Potlatch 20: the hotel liaison

[calimac]

The metaphorical weather in the position of hotel liaison is completely different from that for the ordinary attendee of the convention. If I'm doing my job well, none of the rain that falls on me will be perceived by you. As I saw it, it came out like this:

Friday: Blustery, with frequent squalls. I arrived on site at noon, as planned, expecting to hang around to be called on as needed. Instead of sitting relaxed in the lobby getting Earth Abides re-read again, I spent most of my time until about 7 pm being called on for one urgent set-up matter or another.

I had tried, as much as possible, to check up on and confirm all the facts and arrangements and logistics for the convention, and this saved us a lot of trouble. On the other hand, things we did not and could not have known about suddenly rose up and had to be handled. And sure enough, the one small item that I was conscious of not having confirmed (because I was sure the matter had been covered by others, and because for me to do so would have required confirming two other things first) bit us hard in a tender spot, and incurred an extra set-up charge for us. My fault, I kept saying, because this time it was.

k6rfm and lin_mcallister running the con suite wanted to go out for lunch at 1, but were stuck because they didn't know when the hotel would be delivering the furniture and recycle bins we'd asked for. I said I'd baby-sit the room for them: I'd had an early lunch before I arrived, and this was why: so that I could cover for others without having to worry about my own food. (And in the process, I did manage to find out when the stuff was expected.) In fact, I did not have a single meal out with anybody else for the whole con. I was expecting that: I had to eat on the fly in the odd corners of time, and programming breaks were often the busiest hours. During a panel, nothing else was going on, and it was easier to run out.

Saturday: Calmer with patches of sun. This was the only full day of the convention. Setup was finished, teardown had not begun, there was less I needed to do. I actually got to two and a half program items, which is good because I was on one of them (the only time I turned my cell phone off for the whole con), and I got to visit the bake sale too. I'd contributed to that, having baked the previous day and brought in when I popped home that morning to feed the cats: brownies without nuts but with chocolate chips. I thought of labeling them ambisexual brownies, but I wasn't sure how many people would get the joke. They proved popular, particularly with young Alice.

Sunday: Overcast and gloomy in the morning, clearing by afternoon. I'll just let the "overcast and gloomy" metaphor stand for itself, because everything worked out OK in the end, but it's hazardous to discover that what you'd been assured was so by person A turns out not to be the case, and there are times when I could wish I were more crafty and less empathetic. After we'd gotten the bill, and I'd actually taken it home to review and itemize it on an Excel spreadsheet (a laptop computer? not me), it was something of a relief to sit down in a hidden locale with our treasurer, the hotel's person in charge, and large piles of cash.

The big event on Sunday was the Potlatch 20 Birthday Party. This was held exactly as we'd planned, with the two big sheet cakes we brought in from the Prolific Oven bakery ("we" in this case being marykaykare and magscanner) served in the programming room by the cheerful hotel banquet staff, and everyone had a good time, eating the delicious cakes and drinking coffee, sitting around and chatting. But we didn't get there without a two-day major detour the size of Aragorn falling off the cliff in Peter Jackson's The Two Towers, which ten minutes before the event suddenly vanished into thin fricking air. If you want to know more about that, you'll have to buy me a drink, which is what I felt like having throughout most of this. Phew.

The attendees were happy, I think the hotel is happy, and even I may be happy. But. Not to do this again for at least another two years, that is the law.

Comments

[magscanner.livejournal.com]

As far as I could tell during the con, hotel and convention sailed off happily together in a pea-green boat and spoke only in soft whispers of love. Of course, I have not discussed this with vgqn, and other insights are possible.

My only hiccup was that in scheduling cake pickup I forgot to schedule a lunch break for the staff, namely me. I hope Mary Kay found some; I constructed a delicious and nutritious lunch from pieces found in the consuite fridge after a desperate plea to the running staff.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Do you remember your exclamation of dismay when I told you the hotel was planning on carting the cakes down to their kitchen to cut them? And then how that didn't actually happen? That was the giant detour that vanished away.