InsaneJournal

Dragon*Con 2007 - Part 1 (Thursday)
Dragon*Con 2007 Report--Now with VIDEO!

THURSDAY

We leave, miraculously, before the time I'd anticipated. We're on the road by 11:20am instead of 12:00pm. An hour into the trip and I'm just finishing looking at all the programming tracks. There is an absolutely overwhelming amount of stuff, and we're really going to have to narrow our choices.

The drive goes surprisingly fast, perhaps because there's four of us and all of us extraverts, this year. Dom and Beau talk about programming, and we all discuss personality types and financing. After a while, I put on my iPod and listen to Lifehouse while working on my Faith/Dean fic, which, I gotta tell ya'll, is turning into an epic. Of course, it's also about the Dean/Faith/Sam in terms of family rather than actual threesome, because I seem to have a complete inability to write Dean as being at all emotionally separated when it comes to Sam.

We arrive at the Marriott in Atlanta at 10:00pm and go directly to early registration, thinking we can save time in the morning. Except that 10 gazillion other people and their ancestors and the amoeba that spawned them all have the same idea. Turns out they closed the line just as we arrived, because they already had an hour's worth of people lined up.

So, instead, we check into our hotel room, which is on the 35th floor. Yes, the 35th. It's not especially impressive for $330/night w/parking, but OMG the view is. After sorting and setting out our essentals, we proceed immediately to the bar downstairs in the hotel. As we arrive, some guy sitting there is ordering a shot of something for $36.00. A shot. For $36. I know the prices at this hotel are obscene, but DAYUM. We get beer, head outside for a smoke, where we run into a few of people we know from the Washington DC area. There's some con people already out and about, and while I take stock of things I tap Beau and make him look through the track listings to see what he wants to do.

We head back up to the bar and settle in up there, slamming back beers while Beau and I trade panels and events like stocks until we get a workable schedule. We are so slammed for eventsa now that if we attend them all, we won't be doing much else. I've got the feeling we're gonna end up missing quite a few of these.

After we wring the last possible beer from the bar, we head back outside for a bit.

Random Cowboy Guy on his Little Rascal motoring thingie rolls up and starts talking to us. Pulls his bottle of Jack Daniels out of his pocket, takes a sip, nods at us, then zooms off into low horsepower adventure. I'm not sure what that was about.

While Beau and I are chatting, I spy a guy wandering around with a boom box on his shoulder. Which causes me to turn to Beau and in tones of utter disbelief and astonishment, ask "Why would ANYONE carry around a _boom box_ these days?" A split second later, my brain kicks in and I realize aloud "Oh, it must be part of a routine!" Sure enough, the guy starts rapping. It's not bad, the beats are rocking, but I can't understand what he's saying at this distance. After a bit, he comes over and asks us if we want him to rap for us. Being nice people, we accept.

And maybe distance wasn't the problem with hearing the lyrics, because I miss most of them except for something about rolling a blunt and dipping it, and then "Zombie Jesus! Zombie Jesus! Zombie Pirates!"* And then a phrase that follows these proclamations that Beau and I argue about for 10 minutes afterward. The Zombie Jesus and the Zombie Pirates were either "dancing on the ship" or "dissin' on shit"--the jury is still out.

We have arrived, now have a working schedule for the entire four day weekend, our room is procured, and we have several beers in our bellies. We congratulate ourselves on a job well done and head to bed for the evening. The REAL fun starts tomorrow, when all the freaks really come out in droves and the Buffy and Firefly panels convene.

* = video