not dead! honest!

friday, we both had off of work. barda was over on thursday night, so first thing friday morning nathan took her off to work and then came home and woke me. (what a fine pleasing sweetheart he is. he let me sleep. awwwww.) then we frantically packed and loaded all our crap into the car. i had dropped the fabulous pirate dog off at my parents house the night before, so that was all done. then, into the car to drive to cedar rapids iowa, for the second time in a month. can we say tedious? can we say that a person should not need to have a favorite truck stop in iowa? (mason city, if you're wondering.)

anyhow. long drive, got there about 4 or 5pm. nathan had wanted to make opening ceremonies, but we were unfortunately running around like headless chickens getting ice for his soda and finding a place to make copies of the supercon party signs. we spotted the genghis grill and decided that we'd bring an expedition back there for dinner on saturday. back to the hotel, where we dragged in the soda and found a small horde of people to drag off to dinner in the hotel restaurant. they continue to have good sounding but not so tasty food. however, free breadsticks!

after dinner, i wandered up to the room and changed into my new jungle betsy outfit-- a stretchy camo t-shirt and olive cargo short-shorts. off to the supercon party, and i made conversation with people and handed out flyers and was polite to strangers for hours and it was all good. gregg had a homebrewing panel at 9pm, so at 10, when it got out, he led a whole bunch of people back to the room to sample his homebrew beer and nathan's homebrew soda.

i crashed, as predicted, about midnight. fall down go boooom.

saturday daytime was not so exciting, but that was fine. i went to the dealer's room and procured a few christmas presents and some books. i sat around the lobby and peoplewatched, and found out that the animeiowa postmortem had been relocated to the icon hotel, rather than the hotel across town where animeiowa had been held. (dear laura: :P ;) this did mean that i got to see the person who i had met and talked to at the wedding two weeks ago who i was hoping would be at icon, but only fleetingly. i succumbed to yet another bad case of "i think i'll pretend you don't exist". sheesh. if anyone knows a way to dig that programming out of my head and replace it with witty banter, please let me know.

anyhow. saturday night, we went off to genghis grill with tony and kerry and stephanie and jeudi (that's what her nametag said!) and had a quite fine time. pretty good food, although they seem to be a touch confused about this mexico/mongolia distinction. however, we had one vegetarian and one person with food allergies in the party, and the vegetarian was happy with the selection and the food allergy person was not dead, so i count that as a net win.

saturday night, i spent most of my evening in the consuite or in the hotel lobby, which is quite fine hanging out space. sadly, there was a bartender pouring strong drinks in the consuite, and there was a laboriously winding hallway between consuite and the lobby which had a fireplug in it. this, i say, is no fair. i am usually barefoot in the evenings at cons, and sometimes tipsy, and putting large cast iron obstacles in my way is a dirty trick.

i managed to not break myself, however. go, me!

sunday morning, we got up way too early, and sped home so as to coordinate the baby party for m., who slept through most of the baby party, and hardly fussed at all. many people came, and there were cookies and family and friends, and it was all good. the dogs didn't even eat anyone.