York/New Jersey, restoring old movie theaters, my recent trip across country, and even about architecture a little. During dinner, I met a huge number of boarders, old and new, like snow "awesome to finally meet in person" leo and her hubby, Ixodes and his wife (who are super friendly), becca and her husband, Cat, Lily, and others whose names I'm certainly going to unintentionally leave out if I try to list them all.

After dinner, we did our best to clean up, including Pod and myself hauling a cooler full of ice up and down several flights of stairs trying to figure out where to dispose of it, until we realized we could just dump it in the bathtub in Pod's room. The first reading followed, and then we all hung out at the bar. It was during this time that I was convinced by others to come back the next day. I was having too good of a time with BwBers, so I agreed. I left fairly "early" at 11pm, not being a drinker and having to drive back to Northern Virginia in any case.

I returned the next day, which was mostly spent hanging out in and around the hotel lobby and bar. I had lunch in the hotel restaurant with maid of woodlynne and DaveAx, and then pretended to help work the door before George's next reading in the early afternoon. By this time the Silent Sisters had made their appearance and were now the biggest hit of the con (except perhaps for GRRM, I guess). Later in the afternoon, JetboyGirl convinced me to attend a panel about the "evolution of fantasy", but it turned out to be a stinker, so we left after 5 minutes. So much for her attempt to get me to care about the actual content of cons and such.

We spent a long while trying to figure out what to do for dinner and decided to walk over to the Dogfish Head ale house nearby. It was Chef, kair, snowleo, Etulftune and B, Pod, and myself. Halfway there, I realized that it was a Saturday night and called the place to see if they could seat 7 people. Turns out, they didn't do call-aheads, and it would be an hour-plus wait for a table. We soldiered on, mainly because we were on foot and had no other options, but also because Chef seemed super determined to get us a table at any cost. Mostly, his (dubious) strategy appeared to be simply demanding a table in a viking-like manner, at high volume, which made kair worry just a little bit about getting thrown out of place before even getting seated there. She seemed to be speaking from experience.

We got there and somehow I managed to finagle them into seating us in the bar area at a table meant for 4, which we could squeeze into. Chef disappeared at this point and it turned out that he caught the final score of the Dodger game on the bar television and, despondent at the loss, decided he wanted to be alone for a while. Being a huge baseball fan myself, I sympathized completely. After dinner, back at the hotel, I tried to cheer him up best I could, but he was already in better spirits, which I'm sure was due greatly to the support of his truly wonderful wife. (Did I mention how wonderful kairparavel is? No? My bad. She's pretty wonderful.)

Those of us who went to dinner missed out on the mass book signing, mostly because we had no books to get signed. My only regret was that we couldn't help out managing the crowd, which apparently MofW and others did a stellar job of dealing with. There was a George & Howard & Gardner Show later that night, which was attended by most of the remaining con attendees and ran almost to 11pm. They recounted lively stories from cons over the last 40 years, some of which were fairly NSFW. I had mixed feelings about this event, but I won't go into that in much detail here; I left before it was finished. Night-time festivities continued in the hotel bar, punctuated by aggressive manipulation of chairs in a not-so-subtle takeover of the bar area by the BwB and by occasional glances at the Detroit-Boston ball game. I left around 1am or so and thus missed out on the late night ruckus in Pod's room.

Sunday morning was a light affair; JetboyGirl gave me a ride with all my Epic Road Trip gear to the con from Northern Virginia, followed by a GRRM Q&A session and getting ready to head back to NJ, after numerous emo goodbyes and hugs. Etulftune and B were kind enough to give me a ride back to NJ (again with all my road trip crap), but my plans to introduce them to crabcakes at Faidley's in Baltimore for lunch was ruined by it being a Sunday, when Lexington Market is closed. We ended up having a late lunch in Edison, NJ instead, where Indian chaat (street food) made a decent alternative to crabcakes (or so I hope).

As I've said before, I'm not super interested in conventions per se, beyond the fact that they're a great place to hang out with George and Parris and the good members of the BwB. It was a good enough time to get me to stay the whole weekend, which says a lot about the BwB and especially about its main movers and shakers (Xray most of all, but also several others). I can't say how often I'll be able to attend more cons, especially now that I'm heading back to India for good, but hopefully there will be more chances to interact with the BwB again. They're a great bunch of people and anyone hesitating to go to cons or meetups should really reconsider. I really had an excellent time and made some great new friends who I'll want to see again soon. Thanks, BwB. :)

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Has anyone who ordered the signed/numbered book received theirs yet? They told us it would be about a week and 2 have passed.

[Arlingzen Bill]

As anyone who ordered the signed/numbered book received theirs yet? They told us it would be about a week and 2 have passed.

I'll look into it.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Thanks Bill :)

[Arlingzen Bill]

So I got word that the books arrived today. They are checking quality and numbering so I expect that they will be mailing them in the next few days.

Bill

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

YAY!!! Thank you very much Bill for checking on this.

[Knight of City of Bayonne]

Good news. The con organizers are to be congratulated for an overall job well done, and certainly did all that was possible to mitigate the unforeseeable circumstances that delayed the books.

[Arlingzen Bill]

The books are in the process of being shipped.

We got ours at the meeting last night.

[becca69]

I see Subterranean Press had some for sale. Do you know if all the remaining S/Ls went to them? If not, can we purchase another copy if we already preordered one?

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

I see Subterranean Press had some for sale. Do you know if all the remaining S/Ls went to them? If not, can we purchase another copy if we already preordered one?

The website says the signed ones are sold out :(

[becca69]

Try the WSFA website: http://www.wsfapressbooks.org/?wpsc-product=the-skin-trade

I just wasn't sure if it was up to date.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

One of my books came today

and the other will be shipped soon has also arrived :)

Becca, my second book was only 200/500 so I guess that means there are 300 left for sale

[PhilWenk]

Extremely belated but I feel the need to remark on how great a time I had at Capclave. It was my first convention, purchased for me as a birthday/travel gift and I think it was about as amazing as possible. Not only did I get to meet some great people who reguarly attend these events, but I also was able to buy Mr. Martin a beer and won the raffle to enjoy coffee with him the next morning. Regrettably, I stayed up until aroung 6 in the morning talking with fellow fans and con degenerates, so the meeting with Mr. Martin was accompanied by a rather brutal headache. Regardless, it was great to meet many like minded individuals. I know that I do not have a history here, so matching screen names to faces was not possible, but it was still awesome to meet a large group of extremly polite, fun, and like-minded individuals at the convention. I will try to attend the Charlotte convention that George RR is booked for, I hope to see some of the wonderful fans I encountered at Capclave down in NC!