Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Una goes to college

In the morning, the Gryphon and I got up, got showers and then headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. We ordered an extra order of sausage for Una, since she doesn't always eat when she's in a strange place and over excited.

The restaurant staff were really nice about it, allowing us to box some up from the buffet, since we were eating from the buffet anyway. One of the waiters told us that his dog does the same thing when they're traveling.

Sure enough, back in the room, Una enjoyed her sausage very much. While The Gryphon attended a board meeting, I took Una for a walk. I asked at the front desk for a good place to walk, and they suggested the college next door, Gaucher College. So we took a very nice, relaxing walk there. Una sniffed everything while I listened to my iPod and took photographs of things that struck my fancy.

There were a lot of strange touches to the place, such as these relatively small fountains in the middle of a duck pond on the entrance road. Maybe they look more impressive in the summer, but currently, they're not so much.

Nobody seemed to be walking around on campus. Maybe they were still on winter break, because it's not just a commuter college: the campus does have dorms.

Interestingly enough, we found a tire swing. I have no idea why a college campus would have one, but I'm sure the college students enjoy it.

When we got back to the room, I had a little time to take a nap. It was about 11 a.m., and I had to attend a meeting at noon. But it wasn't easy to sleep, because I had to leave the radio on to distract Una from the hallway noises. Every time a commercial came on, I woke up.

I remembered what my dad told me when I was young and couldn't sleep. He said that you get most of the benefit of sleep just from lying down and relaxing. Instead of fretting over a lack of sleep, relax and think of pleasant things. So I put my iPod on and listened to music with the lights off.

Sometimes my iPod seems to have a brain, anticipating what I want to hear. This time was one of the most amazing. It started out with "Purple Rain" by Prince, a very soothing song. Then was "Headphones" by Bjork, a beautiful song where she plays around with stereo and sings about how headphones saved her life by helping her sleep. This was followed with a mellow Coldplay song.

I'd planned on getting up at about 11:30 but hadn't set an alarm, since I rarely need to when I nap. My internal alarm wakes me. Sure enough, the next song was a louder, more rocking song. I looked at the clock: exactly 11:30.

I took Una out once more before heading to the mandatory portion of the staff meeting. Part of the reason it was mandatory was so we could all attend a staff training on the effects of drugs and alcohol use and abuse. The training was taught by one of our staffers, who is also an osteopathic resident who's in a psychiatry rotation and deals primarily with addiction issues.

She gave an eye-opening presentation about the various effects of alcohol abuse, which should be helpful when staffers are looking for warning signs of people who might need medical attention at the convention.

The other things we addressed during the mandatory section included the reports from the department heads and general announcements about policies. I sat in the same row as a bunch of friends.

Usually, I multitask during these meetings. But this time, I was so tired that I just took notes. One interesting takeaway from the alcohol conversation was a chart of the effects of alcohol on different sizes of men and women. According to the chart, my legal limit is three drinks in an hour. However, I know from experience that two drinks in an hour is more than enough.

After the mandatory meeting, we went back upstairs to order some room service. The restaurant wasn't serving lunch any more, and weren't serving dinner yet, so it was the easiest thing to do. I ordered a wrap with wasabi tuna inside, and The Gryphon got a ratatouille sandwich.

We also ordered a child sized hamburger for Una. I was shocked to discover it came with a pile of greasy fries. We tried a couple but didn't want to give any for Una, so they went out in the hallway on the tray when we were done.

The Gryphon left for the budget meeting, and I changed from boots to sneakers and bundled up for a second dog walk. We took a different route, discovering that they were having a chess tournament there in the athletic center. The chess competitors and attendees were the only people I'd seen on campus besides some morning joggers on our first walk.

Since I started the walk at about 5, and it was winter, the sun was going down by the end of our walk. I got an interesting picture of the sunset through a sign from one of the buildings.

Back in the room, I lay down with my iPod and tried to sleep. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to play one album straight through, but I'd accidentally changed some settings and had a hard time figuring it out. I did eventually manage to play a Ladysmith Black Mambazo album.

Una started to get restless at about 6:30 when people started returning to their rooms, so I got up and changed for the big group dinner. I like to dress up for it, and I'm in good company: more and more people have been doing so over the last couple of years. I wore a black knee-length skirt with a black scoop-necked cotton and angora sweater, a patterned tan jacket with three-quarter length sleeves, and my gold knee-high boots.

I tried to get s self-portrait in the mirror, but the best one was a close-up.

When The Gryphon came up, while he was getting ready, I ran Una outside again before we headed down for dinner. The plan was to enjoy dinner and then grab Una so she could be with me the rest of the night, not sitting in the room barking and whining.

Our dinner was in a nice ballroom area, and the buffet was already available. It featured a number of vegetable dishes, along with a pasta and fish dish. I had mostly vegetables because I wasn't that hungry after the big lunch. I did share a piece of chocolate cake with The Gryphon for dessert.

Everyone was socializing, taking pictures and having fun. We got together the people who were dressed "swanky" and got a group shot. It's a pretty nice picture, although it's hard to get everyone with their eyes open!

Then we got silly and took some more photos, such as my favorite, of Doc the Stampede dancing in his Yakuza looking suit.

Immediately after the dinner, I attended the publications department meeting while The Gryphon attended the one for human resources. While he's stepped down as the head of the department, he's currently an assistant for it. In pubs, we discussed some merchandising ideas and set this year's theme, which will be superheroes.

I had told the head of publications, The Cosplayer, that I would have to leave at 10, because I expected Una would be restless by then and other hotel guests might be trying to sleep. This time, when I returned to the room, I could hear her whining all the way from the elevator.

She was overjoyed to see me, and after I'd changed into jeans and a sweater, keeping the boots on just for the heck of it, I ran her outside to relieve herself before returning to our rooms on the second floor for socializing.

We made the rounds, saying hi to people. A number of people asked us if we were on the ninth floor. Apparently, she'd barked at them when they walked by. Poor, silly doggie. Unfortunately, it's hard to correct for that when we're not there. If she barks when we're at home, we can spray her with a water bottle and tell her "quiet," which tends to do the trick.

Una and I watched a very entertaining event in the meeting room. They set up a model version of the clock tower from downtown Baltimore, along with the Inner Harbor Sheraton. Then we competed to see who would wear a Godzilla costume and stomp on them.

In order to win this privilege, you had a purple ball catapulted to you and had to keep it in the air with seven volleyball-style hits. It was harder than you think. I did it four times before it got away from me, and my second attempt wasn't even that good.

Several other people tried before someone was finally successful, the guy who is in charge of autographs for the guest relations department.

He was a great choice, because he was really funny as Godzilla, doing a crane stance as a warm-up. I took a little movie of him, but he kept delaying the actual stomping, so my memory card filled up. As I was frantically trying to switch in a new one, he stomped the buildings, so all I got was a photo of the aftermath.

Still, it was entertaining. Surprisingly, Una didn't bark at him but seemed to enjoy it. I guess it's because we were all laughing. This is funny, because earlier in the day, I was just back from our early dog walk. She was very good until a young woman walked through the lobby briskly carrying a guitar case. Una barked her head off.

So in Una's mind, a woman with a guitar is more dangerous than Godzilla.

Afterwards, we hung out in a board room, socializing with people and enjoying refreshments. Since the room was warm and the company pleasant, we stayed there much of the night.

I talked to one of our translators, who I found out grew up in San Francisco. I don't know if he still lives there, but if he does, that would explain why I only see him a couple times a year. I'd never spoken to him for so long before, and it was Una that got us talking. Turns out he has a dog, too.

Later on, the Dachshund, Sydney, joined us, with one of her people, the former head of guest relations. He got her sufficiently calmed down to meet Una. She did try to nip Una at first, but later, when she was being held and petted, she sniffed Una and then licked her. It was so cute!

I knew that Una would love her, because she has a friend who looks just like her, a little Dachshund mix named Zoe.

One of the best parts of the evening was getting to see an Otakon staffer I hadn't seen in years. Her older sister, who is brash and funny like Margaret Cho, has remained on staff, and has been encouraging her sister to come back. It was good to see her again, to get caught up a little bit. She complimented me on my weight loss and my new hair style and glasses.

Interestingly, there was at least one wedding being held in the hotel that weekend. The managed to keep our two groups separate, so that we only crossed paths in the elevators.

We were up pretty late, and Una was sufficiently exhausted to actually sleep. I switched the radio from the smooth jazz station to an adult contemporary station, which I found easier to sleep to, maybe because I knew the songs. The commercials entered my dreams with, for example, The Pirate urging me to take a computer training course.

More from Com Con 2007:

January 22, 2007 - Dog Hotel

January 24, 2007 - Time to Go

January 25, 2007 - More Com Con Pics

February 1, 2007 - Inside Goucher

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

January 2007 Index

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