StellarCon 32/Deep South Con 46

Year by year, I have been going to StellarCon for one reason or another. Before 2001, I went because the Guild went and had a good time. I gamed and went to the occasional panel. I wasn’t married and had less to be responsible for. Then I started working the con, and in that time I got married. My excuse to go was to work gaming, which I had fun doing. That ended in 2006 when I finally passed gaming over to Corey, who is handling it well. 2007, I was fan guest of honor, which was kind of cool. This year, I was going to help ConCarolinas to bid for Deep South Con.

This year, StellarCon was about two things for me – Stargate and ConCarolinas. I was slated to cover the SG-SOCOM and the ConCarolinas table, and planned to run a party for the Deep South Con bid.

Well, StellarCon was successful for us and I had a reasonably good time. My weekend was split between promoting CC and promoting SG SOCOM. I think I did a little more CC promotion however.

FRIDAY: We parked the car in front of the hotel in the unloading loop and unpacked our car, made sure the tables were good (and thanks to Randall and Carol, they were great) and went to my first panel that I was to moderate. It was the SG panel and we had a great time. Filled the full hour with good SG discussion. I was pretty amazed how many people were… out of touch. I guess they use these cons to stay in touch, instead of the internet and whats in front of their face. Or maybe I simply have too much time on my hands.

By the time I got out of that, it was 10 PM. I walked around to see what else was going on while my wife put the kids to bed and by 11:30 I was in bed. By the way, this hotel now has Sleep Number beds…. they are FREAKIN’ AWESOME!

SATURDAY: I woke early to get to my Stargate SG-1 game which did not make. I was somewhat disappointed in that because I wanted to get in a play test before GenCon. So I covered the CC and SG-SOCOM until 5 PM, taking a short break for lunch in the con suite. It was after lunch that I got word that I had TOTALLY forgotten something – I never went back the night before and park my car!! It had sat out there all night and was ABOUT to be towed. Luckily, I moved my car and nothing bad happened, but I did feel kind of stupid.

The rest of the day was spent promoting and chatting with folks. I never really got to game, or enjoy any of the con. Just covered the tables and went into the dealers room once or twice. I did show up to catch the costume contest winners which were not all that impressive and then the Rebel, Pheonix and Rubble Award.

Kelly Lockhart won the Rebel Award, deservedly. John Ringo broke down for his presentation of the Pheonix Award to Jim Baen. The con chair of Outside Con (last year’s DSC) won the Rubble Award for “trying to drown the SFC committee” because of the terrential downpour that hit their con.

After dinner, I pretty much shut down the tables, and went upstairs to prep for the party. The party started at 10 PM and had between 10 and 25 people at any given time. Good food and drink (alcoholic and non) were had by all. Davey Beauchamp was our best friend because he talked us up all night. The Taste of the Carolinas was a big hit but I think I drank more than any one person. I met the guy behind ZombieCon and his friend, an actress of which I can not remember her name. Carol brought some very cool ConCarolinas labelled wines, which was a cool touch. I think people walked away happy and impressed with ConCarolinas.

SUNDAY: As for the Deep South con Bid meeting, we went, we saw and we kicked butt. They were a good group of people, and we were well received. I think I sold the whole deal when I said I wanted to dedicate the bid to Irv Koch, Brian Burley and d g k goldberg. It was kind of heart warming to see so many fans warmly accept us with that dedication.

Steph was suffering from some kind of food poisoning by Sunday, so she could not make the meeting or the vote and was simply ready to go when all that business was done. We left about 2 pm.

With the DSC thing out of the way , I am having a hard time figuring out some reason to go back again. I am not sure I am going back to StellarCon, unless it is simply to promote ConCarolinas again. We’ll have to see. Maybe for a day and a night to promote CC. It is not that StellarCon is doing a bad job or something, although it does have a different feel to it. In the past, I felt like the passion was out of the con. Now, I simply feel like maybe I have outgrown it… ot just gotten too old for it. I dunno. Or maybe I will start going to some of these other TN cons I keep hearing about. Who knows.

Thanks to my wonderful wife for taking care of our children so I could do the con, but I think that I part of the reason I did not enjoy it that much this time. She was upstairs with the kids and I was more or less alone downstairs watching tables and doing pretty much nothing else. Maybe if we can get the in-laws to take care of the kids one weekend, we can have more fun.