I neglected to ask for today off until so late that I would have been embarrassed to do so, so while James, who did ask for the time, traveled about buying new boots, visiting the hobby shop, and doing other errands, I was finishing off two more purchase orders, doing yet another payment authorization, answering e-mails, and otherwise busying myself with work until the time came to cut loose. We were heading across town to Timegate* immediately, since it was already 3:30 p.m. and we didn't want to get stuck in the worst part of rush hour.

Too late. The sky was dark and heavy when we left the house and it was pouring by the time we got on the freeway. Traffic westbound on the top end of I-285 was backed up for at least six miles, from I-75 past Roswell Road, and eastbound was backed up about the same distance. We tried to get around the last bit of the jam, but only cost ourselves more time. Still, we got to the hotel in time to have to wait around for the restaurant to open.

We eventually ate, but it took a while. There was only one waitress and the poor girl was running around like crazy, even though there were not all that many diners. The kitchen was very slow; we waited about 40 minutes for our food and some friends of ours who came in later waited even longer. I had an Asian salad for supper, pretty much a duplicate of the salad that we used to have at Rockford's when we used to play trivia there, except this had cucumber in it and there were a lot fewer mandarin oranges and they left out the chow mein noodles. (They also had the same salad dressing that Rockford's used to have, which we can't find in the stores, dammit!) This had about four ounces of grilled chicken breast in it and I cannot for the life of me figure out how people live on these salads. We finished eating about 5:15 and about 8:30 I was so hungry and lightheaded we had to run up to the con suite between panels, where I grabbed some plain pasta and a juice box.

We went to three panels after supper, which were all fun. The first was supposed to be a visual retrospective about the "good old days" of Doctor Who fandom in Atlanta, with the Terminus TARDIS group and doing fundraising for Georgia Public Television. Unfortunately they never could get the VCR to work, so we ended up just chatting about the good old days of meetings at White Hall at Emory University, the Science Fiction and Mystery Bookstore in Virginia Highlands, and George Wearn and manning the phones at GPTV.

The next panel was run by author Jana Oliver, where we talked about where we would go if time travel existed and who we would like to meet and if we would try to change history. Much discussion about the butterfly effect, killing Hitler and the like.

Finally we went to "Doctor Who 101," what was supposed to be a history of the series for the folks just entering the fandom via Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. It eventually went off on the usual tangents about the books and even into Torchwood—oh, yeah, and some video involving Daleks and porn. [don't ask]

We had brief discussion whether we wanted to stay for the Doctor Who documentary, but I was spoiling for a headache left over from being hungry, so we came home. I had to eat a bowl of oatmeal and two ginger cookies to even keep the headache at bay.

I had better remember my sunglasses tomorrow, too; the lights in the meeting rooms are wayyyyyyyyyyy too bright. And I thought the ones at work were bad. Yow.

And, in late-breaking news, the laptop is still in Louisville.

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* We've been going to Timegate for a couple of years. Previously it was held in the summer and in the fall, a one-day con held at the Lions' Club near Northlake Mall. The convention got enough "gate" for them to do a weekend affair.

Labels: conventions, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:40:00 PM

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