As always, it's long. You've been warned!
Wednesday, 19 August
After much tearing out of hair, running in circles like a chicken with its head cut off and general freaking out trying to get everything finalized, it's almost time to fly southwest. Get up Tuesday morning, get a few last minute errands done around town then grab a nap through the afternoon until early in the evening, when I get back up around 10pm and do the final few things, make sure everything I need is packed and wait for my taxicab to pick me up for the airport. Taxi arrives at oh-dark-hundred (4:45am local time) on Wednesday to take me to the airport for my 6:55am flight out of Ottawa to Chicago. Arrive in Chicago about 8:10am (local time) and discover that there is a flight to Orange County LA at 8:35am. That sounds SO much better than sitting around in the Chicago airport until 11:45am, so I haul butt from one end of the terminal to the other (thank goodness it was in the same terminal though, otherwise I wouldn't have made it) and get to the boarding desk completely out of breath. Manage to gasp out that I want a stand-by seat if there are any available and the lady behind the desk is like "we're just about to close the doors, give me your boarding pass for your scheduled flight". Hand it over and tell her that I don't care that the only thing she has left is middle seats, just get me on the plane so I'm not stuck sitting here in Chicago for 4 hrs! They literally closed the plane doors right behind me. Whew, made it! I can deal with the middle seat. I don't care. Anything is better than the layover.
Arrive in OC around 10am (local time) and give my ride a call, leave a message on their voice mail telling them that I'm massively early, so they can pick me up whenever they want, but I also understand that they may not be able to pick me up until the previously planned time. Sit around outside the airport in OC enjoying the sunshine, the fact I don't have to worry about missing a connecting flight, etc. Grab a drink, get out my book and settle in to wait. Wait, what? Did I just hear someone call my name? I haven't heard back from my ride and I'm not expecting to see anyone else, who was that? Look around just as I get swooped up into a hug. Eep! Oh! Hey Kaelten! He noticed me sitting there so came over to chat for a bit before catching his shuttle to the hotel. Yay, first hug of the 'con! As it turns out, though, it's actually a good thing that I got there early. Kaelten heads off to the hotel and a while later I get a call from him. Our rooms aren't paid for! Gah?! What's going on there? Kaelten tells me he's looking into it and will call me back to let me know when things are sorted out. Apparently there was a bit of a glitch in the system and a whole bunch of the fansites representatives' rooms didn't get pre-paid. He calls me back to let me know it's all fixed up though so that was nice, that it was all sorted out before I arrived at the hotel myself.
Finally, my ride arrives, at the time we had originally planned and turns out that their cell phone had stopped working that morning, so they never even got my voicemail. Lol. Oh well, it was still a pleasant wait. Get the second big hug of the 'con, load my suitcase into the car and off we go. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my friends? Knowing that I grew up in Nova Scotia, knowing that I absolutely love the ocean, knowing that I have no plans for the afternoon and knowing that even though I've been out here three times previously I've yet to make it to the shore, the first thing that they do is whisk me off to the beach! Yay! I can now very happily say that I've stuck my toes in the Pacific ocean as well as the Atlantic! We got down to the beach and my socks and shoes came off and the legs on my jean got rolled up so fast it would have made people laugh to see it. Into the water I went, quick like an otter, wishing I had brought a bathing suit, or at the very least some quick dry shorts, but I didn't so I contented myself with just wading for a bit. Eventually I came back up on shore and we went wandering along, clambering over rocks, checking out the tide pools, showing me little critters that I never saw on the beaches over on the Atlantic side of the continent. What an absolutely wonderful afternoon! *sighs dreamily*
After a while it's off for some food (all that wonderful fresh salt air and exercise scrambling around on the rocks made me hungry) then time to drop me off at the hotel so I can get checked in, set up and return all the calls I'd been ignoring all afternoon while I was at the beach. Sorry about that guys, but I was taking some 'me' time before the insanity began.
Eventually hook up with Dolby, Iriel, Kaelten, Esamynn, MentalPower, Gazmik and Lunessa, wander off to find food (for the rest of them). End up at Tony Roma's for ribs and stuff, I steal a few fries from various plates since I'm not really hungry, having already had supper earlier. Sit around there for a while, then back toward the convention center and our various hotels. Spend some more time chatting some more then folks start heading off for sleep. My head hit the pillow and I was out like someone had turned off my lightswitch.
Thursday
Slept in a bit today, no real wonder after the lack of sleep leading up to the trip. Got up around 9:30-10am and meet up with some folks for a bit before I have to head off to Blizzard for lunch with the UI team then some meetings through the afternoon. As per usual, I've got so many other things scheduled that I don't get to go to the Community Summit stuff with Blizzard, yet again (which reminds me, I still need to email them about the stuff I missed). Spend the afternoon in and around Blizz HQ, having meetings and gathering more hugs. Eventually head back to the convention center and hotel area. Go to stand in line for my entrance badge. Oh, hey, look at that! What line? God I love being press.
Wait for everyone else that is getting their tickets then we start walking to the restaurant for the 4th Annual UI Community Dinner.
Dinner was at Bubba Gump's. The menu everyone was treated to is
here. Dolby shot a mini-video of everyone that was in attendence which you can check out
here. We had 39 people show up out of the 42 that were signed up. We also got to hand out the t-shirts we made up for this year. I think (hope?) everyone got a good chuckle out of them. I know I saw enough of them worn over the next two days. They were definitely good UI geek t-shirts.
I'm sure someone out there has shots of them being worn (both front and back). Please post 'em if you've got 'em, folks.
I think everyone had a good time at the dinner. Well, except maybe ckknight, since I think we rather embarrassed him. We knew it was his birthday that weekend, so we made sure that the servers knew it as well. You know how embarrassing it is when a restaurant comes out and sings whatever is their version of the Happy Birthday song, cheering and clapping, etc. And of course whoever else is with you hoots and hollers along with them, right? Well, imagine having yourself pulled up out of your chair, made to stood in front of everyone, and having 38 other people above and beyond the staff all carrying on? Not that I would ever do such a thing as to make sure the restaurant staff knew about it and were encouraged to make sure they made as big a deal out of it as possible though. Of course I wouldn't!
Hehehehe, poor ckknight. I think he wanted to sink through the floor. He was a really good sport about it though.
The staff at Bubba Gump's were absolutely fantastic! They treated us great and the food was wonderful. Prices are reasonable. And I have to say, as the organizer, it was so very very nice to call a place up and have it not be some huge hassle trying to book for a large group, nor have them placing unreasonable requirements on the group ($2.5k deposit?! Minimum total group food and beverage orders of $3k?! I don't think so!) I'll wait for feedback from others but I'm certainly inclined to go with that restaurant again next year.
I think everyone pretty much agrees that holding it on the Thursday night instead of the Friday (as in previous years) is a good decision. It was really nice to see the contests for a change! Unless I hear compelling reasons to do otherwise, I'm very much of a mind to make the annual dinner be on the Thursday night from here on out.
After we finally broke up from dinner (the restaurant did
not hustle us out the door, which was nice), a large number of us walked back toward the convention center and our hotels together. We ended up drinking at one of the hotel bars for a while before folks went to get some sleep in preparation for BlizzCon the next day.