...walking in a winter wonderland. Gone away is the bluebird, here to stay is the new bird...

Photos online: The Old Homestead part 23: Rugs and Chair (27-Feb-2008)
The Old Homestead part 24: Living Room and Hall (04-Mar-2008)
Dinner with Maria, and her shoes (29-Feb-2008)
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 307: Coral Cafe (21/28-Feb-2008) et seq.
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 311: Coral Cafe (06-Mar-2008) et seq.
The picture of selinawoman is from the last batch of Coral Cafe photos.

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More recap of my wonderful winter. I mentioned attending AOD in San Francisco, the same weekend as Gallifrey One down in L.A., and flying back and forth. fairegoddess was kind enough to pick me up at the airport. She picked up some bottled water for us to give away at our table. I brought some other goodies: two boxes of "Candy Cane Jo-Jos" (think an Oreo crossed with a Thin Mint cookie) donated by my mom, and a whole bunch of granola bars. I need to make a spiffy sign that says FREE SNACKS and keep it in my luggage... I keep finding myself caught without one.

On Sunday, Lindsay and I flew down to L.A. so she could join an "unofficial hotel tour" of the LAX Marriott on the last day of Gallifrey One. (I'm sorry we didn't get a good look at your ballroom, Lindsay!) As you may know, I handle the postcards for Gallifrey One as well as for animelosangeles. There's a certain number of "old hands" who go to Gallifrey One and Animé Los Angeles (and Loscon), many of them to run departments (or parties) at two or all three conventions. I was surprised, though, that so many of the Animé Los Angeles staff that joined us on Sunday were interested in Doctor Who and Torchwood. There's an untapped market there: we should be sure to have Gallifrey flyers at Animé Los Angeles next year, maybe even a fan table if there's anyone from Gallifrey to man it.

I supposed I shouldn't have been too surprised, given that I'd already run into people (such as Lina aka "Chick Jack") in Torchwood costumes at Anime Expo. Yes, someone I usually expect to see in a Pirates of the Caribbean costume at anime conventions was dressed as... never mind. People have lots of interests, and as our median-sized convention gets larger there will be more instances of cross-over. And certainly with Doctor Who on Sci-Fi, and Torchwood on BBC America, the cable tv audience is taking it to their hearts. (This was the largest Gallifrey yet, larger than last year which also set a record.)

Which makes me wonder what other non-anime interests a significant number of anime fans share, and should we have an "Extracurricular interests" track? Suppose the LAX Marriott went through a space warp and came out the other side with three extra program rooms. We could take one room and do fannish inquisitions on Saturday: offer up panel time to other conventions, to spend 45 minutes talking about their own convention and taking questions. Saturday we'd focus on other anime conventions, but the other two days would be offered to other conventions and other interests. A quilting panel, maybe? ("Something to do with all those remnants from the half-dozen costumes you make each year.")

I didn't spend that much time at Gallifrey -- a few hours on Friday, a few hours on Sunday. Badge ribbons have infiltrated the convention, though. Robbie ordered about a dozen titles for official purposes, some to encourage traffic flow: you could get one ribbon just by visiting the dealers room, for example. And Jim Flynn had "VOTE FOR SAXON - SAXON IS YOUR MAN" (a combination of two campaign posters from a Doctor Who episiode). britgeekgrrl had a few new ribbons, including one in Welsh: "Mae fy ffrind wedi dysgu Cymraeg, a ces i ruban dwl yn unig!" Lee Whiteside had a Arizona ribbons, including one for SFTV.org and another for the Discworld convention they're having out there. And campaign messages were everywhere -- the "Vote for Saxon" messages were ubiquitous, but the "McCoy/Aldred '08" messages were funnier.

The clonepod people had home-made ribbons at Loscon, we talked briefly during the Gallifrey/AOD time period about the custom orders they wanted to do, and by the time I saw them at ConDor they'd ordered some on their own. But more about ConDor later. Speaking of ribbons, though, if you wanted ribbons for costume_con you'd better get busy. See my Ribbon Resources for basic info and how to sign up to hear when I'm sending in my orders. (In the case of Costume-Con, next week; for Baycon/FanimeCon/etc., probably right before I leave for Costume-Con.)

Getting back to Gallifrey One, though, their program book cover was reversible -- on one side K-9 was listening to a Victrola (per their "Sympony") theme, composed (sorry) by their usual cover artist, and on the other side was a completely different cover by vandonovan. Everyone got both covers, but half were folded the other way so each piece of art got equal time as being "the" cover.

When fairegoddess and I got to the LAX Marriott, FER and Matt² were just arriving as well. Matt had turned his hair green, on purpose. He looked like a Chia Pet.

More people were waiting inside, including divine_sage and midnight_rocket. Not pictured: library_lynn, Joyce Hooper, Evan James, videl_bishoujo, neo_serenity, Matt Tsang. Other people at the con who were working and didn't join us for the tour: nitroace, Patrick Beckstead, Scott Beckstead, glittercat13, Robbie Bourget, John Harold (he'll be joining us next year on Ops), Ed Hooper, Joyce Sperling... lots of people. (I wasn't there to take all their photos, so I don't have a complete record.)

We saw a little of the hotel's function space. We couldn't see the whole Imperial Ballroom, but we saw the half that Gallifrey One uses for the Dealers Room. (The other half is their main program book, and it was dark because of a video/live commentary thing going on.) Marquis was completely unavailable, as another group had it sewn up. (We probably won't see any of it at our meeting this weekend, as there's a big group taking over the whole place. It was difficult finding a room for the Exec to meet Saturday night, although we do have a place for our general meeting Sunday morning.)

But we did go to Gallifrey's Con Suite, which is the same room that we'll be using. It opens out onto the pool deck. And the Marriott has completely remodeled their pool deck area. There are some cute bridges, and an interesting pavement, and even a firepit under a canopy near the pool. (So if it rains, you can at least gather around it.)

The pool deck got many oohs and aahs. It's much prettier than what we had to work with in Burbank. Weather permitting, I expect most or all of the Cosplay Gatherings will be out here. And half of the rooms look out over the pool area. I expect the first-floor and second-floor rooms will be very popular.

After the abbreviated tour, we went for dinner at Cozymel's. Tiff had been telling the others about "this great place Chaz took us to after PMX" and was delighted that we were going back. Here you can see her with Videl-chan, making moustaches from each others' tresses.