Here’s a daredevil thing for me to do: trying to update my journal before coffee. Yeah, I’m just a wild man.

For some reason I thought I’d written here since Monday, but evidently I was mistaken. Well, let’s talk about the week past, and plans for the coming week of travel and conventioning…

So…what happened after Monday? Well, Tuesday and Wednesday, not a hell of a lot. Went to work, went to the gym, came home, made dinner, watched Tivo. Yay. The only item of note was that on Tuesday I had my bimonthly status meeting with my boss (the one we agreed on after he sprung several items on me for the first time after my annual review). True to form, he fixated on the one project where communication got snarled and it got delayed, ignoring the other four that I had worked on successfully over the period. So he wound up asking that I keep my project status on Microsoft Project (retch!) and asking for more frequent updates. Perhaps if he didn’t attempt to manage by active avoidance, he might have a clue what’s going on. Eh. Enough ranting about that.

Thursday – July 4. Whee! Our friends Rob and Janet open their house every year for a huge party. It’s not dissimilar in style from our party that we had here on Memorial Day, only on a larger scale – they had about 30 people crashing at their house (which is huge, and can actually hold that many, albeit with creative sleeping arrangements and some tent camping). They’re a heck of a lot more laid back about the whole thing, I must admit – I’d be stressing badly with that many people, and when crises erupt (in their case, due tot he extreme drought we’re going through, they’ve pumped their well dry repeatedly), well, my head would explode. Not a pretty sight, no.

So anyway, on the Fourth, after a pleasant day of sleeping in, hanging out, and snuggling with takaza, I headed over to Rob and Janet’s and hung out. Dan stayed home and enjoyed the “alone-time”, I think. We do a lot of things together, and there’s really not that many times when one or the other of us is home alone. It can be quite nice and relaxing sometimes. Anyway, it was cool to see folks I hadn’t seen since last year’s party, hang out, and enjoy grillables. The folks at these parties are pretty cool – a combination of old friends from Virginia Tech, the SCA, Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia, and friends-of-friends. It’s a very sociable crowd, and it doesn’t matter much that sometimes you forget people’s names – just keep chatting and you’ll figure it out eventually 🙂 Anyway, I packed it in early and headed home to find that Dan had made some yummy banana pudding, with Nilla Wafers and meringue and everything. Mmmm. Life was good.

Dan had to work on Friday, and was quite grumpy about it. I got up with him at 6 AM and puttered about the house for a while, telling myself I was going to get motivated and go to the gym. Hmm, didn’t ever really succeed there. I did play with the new camera a bit and learned some for the different modes – that was fun. I finally got motivated and went to pick up Dan for lunch. On the way over, I stopped and picked up a pretty pink rose. I surprised Dan at his desk with the rose, which is good – everyone should get surprises like that sometimes. We went to Lubrano’s in Morrisville for lunch (can’t find a website for them, but it’s between Aviation and Morrisville Parkways on 54) – very tasty Italian food, and great prices. We need to take the Gang there for dinner some night. I dropped Dan off at work and went about my errands for the day – a little driving around to see what’s new (Brier Creek Commons is going to be huge when they finish it) and a little shopping. Stopped at Wal Mart to get another Coleman air mattress for next weekend since the Greatland brand one that we picked up at Target (and didn’t get charged for!) was uncomfortable and difficult to inflate. That makes two comfy Coleman air mattresses for our Anthrocon roommates – yay! I was, of course, reminded why I don’t go shopping at Wal Mart much (stupid people + screaming kids = annoyed Duncan). artemisfur, you have my every sympathy. I stopped back by the party briefly to drop off Rob and Janet’s air mattress which we’d borrowed for our Memorial Day party (uh, whoops) and then came home.

Dan came in and we relaxed a bit, me snoozing and Dan poking at his computer, then Dan rousted my butt up and we got motivated. After a quickie dinner, we headed out amidst the thunderstorms to see Men in Black II. I didn’t particularly want to see it, but well, it’s the law. And it was about what I expected – a couple of entertaining moments a whole lot of useless exposition, some completely senseless plot twists. I got the feeling that a good bit was left on the cutting room floor, which is pretty amazing given that the movie is only eighty minutes long. After the movie, we came home and crashed, boring married people that we are.

Saturday was a nice replay of the Fourth – relaxing, snuggling, and just enjoying each other’s company. We finally got motivated and headed over to Rob and Janet’s at about 4 PM. It was pleasant to hang out, chat, and nibble on pizza. We said our goodbyes at about 9:30 and headed on home. When we got home, we got some useful e-mails, which leads me into plans for this week.

Dan and I are working a four-day week this week. On Thursday night I’m picking up Dan from work and we’re driving north, as far as Aberdeen, Maryland (I need to make hotel reservations for that tomorrow). I figure that’s reachable in one night’s driving, and it puts us on the far side of Baltimore traffic for the Friday morning drive to Philadelphia and Anthrocon.

Anthrocon is going to be huge this year, I think – I know their pre-registrations are over 1,000, which I’m guessing means somewhere between 1,500 – 1,750 attendees. Yowza. Both Dan and I are on staff this year. We got emails last night with our marching orders – we’re in charge of closing down Artists Alley Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. See, in order to avoid the artists having to get a sales tax license just to sit at a table and sell their own works, AC handles this by selling their work on consignment, meaning that the artist makes a receipt for his work, the buyer takes it to the register, pays the AC staff there, then takes his receipt (mark paid) back to the artist and gets his goods. It’s clunky, but it keeps everything legal. Well, this means that at the end of each day all of the receipts need to be reconciled and every artist needs to be paid. That’s going to be our jobs – whee! I feel kind of funny, though, since we’re only scheduled for all of seven hours over three days. I’ll probably be helping out by filling in at the Volunteers Table and wherever else I’m needed. Yeah, I’m weird that way, but this is my version of fun.

So, given that we’ll be going to the gym after work each night this week and getting home at 6:30 or so, we won’t have that much time to prep for the con. So today one of my jobs is to sit down with Dan and make lists of what we’re going to pack, as well as gather together and stack in the dining room anything that we want to tale that we can at this early date. This is in addition to the grocery shopping and laundry we need to do, plus Dan has to work up a new flyer for Midwest Furfest to be distributed at Anthrocon. We have 500 sheets of (goldenrod) paper for the flyers, but I’m wondering if we shouldn’t pick up another ream given the huge attendance. Hm – we’ll need to talk about that.

Well, I’ve now reached the point where I need my coffee and my Sunday paper. Laters, kids!