Yes, finally and actually the first day of the convention.

John and I headed over for breafast with Lori and Kevin to Huckleberry’s, a chain which serves “Southern food with a California twist”. Not sure what the twist is, and I’m no expert in southern cooking, but it was a pretty good breakfast and there was a mechanical motion activated alligator, so as you can imagine I was delighted.

Back at the convention John ran off to his first panel, and I went to the art show to prepare for my docent tour the next day. Now that all the art was up it was almost overwhelming, its genuinely nice to have a reason to visit the art show repeatedly at a convention this size, because there is far too much to absorb in one walk through – I spotted something new every time. But impossible to miss was the art of Daniel Gonzalez, these large oil paintings of skeletons lit from within.

I mentally formulated my plans for the tour, then went over to the fanzine lounge to hang out with Garcia for a bit. Opening Ceremonies was scheduled at 7:30pm, but there was a full day of panels before that, any of which I had saved to my schedule. But then Lori said she and Kevin were at the hotel pool, and Amy was also planning to join, so that’s what I did with most of my first day. It was sunny and lovely, the drinks were pretty good, and it’s easy to forget how nice an outside pool can be. Almost as easy as it can be to forget you have a panel at 6:00pm!

Thankfully I realized in time, a little after five o’clock a small voice in my head suggested that I should just maybe double check what day my only panel was on. Surely that was Friday right? But better safe than sorry. Whoops. I scurried back to the room to shower, then managed to find the green room. Terri Ash came in shortly after, and we chatted while waiting for our moderator, Teddy Harvia. He hadn’t arrived by ten till, so we walked over to the panel room. Which turned out to already be occupied by a different panel… the room had a large 261A number above it, but a smaller 261B at eye level… luckily there was someone there who had already gone through this and they directed us around the corner to the “real” 261A. It was far too large for our needs, we had half a dozen people in the audience. Out moderator remained absent, so we started and did our best to be entertaining. About half-way through a tall man in a cowboy hat came striding in, Harvia had landed. Literally, he came direct from the airport. The rest of the panel was great, and at least one audience member was genuinely there out of interest, not just a friend or partner, so that was nice, hopefully they got something out of it.

Normally I like to attend opening ceremonies, but seven thirty is an awkward time, especially if you have a panel at six and would prefer to get changed for the evening. We skipped out and walked down to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles,

Our room was on the sixth floor, logic being we were right above the party floor and could pop down the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. Sadly, the stairs only opened onto the ground floor, fire escape style, so that didn’t work. But it did mean that I could look out my window and see the beautiful Lanai deck, where the parties were taking place.

I was nearly finished getting changed when someone posted about the lunar eclipse, which I had entirely forgotten about! I slipped shoes on and ran down to join folks on the deck. There was cloud cover, so we lost sight of it eventualy, but for a while it was quire the magical effect.

The Lanai deck is a ver cool space to host the parties, despite the occasional traffic flow issue since only the deck doors were open on each room (no hallway door), but the huge space meant you could get your drinks and wander outside, but the rooms were still individualized and full of people, so it didn’t have that warehouse effect of convention center indoor party scenes. There were some tables, but also artificial grass that folks sat around on. Without obvious room numbers it was a bit more difficult to keep track of which parties were which, but the bids mostly had huge national flags which certainly helped.

There was a gaggle of what I still think of as Bay Area folks at one table, Garcia and Schachat, Joe Price, Ric and Debbie Bretschneider. It was still comparatively chill, but I had a nice time chatting and wandering into the different rooms before calling it a night around midnight.