(no subject)
Right, so, positive posting.
Firstly! I think I forgot to talk about it at all in the days leading up but I did make it to TFcon Baltimore at the beginning of this month! Road trip with my mom this time around. The drive ended up taking a lot more time than expected due to GPS rerouting us around road work and traffic. Some nights, I wake up in a cold sweat of dread, certain that I'm still making my way through the least populated stretches of Virginia. The view was beautiful, though, I'll say that-- and there were so many cows! Almost no signs of civilization but so, so many cows.
I had to book a hotel nearby the con venue rather than at it, since it wasn't being held at a hotel in my network, which I didn't think much of until we got there and it hit me that I wouldn't be able to just advertise a room sale to try to move the toys I'd brought with me to sell. Whoops. I ended up making a full list of stock and pinning that to the overfull bulletin board instead, not that it did any good in the end. Another time, perhaps! The hotel we stayed at was small but nice and it would've been an easy walk to the venue if the roads were marked sensibly. I ended up getting lost four different ways back and forth between the hotel and the con, which was a fun enough way to explore the area but didn't exactly help me with keeping to my personal schedule, lol. I only even found the venue the first time because I looked to my left and recognized someone's closet cosplay of a one episode wonder from the Sunbow cartoon.
Anyway, the con itself was fun as usual! I was worried because there was some controversy leading up, due to the con runner being dismissive of artists who'd paid for booths. I don't remember all of the details off hand but I think people still hadn't been sent their vendor packages the week of. I chatted with one of the artists there who's done a few shows and she said that the guy is a control freak and hates delegating but also doesn't spare a lot of attention for the parts of the con he isn't personally invested in. And the con started as a toy show, so. That was disappointing to find out but I guess people have been really getting onto him about letting other people take charge of organizing stuff and he has given in on some things, so here's hoping there are more improvements to come. There was such a fun selection of different types of art, including some crochet stuff!
I ended up not buying much. I went with a shopping list but didn't see much of what I had on it. I saw plenty of things that I wanted that weren't on my list but I had a particular big ticket item I was looking for and so I mostly resisted impulse purchases, especially of the higher-priced things that caught my eye. Got a small but fun handful of things nonetheless, which I might post eventually. Most of my money ended up going to the artist alley. I got a chibi sketch commission, a couple of small prints (one benefiting Palestine, which was cool to see), some buttons, a keychain, a glasses cleaning cloth, a D20 and some stickers-- including a free sticker that someone was giving out and another free sticker that I got in exchange for doodling on a post-it at someone's booth! Her way of encouraging people to do traditional art, which was fun. I wanted to hit all the advertised room sales but the hotel was one where you need a room key to operate the elevator and I couldn't find the stairs. Good thing there wasn't a fire, lol! I managed to get to two sales when another group was going up but that was the only floor where multiple people were holding sales and I didn't want to have to keep waiting for the elevator. It was getting late by then anyway.
Getting back to my own hotel after that was the first time I didn't get lost. Yay for me! I ran into one of the vendors, who I'd purchased a couple of novelty CDs from, on my way. He and his wife(?) were looking for a pizza place they'd been recommended and it was in my hotel's direction. We walked and chatted on the way and being with people I even just kinda knew made me feel more at ease. I wouldn't necessarily say I felt unsafe on the streets there but it was after dark in a city I was unfamiliar with, so I hadn't been entirely comfortable either. I said goodbye to them when they found their pizza place and my hotel was only another block or two along the same route, so it was a good walk, all in all.
Here's a fun bit. My mom and I had split up for the day-- me to the con, her exploring-- and she was still out when I got back. I was going through my meager haul, laboring under the reminder that my current laptop, Chad, does not have a CD player, when my mom texted to ask about what I'd brought to sell. At the restaurant she'd chosen for dinner, where she'd been seated at the bar, two guys had sat down next to her carrying TFcon tote bags and she'd struck up a conversation. It turned out it was their first con. The one guy had only recently gotten into collecting and learned about it; his friend had come with to support him. He didn't know room sales were a thing. I didn't have anything he was looking for but my mom said he was excited to find the bulletin board the next day to check out any other sales. I guess he must not have looked at the online schedule either, because he only found out about the script reading panel from my mom talking about how we would be staying later than usual because it had been moved from Saturday to Sunday this time around. She ended up texting me a few more questions-- he wanted to know if Peter Cullen was ever a guest, to confirm how many shows TFcon puts on per year and where they were, when the script reading was. It was cute, Idk.
I hoped we'd run into my mom's new friends at the con the next day but it didn't happen. We did have fun, though. I didn't find a whole lot more but I did knock an item off my shopping list and we found some gifts for the niblings. My mom got a glasses cleaning cloth and a few stickers too. We went to the script reading, where I tried out and didn't get selected. Such is my life, lol. I wanted to stay to watch but, like I said, it was already later than we usually left and since I knew it would be posted online later anyway, I said we could go ahead and pack it up.
Even though we hit a small traffic jam on our way out-- during which we played the license plate game and spotted one from California-- the drive back was a lot smoother and went much more quickly. Made the grief process for the end of the trip feel a little rushed, tbh, lol. Our rental car also did not have a CD player and so I still didn't get to listen to my new CDs yet. Is the onward march of technology designed to make me, personally, suffer? It's worth thinking about.
All in all, a fun trip. And the fall TFcon is in Chicago next year! (Of course, if it'd been in Chicago this year, it would've lined up perfectly with an event my sister had wanted to go to but, okay.) It's at a hotel in my network, too, so I can even do a room sale. Already looking forward to it!
I didn't meant for this whole post to be about this, lol, but it is easily the most significant thing I've done since I fell off the radar. My birthday was fun but still just another day. Lots of little things here and there making the world keep turning but all so pleasantly mundane that trying to sort them into a coherent write-up feels futile at this point. And I wanna keep this overall positive, like I said at the beginning, so obviously I'm skipping some significant world events.
Still gotta catch up with everyone's posts. I hope you're all doing as well as can be expected or better ♥
Firstly! I think I forgot to talk about it at all in the days leading up but I did make it to TFcon Baltimore at the beginning of this month! Road trip with my mom this time around. The drive ended up taking a lot more time than expected due to GPS rerouting us around road work and traffic. Some nights, I wake up in a cold sweat of dread, certain that I'm still making my way through the least populated stretches of Virginia. The view was beautiful, though, I'll say that-- and there were so many cows! Almost no signs of civilization but so, so many cows.
I had to book a hotel nearby the con venue rather than at it, since it wasn't being held at a hotel in my network, which I didn't think much of until we got there and it hit me that I wouldn't be able to just advertise a room sale to try to move the toys I'd brought with me to sell. Whoops. I ended up making a full list of stock and pinning that to the overfull bulletin board instead, not that it did any good in the end. Another time, perhaps! The hotel we stayed at was small but nice and it would've been an easy walk to the venue if the roads were marked sensibly. I ended up getting lost four different ways back and forth between the hotel and the con, which was a fun enough way to explore the area but didn't exactly help me with keeping to my personal schedule, lol. I only even found the venue the first time because I looked to my left and recognized someone's closet cosplay of a one episode wonder from the Sunbow cartoon.
Anyway, the con itself was fun as usual! I was worried because there was some controversy leading up, due to the con runner being dismissive of artists who'd paid for booths. I don't remember all of the details off hand but I think people still hadn't been sent their vendor packages the week of. I chatted with one of the artists there who's done a few shows and she said that the guy is a control freak and hates delegating but also doesn't spare a lot of attention for the parts of the con he isn't personally invested in. And the con started as a toy show, so. That was disappointing to find out but I guess people have been really getting onto him about letting other people take charge of organizing stuff and he has given in on some things, so here's hoping there are more improvements to come. There was such a fun selection of different types of art, including some crochet stuff!
I ended up not buying much. I went with a shopping list but didn't see much of what I had on it. I saw plenty of things that I wanted that weren't on my list but I had a particular big ticket item I was looking for and so I mostly resisted impulse purchases, especially of the higher-priced things that caught my eye. Got a small but fun handful of things nonetheless, which I might post eventually. Most of my money ended up going to the artist alley. I got a chibi sketch commission, a couple of small prints (one benefiting Palestine, which was cool to see), some buttons, a keychain, a glasses cleaning cloth, a D20 and some stickers-- including a free sticker that someone was giving out and another free sticker that I got in exchange for doodling on a post-it at someone's booth! Her way of encouraging people to do traditional art, which was fun. I wanted to hit all the advertised room sales but the hotel was one where you need a room key to operate the elevator and I couldn't find the stairs. Good thing there wasn't a fire, lol! I managed to get to two sales when another group was going up but that was the only floor where multiple people were holding sales and I didn't want to have to keep waiting for the elevator. It was getting late by then anyway.
Getting back to my own hotel after that was the first time I didn't get lost. Yay for me! I ran into one of the vendors, who I'd purchased a couple of novelty CDs from, on my way. He and his wife(?) were looking for a pizza place they'd been recommended and it was in my hotel's direction. We walked and chatted on the way and being with people I even just kinda knew made me feel more at ease. I wouldn't necessarily say I felt unsafe on the streets there but it was after dark in a city I was unfamiliar with, so I hadn't been entirely comfortable either. I said goodbye to them when they found their pizza place and my hotel was only another block or two along the same route, so it was a good walk, all in all.
Here's a fun bit. My mom and I had split up for the day-- me to the con, her exploring-- and she was still out when I got back. I was going through my meager haul, laboring under the reminder that my current laptop, Chad, does not have a CD player, when my mom texted to ask about what I'd brought to sell. At the restaurant she'd chosen for dinner, where she'd been seated at the bar, two guys had sat down next to her carrying TFcon tote bags and she'd struck up a conversation. It turned out it was their first con. The one guy had only recently gotten into collecting and learned about it; his friend had come with to support him. He didn't know room sales were a thing. I didn't have anything he was looking for but my mom said he was excited to find the bulletin board the next day to check out any other sales. I guess he must not have looked at the online schedule either, because he only found out about the script reading panel from my mom talking about how we would be staying later than usual because it had been moved from Saturday to Sunday this time around. She ended up texting me a few more questions-- he wanted to know if Peter Cullen was ever a guest, to confirm how many shows TFcon puts on per year and where they were, when the script reading was. It was cute, Idk.
I hoped we'd run into my mom's new friends at the con the next day but it didn't happen. We did have fun, though. I didn't find a whole lot more but I did knock an item off my shopping list and we found some gifts for the niblings. My mom got a glasses cleaning cloth and a few stickers too. We went to the script reading, where I tried out and didn't get selected. Such is my life, lol. I wanted to stay to watch but, like I said, it was already later than we usually left and since I knew it would be posted online later anyway, I said we could go ahead and pack it up.
Even though we hit a small traffic jam on our way out-- during which we played the license plate game and spotted one from California-- the drive back was a lot smoother and went much more quickly. Made the grief process for the end of the trip feel a little rushed, tbh, lol. Our rental car also did not have a CD player and so I still didn't get to listen to my new CDs yet. Is the onward march of technology designed to make me, personally, suffer? It's worth thinking about.
All in all, a fun trip. And the fall TFcon is in Chicago next year! (Of course, if it'd been in Chicago this year, it would've lined up perfectly with an event my sister had wanted to go to but, okay.) It's at a hotel in my network, too, so I can even do a room sale. Already looking forward to it!
I didn't meant for this whole post to be about this, lol, but it is easily the most significant thing I've done since I fell off the radar. My birthday was fun but still just another day. Lots of little things here and there making the world keep turning but all so pleasantly mundane that trying to sort them into a coherent write-up feels futile at this point. And I wanna keep this overall positive, like I said at the beginning, so obviously I'm skipping some significant world events.
Still gotta catch up with everyone's posts. I hope you're all doing as well as can be expected or better ♥