Karval Kon 29

[mishalak]

My day started off with last minute packing. I did manage to limit myself to just a few outfits rather than over packing more outfits than any person could possibly wear in just 42 hours. So one suitcase and my big ol' manpurse laptop bag were enough. I arrived at Rose's on time (go me!) and helped pack up her car. We were picking up Robbin because her car was acting up and she didn't want to risk driving it to Limon. Unfortunately she was originally going to pick up Laura, a really cool illustrator, who had decided with that and a few other things that she just wasn't going to attend. Sadness. But still, Robbin! And at her house she gave me back my German corkscrew, glee!

Nice drive out to Limon with the both of them. Everything went well with checking into the Davey Crockett Motor Court Midwest Country Inn. The place is in need of repairs, but they have a friendly handyman/desk clerk so it is likely to be open next year for Karval Kon. After getting an Arby's sandwich for dinner I did some art, working on a somewhat accurate representation of a black hole's accretion disk. I did another piece that night, but nothing I was terribly impressed with. One the bad side was that I discovered a seam already giving way on my new Levi 501s, I swear their quality has slipped. All ten of us were on the tired side so we didn't end up staying up late or playing "The World's Greatest Party Game". I clonked out at about thirty minutes past midnight.

It was occasionally rainy the next day as we trekked about looking at the vast shopping opportunities in Limon. Breakfast at Denny's was, well breakfast at Denny's, but the conversations were a cut above average. I got tea at the Super Foods (forgetting I didn't have anything to boil water with, silly me, next year I'm considering bringing a electric kettle for myself and Robbin), but didn't find heavy-duty thread at the Ben Franklin.

Rose's hunny, Dave, got the nod as the fan guest of honor since he was not there and the guests of honor cannot attend. Alan Tudyk, who played Walsh on Firefly, got the nod as pro guest of honor, I tend to be more reluctant about actors because if in some theoretical way the person did show up, that's the point of the guest of honor who isn't there someone we think would be really fun to attend Karval Kon, I don't know that most actors would be able to take it non-seriously enough to get the quirky small town weird fun of the convention. And Gail, who knows nothing of Alan got the black spot to give their guest of honor speeches, of course.

Dinner was at the former Rip Griffen, now the Transit America, truck stop. They have perfectly adequate fish and chips that Arlen and I both chowed down on while nearly everyone else did the buffet. Though they don't have malt vinegar for the fish. Our waitress was enthusiastic about serving us and pretty cool about our silliness, we even invited her to the convention after she got off shift. She didn't come though.

Just as well, I choked when it came time to do the costume contest. I didn't feel enough like Gigolo Joe (from A.I.) and so it just didn't work out. Next year I'm just going to wear the vampire fangs to be a vampire no matter what the theme is, that costume works on me. It was fun wearing my leather pants for the first time in public though. During the movie skit portion of the convention I got to be a combination of Ash from Alien and Dr. Frankenfurter, "Just a sweet transistor from transsexual...."

The team I was on lost twice in World's Greatest Party game, the first time was really close (like by two points or something out of a hundred and something) and the second time we lost by seven because I blew the pantomime of Arthur Dent. For anyone who still doesn't know the World's Greatest Party game involves everyone putting the names of six famous people, real or fictional, into a hat. The first round in thirty seconds you try to get your teammates to name that person using anything but the name of the person as written on the slip. That continues back and forth between the teams until the names are used up and then the person who's up only gets to use two words. Poor Tim said "Walka-Walka" for Fozzie Bear and his team didn't get it and he just stood up there saying it a few times while the time ran out and the team I was on were all cracking up. It took forever for Amanda to get her breath back. The final round is pantomime and the time increases to a whole minute. This is when having names like Elvis in the hat is really good because he has a distinctive move. My shining moment what the pantomime for Joe Namath that I made work. They didn't get that I was throwing a football so I quickly switched to catching one and running, and this was pretty impressive because I didn't even know who Namath was before the convention.

After this we played Werewolf, a game Hilari Bell brought, for five games. Wow. What a fun game. And not just because I was one of the werewolves who got to kill people in four of the five times we played. I even had fun when I was fooled by Rose, my bestest friend and con chair, and killed by her because she was a werewolf and I was just a villager. My proudest moment was when my fellow werewolf, Arlen, got lynched in the first round and I went on to fool everyone until I had killed everyone in the village by lynching or killing in the night. Wooo! In the final game I was the werewolf yet again and I got lynched on general principles and so the villagers finally won.

Just Tim, Rose, and I stayed up to play the in the sack deep questions game. Pretty fun, I think I like Tim better now, I'd only seen him around some at MileHiCon before and I didn't know him very well.

The Sunday art auction worked out great. I actually made enough money to cover breakfast. Woo. Of course I only had iced tea and tomato juice for breakfast and some extra pancakes that no one else wanted. Later on today I'll have to post some pictures, but I don't want to delay this conreport any longer.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Werewolf is fun. Also gives you a bizzare view of how people make decisions. One favorite moment was mid game (down from 25 to 10 or so) when I accused this one quiet guy of being a werewolf. No reason I could verbalize, just had a hunch. When the arguments were settled I got lynched. When I got to the dead people one of the best players grabbed me and asked "How did you know?" because yep, the guy I accused had been a werewolf. Damned if I can figure out how I knew though.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

We only had nine people to start with including the game master, so there were two werewolves, one night owl, one seer, and four villagers. We were pretty good at either getting the night owl or the seer the first two rounds and after that it was mostly mopping up and moving blame to innocent people. The werewolves have an advantage in that because they have natural allies. One more villager might have helped them out a bit. Next time I'm wearing full wrap around sunglasses for when I go to sleep just in case I'm the night owl.

Lifting query

[friendly-drelb.livejournal.com]

Hi there! Glad you enjoyed the kon ... 'twas much fun having you there. Heck, you were a better Gigolo Joe than I was Beta Paige. Can I crib your post for the regress report, which I swear I'm going to do in the next couple of months? - Rose

Re: Lifting query

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Sure thing! By the way did you like the Bad Blood reference in my reporty type thing?

[julesjones]

Sounds like you had fun. Good. :-)

Do we get photo of leather trousers? (I suspect that you did indeed mean trousers and not what *I* would understand by "leather pants", but by all means post those sort of photos as well.)

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Two nations seperated by a common language. I don't think anyone took pictures of me in the outfit, though I could recreate it here at home.