Yes, it’s time for another one of Duncan’s exhaustive, verbose Anthrocon reports! This is the personal report; I have the “official” department report outlined. I’ll get that written up and posted by the end of the week.

I’ll preface this by saying that my Anthrocon reports (both personal and departmental) are long and detailed. This is mainly for my own benefit, as it’s very handy to look back just before the convention at past reports for reminders of what we did in prior years, what worked, what didn’t, and handy things like which pizza joints were good and which were not. Feel free to read along, though!

As you probably know if you were reading my journal before the convention, I was working (and stressing) hard leading up to the convention. We had a lot to prepare, only some of which could be done before the convention. The weekend at the Westin Chicago North Shore just before the convention was a godsend. It really took a lot of stress away, and put me in a proper state of mind for the convention. I made sure to read over last year’s Anthrocon
and was reminded of the mind-clearing moment of realization in the Alley on Friday. I resolved to remember that lesson and keep a positive, low-stress outlook.

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2008
We had packed up Takaza’s car the night before, and it was pretty full. Three cash registers in boxes take up a lot of space! We tried to pack carefully and asked ourselves whether we really needed certain items (I tend to over-pack terribly when we drive to conventions). We had to take out the rear seats of Dan’s Element to make everything fit, but we got it all in. That morning I dropped Dan off at the Metra station and he took the train in. I worked a semi-productive day, and knocked off at 2 PM. I came home, swapped my car for Dan’s, and headed down to pick him up. He got out of work at 3 PM and took the first shift of driving.
We took the Tri-State Tollway down to I-80/94 out of town and didn’t run into any traffic jams – yay! We were listening to a fun podcast (This Week in Tech – TwiT) which really made the miles fly by. Dan drove the first three-or-so hours, then I took over somewhere just past the Ohio state line. We followed I-80 due east to I-480 in Cleveland to our destination for the night, a Hyatt Place in Independence, OH.

The Hyatt Place (formerly Amerisuites) had recently undergone a renovation. They almost got it right – the room was pretty swank (50″ flat-screen TV, nice parlor and kitchenette), but there were a few things they missed (bathroom door needed refinishing). The lobby had been re-made a la Starbucks – leather and earth tones all over, a pseudo-bar where you could order a small selection of breakfast dishes – but they couldn’t hide that it was really just a gussied-up hotel lobby breakfast buffet. It wasn’t bad, mind you, but I found it kind of amusing. The beds were comfy, though, and I slept pretty well.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2008
…Well, except for that whole “waking up at 6 AM” thing. I tried to console myself that it was just the time zone change, until I realized that it was 5 AM CDT. Crap.

I killed some time surfing around on my laptop while Dan slept a bit more, then once we were up and showered we hit the road. Breakfast came courtesy of the Starbucks at the next Ohio Turnpike Service Plazad a bit more as I drove through the last of Ohio into Pennsylvania. We stopped in Zelinople, PA at Baldinger’s Market to do a little candy shopping. We picked up some interesting-looking candies (my favorites were the maple-coated peanuts, the salt licorice, not so much) and admired the tourist kitsch before driving the last thirty miles to Pittsburgh.

The Westin of course, a madhouse as we pulled up just after noon. Between the group before us (American Society for Engineering Education) checking out, a crazy number of Anthrocon attendees checking in, and the New York Yankees staying at the hotel, there were people everywhere. I was able to check in immediately (I found out later that they keep all Anthrocon staff suites vacant the night before people are supposed to check in so they are ready the moment people arrive). Dan had a bit of trouble with the hotel staff as they ordered him directly down to the parking garage without giving us a chance to unload first, though given the craziness I’m not too surprised. Dan was able to grab a parking space right next to the elevator, so that was nice.

Eschewing a bellhop (mainly because I’m cheap), we piled all of our stuff from the car onto a cart we borrowed from Ops. After dropping off the con stuff in ops, we carried our personal stuff up to our room and got everything situated. Once that was complete, we checked with Operations to see what was going on. The truck with all of the convention’s stuff hadn’t shown up yet, so we took the opportunity to grab some lunch while we could. After three years of hearing about it, I was finally able to visit the Steel City Diner! And as long as you accept that it’s a diner and we’re not talking haute cuisine, the place is actually pretty fabulous. My cheeseburger was enormous, and the home fries were delicious. The staff was extremely friendly, as well, and the price was right!

After lunch it was back to Ops, where stuff was coming in from the truck. Dan and I helped organize the boxes into the proper piles and separated out boxes for Operations, Supersponsor Lounge, and Registration. Many of the Registration boxes got sent down to the room where they were stuffing bags; I later found several boxes that also had to go down, I suspect after they had started stuffing bags. I hope that didn’t cause too many problems!

Somewhere in all this craziness, ottr showed up! He kept us company and we had fun chatting as the carts rolled in. After puttering around in Ops a bit more, we went up to our room to chat for a bit, then we decided to walk down to Primanti Bros. for dinner. It was…not what I expected. Essentially, I’d call it a dive bar on the strip, but the sandwiches weren’t bad. My corned beef and cheese sandwich was good, and it introduced me to a fine Pittsburgh tradition: they put French fries on every damn thing. Including the sandwich: corned beef, cheese, French fries, and coleslaw. Still, it was pretty tasty. We walked back from the restaurant and along the way ran into bergandsheepy briefly. Nice to see some old friends! (Goodness, I remember hanging out with them at my first Antrhocon – in Albany, and 1998!) Not long after we got back to the hotel, I went off too bed. I knew the next day was going to be an early one!

Next…Thursday – Convention set-up and a tasty dinner!