There was no blog entry on Tuesday of this week because I got home from AwesomeCon too late the night before, and I was very tired from a long weekend of travel. And what an eventful weekend it was.
It began with my train being delayed thirty minutes only an hour after it got going. When I messaged my friend I was staying with that weekend, she had forgotten that I was showing up that night! Once my train pulled into its station I came to learn, after lugging my bags across Union Station, that the last subway train to my destination had left for the night thanks to the thirty minute delay.
Once I got to my friend’s place (thanks to a Lyft) I slept comfortably on her dangerously cozy sofa. In the morning I took my time getting ready, since Garth is notorious for dragging his feet in the morning and we had hours of setup time down at the convention center. I had to be the one to pick up the badges for the Artist Alley table since they were reserved in my name. It turns out Garth turned over a new leaf and was already in the loading dock queue when I sat down for breakfast! I slurped down hot oatmeal and ran out the door.
On Saturday the entire convention center ran into serious signal problems, which meant there was great difficulty accepting credit cards. And since no one carries cash on them any more, it meant everything ground to a halt. A very nice young woman wanted to buy both Oracle for Hire volumes, and she patiently waited nearly twenty minutes while we struggled to get our readers to accept her payment! Finally I told her to be on her way with the books while I searched for a signal to get her card to go through, and as soon as I got one the card was declined. She was long gone, and there was no one to blame for this but me.*
The rest of the weekend went pretty smoothly, except for the friend I was staying with being unexpectedly busy on Sunday night and my train suddenly MOVING BACKWARDS on the track on Monday afternoon. But I made it home, and I was happy to see my family again.
But for all the stumbles and miscommunications and signal issues, AwesomeCon was a great weekend. I got to see lots of people I hadn’t seen in years and met lots of great attendees who either discovered me or had been following me for years and had very, very heartfelt things to say. My spirit was enriched and my spirits were high, and AwesomeCon lived up to its name.
*The young woman from this story contacted me once she realized her card hadn’t been charged for the books, and offered to send along payment these few days later.