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rivkaOne thing I have to say in favor of apc12, compared to the other alt.polycons I've been to: it was much, much easier to get there. Compared to the cross-country flight required for apc7, or the long hot road trip to apc10, the five-minute drive to apc12 was a delight. I don't know why more con chairs don't take these location issues into consideration. *grin*
On the other hand, packing for apc12 was considerably more involved than usual. In addition to our ordinary con supplies, we were juggling a Crock-pot, five gallons of apple cider, a set of computer speakers, an electric kettle, a cake, and a large stack of mission-critical papers. We don't usually need a bell cart to check into a hotel just for the weekend.
I was seriously worried on Thursday and on Friday morning that not enough people would show up for the con to be a success. I actually always worry about that before anything that I host, but this time I'd gotten three cancellations in the 48 hours before the con, and I feared that the predicted bad weather would lead to more. That fear began to resolve when I went down to the hotel deli after unpacking and found![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kalmn, kightp, and lcohen, who were able to reassure me that many people were already there, and who were obviously already enjoying themselves and each other.
I spent most of early Friday afternoon being antsy. The hotel was a little slow to respond to some of our requests – for example, no registration table had appeared by the scheduled time of 1pm, so I had to call the manager on duty to fuss. Also, we'd been promised a noon check-in for the consuite – which didn't happen. For some reason, although the hotel was half-empty, they assigned us a consuite that had been occupied the night before. At 1:20, the room was still listed as uncleaned. It was also on the 20th floor, although I'd specifically requested a high floor for the view. I got them to switch us to another consuite on the 30th floor, which was immediately available and had a spectacular view of the city and the harbor. Yay. So, after those few hitches, registration and moving-into-the-consuite proceeded smoothly, and I started to relax.
Somewhere in there, LoRe showed up with the T-shirts, which were amazing. Does it sound insulting to say "much better than I imagined?" Because I mean that in the nicest way. I was blown away by the design. Even our hotel contact commented on how good the T-shirts looked. People also started showing up with presents. As I mentioned in my last post,dragon3 brought a ceramic gecko to be my Jennie substitute. curlygrrl utterly surprised me with a whole bag of Australian toys for the Li'l Critter, including some great stuffed birds which, when squeezed, make realistic birdcalls. kightp gave me a little rice bag and a bottle of lavender essential oil, and showed me the gorgeous partially-finished pastel-free sweater she's making the Critter. kalmn had knitted hats for the baby and for curiousangel and me. This was about the time that I started feeling overwhelmed with people's loving kindness. (That lasted all weekend.)
This was also the first time that I hit a wall and had to force myself to sit down and rest, despite my intense desire to run around seeing everyone and doing everything. I plopped myself down in a chair by the registration desk (which, incidentally,treacle_well did a fantastic job with) and, after curiousangel, for the first of many many times, peered closely into my face and then ordered me to eat something, had a delicious rare roast beef, cheddar, and hot honey mustard sandwich on sourdough, from the deli. Adrenaline really helped me keep going during the con, but it was also amply clear that, at seven and a half months pregnant, adrenaline would only take me so far.
Opening ceremonies were at four. Ben called me just as they were getting ready to start – he had no idea where the convention was being held, but fortunately just happened to be only a few blocks away. (He walked in about halfway through.) My last fears that the con would be too small to be successful melted away as the room filled up for opening ceremonies – there were a lot of people there already! I made my announcements, introduced the concom, explained the concept of the badge code and the photo policy, and then let everyone introduce themselves. As has become traditional, after the introductions I went around and repeated everyone's name – fortunately, I already knew almost everyone there.
I skipped the first panel, preferring to go up to the consuite and sticker my badge. At 5:30,curiousangel and I slipped out to take a tour of the hospital where we're going to deliver, which fortunately was just across the street from the con hotel. I'll break that story into a separate post. We came back just as groups were forming for dinner – perfect timing – and joined dragon3, hobbitbabe, kightp, patgreene, boxofdelights, and bcholmes. A few people wanted something with crab in it, so we wound up at Copra because we knew they served crab cakes. Service was slow, but the food and the company were much appreciated.
After dinner I spent a little quiet time sitting at the deserted registration table, doing my needlework. I just felt that I needed a break.kalmn surprised me there, just before my 9:30 panel, with the presentation of a gorgeous silver-and-copper otter pin that a number of people had plotted and conspired to get for me. I was so happy! There was much hugging of plot participants and much incoherent gratitude.
I don't have a great deal to say about the panel, which was called "the Poly Peter Principle," and was supposed to be about whether relationships rise to their level of incompetence, and whether it's possible to hold a relationship at a "lower" level where it's working well. The first ventilation problems became evident – the room was sweltering – and there was much fiddling with thermostats and lights and so forth. I made my first marriage proposal of apc12, tokalmn, and also inadvertently used the word "lifestyle" for the first time ever at an alt.polycon. No one threw anything at me.
Back to the consuite afterward for more food, drink, and hanging out. I faded pretty fast, though, and even though I made myself stay up later than my body wanted because I didn't want to miss anything, I was still asleep by 1am.
Saturday morning I breakfasted in the consuite -fourgates had provided an array of breakfast foods, including bagels and cream cheese and juice and doughnuts, and we broke out the divine block of aged extra-sharp Tillamook cheddar kightp brought from Oregon. Then I wandered off to the communication panel, which I was moderating with baratron. Some of the things that irritate me about alt.poly were highlighted on that panel, particularly the obsessive focus on precise definitions of words as the beginning and end of communication. For a while, we got sidetracked into an attempt to define "love," but bcholmes got us back to communication issues, and eventually the conversation expanded to include discussion of nonverbal communication and non-intellectual communication. After being rather cranky in the middle, I wound up feeling pleased overall.
Oh: I did wind up asking Aahz to leave that panel. He came in partway through and hung out behind the circle, leaning over people's chairs to cuddle and talk to them. I know that he doesn't realize how loud his voice and laugh are, but they were distracting enough that I got his attention and asked him to either join the panel or take his conversation outside. He left. I haven't decided whether or not I should feel bad about that.
After the panel I grabbedrmjwell and Ian, who wanted to start setting up for the dance. They hauled the DJ equipment from my room to the room where we planned to have the dance and began setting up, but we were quickly derailed when I ran across a hotel guy setting up a dance floor in a completely different room – one we hadn't rented. After about half an hour of confusion and discussion, we wound up moving the dance to the room where they'd set up the dance floor (after establishing that we would not have to pay for it).
Up to the consuite for a quick lunch (the other half of my roast beef sandwich from Friday, plus some carrot sticks and a clementine), and back down for my last panel: Poly Third Wheels. This panel was supposed to be about what it's like when your partners, or your partners and their other partners, share interests that you don't share. It turned into a good, wide-ranging discussion of how interests affect relationships, including questions of how it feels when your partners don’t share your interests and how hobbies and relationships sometimes compete for time. I stayed for the following panel, Poly and Parenting, and – as usual – really enjoyed hearinghobbitbabe and dragon3 talk about their kids. boxofdelights had some especially useful comments about being poly when your kids are infants – I really appreciated being able to ask her questions about that.
Somewhere on Saturday, I started to notice something that made me very, very happy. It's not my story, so I'll just grin nonspecifically at the people involved, and let them decide whether they want to say anything about it.
I should mention at this point that it had been snowing hard all day.curiousangel and I had organized a Chinese banquet for a subset of folks who we knew were either particularly fond of food or particularly fond of a couple of non-congoing locals we had invited to the banquet. As dinnertime approached and the snow continued to fall, negotiations about who was going to make the banquet and who wasn't became intense, and I started to worry. But it all worked out smoothly in the end: misia and perigee decided not to risk the drive, but jonsinger and lisajulie made it safely up from Laurel, and we tramped through the snow (or skidded down the street, for those of us who were driving) to Chinatown Café.
A total of 15 of us met for the banquet. I got the impression that the restaurant had opened largely for us, although they also got another large group of alt.polyites and a few locals straggled in as well. As usual, Joann (the manager) took excellent care of us.jonsinger, as is his habit, had brought along all kinds of neat things for us to touch, taste, and smell – including a tea bowl that filled me with such delight that he gave it to me as a baby gift. It's beautiful to look at, but the tactile experience of it is what's really important. You shall all have to visit me and drink tea from it.
Eventually we wandered back to the hotel, and I put on my dress for the dance. I wasn't planning to dance at all (although I ended up doing so anyway), but I figured there was no reason why I couldn't dress up and flirt. And indeed, people seemed to appreciate my vast quantities of cleavage. I had a great time hanging out in the dance room, listening to music, talking, and flirting a little. Okay, maybe more than a little.
At one point, I was in the ladies' room when someone came in talking on a cell phone. I heard her say, "Apparently, there's a fucking swingers' convention in this hotel." She explained that she'd ridden in the elevator with "about six people, who were apparently together," and that they "seemed to have a really extreme lifestyle." Her boyfriend had spoken to some alt.polyfolk in the bar and confirmed that, indeed, it was a "fucking swingers' convention." Honestly, she sounded more titillated than upset. I waited around for a couple of minutes, eavesdropping and trying to figure out what I might say to her, but then decided that she might not really want to be confronted by a pregnant "swinger" in the bathroom. So instead I went back to the dance and regaled everyone with the story.
I got to slow dance withkalmn. Yay.
Saturday night got very, very late. I stayed up talking in the consuite until almost 3am, wrapped infourgates' coat because it got a bit too chilly for all the bare skin I was showing. I had a lovely time, though.
Sunday morning was the Decadent Brunch. I was dismayed to find out, at the outset, that despite everything we had done to ensure that the food was labeled with full ingredients, in fact the hotel had just put up labels with the names of the dishes. I was eventually able to get the chef out to answer questions, but I felt bad – I had tried so hard to ensure that it would be fully accessible to people with food restrictions. Also, two different people came up to me during the brunch to complain that too many dishes had ingredients they didn't like. Because of the combination of these things, I have no real idea how the brunch was received overall – I liked my food, but the complaints and the problems overshadowed everything else for me.
I made my closing remarks after most people seemed to have made their second trips to the buffet. (Too pregnant to consider speeches before food. I don't think anyone minded not having the remarks at the beginning.) I thanked the concom profusely – my God, I really did have the best concom in the world – and shared the "fucking swingers' convention" story. I got my biggest laugh of the weekend for saying, "And I thought, wow, what are the odds? A swingers' convention and alt.polycon in the same hotel on the same weekend." Then it was back to the consuite for more socializing, one more panel (Poly Horror Stories), and the shortest closing ceremonies ever. (They lasted five minutes and then degenerated into hugs and goodbyes.)
We'd made plans to have dinner withhobbitbabe and dragon3, and wound up adding kalmn and lcohen to the group. I worried a little bit on Sunday afternoon if that was too much – I was tired, and thought it might be better to just go home and sleep. But it turned out to be perfect. We got to show off our house and our neighborhood and our Afghan restaurant and our brewpub, and everything was very peaceful and mellow and comfortable. It was a nice way to sort of ease out of the crazy con mindset while still not quite letting go of alt.poly friends. I enjoyed the evening immensely, in a sleepy sort of way. Then I came home, gave an instant con report to therealjae, and went to bed.
Yay.
On the other hand, packing for apc12 was considerably more involved than usual. In addition to our ordinary con supplies, we were juggling a Crock-pot, five gallons of apple cider, a set of computer speakers, an electric kettle, a cake, and a large stack of mission-critical papers. We don't usually need a bell cart to check into a hotel just for the weekend.
I was seriously worried on Thursday and on Friday morning that not enough people would show up for the con to be a success. I actually always worry about that before anything that I host, but this time I'd gotten three cancellations in the 48 hours before the con, and I feared that the predicted bad weather would lead to more. That fear began to resolve when I went down to the hotel deli after unpacking and found
kalmn, kightp, and lcohen, who were able to reassure me that many people were already there, and who were obviously already enjoying themselves and each other.I spent most of early Friday afternoon being antsy. The hotel was a little slow to respond to some of our requests – for example, no registration table had appeared by the scheduled time of 1pm, so I had to call the manager on duty to fuss. Also, we'd been promised a noon check-in for the consuite – which didn't happen. For some reason, although the hotel was half-empty, they assigned us a consuite that had been occupied the night before. At 1:20, the room was still listed as uncleaned. It was also on the 20th floor, although I'd specifically requested a high floor for the view. I got them to switch us to another consuite on the 30th floor, which was immediately available and had a spectacular view of the city and the harbor. Yay. So, after those few hitches, registration and moving-into-the-consuite proceeded smoothly, and I started to relax.
Somewhere in there, LoRe showed up with the T-shirts, which were amazing. Does it sound insulting to say "much better than I imagined?" Because I mean that in the nicest way. I was blown away by the design. Even our hotel contact commented on how good the T-shirts looked. People also started showing up with presents. As I mentioned in my last post,
dragon3 brought a ceramic gecko to be my Jennie substitute. curlygrrl utterly surprised me with a whole bag of Australian toys for the Li'l Critter, including some great stuffed birds which, when squeezed, make realistic birdcalls. kightp gave me a little rice bag and a bottle of lavender essential oil, and showed me the gorgeous partially-finished pastel-free sweater she's making the Critter. kalmn had knitted hats for the baby and for curiousangel and me. This was about the time that I started feeling overwhelmed with people's loving kindness. (That lasted all weekend.)This was also the first time that I hit a wall and had to force myself to sit down and rest, despite my intense desire to run around seeing everyone and doing everything. I plopped myself down in a chair by the registration desk (which, incidentally,
treacle_well did a fantastic job with) and, after curiousangel, for the first of many many times, peered closely into my face and then ordered me to eat something, had a delicious rare roast beef, cheddar, and hot honey mustard sandwich on sourdough, from the deli. Adrenaline really helped me keep going during the con, but it was also amply clear that, at seven and a half months pregnant, adrenaline would only take me so far.Opening ceremonies were at four. Ben called me just as they were getting ready to start – he had no idea where the convention was being held, but fortunately just happened to be only a few blocks away. (He walked in about halfway through.) My last fears that the con would be too small to be successful melted away as the room filled up for opening ceremonies – there were a lot of people there already! I made my announcements, introduced the concom, explained the concept of the badge code and the photo policy, and then let everyone introduce themselves. As has become traditional, after the introductions I went around and repeated everyone's name – fortunately, I already knew almost everyone there.
I skipped the first panel, preferring to go up to the consuite and sticker my badge. At 5:30,
curiousangel and I slipped out to take a tour of the hospital where we're going to deliver, which fortunately was just across the street from the con hotel. I'll break that story into a separate post. We came back just as groups were forming for dinner – perfect timing – and joined dragon3, hobbitbabe, kightp, patgreene, boxofdelights, and bcholmes. A few people wanted something with crab in it, so we wound up at Copra because we knew they served crab cakes. Service was slow, but the food and the company were much appreciated.After dinner I spent a little quiet time sitting at the deserted registration table, doing my needlework. I just felt that I needed a break.
kalmn surprised me there, just before my 9:30 panel, with the presentation of a gorgeous silver-and-copper otter pin that a number of people had plotted and conspired to get for me. I was so happy! There was much hugging of plot participants and much incoherent gratitude.I don't have a great deal to say about the panel, which was called "the Poly Peter Principle," and was supposed to be about whether relationships rise to their level of incompetence, and whether it's possible to hold a relationship at a "lower" level where it's working well. The first ventilation problems became evident – the room was sweltering – and there was much fiddling with thermostats and lights and so forth. I made my first marriage proposal of apc12, to
kalmn, and also inadvertently used the word "lifestyle" for the first time ever at an alt.polycon. No one threw anything at me.Back to the consuite afterward for more food, drink, and hanging out. I faded pretty fast, though, and even though I made myself stay up later than my body wanted because I didn't want to miss anything, I was still asleep by 1am.
Saturday morning I breakfasted in the consuite -
fourgates had provided an array of breakfast foods, including bagels and cream cheese and juice and doughnuts, and we broke out the divine block of aged extra-sharp Tillamook cheddar kightp brought from Oregon. Then I wandered off to the communication panel, which I was moderating with baratron. Some of the things that irritate me about alt.poly were highlighted on that panel, particularly the obsessive focus on precise definitions of words as the beginning and end of communication. For a while, we got sidetracked into an attempt to define "love," but bcholmes got us back to communication issues, and eventually the conversation expanded to include discussion of nonverbal communication and non-intellectual communication. After being rather cranky in the middle, I wound up feeling pleased overall.Oh: I did wind up asking Aahz to leave that panel. He came in partway through and hung out behind the circle, leaning over people's chairs to cuddle and talk to them. I know that he doesn't realize how loud his voice and laugh are, but they were distracting enough that I got his attention and asked him to either join the panel or take his conversation outside. He left. I haven't decided whether or not I should feel bad about that.
After the panel I grabbed
rmjwell and Ian, who wanted to start setting up for the dance. They hauled the DJ equipment from my room to the room where we planned to have the dance and began setting up, but we were quickly derailed when I ran across a hotel guy setting up a dance floor in a completely different room – one we hadn't rented. After about half an hour of confusion and discussion, we wound up moving the dance to the room where they'd set up the dance floor (after establishing that we would not have to pay for it). Up to the consuite for a quick lunch (the other half of my roast beef sandwich from Friday, plus some carrot sticks and a clementine), and back down for my last panel: Poly Third Wheels. This panel was supposed to be about what it's like when your partners, or your partners and their other partners, share interests that you don't share. It turned into a good, wide-ranging discussion of how interests affect relationships, including questions of how it feels when your partners don’t share your interests and how hobbies and relationships sometimes compete for time. I stayed for the following panel, Poly and Parenting, and – as usual – really enjoyed hearing
hobbitbabe and dragon3 talk about their kids. boxofdelights had some especially useful comments about being poly when your kids are infants – I really appreciated being able to ask her questions about that.Somewhere on Saturday, I started to notice something that made me very, very happy. It's not my story, so I'll just grin nonspecifically at the people involved, and let them decide whether they want to say anything about it.
I should mention at this point that it had been snowing hard all day.
curiousangel and I had organized a Chinese banquet for a subset of folks who we knew were either particularly fond of food or particularly fond of a couple of non-congoing locals we had invited to the banquet. As dinnertime approached and the snow continued to fall, negotiations about who was going to make the banquet and who wasn't became intense, and I started to worry. But it all worked out smoothly in the end: misia and perigee decided not to risk the drive, but jonsinger and lisajulie made it safely up from Laurel, and we tramped through the snow (or skidded down the street, for those of us who were driving) to Chinatown Café. A total of 15 of us met for the banquet. I got the impression that the restaurant had opened largely for us, although they also got another large group of alt.polyites and a few locals straggled in as well. As usual, Joann (the manager) took excellent care of us.
jonsinger, as is his habit, had brought along all kinds of neat things for us to touch, taste, and smell – including a tea bowl that filled me with such delight that he gave it to me as a baby gift. It's beautiful to look at, but the tactile experience of it is what's really important. You shall all have to visit me and drink tea from it.Eventually we wandered back to the hotel, and I put on my dress for the dance. I wasn't planning to dance at all (although I ended up doing so anyway), but I figured there was no reason why I couldn't dress up and flirt. And indeed, people seemed to appreciate my vast quantities of cleavage. I had a great time hanging out in the dance room, listening to music, talking, and flirting a little. Okay, maybe more than a little.
At one point, I was in the ladies' room when someone came in talking on a cell phone. I heard her say, "Apparently, there's a fucking swingers' convention in this hotel." She explained that she'd ridden in the elevator with "about six people, who were apparently together," and that they "seemed to have a really extreme lifestyle." Her boyfriend had spoken to some alt.polyfolk in the bar and confirmed that, indeed, it was a "fucking swingers' convention." Honestly, she sounded more titillated than upset. I waited around for a couple of minutes, eavesdropping and trying to figure out what I might say to her, but then decided that she might not really want to be confronted by a pregnant "swinger" in the bathroom. So instead I went back to the dance and regaled everyone with the story.
I got to slow dance with
kalmn. Yay.Saturday night got very, very late. I stayed up talking in the consuite until almost 3am, wrapped in
fourgates' coat because it got a bit too chilly for all the bare skin I was showing. I had a lovely time, though.Sunday morning was the Decadent Brunch. I was dismayed to find out, at the outset, that despite everything we had done to ensure that the food was labeled with full ingredients, in fact the hotel had just put up labels with the names of the dishes. I was eventually able to get the chef out to answer questions, but I felt bad – I had tried so hard to ensure that it would be fully accessible to people with food restrictions. Also, two different people came up to me during the brunch to complain that too many dishes had ingredients they didn't like. Because of the combination of these things, I have no real idea how the brunch was received overall – I liked my food, but the complaints and the problems overshadowed everything else for me.
I made my closing remarks after most people seemed to have made their second trips to the buffet. (Too pregnant to consider speeches before food. I don't think anyone minded not having the remarks at the beginning.) I thanked the concom profusely – my God, I really did have the best concom in the world – and shared the "fucking swingers' convention" story. I got my biggest laugh of the weekend for saying, "And I thought, wow, what are the odds? A swingers' convention and alt.polycon in the same hotel on the same weekend." Then it was back to the consuite for more socializing, one more panel (Poly Horror Stories), and the shortest closing ceremonies ever. (They lasted five minutes and then degenerated into hugs and goodbyes.)
We'd made plans to have dinner with
hobbitbabe and dragon3, and wound up adding kalmn and lcohen to the group. I worried a little bit on Sunday afternoon if that was too much – I was tired, and thought it might be better to just go home and sleep. But it turned out to be perfect. We got to show off our house and our neighborhood and our Afghan restaurant and our brewpub, and everything was very peaceful and mellow and comfortable. It was a nice way to sort of ease out of the crazy con mindset while still not quite letting go of alt.poly friends. I enjoyed the evening immensely, in a sleepy sort of way. Then I came home, gave an instant con report to therealjae, and went to bed.Yay.
