I'm back!

Wow, what a weekend.

Everything between the Thursday night concom potluck and meeting to the Monday afternoon breakfast is a bit of a blur. I'd been feeling like I might not want to do this again a few times in the last couple of weeks, but who am I kidding? I love working with this fantastic group of people, even if I spend 18 hours a day running around and don't get to see much of the convention.

The bits I did see, however, were a lot of fun. Some highlights of the weekend:

• I got to spend some quiet time with rosemary_ca and others Thursday and Saturday nights. Most people had long gone to bed, but rosemary_ca was a gracious hostess (and even fed me a delicious grilled roast beef sandwich around 4 o'clock Sunday morning :) ). I'm glad that our friend Ben made sure that I stopped by.


• Ditto for summ3r_daze Friday night. I didn't make it to her room party until something like 3AM, after putting Saturday's panel schedules up and making sure all the doors were locked for the night, but she made sure that I was relaxed and fed. (That's important. Friday I had the departmental breakfast meeting at 9AM, and didn't get out to eat until 12:30 AM. I know I'm supposed to find time to eat, but there was just too much that needed doing, and not enough available bodies.)


• Back to Thursday - I had to go up to my room to grab the binder that contained all of my Programming notes. kairi_kiss was heading up at the same time, so we were in the elevator together. The doors opened, and there stood Gareth David-Lloyd in a tight black tank top. Russell T Davies should fire the makeup artist and costume designer on Torchwood - the man is smoking hot in person. You think he's hot as Ianto? You ain't seen nothing. He said good evening, we returned the greeting, and once the elevator doors closed, I turned to kairi_kiss and fanned myself. Every time he saw me after that, he winked, though I'm sure that he was doing that to everyone. (ghstlght74, before you get your hopes up, he's straight and his girlfriend was there this weekend too. :P )


• Late Friday afternoon, I went over to the airport to meet Jim and Shannon Butcher. I knew that we were picking up an actor at the same time, but I didn't know who until we got there and psubrat handed me a sign with the Polaris logo and the name "E. Muth" written on it. Of course, Ellen was our actor GoH at Gaylaxicon two years ago, and I saw her again at Dragon*Con last year, where she remembered me, so I was amused by the coincidence. psubrat stood at one end of the departure area while kaelsu2 and I stood in front of the doors. Ellen came through, I waved, and she came over and said, "Hi! Remember me?" :)


• Friday night, I was on my way past the Blast-Off Party when I spotted Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens standing in the hallway. I hadn't yet seen them, so I stopped to say hello and make sure that they had everything they needed. I hadn't actually seen them in 19 years - they used to live here in Toronto, and I used to socialize with them occasionally, back before they'd published their first Star Trek novel - and after assuring me that everything was good, Gar asked me, "And you are--?" I showed him my badge, and he grinned widely, said, "Lance! I'm sorry, but it's been 19 years!" and threw his arms around me. Then Judy came over and did the same thing.


• I actually managed to make it to Klingon Karaoke for about 45 minutes Friday night to hang out with hoskie (and sing "West End Girls" ;) ). I only saw him one other time during the con - when I was dashing somewhere in response to a radio call, naturally. (I hope you enjoyed yourself!)


• An important note - never get a Boston Creme donut for breakfast, then put it in your pocket and forget about it for the next two hours. (I needed both hands free to carry two cups of coffee back to the hotel.)


• Another Ellen Muth story - Saturday afternoon, I was taking Jim Butcher (who was fantastic, BTW) backstage for his Main Room talk when Ellen and her guest liaison came into the hallway on their way to the autograph room. Apparently Ellen had been watching Polaris TV (a loop of items about the con and its history that we play on the hotel's internal TV channel), and the Polaris Vs. TT videos that twiddler and I performed last year were part of it. She grinned and said, "I saw you on TV this morning!" (I thought I was the one who was supposed to be saying stuff like that. ;) )


• Edited to add: How could I forget the fire alarms? I got to bed at 5:30 Sunday morning... and the alarm went off three times between about 7:30 and 8:30. I finally got up the third time (it was a fast ringing, as opposed to the slower one from earlier) and took the stairs down to the lobby, where I found almost nobody. Someone had buttons made up that said "I survived the Polaris 22 Inferno... three times" and gave them out. (I'm not sure who was actually responsible for making them. I don't even remember who gave me mine, though I do remember whitesangria giving me some for the Butchers and the Reeves-Stevenses.)

Most of the rest of the weekend was taken up by walking back and forth between one end of the hotel and the other, just making sure that everything was going smoothly. I stage-managed the Constellation Awards Saturday evening, which went very well. When Tanya Huff was announced as the winner for "Best Canadian Contribution" (as the author of the books that the series "Blood Ties" was based on), the crowd went absolutely nuts - everyone loves Tanya. (She did thwap me in the arm on Saturday and tell me off for scheduling her for four consecutive panels. We normally try to avoid that, but Jenga happens...)

As with most large events, there are things that don't go as well as one hopes. We had a panel planned on Sunday afternoon with one of the scientists from the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences, and he had to cancel very late last week because of a last-minute conflict. I had printed up signs and posted one on the door of the room the panel was scheduled in, but I didn't realize that I'd posted it on the door that actually opened. When the door was propped open, the sign was on the other side, facing the wall, where nobody could see it. Our AV guy radioed me to tell me that there were no panelists there, but there were about 20 people in the room. I told him that the panel had been cancelled and raced the entire length of the hotel to apologize to the people who had come to hear him speak.

I also didn't get to see the head of KAG/KANADA, with whom I'd been emailing (and to whom I owe a response to an email from about two weeks ago). I'd really wanted to sit down with him for a few minutes, but while I saw someone else from the group, to my knowledge, I never actually saw him. I was a bit miffed that they had decided to reschedule their Grand Assembly without actually consulting the department - they just scratched it off the schedule that was posted on the door to the room and wrote in "rescheduled for Saturday afternoon". I have no idea where they held it, considering that all of the panel rooms were in use...

I was worried that the filkers would be put out by the last-minute arrangements we'd had to make because we lost the use of the room we'd designated for them. However, when I explained the situation, they were all very understanding. I was a little surprised that they packed it in around 2AM. (One of them - I can't recall now if it was marahsk or someone else - said that the days of filking until 5 in the morning were long past for this particular group.) At one point, when I went down to count the number of participants, I was asked if I would sing. I declined, but mentioned that about 20 years ago, I did write two filksongs that got published in Star Trek Toronto's clubzine. I half-suspect that someone is going to dig those up for next year. *gulp*

I'm also sorry I never got to see Terry Farrell. DS9 is my favourite of the Trek series, after all. (Don't tell Gar and Judy. ;) )

Anyway... thanks go out to the fantastic group of people I spent the last year working with to produce this event. We had our moments during the year when we didn't see eye-to-eye, or where our respective goals came into conflict, but at the end of it all, the show went on, and from the comments I was hearing, nobody really noticed that we were like a group of ducks, paddling madly underneath the surface - they just saw the calm, serene floating. ;)

I know I'm going to forget someone, but hugs to: aion117, angel_ariel200, angrykat, aprilsnark, blentron, bnddbl07, chanilye, dx4, ferrio, gurudata, indefatigable42, kaelsu2, kairi_kiss, kanecool, ladygiggles, michael_bridge, nexstarman, ophelia_begins, plaidlibrarian, psubrat, puddlemagnet, rockgoddes, scifi_sara, summ3r_daze, twiddler, vampire_sedet, verminator, whitesangria, yellow_freshia, and Declan-of-the-LJ-that-must-not-be-named. If I snapped at you at any point, I didn't mean it - I just get that way when I'm focusing.

Thanks and hugs also go to smittyd, who said, "No problem!" when I bumped into him in the hallway Saturday afternoon and told him that we needed someone to run down the street to the print shop to print 18 copies of a 22-page script the Reeves-Stevenses had asked us to make for their screenwriting workshop... and then came back dripping wet because I didn't know it was raining out when I asked him. And he never complained once.

And thanks to those of you who aren't on concom but who attended. If you were there but aren't on this list, it's either because I'm a moron at remembering your LJ handle or because I didn't see you all weekend - and I regret that: andromakie, assetic, avt_tor, briankit (you still owe me that ass-grab I didn't have time to collect ;) ), c_debergerac, cuteteenboy, dblaser_ca, dlacey, dragon_mom, elizard100 (an extra thanks for your brilliant job on the In Memoriam video, which I finally got to see at the same time everyone else saw it), hico, hoskie, kaijugal, kosst_amojan, legostargateman, marahsk, mints4friends, neoengel, pann_da_bear, redeem147, rosemary_ca, smittyd, theengineer, thegrandepoobah (did we actually say hi at all? I know I saw you from a distance at least once), travellingone, and troystar.

Thanks also to our guests. I only really got to interact with two of the actors - and only saw Rainbow when he was in the lobby Sunday waiting for the limo back to the airport - but I did get to at least say hello to all of the authors except for one (Kelly Armstrong). She's local, though, so I'm sure I'll see her at a future Ad Astra. (I feel bad about my conversation with Kenneth Tam - he stopped me to say hi in the Dealers Room and I kept getting radio calls during our five-minute chat.)

Oh, and omahastar? I got that autographed photo from Rainbow Sun Francks for you. Personalized, even.

Now to take it easy for a couple of days before I start thinking about Anticipation again. Maybe I'll even get some work done this week (though I completely forgot that today was Tuesday when I promised the client that I'd have something finished by Wednesday's build...)