origins-ish

[jazzfish]

So, on Friday morning I woke up at quarter of four, taxied to the airport with the cat couriers (because the Skytrain doesn't run that early), and hopped a flight to Toronto. From there I caught a puddle-jumper to Columbus.

Sounds easy, right? Note to self: never change planes in Toronto. I had an hour fifteen scheduled for the transfer, which ended up being a little under an hour after the flight in was slightly delayed. No problem, I figured: just get from one end of the airport to the other. How hard can this be? As I walked I caught myself quietly singing "I hate the Skydome and the CN Tower too, I hate Nathan Phillips Square and the Ontario Zoo..." in a manner that I can now recognize as "prophetic."

They sent me out to go through US Customs. Meh. I'd been hoping for something along the lines of Vancouver where I didn't have to go through customs until I got to the States, but whatever. The customs line stretched out... and out... and out. Time remaining before my flight left by the time I got through customs: ten minutes.

I walked through customs having explained to the very bored customs agent that I now lived in Vancouver and hadn't actually visited the US at all since moving three weeks ago, and stared out at a sea of people moving slowly through x-ray machines and scanners. They'd sent me so far out I had to go back through security.

At this point I avoided breaking down due to lack of sleep and lack of food, and went to stand in the Air Canada customer service line, which didn't move. The guy in front of me was trying to get to Columbus as well. He'd been standing in the line for twenty minutes at that point. Turned out the guy behind me was also on the flight to Columbus, so he got in the second Air Canada line and we figured we'd all flock to whichever agent we got to first.

Twenty minutes later the guy in the other line got to talk to a human being, and we found out the plane hadn't left yet. So we sprinted through the expedited security line and ran to the far end of the Toronto airport, and made our flight. Yay.

I'm sure Toronto is a lovely airport [a lie: I'm sure of no such thing. There were signs declaring it Most Improved Airport, which as jpenamelist pointed out is not really an award you want to win] but I cannot fathom ever trying to fly through there again.

But I made it okay, starving and headachey and worse for the wear. I found uilos and collapsed on the bed in the hotel room for probably half an hour or so, and then she herded me to North Market for the first of several weekend meals involving crepes.

And then it was Origins, and there were games and people and all.

I feel like my Origins was only half as good as usual this year. Which it kinda was: I didn't get there until Friday evening, when I'm usually there on Wednesday, and I left on Sunday night instead of Monday morning.

It's not just that, though. The compressed schedule meant I wasn't trying to weasel into any RPGs or LARPs or other scheduled events. I slept poorly Friday night, so I spent Satyrday in kind of a daze, and skipped the Icehouse tournament (to my regret, as N-time champion Jake Davenport had returned). Even the dealers' hall had very little to interest me, apart from the IPR booth, where as usual I dumped lots of money into small experimentalish RPGs I will probably never get to play. At least they take up less room than board games.

I didn't do nearly enough gaming. I played somewhere south of ten games over the course of the weekend, and none at all on Sunday. The Innovation expansion is fun, as is Fealty (new games from Asmadi), in mostly different but somewhat similar ways. And not even a token effort to get into a role-playing game.

Nor did I do enough talking to people. I'd been hoping to run into prog but apparently we never coexisted in the Lab at the same time and it's ridiculously difficult to find anyone in the Board Room even when you know they're there in the first place. I spoke briefly with Ryan M-- and ee0r and Jake and JohnPaul who has taken up the mantle of Fluxxmeister, and at greater length with psilan and Chris of Asmadi and elvenyukiryu, and on Sunday found both the brain and the opportunity for a longish not-terribly-important-except-for-being-pleasant conversation with sorcyress. So that was good. It just... wasn't enough.

(ETA: which is not to downplay the companionship of the people I've been spending the past few years at Origins largely in the company of, rbandrews [and now diadelphous] and rislyn and company. I just... don't think of them as Origins-related, I guess. They're people, not Origins-people. Or something.)

I think the enforced near-isolation of the move and the subsequent getting-settled-in is starting to wear on me. I may be forgetting what little I knew of how to interact with people. Or possibly I was just tired.

(In other news, I flew back through Phoenix, which was a hundred and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, and has an airport that lacks sufficient seating so that everyone spills out into the aisle and you can't nagivate past them very well. Not recommended. Although it's kind of neat to see mountains sticking up at random in the middle of an otherwise flat city.)

And with the stupid move on GAMA's part to put Origins at the end of May (as I spent the weekend telling people, GAMA didn't like people having to have to choose between Origins and GenCon, so they made the decision for them), there's going to be no official Looney Labs presence at Origins for literally the first time since I've been going. This is likely to result in fewer people I know at Origins.

On the other hand, and having looked at a calendar, next year's Origins is the weekend after Memorial Day, making it the weekend after Wiscon. So I can go if I decide I want to. Maybe this is the year to get back to my Origins roots, look through the prereg book and sign up for events online. (Apparently there was a writer track this year? Huh.)

It all depends on scheduling, of course. The current favored option is to make the end of May into a serious vacation. Go back to Virginia for Beach Week, then working remotely (or maybe even in the actual office!) for several days while seeing my parents and other people. Then fly out to Madison for Wiscon, and go more or less straight from there to Origins. Doable, depending on how much vacation I'll have and whether / how much of it I have to use earlier. And of course it depends on uilos's vacation and scheduling as well, since she's no longer accumulating ridiculous amounts of vacation and using none of it. Hrm.

Overall: fun but not nearly enough of it.

And now I am home,and it's time to face the week.

Comments

[jazzfish]

That'd be great. Email sent!