bovil and I made the long drive down last night, leaving San Jose about 8.

On the advice of lisa_marli, we finally tried the 25-156-152 route to Pacheco Pass, so as to avoid the idiots-stop at the 152-156 junction (where, as it turns out, CHP had someone directing traffic). It's definitely a better route in general, and we got to Casa de Fruta for dinner before 9.

I drove us as far as the second rest stop on I-5, and Andy took over and drove the rest of the way. We got here about 3:30am and slept in this morning. Lunch in the cafe, and then we helped hang some art show panels and provided a touch of Evil Genius mood lighting (from our decorating supplies ) for the consuite, since the room had the candelabra sconces on the wall and we had 3 full strings of candle flicker bulbs in our kit.

I'm about to go get in a workout, bovil is hanging out making himself useful, and plans for this evening include building the CC26 fashion show reservation tables, sending out a couple of CC26 broadcast notices and fashion show announcements, and then the big orphan's Thanksgiving dinner here for the early arrivals at the hotel.

Evil Genius Hall of Fame party Saturday night!

bovil and I will be going to the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association - Bay Area Chapter "Best Buck in the Bay" Gay Rodeo and Festival (how's *that* for a mouthful? this weekend.

We'll be checking into the Jack Tar Cathedral Hill Hotel on Friday in time to attend the Sponsor's reception (we sponsor the prize buckles for Goat Dressing )

Anybody out there going, too?

(And yes, I will be packing the infamous Half-Naked Cowboy Hawaiian Shirt)

As in a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium...

I had coupons good for 5 bucks off a second ticket, which would have come to $37 for the two of us...

So I splurged the $100 on a membership, which will give us free admission for a year. If we go twice more, it's paid for itself, and if not, I don't mind contributing to the aquarium.

We now have our room reservations for Anime Los Angeles

and for Costume College at the "lovely" Airtel Plaza in Van Nuys.

I was able to reserve our favorite suite at the Airtel for both weekends (it overlooks the main pool and hot tub, and is fairly close to the main loby if you are willing to cross the patio). Yay!

Unfortunately, neither conference has a suite rate. Boo! :-(

Well, it took the intervention of a *very* cooperative American Airlines Aadvantage agent, but Andy and I have our tickets for Toronto in June.

It required agent intervention because the system won't show you how many award seats are available on a particular flight, and we each had to use our own mileage accounts. So we worked in parallel, and you guessed it -- only one ticket went through.

The agent tried 3 different iterations, and I'm not sure how he did it, but he got us onto the same flights both ways.

(We're cashing in the miles we earned when we paid for first-class tix to Glasgow last year, so we had enough for first-class award tickets to Toronto!)

For all the horrible things you hear about airline award programs, I have to say this was a very good bit of customer service.

Edited 16:12: Jetblue is now showing that my flight is delayed 90 minutes, but they still want us to check in at the normal time. argh

bovil and I just got back from Reno. I've got a couple hours, and then I'm back to the airport for the 8:15 JetBlue red-eye to Boston's Logan International Airport and then a cab to Tewksbury, where I'm staying at the Holiday Inn.

My vendor meeting is at 9am on Monday.

moonpuppy61, if you want to reach me you can drop an
email page to my cell at pagekevin at twistedimage.com.

Current Temperature at Logan: 16°

My big fabulous fake fur coat is definitely coming along.