Further Assimilations

I'm in my hotel room in Blacksburg. The plan was to check in, and do a little shopping for a few things, but impink and kittykatya were in the hotel lobby, and we stopped to chat... looked up and half the con was there. The "Meet and Greet" started hours before the official panel time, but it's cool, I got to see friends I haven't seen since last Technicon, and others I haven't seen in many years. I'm having a good time!

I has another Guest badge. I'm kinda enjoying my slowly-building collection of those.

Okay. Brain shutting down on it's own. I feel better than I did this time last year, so fingers crossed that I don't collapse tomorrow. Night!

I feel guilty when I let Twitter do most of my LiveJournal updating for several days. It doesn't help that my DSL, which was working fine for a while, died again over the weekend. They'll come by on Friday to look at it. Cox Cable, folks, I'm telling you now.

So, what exactly was I up to with all that driving? It's an epic tale...

We left Chesapeake early on Friday morning, heading to NoVa to see Owen. On the way one of my tires sprang a leak; we pulled into a White Tire to have it fixed. It turned out that the tire was fine; something I'd hit on Xmas eve had bent the rim a bit, and that was letting air out. They hammered the rim back into shape, re-balanced the tire, and refused to charge me. Happy Holidays indeed!

To say that Owen was charged up to see us might have been an understatement. He wore us out just talking to us! He received a glow-in-the-dark NASA Langley shirt from us, which he wore all night; his parents gave us an elegant hanging candelabra and an Elfin Tree Door (which is already installed on a suitable tree in our yard).

When we left for the hotel, Owen's folks sent us to a French cafe for dinner. I've never eaten French food before, and was surprised at how tasty a charred, bloody cut of meat could be. (Look at dish, and mentally sigh. Put forkful of dish in mouth, and mentally jump at the flavor!)

The HoJo's we stayed at that night was clean and cheap, and the bed mattress might as well have been a solid slab of wood. I kid you not, Starr found the floor more comfortable.

We went back to Owen's place for breakfast, and he and I bonded over some Lego. Eventually, we had to leave; Starr's mom took her by a neighborhood yarn store, though, and we ended up losing another hour to their 25%-40% Off Sale. No problem for me, I had Solitaire and MahJongg on the cell phone. The drive from there to Christiansburg turned out to be the least fun of the trip, though; crossing the Appalachians on Lee Highway was tense and a bit nauseating, and our reward for reaching the other side was I-81. Yippee-doo.

Finally, though, we reached C-burg and we saw Mom waiting for us outside the facility where she's staying. Mom ordered me to stop a yard and a half away, and walked that distance from he wheelchair to my arms as Starr steadied her. Wonderful! She gave me the best Xmas present she possibly could right there; the Red Lobster dinner that followed only added to the celebration!

We spent Saturday night in the Microtel, which did its intended job of being cheap, comfortable, and a provider of wireless Net access. I know that lots of folks in the New River Valley would have put us up, and I would have loved the chance to socialize, but we'd have been rude guests: coming in late, going straight to bed, and waking up early the next morning for a quick e-mail check and a return to Mom's place.

After a Cracker Barrel breakfast, Mom took Starr to Mosaic, her favorite yarn store, where we met Benny, Cathy, and Jamie Williams; I passed the time proving to Jamie that I am totally old and lame when it comes to anime and Final Fantasy games, and Starr ended up with a couple more bags of crochet yarn. (I had given Starr yarn money for Xmas. Starr asked and received permission to buy herself other gifts with that money, as she's now stocked up on yarn for a few weeks.) We said a sad goodbye to my mom, and began the six-hour drive home. I have to say, that used me up. We finally arrived around 8:30 Sunday night, and I was done. Kaput. Over.

Still, it was a lovely weekend, and time and gas well spent. I only wish that I could fly to Technicon Last instead of driving. Or perhaps portal there, if all that 'cake' stuff's been worked out by now.

In general, I like living in Hampton Roads, I honestly do. Last night did not provide a good example...

There are three bridges in my Metro area that can take me from work to home. Assuming no heavy traffic, the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel does so in about 40-45 minutes; the James River bridge adds about 20-25 minutes to that; and the Hampton Roads bridge-tunnel adds about 20 minutes to the MMBT. (I have a bad tendency to refer to them as the Mimbit, the Jerb, and the Herbit.)

Unless it's 1am, though, there's probably going to be an additional 10-30 minutes of heavy traffic on the Herbit, and the Mimbit is a crapshoot: sometimes I fly straight through, and sometimes I sit waiting an extra 15-20 minutes. We have handy electronic signs alerting us to congestion on the Mimbit and Herbit, but because of geography, by the time I see one, the Jerb is already out of the question.

Yesterday, the signs warned me that the Mimbit was blocked by an accident - based on reports I've heard, an idiot trying to cut off a fellow driver. I had a quick decision to make - wait in blocked traffic there, and hope the accident is cleared within an hour (it usually is) or join all the additional traffic to the Herbit, probably incurring a 90-minute delay. I joined the queue of blocked traffic.

I took 2 hours to reach the tunnel entrance for the Mimbit, only to find that the tunnel remained blocked and that traffic was being forcibly rerouted back to the other two bridges. I don't know the Jerb route well enough to ensure I wouldn't get lost, so I joined the crowded line for the Herbit. 90 minutes later, I was finally home. 3.5 hours to make a 45-minute commute. (Turns out that the Jerb was just as bad.)

Starr, aware of the situation thanks to cell phones, had pizza and chocolate waiting. I love this woman.

T - I - R - E - D.

Went back to Roanoke on Saturday. My mom's doing great: she can move both her leg and arm now, and on Sunday took a few steps (with a great deal of support). I'm told this is still Gold Medal performance, and my optimism was repeatedly fed this weekend. nanoreid was there for a bit, and I got to say hi to Ginny and Ian as well. Starr bought my mother a knitting loom which can be fastened to a solid surface, and now my mom can indulge her addiction one-handed for the duration!

Roanoke felt a little odd, there are buildings and shops which weren't there last time I passed through - a bit like hearing an old song on the radio and finding an entirely new chorus after the second stanza. I took a hotel room there Saturday night to save us the drive to and from shrewlet's offered crash space in Blacksburg, but while the room was huge, the bed was hard as a plank, and we slept poorly for folks who would be driving 204 miles home. Route 460 was a beautiful, tranquil drive, though. I'm sold on that road for now.

Yesterday we woke too early, and headed over to spend lunch with Starr's mom, then the afternoon at Amy's with the gamer group. Her mom was going to gas grill the food, but after the gas loop rusted away at a touch, we went with good old charcoal, and lunch was yummy. I now know where Starr gets her habit of cooking a regiment's food for a few people, and felt guilty leaving before I could consume a second hamburger.

While the afternoon was sold as a combination grilling / gaming event, I'm not sure anyone was really into the gaming, and after a few hours of excellent chatting and cattching up, we left to get me some badly needed quiet time. I developed yesterday something that feels much like my old migraine headaches, something which comes in short, searing pulses then goes away for a half-hour or so. (One of the first things Starr did when hearing about that was to check me for stroke indicators - of which I seem to have none.)

In geek news, the Mars Phoenix robot probe has a Twitter account. Andy Ihnatko referred to the account as cosplay for rocket scientists, but I'm enjoying keeping up with what the probe's doing (or at least what it was doing 15 minutes ago - speed-of-light lag, y'know). Some quick Googling finds images taken by the Mars Recon Orbiter of Phoenix on the way down (Phoenix Down?) which means that we Earthlings not only managed to hit a target scores of millions of miles away, we got a picture of it from another camera that had previously done so under our instruction. [T]hese are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years. - Carl Sagan

So, yeah. Probably another early bedtime tonight, which is a shame because I wanted to get some WoW levelling in. With luck, the rest of the week will go a little easier on me!

Starr showed me YouTube footage last night of several Discovery Channel stars singing the Boom-de-ah-dah song live at some promotional event. I was tickled by the Alaskan ship captains jumping in, and am more convinced than ever that Mike Rowe is insane in a wonderful way.

We had multiple friends ask us out last weekend, and politely demurred every time; this was our first unscheduled time in months, and we were determined to enjoy it quietly at home, with no stressors, expenses, or travel. So, of course, we ended up at Busch Gardens.

Yeah, that plan worked out great, didn't it?

But it was a gorgeous Saturday, and I've been trying to visit the park since moving to Hampton Roads. We'd purchased Virginia resident Fun Cards earlier, and the Old Country was calling our name, so out we went! The weather might have been a bit too gorgeous, actually, since we left the sunscreen in the car and Starr got a bit roasted. There were also a couple of lines where we were minutes away from abandoning our place and running for the nearest air-conditioning.

But we had a great time. The DarKastle ride may be our new favorite - the 3-D is quite effective, if artificial. I rode the Battering Ram for the first time, which was a mix of fun and "ohcrap ohcrap I am falllinnnngg!" Seriously... rides where I fall make my internal organs shift positions and are an exercise in endurance for me, not entertainment. I don't know why.

The Big Bad Wolf, on the other hand, didn't have too much falling for a roller coaster, and a lot of swooping. I love swooping :) It was almost dark by the time we got to that one, which added a dimension. The turkey sandwich I ate at the Festhall was pretty yummy, if overpriced, and I made sure to eat it in small, well-chewed bites, in hopes of avoiding motion sickness later. The Corkscrew Hill 3-D simulator nearly defeated that strategy, however.

We also got to see live wolves and huge bald eagles in a predator show, and a pretty good Irish music and dance show. So, even with sunburn, exhaustion, and expense, I'm chalking it up as a success. On the other hand, Sunday was quiet, lazy, and cheap after all. It kind of needed to be.

• 10:33 @tangowildheart The Metro needs a line built of steampunk and giant crystals, with an underwater stretch including visible plesiosaur FTW. #

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Saturday I woke at 8:30, thought to myself "no way, not on a night where I have to stay up 'till 2" and went back to sleep. I woke again at 10:30, went to sit up and was assaulted by nausea and headache. Not, "Oh, I feel like crap, oh well," but "oh God I think I may need to run for the bathroom RIGHT NOW." In the hopes that more rest would help, I rolled over until noon. Couldn't put it off any longer at that point, and made it to McBryde in time for kittykatya and impink's Fragile Gravity (http://unseenllc.com/) panel. That was fun, especially when Barb had to change a DVD and Chris was forced to improvise for several minutes. I look forward to Book 3!

Well, you know you're at a real con when two good events are going on at the same time, and much as I wanted to see the General Webcomics Panel, the Spin Doctor had a date at Filking 1025. (Tech uses 4-digit course numbers.) I contributed a couple lines to the weekend's official filk, which we actually finished nice and early! What a concept! An impromptu rendition of "The Dragon and The Lady" followed (NSFW), with joking comments about the fact that the local fandom children are being raised on this stuff. To quote a song that Keith often covers, we'll have a generation of well-rounded outcats.

I dropped by rattrap and drich's "First Ones" panel - they are the only attendees who've attended every Technicon. I'd prepared a button that read "Technicon Fourth One" (the best I could do). Lots of old memories flew around that panel; hard to believe the con's 25 years old. I'm fairly sure that's a Virginia fandom record, unless you count RoVaCon / Rising Star as one entity. Still, though, the pain, nausea, and light-headedness continued to build. Barb and others started telling me to Go Lie Down. I talked to Starr a bit - she was having appliance issues at the house right before she had to attend a wedding - and finally gave in and went back to the hotel.

Good news of the evening? While I was semi-comatose, colleenk gave birth to a little boy. Gratz to her and yubbie! (Unsurprisingly, this made the con accountant unavailable for the rest of the event.)

I really regret missing the Costume Call and southernsinger's performance. Every few years at Technicon, I seem to come down with something on Saturday; perhaps I need to start over-medicating the week before, or something. I wasn't the only one, either: shrewlet had a rough day, and there were bleary eyes elsewhere at the con. However, with modern technology, it's likely that the evening entertainment was all taped, and I'm hoping that someone posted pictures somewhere.

Fortunately, I woke up in possession of a far stabler head and stomach before my evening panels, and headed down to the Microtel conference room. Those panels... are a filtered entry.*grin*

I have driven to Orlando. I have driven to upstate New York. In neither of those cases was I responsible for the steering wheel the whole time, if at all; so, yes, a five-hour drive can absolutely wear me out!

Since NASA Langley is practically sitting on I-64, I packed the car on Wednesday night and headed right to Blacksburg from work Thursday. 64 and I-81 aren't too unpleasant on a Thursday evening; my CD player may be broken, but the iPod plays through it nicely except for the pauses when it tries to eject nonexistent CDs.

Unfortunately, my transmission started throwing fits around Afton Mountain (who could blame it?) slipping and locking into third gear three times on the trip down. Pulling over for 10 minutes each time seemed to reset things, but that's no way to run a railroad.

I made it safely to the Microtel, where I was informed that the wireless access was a bit spotty on my floor :( Nevertheless, in an effort to adjust my sleep rhythms for the weekend, I stayed up for a couple hours unsuccessfully farming Primals in Zangarmarsh, only getting kicked off the server three times.

Friday I headed down to see my Mom (one of the main reasons for my Thursday travel), which was lovely. We traded Xmas presents and had good conversation over a mildly disappointing lunch. Interestingly, I'm still on a hot-rodded Mac G4 tower, and she's got the latest and greatest iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, which she took great glee in showing me.

Went to the lube place, got the transmission flushed, and had them look at my rear tires, which were making unhappy growly noises. Yep, they needed replacing. Technicon was getting expensive already...

Five-hour drive to Technicon - not from home, mind you, that would have been six - from NASA Langley. (This is why the car was packed last night.) I might have shaved off half an hour were it not for some kind of road work happening on I-81 between Roanoke and Blacksburg. But it's no big deal. I am super special-plus tired though.

The Microtel is well named. This may be the smallest hotel room in which I've stayed, though it's nice and clean. Glad I'm not trying to run any con events in the room. The good news is that the clerk said that wireless was "spotty" on the third floor, yet I seem to be getting a fairly good signal. So that's nice.

I am here today because I promised I would show up, and because you, my fandom friends, are awesome people whom I miss. I don't drive five hours for just anything :)

Good morning, all.

My apologies for leaving everyone in suspense about Starr. I've pretty much had no Internet access since my last post. (It wasn't down, I have just had higher-priority matters to handle. Given how high-priority I usually make the Internet, that's saying something. But anyway.)

Starr is back from the hospital and is doing quite well - well enough to wear me out this weekend staying up late and getting up early. She'll probably be back at work tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest - I think she's pretty excited about it. Her doctors say that her condition has probably been present since she was little and masked by other issues, so her treatment might actually leave her healthier than ever. Part of the priority issues from the last week was me being a bit of a jerk - I've not been handling events too well the last fortnight, and I needed a bit of a talking-to - but I think I have it under control now. Saturday night we were having a good time together, and she looked happier than she has in a long time. (The hew haircut's darn nice too!)

I'm preparing for Technicon - as I've said, I refuse to do seat-of-the-pants this year - but just last night got a new schedule change, and am trying to adjust for that. (I actually agree with the reasoning behind it - I'm just laughing at Murphy.) There will be a post with further discussion of the TCon panels under my Lifestyle filter. I'm kinda hoping to get a little gaming in this year with jsciv - last year I was so busy, I barely laid eyes on the man. It'll be awesome getting to see everyone who can attend.