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For the first time in probably close to eight years, I
went to a convention that I didn't have to work in one
capacity or another. It was the first Aggiecon that
I've attended where I wasn't involved in planning it.
Because I hadn't been obsessing about it and working
on it non-stop all year, it was a bit of a surprise to
me when it actually was time to go to Con. I'd
thought due to my job and Zack's we'd only be able to
make it on the weekend.
Thursday before the convention, my project got
terminated, if I'd been thinking about it, I might
have come up Friday.
So, Saturday morning Zack and I piled in the car and
made the hour and a half trek up to College Station.
We both agreed that it felt strange to be coming back.
It doesn't quite have the same homelike feeling that
it had even four months ago when I was driving up
there three days a week.
We went upstairs and picked up my former chair badge
from the registration booth. There have been some
renovations to the scheduling department and so things
look different. I'm not sure I like it really. It's
less accessible and less ascetically pleasing than it
used to be. Additionally, I'm not a big fan of change
so that might have something to do with my dislike for
the new arrangement, too.
The dealer's room and things were arranged slightly
differently from the last year. One of the normal
dealer's room rooms was turned into computer gaming.
It was darn impressive, too. They had close to forty
LAN'ed computers and 6-8 console systems.
Dealer's room had more jewelry this year than I
remember seeing in previous years. I picked up a
nifty piece of jewelry made out of magnetized
hematite. It can be a bracelet or a necklace
depending on how I align all the beads.
Zack and I poked around the dealer's room. Joe
Singleton was at a panel when we showed up so we
wandered around and talked to various people that I
hadn't gotten to talk to in a long while.
While we were looking around the dealer's room we
picked up a copy of Frag and a set of X-Bugs. X-Bugs
for those of you that don't know is like tiddlywinks
on crack. It has different stickers on either side of
the tiddlywink. You try to flip it onto your enemy's
bugs and crush them. It sounds weird, I know, but
it's really pretty fun.
There were significantly more people in costume this
year than there were last year. I didn't get too many
pictures because our camera is on the fritz and Best
Buy messed up our first order or our new camera, so I
didn't get it until after Con, but that's a completely
different story for a different time.
We poked around the Art Show and I found another piece
by Theresa Mathers that I wanted. This time it was a
sailing ship. I'm thinking it's a pretty piece for
the bathroom. I was told later when I was paying for
it that people had been thinking that one wouldn't
sell because it wasn't noticeably science fiction or
fantasy. I have eclectic tastes what can I say?
After that we went over to North Gate, intending to go
to Freebirds for lunch, but there was this HUGE line
there, so we went to the Japanese place around the
corner which had a much more reasonable wait.
We came back and bummed around in the Con Suite for a
while. Con suite was nice as always. Meri and her
husband Dean had pictures of their daughter to look
at. Easteregg is at the climb on everyone and
everything phase so she got left at her grandparents.
We then made our way back up to the dealer's room,
where it was time to surprise Brian Stelfreeze. This
was Brian's last Aggiecon, so to celebrate and thank
Brian for coming to ten Aggiecons Kelly Sullivan
managed to get her hands on thirty or so yellow hats
like Brian normally wears and a huge chunk of
Cepheid's waited for Brian at his table with their
hats. I'm told that both Peter Mayhew and Todd
McCaffrey had yellow hats and could be seen later in
the day wearing them, too.
After the yellow hat escapade, Zack and I made our way
over to Joe's table and plopped down to talk to him
and various other people that passed the table for the
rest of the day. We sat and chatted with Joe while he
drew role-playing characters for a couple paying
customers.
About 5:30 we left the convention to have dinner with
my ex-roommate and her husband. We had fun talking to
them for a couple hours before we went back to
purchase my piece of art, dropping in on a few moments
of the costume contest in the process. It was dark at
that point and we wanted to get back on the road
before it was too late, so we left right after we
bought the print.
Overall, I had a lot of fun. It was very different to
not be on the working my butt off end of this. I look
forward to going back next year.
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