A girl goes West, part the first

I've finally gone through the pics and uploaded them, so now I'm sorting through my notes and blogging the San Fran trip.

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The Backstory:
There's this thing Kit and I (and a bunch of other people) do every year called Otherworld. I've blogged about it before, but just to refresh, it's the most fun I have every year and I absolutely adore everyone involved with it (and you should do it, too -- go ahead, click on the link and watch the video. I'll wait.). Every year there is also a formal ball called Fortunetide, which is usually a fundraiser with a silent auction up in the Boston area, but which this year was held sans auction in San Francisco. It worked out that I was able to attend all by myself -- Kit stayed home with the kids (dude, do I have the best husband or what?).

The Flight:
Virgin America ROCKS. The seats are comfy, there's more leg room than usual, you can see where you are in the flight by using the seat display, the attendants are young and hip and seem to be in a good mood. If you want food or drink, you order it from the interactive display at your seat and someone brings it to you. Even the preflight "here's what to do if we crash" cartoon they show has a bit of a sense of humor. The only drawback is that they only fly out of JFK, but since I was taking AirTrain I figured no big deal. Yeah, uh, AirTrain itself is lovely, but actually getting there was a tremendous PITA. The "A" train at 4pm on a weekday is freaking packed. Blerg. But the flight was pretty much worth it.

The Arrival:
I got in Thursday night around 10:30pm, and Mike S. picked me up at the airport. We were going to swing by the hotel and say "hi" to everyone, but when we got to the car there was a message from Tom that everyone had pretty much gone to bed, so we just headed on over to Mike's. We stayed up talking for a long while - -I don't get to see these folks nearly often enough, and the California contingent even less often. So I finally let him go to bed around 1:30 or 2am, which is about 4:30 or 5am NJ time. This meant that I had past the point at which I could hope to get any real sleep (I have some insomnia issues), but I went to bed and tried anyhow. I dozed a bit, but by 6:45, I was wide awake again. So I amused myself by watching the Bourne movies and a couple of episodes of Twin Peaks on my PSP and knitting while I waited for Mike to be ready to head out.

Friday:
Hung out with Mike all morning, then we went to pick up his tux and it turned out we were right across the street from the Winchester Mansion, which is one of the few things I'd seen when I was in San Jose years and years ago. We didn't go in this time. Also, there was Peet's, which I love. We got to the hotel around 2pm (gotta love Amex points, which paid for the room), and ran into Justin and Eli in the lobby. Got checked in (despite the autoterminal breaking when Mike tried to use it to check in and the computer not having my correct information available), then Mike and I headed out to grab a bite since we hadn't eaten all day. Got back to the hotel, did a little pre-party happy hour with Mike, Justin, and Eli, then went back to the room and got pretty.

The Ball:
Was just wonderful. I didn't get to hang out with everybody I wanted to, but that's always the way it is. There are just too many awesome people and not enough time to spend with anyone. The kids were adorable and well behaved, and so were the parents. Here are some pictures:







Notes on pictures:

• Look! I got a picture of Kristi not talking! (Not to imply that she's always talking, just that usually the pictures are of her talking. The implication is that I have bad timing. I swear.)


• I have no idea why Chris has a napkin on his head. I'm sure it was funny at the time.


• Michelle made that face deliberately or I wouldn't have posted it.


• Sorry about the ones that are weirdly grey -- those are the ones that were taken while the lights were dimmed and you couldn't see anyone until I lightened them. I may take another pass at them and see if I can get some saturation back in them.

There are more here.

Fun/ny things that happened:

• Justin confused Patrick Swayze (in Dirty Dancing) with Kevin Costner and/or Bob Sagget. He also didn't know who John Hughes is. Dude, you're not that young.


• Esther bit me, in a nice way.


• I was double fisting giant Rum Runners, but only because it took like 20 minutes for the bartender to get to me when I was ordering the first one.


• Girls just wanted to have fun...and we did.


• We had several false starts on "Sweet Caroline" -- the music would swell, we'd get all excited...and then we'd realize Chris R. was missing. I think this happened at least 3 times, if not more. We did finally get to sing it, and it was (of course) awesomely fun.


• There was a song by They Might Be Giants about a birdhouse in your soul. Everyone in the room knew every word of the song. I had never heard it before in my life. I understood how Justin felt about the whole John Hughes thing.

The After Party:
A bunch of us went and hung out in the hot tub (thanks for the suit loan, Kristi!) and then that closed down at midnight, and we tried to obtain more drinks. Apparently all of the bars close down at midnight, too. Hotel bar FAIL (and also, no minibar...WTF?). So Justin, Eli, and I went back to my suite and hung out on the couch and tried to find something on TV (another fail) and Justin ended up hanging out until like 4am. We had to be in the lobby at 8:30 to get to Alcatraz the next morning (this is the one thing I was never able to do on previous trips to SF, so I really wanted to go), so he cruised back to his room and I crashed, after making sure my alarm was set for 7:30 (30 minutes to wake up, 30 minutes to shower and dress and pack).

Saturday Morning:
And then I was awake again at 6:45am. Huh? Got up, set up the coffee machine, plugged in the coffee machine, turned the coffee machine on, showered, blow dried, went to get cup of coffee...and found that in the 30-45 minutes I'd been away, the coffee maker had produced just over a cup of very light brown water. That's when I wrote the last bit of the previous blog. Packed, finished dressing, went downstairs for free breakfast (hopefully including coffee), was just about to sit down with my tray when I ran into Kristi, who told me transport to Alcatraz was leaving in @5 minutes. Crap. Coffee too hot to run with, grabbed juice and bagel, ate in the elevator, grabbed bags and made it back down to the lobby in time to grab a ride with Scaz, but not time to get a cup of coffee. Total hours sleep since Thursday AM: Four and a half. Total cups of coffee for the day: Zero. Not boding well.

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Okay, this got crazy long, so I'm going to split this into two posts and save all the fun Saturday stuff for Thursday, because that will be long, too (and never fear, I did get coffee. And a corn dog!).

posted by Laura Y. @ 9:55 AM