Best. Arisia. Ever.

Well, that was a really great time, in spite of some poor organization and aided by the inclement weather.

In my previous years I've generally volunteered a massive number of hours at consuite, frequently working the bulk of both overnight shifts. I decided to not make volunteering a priority this year, so I could relax and enjoy the con. New and surprisingly bad management for the consuite also drove me to split my casual volunteering between several different areas, of which hakamadare's internet services was by far the most enjoyable. As usual, I only kept track of enough of my hours to earn the free goodies, but my total was probably around 25. I'm such a slacker.

I skipped most of the programmed activities, and what I did catch was kind of tepid, so it's a good thing it's largely incidental to my con experience. The art show had a few good things, but was small and unimaginative. The masquerade likewise; I'll probably skip it in future unless someone I know's in it, as mermaidlady was this time, with an excellent last-minute entry. Oh, I guess new_man's Hexhex tournament kind of counts, and it was good. The gaming in general was hopping this year, so kudos to jadasc

I did play in hungrytiger's LARP, Cold Storage, and on reflection it was a very good game. I only had a medium level of fun, but that was mainly due to a) me not reminding the GMs of something, and b) not clicking at all with my key co-player - by quirk, the only player I'd never met. The only real complaint I have about the game itself is that it felt inevitable that a bunch of us would be stuck with nothing to do for the last quarter of the game. Since I was already not making good headway, that was rather frustrating for me. Sorry jducoeur if I was overly negative in my initial comments to you afterwards.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff. anu3bis and I decided at Worldcon that we would hit every open party at Arisia together, and we did. It was fabulous. We wound up leading a mob sometimes in excess of a dozen people around the con, frequently taking much of a party with us when we left. In the end only five of us were hardy enough to last the full tour, being me, anu3bis, laurion, the very fun chanaleh, and L., who I don't really know, but stuck with us nonetheless. We happy few headed down to the dance for a few more hours after that, eventually wrapping up in blissful exhaustion around five.

The extra day of snowed-in con was a lot of fun, really bringing everyone together. As hakamadare said, "woe is me, I'm trapped in this luxury hotel with hundreds of my friends!" (or words to that effect). It would have been less cheery except for the very generous offer of crash space by mr_teem. Since security said they were desperate for volunteers, I switched sides to stalwartly patrol the con, uh, looking for parties. Oddly enough I took to it rather easily, though being the resident symbol of authority was a little weird. Actually, in the wee hours pretty much all the drunken revelry was being undertaken by the security staff anyway, but at least I got notified of where such revelry would be occurring by radio. For, you know, law and order purposes.

So, all around, a most excellent con. I didn't hang out as much with many of the people I usually do, but I hung out a lot with new people or people I don't get to see that much, so it was all to the good.