Last night was a comedy of errors. 

I had really wanted to go to the badge party for Gaylaxicon because I had made a whole bunch of stickers for program participants to have their schedules on the back of their badges. I figured that since I made them, I could help put them on. But, I could not figure out what the plan was supposed to be. The information I got was "we will me back at Don's place after the hotel walk-through, oh, and here's a link to the concom Zoom meeting at 6 pm." Upon reading this, my brain went through these steps. Imagine this as one of those decision trees.

Okay, they aren't likely to have the Zoom meeting at the hotel, will they?  (Yes/No. I choose the No path). So then, probably the plan is to have the people meet in-person that can and Zoom in the rest.  (Yes/No. I choose the Yes path) So best guess is that the tour will be done by 6 pm and so meeting everyone at Don's house will work out.

I still dont' know the right answer to some of these questions, but at some point I definitely went down the wrong tree, as it were.

Because I showed up at Don's at 6 pm and found no one there.  Hopping on to Discord showed that Andrew didn't know where to meet people at the hotel and so then it dawned on me that, oh, okay, maybe the tour is at 6 pm despite the fact that's when the Zoom meeting is?  But, since Andrew was also confused, I decided to download Zoom onto my phone so that I could jump on to the meeting at 6 pm. That seemed like a smart bet since the Zoom meeting was DEFINITELY scheduled for 6 pm.  Only, when I finally got online, I discovered only two other people there, neither of them were Don and neither of them knew anything about where people were supposed to be or even WHEN we were supposed to be there. 

Then, I thought, I'm being dumb. I'll just text Don directly. He confirmed that the tour was happening at six. Now, here's where I could have solved this by driving to the hotel and trying to meet everyone there. Instead, I thought, "Well, by the time I get there, the tour will be over and they'll be headed back here." So, I let Don know that I was going to hangout at a Starbucks and, if he could be so kind, I'd wait for a text on when to come over. 

Then the true comedy hit.

Randomly and quite suddenly, my phone decided it didn't want to accept any data, including messages. 

At least I managed to hear from tallgeese  who noted that I could come hang out at his place until the text came through. At this point, since I got his message, I was unaware that my phone had decided to temporarily bork itself. So we hung out and chatted about life, the universe, and everything. That was quite lovely. I finally got to meet his two dogs in person, having seen them a bunch on Zoom during our Star Trek: Adventures games. No text came, however. I was, for reasons known only to my phone, able to go to Discord and noticed that someone was franically posting on all channels that "the Zoom meeting has started!" so, I hung out a tiny bit longer, and made my way back to Don's... only to still find no one at home. So, who knows where they were Zooming from? 

At this point, I gave up.

I left the badge stickers underneath a FedEx package outside Don's door. Then, I left him a message on Discord explaining what I'd done, and headed home. It was 8 pm by the time I got home. 

What a night!

I am only a little concerned that the stickers are going to remain AWOL. But, worst case scenario (and one I am planning on) I will bring a second set to the convention early and stick them on badges myself. 

In other news, there are a couple of previous items I wanted to update you all on. Remember how I speculated that people might be filming the exhibits at the National Africian-American History & Cultural Museum (Smithsonian) in order to preserve them? Well, my friend John spotted this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/citizen-historians-document-smithsonian-exhibits-under-white-house-scrutiny  It turns out, I was right! 

Likewise, remember when I was talking about how stressful it was to leave a voice mail "tip" for The Racket? Well, they ran a story about us, which I found out about thanks to magenta : https://racketmn.com/gaylaxicon-wits-returns-oktoberfests-this-weeks-best-events  !!!!  They got some of the information wrong? Dungeons, Dragons & Drinks isn't running our D&D one-shots (though they will be one of our community tablers), Tower Games is doing our games. But, hey, The Racket listed us as one of this week's best events, so I'LL TAKE IT. I have zero idea if this will actually result in people signing up, but, you know, I feel like I gave this whole publicity thing a real try and 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' 

I honestly kind of enjoyed the stress of the voice mail? I've been thinking about offering my services to other geek venues. (Personally, I think they should hire me to be their geek on the street!)  THIS would be a fun job for me. Instead, today I applied to work as an impound lot customer service attendant. Fun times. 

Today, too, at 2 pm, I'm going to be getting a call about volunteering to be a hospice worker. I will have to be honest that I'm currently looking for work and so might not be able to be as available as I normally would be. And, I know they're going to ask me why I want to do this work, and I don't have a very good answer for them. No one really likes the job of sitting with people at a time like that, but (and this is the part I have to work out how to articulate) the world is spiralling into chaos thanks to the current presidental administration and I don't know what I can DO to stop it. However, one thing I can do is sit with someone, talk about the weather, hold a hand, read a book, or otherwise offer comfort. Fascism wants us to devalue certain lives and this is one way for me to say NO.

Can I say that in an interview? I don't know, but it's the truth.