There's a pawnshop on a corner in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and I walk up and down 'neath the clock...

[hazelchaz]

A number of photos are now online:
Benches part 2: Delivering Jessica and Kelly's Benches (15-Sep-2007)
LASFS part 302: Estrogen Zone (01-Dec-2007)
Maria's Birthday at Cafe 50's (19-Dec-2007)
Remodeling Monster part 28: At the old homestead again (23-Dec-2007) et seq.
Remodeling Monster part 32: The Old Homestead (27-Dec-2007) et seq.
Christmas 2007 part 1: Lunch with Mother-in-Law (23-Dec-2007)
Christmas 2007 part 2: Dinner at Dorothy and Bob's (25-Dec-2007) et seq.
Christmas 2007 part 4: At Home with Maria (26-Dec-2007)
Shopping at Ikea (23-Dec-2007)
Mattress Shopping (24-Dec-2007)
Table Shopping at Ikea (24-Dec-2007)
Fan Shopping at Lowe's (24-Dec-2007)
Dinner at Islands (24-Dec-2007)
Boxing Day Errands (26-Dec-2007)
Shopping for Chairs (27-Dec-2007)
Split-Rail Fence Survey (27-Dec-2007)
Anime Los Angeles 4 part 1: Thursday (03-Jan-2008) et seq.
Jerry Shaw's photos: Anime Los Angeles 4 part 17: Friday (04-Jan-2008) et seq.

What a winter. So far. In December I had a throat infection. Got over that, immediately had an ear infection. Was well in time for Christmas and some last-minute animelosangeles stuff. The convention rattles forward, a bit rickety maybe, a lot like the title edifice from Howl's Moving Castle especially as brought to screen by Miyazaki -- we get up our steam, maybe bits are falling off, but it works... Round through New Year's and the convention, which was a success, we had 2509 warm bodies and at least 2400 of them had a good time. Next year we'll be at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, moving in on New Year's Day. And then the day after the convention I helped unload the truck at the new storage unit near LAX then hit the road for San Luis Obispo for a FIPS 140-2 seminar I couldn't miss. Got back, had another throat infection. Got better, back to work, then boom! a mild case of the flu.

I don't usually get sick four times in 40 days! But I thank the ghods for the timing. A week earlier, or a week later, and it would have a calamity. Not a disaster, but certainly a calamity as far as myself at animelosangeles would be concerned.

So the convention. Lots of to go over. Can I do everything justice? Let me start with my Minions. These tireless volunteers followed me around, carried my clipboard, picked up my stuff when I absently left it behind, and kept me hydrated all weekend (acting on library_lynn's instructions there). xkokuux took our picture at the end of the convention, shown here. Jose Zamora, Melissa De Mello, Patty Engel, and Arianna Gonzales logged plenty of miles, many of them in the rain, out on the road on a vital errand at one point. Sometimes there would be a need for someone to help out for an hour where there was a critical gap, so I'd leave a minion behind when I moved on. Occasionally my personal in-out parking pass would be brought back after being used to get another impoverished off-site-staying department head past the toll gate at night. Things would be fetched or hauled (often out of my room -- all the over-18 minions had a key to my room to simpify that).

Melissa was on-site first, on Thursday. Jose mostly covered evening duty, with the ladies having the evenings off. Patty got shanghaied onto the team, just a little on Friday and then in earnest by Saturday. Arianna took most of the hours Saturday. They all did great work, and they've volunteered to come back and minion some more next year. Melissa's going to organize the Minions in an actual department, and recruit more people, and manage shifts, and so forth. We've already had another young, tireless fan volunteer to join the crew next year, but we'll talk about Sarah's Saturday adventure a little later... Anyhow, my thanks go out to the Minions for their work in keeping me from utter collapse.

I took about 150 photos. I accidentally left my good camera at work (it turned out it was hidden behind my open laptop) so I used my ol' Olympus, with its annoyingly long flash cycle times (both the warm-up for firing the flash, and the time it takes to write a picture to the "flash" memory card)...

But Jerry Shaw has (as he often does) donated thousands of his photos to the cause. I've uploaded the first 1500 of his Friday photos, the rest to follow shortly. "Lady Amaryllis" pictured as Hermione Granger in Jerry Shaw's photo here, said: Oh my gosh! I found some pictures in there of my Hermione and Viktor costumes that I absolutely adore! Thank you for taking these, you guys! *runs happily in circles*