Year one of dragon*con: toss your toothbrush, toothpaste, and a spare pair of underwear into your backpack, while keeping your camera in your hand. Six days later, acknowledge the clothes that you're wearing are disgusting, and cannot be saved. Burn them. Vow to do better next year.
]]>Year one of dragon*con: toss your toothbrush, toothpaste, and a spare pair of underwear into your backpack, while keeping your camera in your hand. Six days later, acknowledge the clothes that you're wearing are disgusting, and cannot be saved. Burn them. Vow to do better next year.
Year two: one suitcase. More spare underwear. Steal your spouse's toothpaste after forgetting your own. Make valiant attempts to get two uses out of each set of clothing. Six days later, vow to boil your clothes upon returning home; they're disgusting, but not too disgusting to salvage.Year three: stare at the one pair of jeans and the two pair of shorts you own. Realize that you just can't do this again. Make promises to self to purchase wicked-cool skirts or two more pair of shorts in order to cut down the Funk Factor™ at this year's con. Realize that this may be difficult, since, for the first time, you will be a freewheeler.
free·wheel·er (n.) a tech staff member who has tallied how much time he/she spent in a hotel room during last year's dragon*con, and come to the annoying realization that $300 is too much to spend for so little time actually spent in the room, leading to a decision to stash his/her suitcase(s) in the downstairs equipment room and sleep wherever the sleeping bag falls.
Last year's Forgetting Of The Toothpaste was quite annoying. Spouse and I have noticeably different opinions on what makes a palatable toothpaste, and when I, Amy-the-Minty, managed to forget my tube at home, I got to experience the joy of using a non-preferred taste of toothpaste for six days.
Therefore, I present Packlist 0.1beta. You know your packlist is large when it contains sections. The world should fear.
If I'm going to attend one of the raves this year, I should have some glowsticks or some little lasers to play with. That's assuming I have time to attend a rave, like the DJ, and don't find the crowd scary. On second thought, perhaps I should just invest the money in a spare memory card and monopod for the camera. Yeah, that's starting to sound pretty good...
I think I'm going to need a second bag this year.
]]>Current music: all kinds of various Tragically Hip.
I think the real rule for photographers is to never stick out. At dragon*con, being normal makes you stick out. Since I want to borrow Brian's camera to snap photos of the costumed attendees, I really need to avoid sticking out too much.Being the gawky non-geek-with-a-camera, no matter what my badge says about being a staff member, is not the way to get permission to take photographs of people at dragon*con.
So what the heck do I do to avoid standing out at dragon*con?
My list is pretty short. Most of it includes the rasta hat. The plan involves…braids. Four, actually. Two fat pigtail braids, one falling over each shoulder, will encompass most of the hairstyle. To go with it, I'll probably take two small hanks of hair from the center of my forehead and make a small braid going down each side. (Once you straighten out the curl, my hair is close to two feet long now. It's quite interesting to see.) Since I can hide the barrettes under the hat, I can hide the fact that my tech-staff-blue locks are actually clipped into my hair.
That should do it. The rest of my dress shall be my usual ordinary dress: single-color shirts, jeans or shorts. For the jeans I'll have two options—my standard sneakers (good for days when I have to do a lot of standing still) and my combat boots (good for when I fear I'm going to get the size 6 feet smashed by heavy equipment or clumsy humans).
It's hard not to envy the people who are coming to dragon*con in full regalia. Last year's memories of the enormous swordfight in the lobby between the Klingons and the Jedi are some of my favorites of the convention. The fact remains that a) I'm there to work, and b) I'm just not the dressing-up kind of domesticat.
I'll braid the hair up a bit differently than usual, but other than that, I'll be the same old domesticat I always am. I'll just be sure to get pictures of the really inventively (un-)dressed attendees to make up for it.
For now, duty calls…
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