No, not like that, silly! A couple people have said that con reports are long and boring and nobody reads them. Well, the biggest reason I do a con report is so that I can look back at a later date and see what I did when. That’s a good enough reason for me!

And thus we have the dreaded con report for Anthrocon 2003.
Last week was more than a little crazy, what with the job interview on Monday and Tuesday, packing on Wednesday, then leaving for Philadelphia on Thursday. Fortunately I had time to get everything together on Wednesday (and even baked a couple dozen scones!). We packed most everything into the car on Wednesday night and headed off to bed.

Thursday
We woke up at 5:30 AM – only a half-hour than we usually get up, but it seemed a lot earlier than that. Between showering and last-minute packing (had to fill the cooler), we didn’t hit the road until 6:50 AM.

The drive up was fine – due to how the cities are staggered out we managed to avoid the worst of any rush hour ad we breezed through Richmond, DC, and Baltimore. We ran into our first big traffic jam just short of the Maryland/Delaware state line and opted to jump off of I-95 and take US 40 instead. This had the side-benefit of avoiding the toll on I-95, but it took some time. The detour took us 45 minutes, but Bookshire says the traffic jam took 90 minutes to get through, so I guess we made the right choice. After that it was an easy drive right through to the hotel. We arrived right around 4 PM and pulled in right behind Todd and Bookshire, who live all of 30 minutes from us in NC. Funny how that works.

Takaza headed down to Operations to see about getting our badges and I took my place in the long line at hotel registration. The line moved surprisingly fast and soon enough I had secured our room – a junior suite on the ninth floor. I met up with Takaza again and we carried our stuff up to the room. This was our first brush with the dreaded elevators – not too bad then, but it got steadily worse as the weekend progressed until the elevators shut down entirely (funny thing – 14+ people in the elevator tends to overload it and make it stop. How astonishing!).

After a short break to relax a bit in the room, we headed down to Operations. No staff badges due to problems with Registration, so I took a staff ribbon and made do with that and my badge from HollyAnn. I worked with Giza and Decker (nice guy – hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting him before) to set up Artists Alley and Con Store. We had a minor mishap with some of the shelving, but we managed to put it all together in a semi-orderly fashion.

I took a break and headed back up to the room for a quick dinner of turkey and ham sandwiches and relaxed a bit more. After that it was back down to hang out in Ops a bit, chat with the Dealers Room crew (who looked more than a little worse for wear!), keep ZenWolph company in the Registration line, and generally just be sociable. At 10 PM we headed over for the general staff meeting, which was a general thank-you-for-volunteering, please-be-professional kind of thing, with a few items thrown in as a heads up. This is probably not a bad idea for MFF to consider at some point. That went on for an hour, then Kage gave us a briefing on how Artists Alley and Con Store was supposed to work.

I headed off to bed around Midnight, leaving Takaza to work on the newsletter. He didn’t get to bed until 3 AM, setting a pattern that was to be repeated all throughout the convention.

On Friday, I woke up at 7 AM. I proofread the newsletter for Takaza, then went down to get some breakfast at the hotel restaurant while he printed it up. While I was eating, I was joined by Fuzzytoes, Rustitobuck, and Cheetah. The company was good, and it was a lovely way to start the day.

I stopped by Operations after breakfast and was able to pick up my badge, though it wasn’t until Friday evening that I was able to get my bag with con book and schedule – sort of nice things to have, and it was frustrating that I had to rely on others to find out what was going on where even after the convention started.

Opening ceremonies were at 11 AM, then I went and hung out a bit, just seeing who had arrived. I stopped by Artists Alley to chat with Tango and Cnipur and was happy to see that it would be relatively easy to get back into the swing of things. As I was chatting, I got a call from Takaza – we had roommates! Linnaeus and DataHawk had arrived. I went up to the room and met them there. We chatted for a bit then headed over to TGI Fridays for lunch, complete with the Surliest Waitress In The Universe. The less said of that the better.

Then it was time to start my shift in Artists Alley, working with Tango. For those unfamiliar with the concept, here’s how Anthrocon’s Artists Alley works: to prevent each and every artist (and we’re talking 50+ artists) from having to get a tax ID number and handle sales taxes, etc. the convention sets it up where they are independent contractors working for Anthrocon. When someone wants to make a purchase, the artist writes out a receipt in triplicate for the sale. He gives a customer the white and yellow copies and keeps the white copy. The customer takes these copies to the cashier who rings up the sale, adding 10% to the sale (6% PA sales tax, 1% Philadelphia sales tax, 3% Anthrocon overhead). The cashier stamps the yellow receipt and gives this back to the customer, along with a receipt from the register, as proof that the purchase has been paid for. The customer then goes back to the artist, gives them the register receipt, and receives their goods. Simple enough, right? We’ll get back to that…

My shift started easily enough – not too busy, rarely any lines to work at the registers. It took a bit to remember the rhythm of the sales, but once I remember it was a piece of cake. Then at 5 PM it was time to close things down. See, at the end of every day, you have to pay the artists. This is done by sorting through the pink receipts and matching them to the artists’ white receipts so everyone agrees on the same amount for payout. If the receipts don’t match, the artist can provide the register receipt and that works as well. Then a the pink receipts are bundled together and kept by the cashiers, a receipt for the amount paid is written, and the artist signs it.

Oy vey. Between sorting through the receipts and trying to get them into stacks for each name (when some didn’t write their name legibly on the receipt) and getting all the receipt books we needed, we were 15 minutes late starting payout. The closing crew each night was me, Tango, and Takaza – On Friday finished around 6:30, I think. Much longer than I would have liked, but still not as bad as we had last year. I’ll have some thoughts on streamlining the process in a bit. I honestly can’t remember who was there when throughout the weekend, but I want to thank Linnaeus, Brophey, and Rasslor for going above and beyond the call of duty and sticking around to help us process checkout quickly. I hate to think how it would have gone without your help.

Anyway, we headed up to the room after that and just relaxed for a while. Linnaeus and I ran out to Boston Market and brought dinner back for us and Takaza and DataHawk. Good, inexpensive food. After that it was time for the extremely under-publicized MFF staff gathering. Really, it was just CrimFerret and Robert King stopping by, but we had a fun time chatting, SMOFFing, and kicking around ideas. Oh, and drinking some tasty Scotch. After they headed out, I crashed around midnight. True to form, Takaza went down to The Zoo to work on the newsletter and didn’t get back to the room until 5 AM.

Saturday
I woke up around 7:30 AM and proofread the newsletter. After a tasty breakfast of scones and Starbucks DoubleShots, I headed down to help open up Artists Alley for the day. After an uneventful shift, I headed back to the room to grab a quick bite. Then…stuff happened in the afternoon that honestly is a complete blur. More than likely just general hanging out and socializing. Then came the closing shift for Artists Alley – more artists and more money than the day before, so this one took until about 6:15 even though we were still moving a lot faster than the day before. We went back to the room, drained, and relaxed for a bit. Takaza, bless his heart, did some footwork to track down a good place from which to order pizza. I’m thinking that I would much rather have a group of friends up to the room and order food than attempt to take everyone to a restaurant that is probably already completely packed and try to get out in less than three hours.

After dinner I went downstairs and checked out the band, Fear Liston (or Fur Liston, as they went by for the weekend). They had a good sound and were well-suited to the Dave Matthews and similar covers they played. They had a good crowd going, and it was a something that was nice and different. I tried mightily to stay up for Rigel’s dance, but I was fading fast and took the smart route and went off to bed around 1 AM. Takaza was in bed by 4 AM-ish – better than the night before.

Sunday
I was up again at 7:30 AM, and guess what? I proofread the newsletter first thing. After nibbling on scones and DoubleShots I headed downstairs to see how things were going. I stopped by Artists Alley and Brophey let me know that Kage had been looking for Takaza. I called Takaza’s cell and let him know. Kage wanted to insert something into the newsletter, so I grabbed a clipboard and pen and track him down and had him write it down. Then I ran it up to the room and Takaza reformatted the newsletter to make room for the additional story, then restarted the printing. I think we only had to throw away about 75 copies of the newsletter.

I went back down and hung out in Artists Alley a bit, helping Tango and Cnipur. Then it was back up to the room to grab lunch and some more random socializing. Artists Alley closed at 4 PM and we had the most receipt discrepancies of the weekend to deal with, but we still wrapped it up by 4:50 PM. After running back to Ops to count out the cash drawer, I was only a little late to Closing Ceremonies. I stuck around until a little ways into the open comments session (or as I like to think of it, the Parade of Petulant Whining) – I think it was the request to redesign the hotel stairwells that finally did me in.

I headed across the hall to find Tango and Giza engaged in packing up Artists Alley. I lent a hand, then with a crew of volunteers we packed it all out down to the Ops Storage Room. Once we wrapped that up, I hung out in Ops for a bit with TChall as we wondered why Ops was open when it was supposed to have closed (it turns out Giza was otherwise occupied – something about being made a director or something. Sheesh). The staff dinner was shortly thereafter. The Philly cheese steaks were OK, but I hope they choose some other entrée next year, preferably one Takaza can eat and isn’t laced with onions.

We had a fun dinner, sharing the table with Tango and a bunch of Midwest Furfest staff types. We chatted for a long while, then finally wandered out just before the hotel staff had to kick us out so they could clean up. We stopped by The Zoo and I was pleasantly surprised to be invited up to Rigelkitty and Xydexx’s room for games later in the evening. That left us enough time to get in about an hour of swimming, which was very relaxing! Just the thing to cap off a busy convention. Great night for it too – a stiff breeze was blowing making things just a bit nippy when you stepped out of the pool.

The gaming session in Rigel and Xydexx’s room was a blast! We played Catchphrase with them, Linnaeus, NormanRafferty, and jdarkwulf. We learned that Rigel and Xydexx and sick and twisted individuals (“It’s where you put kittens…” “A blender!” “Right!”) and that Catchphrase is a very, very fun game. Takaza and I are developing a possible setup where we could play a large-scale version of it at Midwest Furfest; we’ll see how that works out.

We headed back to the room around midnight and Takaza packed up most of our stuff while I lay half-awake on the bed.

I slept late on Monday – until 8:30 AM! We were a bit slow to get started, and after I showered and generally woke folks up I went down to the front desk. Yes, it is in the Anthrocon hotel contract that the $5/day parking fee is waived if there is any – ANY – charge to the room from the gift shop of restaurants that day. Our bill didn’t reflect that, and the front desk clerk didn’t know anything about it. After discussing it for a bit, she tracked down the convention resume (memo that goes to all hotel staff with the salient convention details) and she struck the charges from the bill. I don’t know if she just did it to make me happy, or if she finally found the resume, but I admit I don’t really care as long as we didn’t have to pay the extra money.

To make a long story short (I know – waaaaaay too late!) we slowly got our act together, and we slowly got our stuff out to the car – no one really wanted to leave, I admit. We chatted for a little bit and then finally got on the road at 10:50 AM.

We made reasonable time on the way home and didn’t hit any traffic jams, thank heavens. We rolled in, exhausted, at 7:20 PM.

And that’s Anthrocon 2003, yay!