Arisia

[rikibeth]

Arisia was a great time, as usual. melovechocolate and I went up on Saturday morning. I'd changed our cell phone to a family plan on Friday so that she could have a phone of her own and I'd be able to keep in touch with her at the con, because even if she stayed in Fast Track the whole time and I did nothing but food prep, that's still two different locations, and I knew that it wouldn't be as simple as that in practice.

It worked out great. She kept company with the Amidon girls (who envied her cell phone) and Talis (who had her own), and was good about checking in, for the most part. At one point I sent a text message from the consuite food prep room (where I spent most of the daytime hours of the con I was there, really) saying "how you doing, kiddo?" and got back "Great, we r hunting duks." The Arisia rubber ducky scavenger hunt is brilliant.

We got there just in time for her to join the Kamikaze Costuming Panel at Fast Track. She used the green satin skirt she'd acquired from tragic_tea as the base for a Gothic Statue of Liberty idea. It was cute!

Oh, and I should say something about the new venue... while I missed the familiarity (and the fantastic ice water setups) of the Park Plaza, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge is an attractive hotel, the atrium that lets you spot people on different floors with those room balconies is a definite feature, and OMG FREE PARKING AT THE MIT WEST GARAGE ON VASSAR ST. Yay!

I didn't get to any panels. I didn't really miss them. I put in some hours of nice, easy, brain-dead food prep for consuite -- which meant schmoozing with tamidon and jedilora and various other people who came in to help, which was pleasant. tamidon had things very well organized. I am sure that jedilora will tell me Molly's lj name. Molly was a brick. She'd done overnight and was utterly fried. I held down the fort (washing dishes and baking off cookies) while tamidon did the Costco soda run -- remember how I said I missed the Park Plaza ice water setups? So did a lot of people. We went through soda like nobody's business. After that got squared away, took off with her in time for feeding the kids dinner -- hooray for the Mexican food vending truck that set up across the street from the hotel! Cheap, tasty, fast, and vegetarian options the kiddo liked. Afterwards, the kids headed off to Masquerade Green Room, and we got into our party clothes. After a quick check-in at the prep room to make sure there were no fires to put out, we got to enjoy some of the evening social time. Many thanks to feste_sylvain for lacing my corset shut. ashbet, too small for YOUR bosom leaves enough room when I wear it for Cleavage Cellphone Storage! However, the beaded net shoulder-drape thingy I wore over it camouflaged it nicely. I spent a fair amount of the evening watching other people try on corsets at brute_force's room -- including a couple of members of the hotel sales staff, who were astonished both at how much more comfortable the things are than they'd expected, and how totally fantastic they looked in them. The curvy blonde was telling the Asian twig girl (seriously, twig, I am pretty petite and I take a 22" corset, this girl was in a 20"!) that she had the Perfect Figure for it, but I guess that shows the modern bias toward anorexia, because I thought the effect on the blonde was a lot more dramatic. I hope they came back and bought them once they were off duty.

Many thanks also to bridget_minerva for being the Adult On Duty for the girls so that they could go to bed at a reasonable hour and the other adults could enjoy social time. And to n2mlq for moving Adira onto a different surface so that I didn't trip over her on my bed when I got back to the room, since Alyssa and melovechocolate had elected to share the AeroBed. (I am informed that this is because Adira is a restless sleeper who snores.)

The trouble with the girls getting to bed at a reasonable hour was that they woke up at 7:30 AM. bridgetminerva had volunteered to take them out to dim sum, which let me & tamidon get over to consuite prep again, where, since Viable Paradise was running consuite breakfast, we mostly had to brew coffee and figure out what was getting served out and what was getting donated to the Pine Street Inn.

I checked out of my shift there at 1:30 PM. I intended to make a quick pass of the Dealer's Room and Dealer's Row and collect our stuff and head home. It didn't quite work that way, because I connected up with jetshade and talandra and discovered that they'd asked melovechocolate to be the flower girl for their wedding NEXT MONTH, and please come to this dealer so she can be measured for the Elizabethan outfit in black and purple that we want her to wear!

Okay, so the flower girl's going to be taller than the bride, but as long as all the participants are happy, who can argue?

I also found out that old friend fabricdragon has an lj, which is marvelous, because it means we can keep up with each other more than once a year! We discussed the fate of the Cursed Cheongsam, and I wish we could have visited longer.

melovechocolate spent the pocket money I gave her on some jewelry (a nice bargain) and a stuffie Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yes, yeast. I have to admit, it's cute.

Kudos to kalessin for somehow averting the Traditional Arisia Snowstorm on his watch. Don't know how he managed it. I would have thought it'd take nothing short of blood sacrifice, but I know he wouldn't do that, there being no rebuilt Temple and all. While visibility driving home in the rain was kind of lousy, it was only rain, and we got home safe and sound.

I've had a nap and checked my e-mail. I'll unpack tomorrow.

Night!