Part V of an n part series. See here, here, here, and here for others.
Lots of stuff, I’m telling you TONS of stuff, goes on at Dragon*Con. You can party almost 24 hours a day on the planned activities alone! If you happen to be bringing friends (or meet new ones) you can fill that bit of time between 6:00 AM and 10:00 AM with anything your heart desires. We danced ’til 3:30 on Saturday night, and I gamed until the same time on Sunday, after which I went down to the concerts! (Friday I collapsed early, but I needed to rest up for the remainder of the Con)
Saturday night we saw the Crüxshadows, an energetic goth/darkwave band that we like. I, personally, don’t find them to be that inspiring from a musical perspective, but their shows are great, and if they ever get a U.S. tour date around here, we’ll go. So far I’ve only seen them at Dragon*Con. Jenn is psyched because she hugged Rogue, the lead singer, a man with wayyy too much energy on stage. I don’t have to guess how he stays so thin.
Other things I did this weekend: I went to a session with John Ringo, Sci-fi Military author extraordinaire. He was a very engaging person to listen to for an hour. He was wearing a kilt, along with half of the rest of the guys at the convention.
One drawback of going to listen to authors is I always want to run out and buy their whole published works. John was no exception.
In the exhibit hall, one of the groups that showed up was the company Chessex, who sells dice, amongst other things. I should have taken a picture of their dice table, it was freaking huge! A friend bought a dIV, which if you understand dice lingo (6 sided die = d6, 8 sided die = d8) means the die has a I, II, III, and IV on it. They were also selling a d5 which had five non-equal sides (typically, you’d roll a d10 and divide by 2 to get a d5) and they swore it was accurate due to the way the corners were mitered. I’ll stick with my d10’s.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster was spotted at Dragon*Con this year! I was touched by her noodly appendage.
Hotel elevators are evil creations of a sadistic being. During the con, elevators were generally hard to come by, and if you tried to get up or down during the periods between sessions, good luck. All this pales compared to trying to check out of the Hilton on Monday with six people’s bags, from the 18th floor. It was so bad that people I was on the elevator with had gotten on going up at the 8th floor, traveled all the way to the top, and were on their way back down. 
We made two trips down the stairs before I decided this was useless and went looking for the service elevators. Next year, it’s service elevators all the way, baby!
I did not understand the people who resided on floors 5 and below who would use the elevators. Just couldn’t be worth their time.
Lastly for this post, Dragon*Con TV! The programming and “commercials” and bumpers alone are worth the cost of entry to the Con. My personal favorite is the spoof, “The Simple Life: Ensigns” set on the Starship Enterprise. “I hope they teach me how to use the Force.” Hee hee.
Jim Butcher is the author of the 
and its following books are excellently sarcastic in tone and wit. They are also well-envisioned with numerous dynamic characters. I enjoyed them all.