From Bette

Southwest Airlines.   They don't assign seats and they don't serve meals. Interesting thing is that without assigned seats there are usually single seats scattered about the plane and so I was able to sit close to the front on all legs of my flight there and back from LA.   And the snacks were good, lots of peanuts and  colas so the missed meal really wasn't missed.

Left Friday morning at 7:30.  And these guys waste no time in either take off or landing.  I overheard some guys saying that SW pilots are all former fighter pilots and it shows.     Got to Burbank at around 11:45am, small airport, first time I've ever gotten off a plane using one of the old stairs and not those tubes that go into the terminal.    The Hilton is right next to the airport and the shuttle bus was waiting right there so very quickly I arrived and checked in.   Joyce was already checked in and had left a note so after changing clothes and turning the air down (burrrrrrr) I went out to register and find my list sibs.

Hilton is a nice hotel.  they had something going on in their main ballroom every night.  So we sci fi people had to walk through crowds of wedding guests, some sort of bible/religious group, teachers, and I'm not sure what that last group was doing.     Oh,  this hotel has two towers of rooms,  East and West tower.  Joyce and me, Allie and Io were in West tower.  Ro and Cathy and the parties were in East tower.  Hardest part of this con was remembering which tower you were either in or going to.

Moved across the open area and into the other building which housed meeting rooms,   That's where the majority of the con was.  Autograph tables were down to the right of the doors set perpendicular to the fan tables which lined the walls.   Our table was one up from the autograph tables so we had good views of the celebs (when people weren't in the way of course).   There were tables for the Space Above and Beyond crew (hi guys!), Oasis, various ST groups, and cons and also, Az, a Prey table which had a cage set up and a cardboard guy inside (star of the show I think, I've never seen an ep so I'm not sure).   Lots of stuff for sale and knowledgable fans.  Not much info though.  They are trying to save Prey too.

Ran into Mert who was talking to Ed who was an organizer from Gallifrey.  We saw a lot of Ed, nice guy, big guy, very organized and hey, he works for a cruise line!   Mert told me where to go . . . well, where to register, then we went to the Con suite, followed by Ed, and met up with Cathy, Allie, Ro, Antoinette and her daughter Jessica (way too much energy there!)

After finding Io and Shandra, we all retreated to Allie's room (except for Cathy who was at the birthday party) and Allie pulled out her Tarot cards.  I've never had my cards read before.  I thought of my question and shuffled the cards about 7 times while Allie read descriptions of the cards from the book (we all pulled a card, I was Courage, hah!).   It surprised me how accurate the reading was and how applicable it was to my question.  I'm hooked.  I bought a set of Tarot from the dealer room.    And off ebay last week (between cons) I bought another set, one with a Southwest Indian motif (it called to me, weird).

We all broke up from there.  I went to bed (hey, been up since 5am EST and I'm not a party person) and the others went in search of parties.   They all had fun.

Saturday -

Got up around 8 and went down to the con suite and had muffins and juice.  Spent most of the morning at the C4aC table talking to Shandra.  Oh wait, she was talking.  Hey, I wasn't going to say anything but she's admitted to her unfortunate affliction of conversational interuptus.  Love ya Shandra, and you are an interesting person but do remind me to bring some duct tape to C4aC.  I will use it if you force me too.  :)

Around 12 I guess, I was coming from the con suite and lo and behold, there was the MAN himself!  DId I stop him?   Well of course,  Did I hug him?  Absolutely! Speak to him?  Definitely, but shortly cause he was off to get a bite to eat before sitting down to autographs.  I asked what he'd been up to and he mentioned doing a couple of films, writing and painting.

Sigh

I really should say that Peter was there as well.  He came in around 10 or so and began signing.  Diana was with him, I said Hi but I'm sure she didn't remember me, and so were Zombiewoman and a man I think was her husband or significant other.  I had brought my copy of Sense and Sensibility for him to sign.  I asked him if that had been his real hair.  He said no, no had their real hair in that movie.  Then I told him that he had lovely thighs, he looks really good in those tight pants, and he turned to Zombiewoman and told her I said he had lovely thighs.  He's  sweet.

But I digress.   David.   Sigh.   He came back and began signing.  I sat at the C4aC table with somebody, haven't a clue who, and caught a glimpse of him at times.  After a while I went upstairs and got the things I had for him to sign which were a laser disk cover to The Kindred and the VHS cover of Scream for Help.  He did a double take at the Scream for Help tape and was surprised that The Kindred was on laser disk.   He signed both, and I got a picture.  Actually, I got a number of pictures of DAB before he left for the day.

The panel:  Peter, Fiona, and David

Was it me or did it seem that Peter and David were just a tad kinder to each other without the egging on of Carrie Dobro.  Nah, not possible.  Well. . . they did seem nicer and made fewer jibes at each other.   They were asked what they'd been doing. Peter:  Mentioned the Patriot, then said he'd just gotten back from Egypt where he'd narrated a 4 part series for the History Channel on mummies and stuff like that.

Fiona:  books, stories, scripts - she's been a busy and productive lady.

David:  mentioned Cast Away (Tom Hanks film out at Christmas), David appears at the beginning of the movie; Jack Frost 2: Mutant Killer Snowman; two independant films:   A Mother's Testimony with Jaclyn Smith and Dodgeball.  He's still writing his one man show and he's been painting.   Painting?  Shandra asked him what medium he was using.  You just have to love this guy!   Ok, he has this wall in his apartment that's 30 x 10 and white.  He decided it needed color.  He checked out the painting stores for canvas and paints and was shocked at the prices.  So he went to Home Depot and bought some dropcloth and wood and framed his own canvas.  Then he went to the "home paint store" <G> and bought 10 small cans of various colors of paint.  He said it was very interesting to find that he couldn't just slap the paint on, he had to layer it, waiting for the paint to dry before putting on the new layer.  He learned a lot about himself as he is not usually a patient man.

After the panel they went back to autographing for a while.  Io went up and put on her "costume" (or did she just take off some clothes?) for the contest and then returned to have someone help her with the makeup.  Shandra mentioned that she wanted a pix with David before he left.  I went over and asked him when he was leaving and his reply was "in a few minutes".   Aaaccckkkk!     I told he he could not leave before we got a picture of him with Shandra and he said Ok. Carrie (I know, it's misspelled) finished with Io's make up and David appeared. So we got pix of David with the Whore of Babylon 5 and with Shandra and me and Io and Carrie and Shandra.  Poor man-then again, all those women fawning over him can't be all bad.  :)  Cathy showed up before he left and showed off her Planet X costume, very inventive.

We took down the table and put the C4aC stuff in Allie and Io's room.  I'm seeing a gap in time here.  Can't remember what I was doing, probably fell down on my bed for a while.  Anyway.  around 8ish I went upstairs to Ro's suite and helped her fill the bathtub with ice.  Difficult to do when you are working with 3 plastic bags only.  Took a lot of trips but it got filled.   We had ordered dinner from room service, burger was good but the fries were terrible.  Soon peoples not of the list arrived including Bill Blair.  When we pointed out that it was  a pajama party and he was obviously dressed he said he'd wanted to come that way but as there had been a couple of police cars out in front of his place, he'd decided to dress.  But for the party he did take off his pants and so wore only a long tshirt and boxers, with something red on them, hearts? He's a very pleasant man, doesn't drink, good conversation.  Was very accomodating when a young lady, inspired by a discussion of Tigger, jumped in his lap and spent a good amount of time bouncing on him.  I think he was being a very good sport by not tossing her off, she wasn't being very careful and he did have his jewels to be concerned about.   Shandra, me and Bill on the couch. Joyce in a chair, Ed came over  (Hi Ed!) and a couple of others who gave the Ouiji board one go and then forgot about it.  Twister, while present, was not used.  Ah well.  Others gathered about the large table talking, some on the floor.

Now in the OTHER ROOM.  I didn't get a count of the number of women but it seemed to me that Greg Keyes was the only man for a while.  He got his toenails painted and it just went . .  downhill?  uphill? seemed pretty skewed to me, from there.  Enough to say that he was all dolled up by the end.   Better descriptions from those who participated, I was just an occasional observer.

Jayson, Io's cousin had showed up and they had gone dancing for quite a while. They returned to find the "make over" in full swing and Jayson was champing at the bit to be made up as well.   Did someone mention his nipple rings?   :)

I crashed at midnight.  You know me.

Sunday later.