Anthrocon: Saturday night/Sunday morning

[rowyn]

Our mission to 7-11 was once again successful, and on our return to the hotel we hit the room once again, to drop off a 2-liter of Diet Coke, grab the backpack, and for me to get changed once again.*

From there, we went to the Chill Out Lounge just as it was getting started.

The event took place in one of the standard hotel conference rooms, but it was quite transformed for the occassion. All the regular chairs had been stacked and pushed against one wall, and replaced by inflatable chairs and loveseats. All the light save the one at the back had been turned off. A tall blacklight was set up against one wall, and a laser light played random colors over one wall and the ceiling near the DJs. The sound system was cranked up to dance-level volumes, but no space was set up for dancing. There were already a dozen or more people in the room, including cargoweasel, who was manning the sound system. We took one of the loveseats near shaterri and Jeff, who were sitting in inflatable chairs. kevinpease was there, too, although he didn't recognize us at first, and a little while later chipotle showed up.

The inflatable chairs were, as it turned out, a good deal more comfortable than the loveseats. The chairs could be sat in and would keep much the same chair-like shape. The loveseats, on the other hand, had a pronounced tendancy to roll forward once anyone actually sat in them, and the unlucky occupants had to brace themselves or slide towards the floor.

The music was too loud to talk comfortably over, and the room too dark to draw. So, despite the lack of (a) other dancers or (b) an actual space to dance in, I danced. Apparently, if you put me in a dark room with loud music, dancing is what I will do.

I have long been blessed with a lack of self-consciousness when it comes to dancing. I'll go out onto an empty dance floor and dance by myself while thirty other people stand around talking. So at the time, I wasn't embarrassed to stand in front of the blacklight and dance, or in front of John, or with (briefly) one of the inflatable loveseats**, or with John***. In retrospect, though, I do feel a bit embarrassed about calling attention to myself by dancing in a room where everyone else is sitting. But not sufficiently embarrassed as to avoid announcing publically on LJ that I did it. Does make me wonder in retrospect if I was annoying anyone, though. :/

I'd sit down between rounds of dancing, and after a while figured out the most comfortable way to rest on the loveseat: John would sit on it normally, and I'd lie down atop the backrest. That way my weight counterbalanced the loveseat's tendancy to roll forward and the whole thing was more table. It also put my face next to John's ear, making it easier to talk to him over the music.

Some time later, we spotted postrodent, peganthyrus, and errorist entering the room, along with a few other other people I didn't recognize. They were hanging out near the back, so Koogrr and I got up to say hi. I gave Rik a hug while John talked to one of the others, and then another person I didn't recognize gave me a hug.

"Wait, wait," I said, peering at the newcomer. "Are you Kincaid?"

queenofstripes nodded.

"Yay! It's good to finally meet you! Here, let me have another hug now that I know who you are."

We stood at the back chatting with them for a bit, then retreated from the general crush of people trying to talk to Kincaid or one of the others. We also saw lady_peregrine cuddling with one of her friends, but she looked too contented to interrupt. :) After a little bit, John and I decided to move outside so we could talk more easily, and draw. I remembered that I wanted to draw something in Kincaid's sketchbook.

"It doesn't look like she brought it with her," John said, looking at the generally unladen crowd near the back.

"I think you're right. Well, I'll go harrass her about not bringing it, in that case."

I walked over to where she was seated, talking to Kevin Pease and indicoyote. "Can I have your sketchbook to draw in?" I asked.

Kincaid looked embarrassed. "I didn't bring it."

I gave her a mock-disapproving look. "You know, 'not bringing it with you' could be contributing to the lack of sketches in it."

"I'm sorry! I didn't think anyone would want to draw in it in a dark room. Here, I have an arm," she said, offering me one bare forearm.

"All right." I dropped to my knees beside her and reached for the pens in my backpack.

"You're actually going to draw on my arm?"

"Of course I am." I selected a pen and took her wrist. "It'll have to be something simple. Which do you want, Peace or Joy."

She smiled. "Oh, give me Joy****."

So I drew Joy on her arm, and then took a picture of it so I'd have proof.***** When I was done, I suggested Kevin Pease do the same ("Look, she's got another arm free") but I don't think he took me up on it. :)

By then, a couple of other people in Kincaid's group needed to be put to bed, so Kincaid escorted them back to their room, while John and I went out to the hallway to hang out. mach came by. He'd managed to pull something in his leg while doing high kicks at the dance that was running at the same time as Capsule. I was a little sorry that we hadn't stopped by the dance at all, since it would've been nice to dance at a location where people were actually, y'know, expecting that sort of behavior. We'd also spoken with a couple of people who'd gotten henna designs at the dealer's room earlier that day. Someday I wanna try doing that, probably by buying henna and putting it on myself because I'm a do-it-yourself sort of person when it comes to that.

A half hour or so later, Kincaid returned and tapped me on the shoulder. "Here," she said, holding out her sketchbook. "Not that there's any obligation to draw in it or anything, but if you still want to ... "

I was delighted. "Yay! What should I draw?"

We spent another couple of hours sitting outside the Chill Out Lounge. The music was a little more muffled than I would've liked, but conversation was much easier. queenofstripes sat with us and talked about various different things, including her character, Reverend -- a cheerful mousegirl who is, it turns out, the 'fixed' version of Kincaid's depressed mousegirl, Bruise. I wanted to do another picture of Reverend because I already had an idea what she looked like and I like drawing anthropomorphic mice.

I don't recall talking a whole lot myself in this interval; in fact, Kincaid apologized at one point for talking quickly: "I'm used to conversations with people from New York, who have a conversational lage of negative three seconds." :) But I had a great time drawing and listening to Kincaid talk to John and the dozen or so people that flocked around her, and generally basking in Kincaid's reflected glory. >:)

Around 4AM, we made noises about going back to the room. We verified with Kincaid that she did want to partake of dim sum with us the next day, then walked with Shaterri and Jeff to the elevators. John commented in the elevator that our 10:30 plans for dim sum were not going to work well. "We still have to pack and get checked out, and doing that by 10:30 when it's already 4:30 is going to be rough."

Shaterri agreed and we switched the time to 12:30PM. "Rats," I said, "we should've told Kincaid before we left. Oh well, we've got her cell phone number so we can call her."

We got back to the room and I tried calling Kincaid, only to get a 'this number is out of range of service' message. "Maybe we'll have better luck in the morning."

John went to bed, and I tried to sleep for a bit but found I was too hyped-up to do so. Instead, I packed most of my things, and finally crashed at 5:15AM.

* Yes, I managed to go through four outfits on Saturday, assuming you count the jeans & t-shirt that I wore to lunch as one.
** The inflatable loveseat made a pretty good dance partner, in fact. Didn't step on my toes once.
*** Who, notwithstanding the footnote above, did make a much better dance partner than the loveseat. And also did not step on my toes.
**** I was not-so-privately pleased that Kincaid could tell them apart. Don't ruin it for me and tell me you just liked the sound of 'Joy' better, Kincaid. :)
***** The text reads "Next time, bring your sketchbook."

Comments

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

*awwws*

You dancing was terrific, and not in the least annoying; I was glancing over in-between cuddles. ;-)

I loved hearing your version of this night. Thanks so much for sharing.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Interesting; I couldn't relax in the little chairs without creating an unstable system, and much preferred the sofae, which would support me when I leaned back.

You could be a professional dancer. (Perhaps you are; I do not know.)

Most. Bullets. EVAR.

[barbx.livejournal.com]

***** INCOMING MESSAGE *****

I've never seen a Livejournal with so many footnotes, and used correctly as well.

I'm usually stuck with mismatched parentheses, mismatched quotation marks and sentence fragments buried in the confusion of multiple parenthetical phrases.

Do you have any idea how irritating it is to an AI to have mismatched parentheses or quotation marks? When I parse the first, my interpreter switches to a different mode, waiting for the end. When there is none, I have to flush the pipeline and guess where the closing might be or ignore it entirely and re-parse.

I hate flushing my pipelines.
-- BarbX

***** END MESSAGE *****

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

That's the sign of an artist - she carries her pens with her! };)

So were you doing any particular dance moves?