We - Mango, Ericson, Tom Farrel, David Larabee, and I - check into room 911 on Friday the Thirteenth. The goils - Katie, Ina, and four girls from Georgia - are somewhere on the seventh floor.
Somewhere in life, probably from Model UN and Congress trips, I learned that, when you're in a hotel with a major convention and hundreds (if not thousands) of people regularly going up and down only a couple of elevators, one of the first things you should do is find the staff elevator and take it as often as you can until you get in trouble (not caught, mind you, but in actual trouble). As it so happens, I got away with taking the staff elevator the entire weekend. On one of the first rounds, however, when I'm bringing everyone in our group on, David - a freshman, who I really don't know - was so afraid of being caught that he nearly wet himself (I kid you not) and he insisted that we take the stairs. That being my first impression of him, I quickly lost a great deal of respect for him, but I conceded and took the stairs that one time, just to make sure we all got down there together. Farrel, meanwhile, is bitching and moaning about the nine flight of stairs we have to deal with (despite repeated reminders on my part where I told him we were going down, not up). That was my first impression of him for this trip (I had dealt with him before, but only on a limited basis and never often) so he lost credibility as well. That and the fact that he reminded me too much of my brother; I have a hard enough time accepting my brother's behavior in a twelve-year-old, but I refuse to tolerate it in a kid a year younger than me. Subsequently, the rest of my weekend was spent, for the most part, avoiding these two; when they were in the room, Ericson and I would leave; when we would come in, they would leave. We saw little of each other, and that was probably for the best.
Anyway.
The con itself was fantabulous, with dealers and raving and video games and costumes, though I didn't wear one myself, this time.
Had never volunteered for a con before, so, since Ericson and I both suffer from insomnia, on Friday night/Saturday morning we volunteer for security, patrolling the building and searching the stairways and hallways for people who are intoxicated, loud, or having sex. We start at around midnight, and at 1:00, Wang joins us (who isn't ashamed to admit, repeatedly, that he really just wants to find people having sex), and the three of us go on until about 4:00 in the morning.
The four Georgian girls rooming with Ina and Katie were cool. One of them, Haley, didn't really talk at all, and another one, Anna, didn't cross paths with us all that often (but was very cool when she did). Kira is a southern girl with hippies for parents (which ought to speak volumes), and Dani - undoubtedly my favorite - was much like Ericson in her personality, but less insensitive. Good times.
Met up briefly with a girl named Jamie, an old friend of the family who's four months younger than me who I hadn't seen in five years. Wow... five years will do a lot to a person. Anyway, we watched the most fucked up movie I have ever seen (which my sister sort of describes here) which someone described as a "Lifetime Movie"; that is, it had a fucked up, ridiculous and sad plot with circumstances so far-fetched that it could never actually happen in real life, but you can't tear yourself away from it because you're just dying to know how this train wreck ends.
Prior to the con, Ericson was somewhat worried about sharing a hotel room with Tom Farrel. Knowing that the con would keep us out of the room most of the time, this didn't really bother me at all, but I was very concerned about sharing a bathroom with Farrel. Wang thought we were both being ridiculous and unfair to Farrel. Lo and behold, Saturday night, Farrel takes a massive crap and ends up clogging and overflowing the toilet bowel, its ghastly contests spewing forth onto the floor. Suffice it to say, Wang came over to our side after this incident.
A lot of other stuff happened but I can't think of it right now, but I'd really like to end on a note that isn't crap... oh. While doing security duty Friday night and sporting a Saturday Night Fever-esque look (I might have a picture, but I'll look for it later), I personally developed a fanclub of three girls who would predict my route and move into position to greet me. It was nice, sort of, but, unfortunately, they were all fourteen. Ewww.
That was probably an even worse note to end on but, eh, so it goes.