I am returned! This weekend I’m tentatively planning to throw up a few thoughts about Con Networking for Introverts, but for now, pictures below the cut!
So those who have been around for my con picture round-ups before will notice that I tend to stalk random interesting things around the hotel and environs. I started this trend when I saw a panel picture online that was taken half the country away from my local con, and yet I knew the texture on the folding wall, the color of the table skirt, and the interlocking pieces of the platform they sat on intimately. So I figured with all the people I saw taking dim pictures of the speakers, I was safe to cover other aspects.
It was a slightly odd hotel. More of a compound, with multiple towers for rooms, and also little apartment-like single-story buildings amongst a rose garden. The last picture there is taken from our balcony. The first two are illustrating that in fact I was in SoCal. I’m from the Pacific Northwest, give me a break. SO MUCH SUN ISN’T NATURAL.
There were a lot of palm trees. I don’t trust palm trees. They’re either lurking, scruffy and disreputable, being gangsta trees, or…
They’re way up there, whispering to each other. What are they saying? What are they planning? Oh, we’re sorry we dropped that on you. We didn’t see you down there. We’re up here, thinking high thoughts. You wouldn’t understand, the air’s too thin.
(On discussing palms, my editor also added that rats live in them. So it’s not just me, folks!)
Programming was held in the Conven Center.
Birdie feets! (I told you, I’m an idiosyncratic photographer) These were just from garden variety crows, but over at the “San Diego River”, I actually got to see some cool different kinds of ducks (along with the usual mallards).
On the hotel map, this was very seriously called the San Diego River. It also had a very official sign next to a shack that said it was a USFS stream flow monitoring station. I think the only flow I saw was behind the duckie feets. They seemed quite happy with the scum, though, as they were nomming their way through it enthusiastically.
On the maps, this was the lion fountain. It it a fountain, I suppose. And those are lions. I was rather imagining something more impressive in conjunction, however.
One of the most incongruous outdoor decorative elements. Popcorn. It wasn’t empty, either, though the contents looked like a coffee machine. The idea of buying coffee from a popcorn cart breaks my brain a little.
There were any number of gazebos scattered about. Watch out! They attack without warning.
It’s the zip tie that makes this for me. “Come on, baby, don’t you want to show me a little ankle, maybe we could have some fun–*choke, hack*.” “Not now, I’m picking flowers. Stop pulling on your collar! You know better! Daddy warned you about that.”
This was in our room. I include it to show that the decor was perfectly unobjectionable. There were rumors about other rooms though. Rumors about a creepy girl that was in paintings across the hotel, staring out at people at night, until they had to cover her or move to the bed where she couldn’t see them. I knew about this girl because I read online reviews idly when Google mapping the hotel before arrival, and I couldn’t believe that she was so widespread, yet I hadn’t been able to see her myself. Fortunately, my friend Andrea came to my rescue:
I think she looks rather sad, myself. Why? her eyes ask. Why am I painted so strangely, and then copied over and over and over so the strangeness only increases? I am but a child, I could have done nothing to deserve this.
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