Well, looking over my Friends Page it looks like lots of folks are packing up and getting ready for Anthrocon. We’d be doing the same except that we’re working with limited vacation this year and too many conventions, so it’s going to a few days off here, a few days there. For Anthrocon we’re only taking off Friday and Monday, so we’ll miss out on whatever festivities there might be on Thursday – oh well. Four days is one day too many for me at a con, anyway.

This week has alternately been creeping and flying past, depending on how much I’m worrying about Anthrocon. Work has been a bit of an adventure, with project status meetings, and the surprise announcement of the fact that I have to make a one-hour presentation on material handling to the department as part of the annual safety training – and I have three weeks to prepare. Dandy. On top of that, I was given responsibility of the department storage room, a 60′ x 40′ room which has become essentially a junkyard for unwanted or unused equipment, pipes, wires, and who knows what else. Naturally, we just received a safety citation since two-thirds of it is pretty much just heaped on the floor. It’ll be my job to sort through it, see who owns what, put in a shelving system, and generally bring order to chaos. At least I have a few months to work on this. Of course, somewhere along the line I also need to do my lab work. Bleah.

So, Anthrocon: Our plans right now have us leaving at 4 PM on Thursday – I’ll be picking up takaza from his work and then we’ll hit the road. We’re only going part way, though – we could make it to Philadelphia Thursday night, but that would mean rolling in sometime after midnight and paying for the more-expensive hotel room. Instead, we’re stopping in Edgewood, Maryland. This is nice because it will let us get up in the morning, make a last-minute store run for this all-important in-room munchies and sodas (though how often we’ll be able to get by the room is an open question). We should arrive at Anthrocon before noon on Friday and we’ll work on checking in as soon as we get there (I doubt we’ll have much luck, though).

As I mentioned before, we’re on Operations staff – one side-benefit of this is that we can bypass the lines at registration and pick up our badges and supersponsor packets at Operations. Yay! Anyway, both Dan and I are scheduled to work in Artists Alley from 5-6 PM on Friday, 3-6 PM on Saturday and 1-3 PM and 4-5 PM on Sunday (I think I have those hours right…) I’ll probably be helping out elsewhere, too – perhaps at the Volunteers Table, or wherever else I’m needed.

You Midwest-Furfest-types that are going to be there: we’re probably going to get together in our room Friday evening (after dinner most likely, since I don’t see us finishing up all the Artists Alley stuff until 7 PM or so, really) with aureth and possibly rustitobuck and mirkowuff. Any staff members who’s like to stop by and discuss constuff (particularly anything related to registration of publications) is welcome to join us. If you don’t see us and can’t find our room number, Dan and my cell phone numbers are in the staff directory on the Furfest website. And yes, since we’re complete geeks, we’ll be checking e-mail throughout the convention as well. Who knows, there might even be some LJ updates, too 🙂

Dig my new LJ icon – ain’t it cute? That’s me in the foreground, and Dan behind me.