I'm back!

[lance_sibley]

Well, some of you have probably noticed that I've been making comments here and there to posts that you've made since last Wednesday night, as I've slowly caught up on my friendslist (it only took two days to read seven days' worth of posts).

Anyway, Gallifrey was a lot of fun - smaller than I thought (about 750 people, rather than the 1000 or more that I thought attended the con), but there was a lot of good energy there. People were excited about the new Doctor Who, despite the fact that many of the people likely hadn't seen it. Though they did get a chance to see it unofficially during the weekend - shaunskywalker made a few announcements here and there about "something that we can't talk about is definitely not being shown in the video room. It's not being shown between noon and 8pm..."

Anyway, here's my day-by-day report, complete with cuts so as not to take up all kinds of space:


7:00 pm

I'm in Cincinnati, just having boarded the plane for the L.A. leg of the trip to Gallifrey. The boarding process was like a scene from a Keystone Kops movie, but everything was finally sorted out.

This plane is a lot roomier than the one I was on this afternoon. I bumped my head getting on and off that one, and it was only four seats wide. This one actually has three seats on either side of the aisle, and it also has the feel of a much newer plane.

Roomier or not, I'm roasting. In Toronto this morning, it was 2°C with freezing rain, so I wore a T-shirt, hoodie and my winter coat. (I drew the line at boots, though.) Randy had called this morning because he'd heard on the radio that flights were being cancelled, but mine wasn't - we just needed to be de-iced first. (That was the first time I'd ever been on a plane being de-iced - it looked like pink dish soap being sprayed over the plane.) For most of today, I was actually carrying my coat around, but decided around 6:15 to put it on to free up my hands, and to go to Starbucks and grab a coffee. Bad idea - I should have found a cold caffeine source.

The forecast low for this evening in L.A. is only 6°C, though, so I may yet be thankful for the warm clothes.

At one point while I was waiting to board, the woman sitting next to me leaned across to her friend and said, "You can tell who the Canadians are." No kidding.

I struck up a conversation with a young guy who was, like me, waiting until the very end of the boarding process for his zone to be called. He's from Michigan, and in college, flying home for the weekend. He happened to mention that two of his roommates were from Toronto. I must remember to ask him later if jaideran_frost happens to be one of them. That would be funny, and do absolutely nothing to dispel the rumour that I know everyone.

7:35 pm

In the air now - takeoff was a bit bumpy.

Oh, that's neat - the video screens came down and are displaying statistics: local time in L.A. (4:39pm - we were about 20 minutes late taking off), altitude (3208 metres), ground speed (546 km/h), time to L.A. (5 hours, 10 minutes) and the distance to L.A. (3005 km), along with an aerial view of the area around Cincinnati, and a red vector showing where we are. We seem to be well into Indiana already. The weird thing is, we seem to be angling northward, toward Indianapolis. We're still accelerating, though - we're now at 746 km/h, at an altitude of 7315 metres.

Other highlights of today so far include being patted down at Pearson - I didn't realize I had some change in my pocets, buried in the Kleenex - and I was very obviously cruised in the food court in Cincinnati. :)

I think I'm going to put the notebook down for a while - I brought two books, yesterday's crossword and today's newspaper in my backpack, so I have plenty to read. Besides, updating the stats on our airspeed and altitude for five hours will be boring.

8:30 pm

The flight attendant just announced that the movie is "Walk The Line." Apparently the headsets they sell on board are "compatible with most electronic devices," so I'm going to see if my Discman's headphones are compatible with their system.

8:32 pm

That would be a "yes."

10:30 pm

Well, that was... meh. Paint-by-numbers biopic. If it wins Best Picture I'll be seriously miffed. I don't know if it's because of all the hype, but throughout the film, I was acutely aware that I was watching Joaquin Phoenix acting, whereas I never had the same feeling about Reese Witherspoon. I guess the odds of seeing "Brokeback Mountain" on a commercial flight are pretty low. Though people wouldn't be able to leave the theatre at the first sex scene.

11:30 pm

I don't know what's going on, but a few mintes ago there was an annoucement requesting any medical personnel on the plane to identify themselves. Fortunately, it seems that there's at least one aboard. I can't tell what's happening, though, as it's right at the back of the plane. All I do know is that the flight attendants keep running back and forth, and a man with an airline ID badge in a horrific checked jacket (a sky marshal, maybe?) went back as well.

It actually makes me feel a bit better to know that there's a medical professional on board. I don't know if it's my cold combined with the altitude that's causing this, but I've been having pain in my chest - normally when I exhale - for the last little while. Coughing hurts too, but only on the left side. Unfortunately, my sinuses won't stop producing gunk. :(

1:30 am

Palm trees. Cool.

I'm on the shuttle to the Marriott. There are two flight attendants sitting next to me who just arrived on a nonstop American Airlines flight from Toronto. Apparently the freezing rain was still coming down at 6:30 this evening.

I should be hungry, but I'm not. I guess the chicken sandwich in Cincinnati and the two snacks on the plane filled me up.

We seem to have arrived. Now the flight attendants are looking at Tom Ford's Vanity Fair photo spread. Amusingly, they don't seem to have heard of him. I thought he was famous.


1:45 am

When I arrived last night, after grabbing a burger in the sports bar (I changed my mind about not eating) and watching Jeffrey Buttle win the bronze medal (yay), I spotted shaunskywalker. I went over and collected a hug, whereupon I found out that he'd heard that I was coming. How, I couldn't quite figure out, but thanks to Mike Doran (who's also here) we figured out that nexstarman had told Graeme Burk, who had told shaunskywalker. Apparently my decision to come here was worthy of gossip. Who knew?

Anyway, today I sat in on some panels - one on the new show, one on why so many gay men are Doctor Who fans, the Opening Ceremonies, and the Guest Of Honour hour with Noel Clarke, Mary Tamm, David Warwick and Louise Jameson. At one point this morning, I found myself outside - wearing shorts and a T-shirt (!). I had been looking for Registration and spotted Tara O'Shea, a Chicago fan whom I'd met last night. It turned out that the guy she was chatting with was Alan Ruscoe, who is a regular background actor on the new show: he played one of the What Not To Wear robots and the Anne Droid (but not the voice - that was done by Anne Robinson) in the season one episode "Bad Wolf". He was also Bib Fortuna in The Phantom Menace and Lott Dod in Attack Of The Clones. I thought it was rather cool that he was just hanging around outside, chatting with the fans.

I also learned the real reason why John Barrowman cancelled - it seems that his BBC contract only allows him to appear at BBC-sanctioned events. Boo.

Anyway, the rest of the evening went by quickly. I had dinner, then went to the Masquerade (where we were subjected to "M'nah M'nah" while we waited for the show to start), ran into ashoemaker unexpectedly, then went to bovil's and kproche's League of Evil Geniuses party, where I spent about five hours drinking "rough-filtered sake" (about the colour and texture of skim milk, and sweet) and red wine. I started feeling tired around 1:15 and decided to come back to my room for the night.

Oh, and Graeme and Scott still haven't arrived. It seems their flight last night was grounded due to weather (I guess I got lucky) and today's flights were all full. Mike said they're hoping to get here tomorrow.

I'm actually a little surprised that there are so few people here. The Registration number in the newsletter was 627 of which only 384 had shown up as yet as of 5 or so this afternoon. I'd been led to believe that this was a much alrger con. Maybe there will be more people here tomorrow.


2:30 am

I was awakened this morning by a phone call. At first I couldn't place the sound, but eventually I figured it out. It was minotaurs, calling to arrange to meet for dinner tonight. I'm sure I sounded like a complete git, but I'd been awake for all of 30 seconds.

After showering and having coffee, I went to see Mary Tamm being interviewed in the main room, followed by Noel Clarke. I then went to the video room for a while where they were screening "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" with live commentary by the writers, which I thought was really cool. I also saw Phillip Olivier on the main stage - he's an actor from some of the audio dramas (he plays Hex, one of the Seventh Doctor's Companions, if any of you have heard them). Yowza. Apparently he's selling some very interesting calendars - I may look for one tomorrow.

I met minotaurs at 6:30, and he took me to a restaurant on Santa Monica in West Hollywood called French Quarter. I had the French Onion soup and pot roast, and we shared a couple of desserts - blackout cake and a banana bread pudding with a whiskey sauce. One dessert between the two of us would have sufficed. We chatted about a wide variety of things, and all in all it was a pleasant first real-life meeting.

After he brought me back to the hotel, I hung out with some of the folks I'd met last night (Tim, an L.A. local, and Tom Wilk, from Chicago) as well as ashoemaker and a few others I recognized from past Gaylaxicons. When shaunskywalker saw me, he pointed and said, "There's number eighteen." Apparently he was counting the number of gay men he knew who were here.

Scott and Graeme finally made it this evening, but I didn't spend much time with them. They went into the dance while I continued to socialize out in the hall. Scott looked really tired, which didn't surprise me given their ordeal. But I'm glad they made it.

Toward the end of the evening, word filtered down that there were only five songs left to be played in the dance. Tom dragged me in with him. (Before anyone says anything, he's straight, but gives good hugs.) I had fun, but now I'm all hot and sweaty. There was a song being played which seemed to be based on an Abba sample, but I was going crazy trying to place it. It turned out to be "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" being mangled by Madonna. I shuddered. It just seems wrong.

I seem to have convinced a few people here to come to Toronto, whether for Gaylaxicon or for TT. This is a good thing. I've met a few people who are genuinely curious about Toronto, including one young lady who wanted to know if I spoke French (not whether I needed to, just whether I did).

Anyway, all in all, it's been fun so far. It's so nice to be able to attend and enjoy a con without having to worry about behind-the-scenes stuff. I know I do that at Ad Astra, past Gaylaxicons and AN, but at those cons I've been tabling or otherwise being there in some official capacity on behalf of another con. Here, other than dropping off flyers (a lot of which were taken, BTW), I've been doing my own thing with just a lot of schmoozing thrown in. It's nice.

I should sleep now, because I want to try to see some more stuff tomorrow, and maybe get an autograph or two.


12:00 pm

Well, today has sucked so far.

First things first, however. Yesterday was enjoyable for the first little while. I went to some panels - I saw Billy West (hilarious, but almost as foul-mouthed as Robin Curtis, which is saying something) and got identified by the show's writers as a Canadian when I interjected that Doctor Who was the #5 show in Canada last year in response to a question from another audience member (well, none of the panelists seemed to know the answer). I guess the Leafs jersey (it was cooler here yesterday) was a giveaway. The funny thing is, it was Mark Gatiss who said, "uh-oh, look out - it's a Canadian!" I had been wracking my brain trying to figure out why he looked so familiar, until someone else referred to The League Of Gentlemen during a panel.

Anyway, I also popped into the Charity Auction with a couple of friends - they wanted to check it out for five minutes, and I promptly spent $20 on an entire set of drafts of the Voyager episode "Riddles" and a set of call sheets. (Why it didn't go for more, I'm not sure. Had the auctioneer pointed out all of the autographs on the call sheets - Kate Mulgrew and Mark Moses, who now plays Paul Young on "Desperate Housewives," among them - I wouldn't have gotten them for $20, I'm sure.) Afterwards, I was hanging out with those same people, Chad (shaunskywalker's partner) and some others and plans were being made for dinner. Chad suggested that we all meet up at a certain area, so I went up to my room to get my jacket. When I came back downstairs five minutes later, I couldn't find them. I waited around for a while, and eventually figured that they had gone without me. So I went into the bar and had dinner there.

While I was in there, a few people struck up conversations with me, so it wasn't entirely unpleasant. John Schwab (the What Not To Wear android who wasn't Alan Ruscoe) recognized me (I was still wearing the Leafs jersey) and waved. I think he's Canadian, actually, judging by comments he made on that panel in the afternoon. There was also a cute young gay Brit named Barry who wanted to chat about Lost and Canadian politics, and another guy, from New Orleans, named Sam who was incredibly drunk and unbelievably flamey. Every other sentence started with "girlfriend," and the others started with "P.S." As in, "P.S., I'll have a vodka-cranberry, girlfriend!" *snap* He reminded me a lot of Andy Hallett, actually.

I went up to my room around 1 o'clock after saying goodbye to some of the people I'd met over the weekend, packed my bags, set the alarm and went to bed.

This morning I got up around 9 (my flight was at 12:10), showered, dressed, checked out and went down to catch the airport shuttle. I saw shaunskywalker there, so I said goodbye. Next, it's my turn to entertain him for a weekend as he and Chad are coming to Gaylaxicon.

I arrived at the airport around 10:15 and stood in line at the Delta checkin counter. When I got to the front of the line, they told me that it was actually an El Al flight, and that I was at the wrong building. (For some reason, they didn't tell me, either when I booked the flight or when they printed the tickets at Pearson, whyat terminal I should be at. So off I went, dressed for Toronto weather (T-shirt, hoodie, winter coat) walking across the monument to concrete that is LAX, to the correct terminal.

There was no line for the Toronto flight (though there was for Tel Aviv; I didn't realize until later that Toronto was actually just a stop on the Tel Aviv flight), so I was able to check in quickly and get into the security line.

When I got to the front, the screener made me wait for several minutes and then directed me to sit in a row of seats against the wall. Apaprently (according to the guy seated next to me) anyone who didn't look Jewish was being singled out for special screening. Loooooovely. (He and the girl he was travelling with had predicted, as soon as I joined the line, that I would be pulled out.)

So they confiscated my backpack (telling me that I could retrieve it at the gate) and my suitcase (presumably it's been checked). I was then taken into a room where my shoes were taken away and checked.

I then proceeded to the gate (with a stop at the duty-free shop) where I had to take off my coat, belt, shoes (again) and hand over my wallet to be searched. Oh, and my duty-free purchases.

About two minutes after being given all of my belongings back, my name was called out. What now? For some reason they changed my seat from row 38/aisle to row 30/window. So not only do I have a view (which I don't like, because I'm a nervous flyer) but I'm responsible for operating the emergency exit over the wing. Whom did I piss off, I ask? The stupid thing was, the guy at the desk kept telling me that it was a better seat. Sure, I have a little more leg room because I'm in the first row of coach, but otherwise - not so much. Plus there's been a constant stream of people using the bathroom right in front of me since we took off. Not to mention that the flight attendants are prepping of the food and beverage carts three feet to my right. And I can't see the movie screen from this angle - it's directly to my right, and about three inches behind me. Oh, and the flight attendants keep speaking to me in Hebrew. Hak nik mein cheinik.

So as a result of all this, I'm overheated, dehydrated, thoroughly annoyed and pissed off, and can't understand what's going on around me. That's especially unnerving when there's what sounds like an alarm and the pilot is making an announcement in Hebrew.

Apparently the flight attendant's English isn't too good, either. She asked me if I wanted ice in my drink. I said yes, since I'm dehydrated. What do I get handed to me? Warm Coke, no ice. At least it tastes more or less like Coke and not some knockoff.

Nothing much else happened after that - the flight landed on time, I got through Customs with no problems, and took a leisurely bus/subway/bus ride home.

When I got home, there were four messages on my machine - one from someone whom I thought was going to be working on Gaylaxicon but who now can't, one from nexstarman, and two from headhunters contacting me about the same position. I returned nexstarman's call immediately, and called the headhunters back Tuesday. I got voice mail for both, so I let the first one to call back represent me. *grin* He wants me to tweak my resume to indicate that my volunteer work on TT and Gaylaxicon fills in the empty space since I lost my last job - strange, but whatever. Since it was Tuesday that I spoke to him, I should do that tomorrow. I hope he understands that it's taken me a while to get caught up on various things after returning home. (He seemed quite understanding when I told him that I hadn't called him back until Tuesday because I'd been away.)

As I said at the top of this post, I've only just caught up on email and my friendslist - I haven't even logged onto TrekBBS or the TTMB since my return. Oh, and I haven't had a chance to read today's paper yet. (For that matter, I spent Tuesday reading Friday's, Saturday's, Monday's and Tuesday's papers.) Oh well. There's always tomorrow.

I went out today to see about getting the new Doctor Who box set at Future Shop. They'd been selling it at Gallifrey for USD$150 in the dealers' room, which was extortion. Future Shop still hasn't gotten their shipment in yet. I popped into HMV just to check the price, and it was $100 (for my American friends, that's about USD$87 - see what I meant about extortion?). The woman in Future Shop didn't seem interested in helping me, though - she made it seem like I was imposing on her conversation with a co-worker by making her look up whether they had any copies in yet.

Oh, and bowling tonight... we managed to tie one game, and lose the other two. But the other team had about 125 pins on us from the start due to their high handicaps. I bowled okay - 171, 178 and 154. My arm was starting to bother me toward the end of the night. (I missed a really easy spare in the tenth in the second game - and that's the one we tied. :( ) cuteteenboy was able to join us tonight, but due to his father being late in picking him up to give him a lift to the subway and the subway being stopped on the whole of the Bloor line for about 20 minutes, we got there a little later than usual. But we were still in time for me to scarf down some pizza for dinner, as is my habit on Wednesday nights.

Sleepy now.