Gonzai Gallery

Last year, I barely managed to be at Balticon because of Mom issues. So I was promoted from volunteer to staff. Go figure. This year, I managed to rack up 30 hours on the job in the art show. Except, that's all I did. One pass of the dealer's room, two panels (one of which was in the art show room), never set foot in the west side of the hotel much less in the game room. Just art show and trooping back and forth between the show and the bathroom/registration desk for three days. The con debuted a new computer system which...didn't work as planned...and only one guy knew how to fix it. I swear, my primary job all weekend was to go to registration and drag said guy back to the art room.

Meanwhile, I have only two weeks of unemployment left and no prospects on the horizon, so my purchasing consisted of the con t-shirt (which is gorgeous, BTW) and two inexpensive prints. And breakfast from 7-11/Royal Farms each morning. That's it. A cheap, hard-working weekend. I did manage to trade 'trade secrets' with the Art GOH, Ruth Sanderson, regarding scratchboard, and I went to a sci-fi trivia competition, was teamed with someone I've never met at random, and we creamed everyone. She knew books & anime, I knew TV, movies & games, we rolled.

Next year - for them's haven't heard, it's Balticon 50(!), the GOH is George R.R. Martin and Balticon is headed to the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Baltimore, right on the Inner Harbor. And I'm the 'co-Art Show Director'. My co-director has already told me she prefers pre-con prep to the con itself, so I'm pretty much in charge of the art show. Meep.

Technically Balticon continued today, but I slept in instead. My legs were all bruises and muscles pulls, Mom & CJ were cranky, and there really isn't much to it on Mondays, so I picked up some crabs (first ones this season) and settled in for a bunch of movies on FioS' special free OnDemand promotion. So far, 'Cabin in the Woods' (it was different/twisty, but not the way I thought it would go), 'The Avengers' (NOW I understand why the Avengers panel at Balticon was titled 'And Schwarma After...' ), 'The African Queen', on the 100 films list and hooray, Hepburn's character was NOT a helpless dame in distress. at least not after adjusting to her circumstances; and 'The Hunger Games', credits presently running. What happened to the tribute who saved Katniss at the Cornucopia? But I kinda figured that's how they'd solve the one survivor problem. Hoping to squeeze in one more, probably the remake of 'True Grit'.

Meanwhile, Balticon had hotel issues. The hotel was bought by another chain very recently, and apparently they fired the whole staff and only hired half of them back; they disconnected the reservation system so only people with a paper printout from the previous chain were able to check in without drama; the bathrooms weren't cleaned; a corkage policy was instituted days before the con (grrr), etc. Yippee. Someone apparently decided to rectify this by punching a hole through the men's room wall. The art show had its own issues with artists (which is not unusual) and serious issues with the customers (not usual). At least one, expensive piece has gone missing, a piece was broken, apparently deliberately, and bid sheets kept disappearing either entirely or showing up in other parts of the art room. Trying to reconcile the paperwork was not fun. Sheesh.

Just back from the annual post-Balticon picnic, which Mom crashed. Had to get her out of the house. But we ate some food, played a couple games and she met a few new people, so I'd call it good. And we were not the ones who set the grill on fire, so there's that.

Partly because I slept in, partly because I was achy all over, but mostly because the jackass with the dog crate e-mailed Sunday night to say he still had the crate and would I like to pick it up on Monday? So I e-mailed back, gave him my cell number again, and waited. And of course, not a peep. I want the damn crate, and I can't afford one new, and this is the only one I've see out there used; but apparently, he doesn't actually want to sell it. Just wants to string me out and make me skip a day with friends. Asshole.

At least I finally managed to give CJ a bath. Which she hasn't forgiven me for yet.

Well, worked my tailfeathers off in the art show yesterday, hanging all of the mail-in art and half the print shop and I have the raw knees, sore quads and achy back to prove it. It was all I did at the con yesterday other than a (very good) dinner. Today was the 'easy' day, with nothing to go up or come down. However, most of the day was either hectic (at one point 5 different people wanted my help at the same time) or completely dead. Thus, I called it a day at 7, helped a friend get registered, and then went up to gaming and squeezed in a couple of games, both of which I won easily. I wasn't surprised I won Ticket to Ride, the other players were not playing wisely, but I was surprised I won Carcassonne over 3 of the local Carc sharks. While I was playing that game, firesign10 happened to pass us in the hallway and by some miracle I recognized her, 'cause we've never met before. We didn't get to talk, though, because one of the Carc players was in a hurry to finish the game. Hopefully tomorrow.

But the big thing today was that before Balticon, I returned the Kindle to the person I bought it from. I did that not because I didn't like it, or because Mom didn't like it, but because...I couldn't register the danged thing with Amazon, which would kind of help for buying books and such. Amazon gave me a 'call customer service' alert, so I did. End result - seems the Kindle had been reported 'lost or stolen' back in December and accordingly, Amazon would not register it unless the person who made that report withdrew it. The person who sold it to me responded in 10 minutes to my e-mail and offered to return my money, so I really lucked out in that regard. We did like what we'd seen of it, so I'll probably wind up getting one somewhere along the line. Just not using Craigslist.

When I got home tonight, she had destroyed the third side of the crate and I have nothing to fortify that side with. She got far enough outside that side of the crate that she shredded all my art show paperwork, several photos I was hoping to use for artwork later, and some newspapers I kept for nostalgia. I have a whole trash bag of shredded papers now, and nothing to keep her inside the crate. And just in time for Balticon, when I won't be home for 3.5 days and my mother won't let the dog out. Great, just great.

It may have been Balticon 45, but it turned into 42 wonders for me - Saturday and Sunday, all I got to do gaming wise was play 7 Wonders 6 times. And teach it all 6 times. Got into some other games, with folks who knew how to play, on Monday. But mostly worked all weekend. We were short volunteers again and even when we had them, I was often the only one trained to use the cash register. Only one around for hanging art Friday as well, and I was the one who was stuck with both the artist having a hissy fit because he didn't like how the ASD resolved a problem with sexually explicit art and with the 'volunteer' who didn't work, did try to steal two pieces of art and then whipped up her shirt to show me her tits. Didn't work. Still made her pay. Scary stuff.

Plenty of quality time with non-scary people though, met plenty of new ones including some cool gamers, and I accidentally had dinner with Steve Geppi. Yes, the comic book distributor/museum owner/part owner of the Baltimore Orioles Steve Geppi. Might tell that story some day...

Saturday is the annual Balticon after-party/picnic, and Sunday is Alphabet Soup. I haven't cooked for Soup yet, and my banana bread is very much in demand at the Balticon shindig, so a couple weeks back I bought a half dozen bananas and set them out to ripen. They need to be brown for banana bread.

Well, Mom decided they were TOO brown and put them in the fridge. On the edge. Balanced against the door. Yeah, you know what happened. Or maybe not. Did you know that ripe bananas explode when they hit the floor? The kitchen was a mashed banana party. The good thing about having dogs is they'll happily help clean up the floor. But there's no way I can get ripe bananas in the next two days, so I have to figure out something else to make in a hurry.

(Come to think of it, given the present hot and humid weather...and banana bread requiring the oven...maybe my mother actually had a plan when she put the bananas on the edge...)

More adventures in art shows, although this time it's more the buyers than the artists (aside from the guy who sent his art to the hotel instead of the art show). But we've had buyers taking photos with their cell phones, and a lot of quick sale adventures. Mostly people seem to think they can personally write 'quick sale' on something and it's theirs. Even if there's already bids on it. Even when the signs specify you must bring it to a staff member. We're counting them as regular bids for now.

Meanwhile, I hit the dealers room and landed a copy of Ticket To Ride: Nordic Countries, which is out of print and going for outrageous prices on Ebay. I got it for MSRP, no tax or shipping :) Happy me! And a stuffed squirrel, he's quite cute. Obviously my netbook works in the art show, which had been a concern. Speaking of concerns, had an interesting conversation with the conchair of Shore Leave. (jslinder I'll e-mail you.) Back to it...

New credit card - finally arrived yesterday. Oddly, they don't want me to call in to activate it.

Balticon - the programming schedule is up on their website...and I still don't have artshow paperwork. Meep.

And oh yeah, watched this week's Justified...if all sermons were like Raylan's, I might actually go to church.