Dragon*Con: Friday
Sep. 8th, 2010 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragoness_eOkay, now that I'm half-recovered from Dragon*Con, I can start posting pictures. I may be a bit slow about this, since I still haven't installed PSP9 on my new laptop, so I'm making do with GIMP. Unfortunately, the GIMP doesn't have all my presets and scripts that I normally use to speed up image processing. It's been very tedious doing it all one picture at a time. Bleh.
We drove up Thursday evening and arrive late Thursday night, and pretty much crashed straight into our hotel bed. Come morning, Becky and I headed over to the food court and found the breakfast buffet at Cafe Momo (which turned out to be way better than the hotel's breakfast buffet, which I had later on Sunday). After breakfast we went our separate ways, she to check out panels that interested her and find her local friends, and me to check out panels that interested me. I spent a while going through the schedule grid in the pocket program with a highlighter and marking possible panels that interested me.
The very first thing that caught my attention was a panel on "The Physics of Your Magic" with, among others, John Ringo (of "Oh no, John, no!" fame) on it. Now, one thing I learned from Dragon*Con 2004 was that John Ringo is very entertaining when he's on a panel. (I also learned in 2004 that Harlan Ellison shuts down the rest of the panel speakers, because he's Harlan-freaking-Ellison and who can top anything he says? Fortunately, Ellison wasn't there this year). Mr. Ringo did not fail to be funny and interesting again.
A typical panel -- that's John Ringo 2nd from the left
John D. Ringo
After leaving all the books to be autographed back in the hotel room, it occurred to me I should have brought the Ringo one to the panel. Oh well, I'd get it signed later.
Dragon*Con was spread out over FIVE hotels this year: the Hyatt, the Hilton, the Mariott Marquis for most of the panels and events, plus registration was at the Sheraton, and some other stuff was over at the Westin. The first three hotels were connected with each other and Peachtree Center mall (and food court, most important!) by pedestrian bridges, which was very convenient, if sometimes confusing.
The Marriot Marquis was also protected by Lovecraftian horrors trying to fool innocent bystanders into thinking they were just lions.
Lion-horrors
The crushing mob wasn't all that bad yet; not nearly as bad as it got on the weekend.
Marriot Marquis lobby
I saw lots of people in cool costumes all through the con, and I'm saving them up for one big "Cool Costumes" post. Otherwise this post would have a hundred pictures in it.
I tried to hit one of the Exhibitor/Dealer rooms, but it was already getting crowded and I was worried about running out of time before the next thing. I loaned one of the vendors (the one selling clip-on horns and cat ears) my program long enough for her to look up a panel she was interested in, and bought a pair of curly horns which I wore the next day under my broad-brimmed black hat.
Cool stuff for sale
Late that afternoon, we met up back at the hotel to collapse and get ready for "Evening at Bree", the annual dance and Tolkien-costume exhibition event that Emerald Rose plays every year. I also finally met Charles, aka CharlesRB, aka Charles Rocket-boy.
Becky's dance outfit
Charles RB
Becky had also finally caught up with Sharon, in spite of cellphone outages. (You can't get any bars in the lowest levels of the hotels; they are underground, essentially).
Becky and Sharon, going thataway in the Food Court
Did I mention that lots of people were in costume? This picture should give you an idea of the proportion of people in costumes vs. not. And if you count the goths in their goth clubbing outfits as "in costume", even more people were costumed. It was a lot like Mardi Gras.
Lots of people in costume
The rest of my evening was "Evening at Bree". That's next post, and a lot more pictures!
We drove up Thursday evening and arrive late Thursday night, and pretty much crashed straight into our hotel bed. Come morning, Becky and I headed over to the food court and found the breakfast buffet at Cafe Momo (which turned out to be way better than the hotel's breakfast buffet, which I had later on Sunday). After breakfast we went our separate ways, she to check out panels that interested her and find her local friends, and me to check out panels that interested me. I spent a while going through the schedule grid in the pocket program with a highlighter and marking possible panels that interested me.
The very first thing that caught my attention was a panel on "The Physics of Your Magic" with, among others, John Ringo (of "Oh no, John, no!" fame) on it. Now, one thing I learned from Dragon*Con 2004 was that John Ringo is very entertaining when he's on a panel. (I also learned in 2004 that Harlan Ellison shuts down the rest of the panel speakers, because he's Harlan-freaking-Ellison and who can top anything he says? Fortunately, Ellison wasn't there this year). Mr. Ringo did not fail to be funny and interesting again.
A typical panel -- that's John Ringo 2nd from the left
John D. Ringo
After leaving all the books to be autographed back in the hotel room, it occurred to me I should have brought the Ringo one to the panel. Oh well, I'd get it signed later.
Dragon*Con was spread out over FIVE hotels this year: the Hyatt, the Hilton, the Mariott Marquis for most of the panels and events, plus registration was at the Sheraton, and some other stuff was over at the Westin. The first three hotels were connected with each other and Peachtree Center mall (and food court, most important!) by pedestrian bridges, which was very convenient, if sometimes confusing.
The Marriot Marquis was also protected by Lovecraftian horrors trying to fool innocent bystanders into thinking they were just lions.
Lion-horrors
The crushing mob wasn't all that bad yet; not nearly as bad as it got on the weekend.
Marriot Marquis lobby
I saw lots of people in cool costumes all through the con, and I'm saving them up for one big "Cool Costumes" post. Otherwise this post would have a hundred pictures in it.
I tried to hit one of the Exhibitor/Dealer rooms, but it was already getting crowded and I was worried about running out of time before the next thing. I loaned one of the vendors (the one selling clip-on horns and cat ears) my program long enough for her to look up a panel she was interested in, and bought a pair of curly horns which I wore the next day under my broad-brimmed black hat.
Cool stuff for sale
Late that afternoon, we met up back at the hotel to collapse and get ready for "Evening at Bree", the annual dance and Tolkien-costume exhibition event that Emerald Rose plays every year. I also finally met Charles, aka CharlesRB, aka Charles Rocket-boy.
Becky's dance outfit
Charles RB
Becky had also finally caught up with Sharon, in spite of cellphone outages. (You can't get any bars in the lowest levels of the hotels; they are underground, essentially).
Becky and Sharon, going thataway in the Food Court
Did I mention that lots of people were in costume? This picture should give you an idea of the proportion of people in costumes vs. not. And if you count the goths in their goth clubbing outfits as "in costume", even more people were costumed. It was a lot like Mardi Gras.
Lots of people in costume
The rest of my evening was "Evening at Bree". That's next post, and a lot more pictures!
