It’s the big day. Here we go!

Friday

I slept poorly, worried about the upcoming day’s events. I finally got up at 6 AM, showered and dressed, and headed down to Cool Beans for my morning caffeine fix. I got over to the Convention Center at 7:15 to find that I had been preceded by the Dorsai. Hall C was open so I was able to get in and prep all of the cash registers and reprogram them as necessary. I laid out all of the supplies we’d need for the Alley and got things pretty much ready to go. Linnaeus rolled in from Chicago, having driven all night, so I ran back over to the hotel and helped him carry a few things up to our room. Then it was back to the Convention Center for Artists Alley signups.

I have to say I was floored when I walked into the room where we were doing signups. The place was packed, standing room only, and I could tell that we were going to have way more than 80 people signing up. Woody and I kept watch over signups, which was going great until I came back from an errand and Woody told me that the spreadsheet I used for signups was broken. You see, it only could handle 100 names, and we had 114 people sign up. There followed an insane 15 minutes of me trying to piece together something that would be somewhat lottery-like in a manual fashion. I was amazingly stressed out and probably not on my nicest behavior; I apologize to any artists who had to deal with me then! We finally got all of the artists dispatched to the Alley and when I got there things were slightly chaotic. I was making sure that the artists were properly situated and trying to find seats for artists while trying to answer questions at the Alley registers while answering questions down at Con Store and…well, I’m afraid that at one point Rooth and I butted heads rather severely, something we have since talked over and mutually apologized for. Once things were up and running, I sat down for a moment to take a break.

As I sat there, I had a…moment of clarity, for lack of a better phrase. I could continue to be stressed out, which would make my life unpleasant, make the lives of those around me unpleasant, and mess up everyone’s Anthrocon. Or, I could calm down and ease off, let the system work the way it was designed to, and actually enjoy myself, and hopefully have staff that would return next year. Once I sat and thought about it rationally and consciously let the stress slip away, it was amazing. The Alley became a lot more manageable and enjoyable, and I hope it made a real difference for my staff as well. I need to remember this moment, and apply it when I get stressed out. It was a huge turning point for me, and affected my entire convention experience.

The rest of the day went well. Payout was a bit crazy as we all tried to remember how things worked, but once we got into a rhythm things worked pretty well. Once we wrapped that up, we reset the Alley and most of the staff headed out. I hung around in the Finance Office and took a couple of hours to rework my artist signup spreadsheet. Dan and I finally wrapped up at about 8:45 PM. First day’s work: 13 and a half hours.

We stopped by Ops and eventually gathered Kellic, Nrasser, and Tango to head out for dinner. We got to August Henry’s at 9:45 PM, 15 minutes before the kitchen closed. We should have taken that as a warning. At 10 PM, the music started, loud enough to drown out any hopes of conversation. I first thought it was karaoke because it was so bad, but no – it was the singer they had scheduled. We cringed as he sent out a song to “all the furries in town” (it was “Werewolves of London”, which is shame because I was hoping for “Muskrat Love”). By the time he started pulling people out of the audience for a duet (“Picture” by Kid Rock) we knew it was time to finish eating and get out of there as quickly as possible. It was a horrible experience, but at least everyone took it in good humor. We walked back to the hotel laughing, and parted ways. I think we got to bed at around midnight.

(That’s all for tonight. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to come tomorrow…)