Lunacon Trip

[dagibbs]

So, foms and I drove down to Lunacon last weekend. Trip down was mostly uneventful, taking about 7 hours. Only difficulty was getting to the hotel at the far end. Finding it wasn't difficult, we could see it as we drove by on the freeway, not able to exit. We took a later exit, turned around, and experienced this again. Finally, stopped and asked someone how to get to that *point to clearly visible hotel* from here. Found our way there third time by.

As I said before, the con itself was ok. The hotel didn't have much in the way of good "hang-around and socialize" space, and the con-suite was small, and again without good conversational groupings areas. The gaming area, as well, was quite a small room, of which a chunk was dedicated to someone selling games, rather than more playing space. If the room had been spacious, having somewhere to purchase games nearby might have been a good idea, but not with the crampedness. Just made me (and I think others) resent the cost in gaming space. And there was no dacne. So, there wasn't much mixing/meeting people space, and since I didn't know very many people, this left me feeling kind of isolated. I did know a few people (5 or 6 maybe) and met another 5 or 6, maybe, but that's about it. I'd previously been to Lunacon more than a decade ago (maybe closer to two decades?), and found it was cliquish. Nothing I saw this time dissuaded me of this. Of course, that's probably true of many cons nowadays -- I don't know, I mostly attend conventions where I already know a good proportion of the people. Though, it does vary, I've attended cons where I've found it easy to meet people, too. Lunacon was not a con where it seemed easy to meet people.

I did get to play and enjoy some Zendo, and to learn and play a game called (IIRC) Gloom which was a card game that put the gimmick of see-through cards to interesting effect. I looked for a copy of Gloom, but couldn't find one to buy. I did bring home a copy of San Juan which I had previously played at tammylc and eviljohn's place. It is a card-game based on Puerto Rico. Hm...that reminds me, I need to update my games list now, too.

foms threw a party for the Anticipation, the Montreal in 2009 Worldcon bid on Saturday night, with some help from Mr Shirt and me. The party was in a good, high-traffic area (on the hallway to the con suite), but the rooms were all quite small, so it was a bit crowded. I think the party went reasonably well, and he sold several pre-supporting membership and a couple friend memberships, too. There weren't a lot of parties, or more accurately, there weren't lot of open parties -- though there seemed to be several quite popular closed parties. (Contributing to that feeling of cliquishness/hard to get to know people-ness that I found at the con.) The con suite closed at 2am both Friday and Saturday night, but our party stayed open later, of course.

The trip home also went reasonably smoothly -- though a bit more slowly due to some rain and fog (though no snow), and a longer dinner stop. At the border, the guard asked who the celebrities at the convention were, and foms and I had found that between us we could barely name two of the four guests of honour. And, of course, probably noone on the list was anyone that the guard would have considered a "celebrity".