Minneapolis trip report
Well, I'm back in Seattle. The intelligent thing to do would be to go to sleep now (it's almost 1am here, 3am there), but I think I'd rather get this all out now so it isn't on my mind at work tomorrow.
It's talk like a pirate day today, too, but I will not be indulging my tendency to shift to that dialect, fear not.
Pictures will come later, hopefully tomorrow. Though I didn't actually get any pictures of us Looterati hanging out, sadly.
This is looooooooooong so I'm being nice and LJ-cutting it. It really is quite an adventure, though.
Friday
Left work at 3:30pm or so, bussed to airport. No crazy stalkers this time. Ended up in the new shiny airport plaza area and grabbed food quickly. Not quickly enough, as the plane was calling "last boarding call" for my 5:25 flight... at 5pm. So I rushed on and ended up sitting there for half an hour anyway. There was a very nice couple from the Twin Cities sitting next to me who were somewhat confused by the idea of me going to a wedding at the Metrodome.
Got to Minneapolis at the expected 10:30pm CDT. Confusedly made my way out of the gates and through the airport to the baggage claim area, where Brian (aka Ghoti) was waiting. He had a sign that said "JANTHINA! AHOY!" but somehow I actually figured out who he was without it anyway. So we took the light rail back to his house, and sat up chatting and playing cards for a few hours, which was really pretty fun. Brian has as many fish things at his house as I have duck things at mine, which is somewhat scary, but reassuring.
Saturday
Twins Game / Wedding
I got up super-duper early, at like 7:30am CDT, and got all dressed up for a wedding! ...meaning I put on a Mariners shirt and jeans. Hot damn, it's cool to go to a wedding and not have to wear a dress. Brian gave me a ride to the light rail stop. The light rail is pretty damn cool. There was a couple on the train that looked like they were going to go get married, and as it turns out, they were. Lots of White Sox fans on the rail, surprisingly.
Showed up at the stadium at about 8:50ish, and found![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jbru, who had a baseball ticket for me, and some other friends of Laurel's whose names I have forgotten or never quite caught. Apparently we were actually there BEFORE the stadium opened! So when they did open it finally at 9:10am, we plodded in. I went around for a while taking pictures of the place, since I hadn't been there before. My impression of the Metrodome is that it reminds me of the Tokyo Dome, but smaller. I don't think I'd really like seeing games there on a regular basis, but it was fun to be in a new place for once. Everybody was extremely friendly and nice.
It turns out that they actually discriminate between the two levels of the place, though, and you can't just go to the lower level if you have an upper-level ticket. However, since I was so early, and my ticket did say "Multiple Matrimony" on it since Laurel's parents bought the group tickets for it, I found a very nice stairway guard lady who said she'd just let me go down, but I'd have to talk the ushers down there into letting me go in to take pictures of the ceremony. I went downstairs (and bought a long-sleeve Twins shirt because all their t-shirts were sold out except in M and XXL), and snuck into the lower field section by 115 or so where there were no ushers guarding it. There was no batting practice, but pitchers (read: Francisco Liriano) were out throwing, and some fielding practice was going on, so eventually I got Scott Baker to sign my ticket, and Matt Guerrier and J.C Romero to sign my Twins program. That was pretty cool. They were very sweet about signing stuff; it seems like the players are in general. There was a gaggle of teenage girls who kept shouting out "JOE!!!!!" "JOE, COME OVER HERE!!!!" and Joe Mauer would just look at them and wave and smile like "Oh god, not another bunch."
Eventually, there was a wedding! They led 83 couples onto the field from inside the right field stadium bowels. It was really interesting to see all the different couples. Some were getting married; some were renewing vows. Some were extremely dressed up - there were some traditional huge white wedding dresses, and a few guys in tuxes, but there was also a lot of people in Twins clothes, and what was kind of cool was how each couple was *unique* -- like, there were a few of 'em where the women used Twins homer hankies as veils; some where they weren't dressed in Twins apparel at all; some where just in jerseys and jeans; one or two couples renewing vows where they had a son or daughter with them; some hybrids where the guy was in a Twins jersey and shorts and the girl was wearing a gigantic white dress.
I spottedkaustin and laurel as they came out, despite having never met them before. The power of LJ! Laurel was wearing a red camisole and a white floofy skirt and a Torii Hunter Twins jersey, and she had baseball Keds. Kevin had a black suit on, but with an all-black Twins jersey as his vest. It was very cool. (Later on, they had "Bride" and "Groom" baseball caps, and their parents had "Father of the BRIDE" and such baseball caps.)
The ceremony was about 20 minutes long. They had the processional where everyone came in; then they had this reverend guy speaking for a while, and they had a lady come out and sing "We've Only Just Begun", and then there was more speaking, and some vows, and they put on rings, and kissed, and all that stuff. To be honest, it was a (not unexpectedly) generic wedding service. The funny part was that the Twins were stretching and running out in left field and the White Sox were in right field, while the ceremony was going on. As Laurel commented later, from her position near third base, she could see players signing stuff by the dugout. (Laurel: "Look! Little Nicky Punto is signing stuff!" Kevin: "Dear, we're getting *married* right now!") A few of the players stopped to watch the ceremony, though.
They had one of the couples throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Matthew LeCroy caught it. He was wearing a bowtie. It was PRECIOUS.
I snuck back up to the second level and found my seat. I was sitting in a row with Laurel and Kevin, andkalikanzeros ("Oh! You're the *other* Shawn... I'm friends with McGuire.") and radparker ("You have a Sidekick too!" "Yes, I have a Sidekick 2 too." "Tutu?") and pbmath I think. Some people down our row (Carol?) had a whole bunch of signs since they had held up "CONGRATS LAUREL AND KEVIN!!" during the ceremony. So, anagramming, they figured out that we could also use those letters and spell out "SANTANA!!" since Johan Santana was pitching the game. So we did that a few times. It was funny.
The game itself was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AMAZING. I am totally in awe and fear of El Presidente, Johan Santana. No, really. He was mowing the White Sox down. He had a perfect game until the 5th inning when Aaron Rowand smacked a single into center. And through the course of the first 8 innings, the White Sox only got two hits off Santana, and struck out 13 times. That's THIRTEEN STRIKEOUTS. I joked later that it was a shame he didn't get fourteen -- then you could say it was a 14-K-Rat wedding game! He ran into a little bit of trouble in the 9th, and I'm sad they even put him out there since he was up to 102 pitches. He loaded the bases, and they brought in Joe Nathan, who promptly struck out Everett, Rowand, and Dye, to win and save the game and shutout. It was amazing. I almost think I need to go buy a "Don't blame me, I voted for Santana/Nathan" shirt after that performance. The Twins' offense also didn't totally suck, and Morneau and Cuddyer both hit home runs, to boot.
(As an aside, the Twins have a LOT of really good-looking guys playing for them. Why don't the Mariners? Sigh.)
After the game, I met Laurel's family, which was pretty funny -- "This is Deanna, she flew all the way here from Seattle for my wedding, even though we'd never met before!"
Oh Mall God.
Because people were going to go do other stuff for a bit, I jumped on the light rail and rode out to the Mall of America.
The MoA is, for lack of any other word, overwhelming. I mean, seriously, I think I was there for about three hours and I don't even think I saw more than half of it. It's amazingly large and has an amazing number of shops. I thought King of Prussia was big, and this makes KoP look like a neighborhood shopping center.
Anyway, highlights for me were the Legoland thingy, where I spent a good half hour playing with stuff and deliberating over things to get (with the constraint, of course, being that I only had my backpack to put stuff in). I eventually ended up getting myself a Lego Pirate photo frame, which I'll have to find some appropriately piratey picture for, or just print out a YPP portrait :) I also got a Lego Pirate keychain for Brian, since it was nice of him to let me crash at his place this weekend and all. After the Legos, I wandered around for a while to various stores, all of which were pretty wacky. There were a lot of Minnesota-themed places and even a Wisconsin one which was full of cheese, cheese-looking hats and whatnot, and Green Bay Packers merchandise. There were also several sporting goods stores, none of which had any Twins stuff, although the third one I went to actually had the EXACT SHIRT I WANTED, a Joe Mauer #7 navy Twins t-shirt in my size. I felt a little weird because I had already bought a longsleeve Twins shirt at the stadium, but I mean, this is the shirt I wanted, so I went ahead and got it too. I'm such a dork.
I got a few other assorted things around the mall as well, including some raspberry scented stuff at the Bath and Body Works place, since I felt guilty after I wandered around testing out all of the stuff in there. (I must have come out smelling like a vanilla mango cherry blossom peach tree strawberries and cream brown sugar freesia mix. I'm not sure why I did that, except that I was feeling goofy and I don't think we have that particular store out here.) I got a bag of strawberry-based Jelly Belly jellybeans in a moment of weakness. By weight it was supposed to cost eight dollars or something, but the guy at the candy place said "ah, whatever, just make it $5", which was cool. I got a "Mall of America" rubber duck. There was also a store that had personalized rubber ducks, but of COURSE they didn't have "Deanna" or "Dee" or anything even remotely like my name. Grrrr.
There's an amusement park in the middle of the mall, and a movie theater, and apparently an aquarium in the basement, which I didn't even see. It's just craaaazy.
The wedding "reception"
Eventually I caught a shuttle to the Bloomfield Sheraton, where the wedding party was going on. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to find my way there, but I was. It was cool. It was kind of funny since Laurel introduced EVERYBODY there by their Livejournal names, so if someone actually bothered following up on me and sees this entry, hello there! Please say hi so I know or remember who you are!
Though, the first person she introduced me to was the person who showed up at the same time as me -- that was kind of funny. "Oh, Deanna, this is my friend Pamela, she'spameladean on Livejournal." "Wait, you're THE Pamela Dean?" That was pretty funny. Of course, the guilt here lies in that I know Eli was a huge fan of hers, but I think I only read one book of hers. Heh. Well, anyway, I ended up talking to Pamela and her husband dd_b for a while about cameras, and that was kind of cool. There was another guy with a camera who does Shockwave Radio or something who I talked to about filk. I talked to Peter for a bit as well, since he was dressed up as Arthur Dent with a towel and a bathrobe that said "Host" and was manning the bar. I am not a particularly good person at random chatter with complete strangers, but it mostly worked out. At some points I could just talk about baseball with people, and at some points I could just let people tell me about their Minn-StF club, and then at one point we went out around the pool area with the big letters from the game and spelled out "CONGRATULATIONS LAUREL AND KEVIN" again, which was pretty neat.
(actually, the funny part to me was that after we displayed the signs, we came back, and I had been assigned the "L A" in "congratulations", and I held them backwards like "You can call me Al!" and the person behind me who had "T I" was like "You can call me It!". We paraded around all the rooms in the suite with our letters, and I joked -- "Hey, this is the weirdest conga line ever. Or would it be a 'CONGRA' line?")
One of the wedding cakes had a baseball diamond on it in icing. Nobody seemed to actually want to cut into that part. I suggested that L & K should save the baseball diamond -- much like you normally would save the top layer if you had a multi-tiered cake -- and freeze it and eat it in a year. I also suggested they should go to Twins Spring Training for their honeymoon. Man, Laurel is totally living my dream wedding :)
Anyway, after hanging out a bit longer and all, I ended up getting Peter to give me a ride back to town, which was very nice of him (and thanks again! if you ever see this.)
Catching up with old friends
So,cheerfulchaotic was actually in town, and I hadn't seen him in a really long time, so I met up with him at the Uptown Transit Center, since he apparently lives in Uptown (which is south of Downtown. Don't ask). He also convinced Seth Kingman to come hang out with us, which was pretty damn wacky, since I don't think I'd seen Seth since graduation in 1998. I mean, I must have seen Stevie in the last year, I just don't remember when. The three of us went to some Indian restaurant that I already forget the name of, and we split a couple vegan dishes, and caught up on stuff, most of which meant that I sat there listening to Stevie and Seth's hilarious tales of various people and things and thought, "Damn, I am *so* female and straight." (S&S are distinctly neither female nor straight.)
After dinner we walked over to Stevie's house and hung out for a while, playing a game of San Juan which took like two hours because Seth is a very indecisive boy. It was mostly okay since the point was hanging out. One of Stevie's housemates has bunny rabbits and one of them actually ventured out into the living room, but immediately got frightened off.
Seth won the game by two points over me, and after that I caught a cab back towards where Brian lives, because I was sort of afraid of trying to navigate the buses or whatnot late at night on a Saturday in the not-so-great neighborhoods. It wasn't too bad. I guess I got there a bit before midnightish, and Brian wasn't back yet (he and Squimur were at a pirate party for the evening, but I decided not to go to that in favor of wedding party and catching up with CMU folks). So I sat down on a couch in the living room to read for a bit, but I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I remember, it was like 12:30 and I woke up to hearing "Wow, you must be tired." Went to sleep for real shortly after that.
Sunday
With no alarms set, I woke up around 10am, and Brian was already up and playing some puzzle videogame on his Nintendo DS. I got up for real, and put on my squid-and-crossbones shirt, since I thought that'd be appropriate for hanging out for the day. It was.captain_squid and piratelemur showed up around 11:30? or so. Janice was wearing a St. Paul Saints shirt in katakana, which I thought was pretty cool.
We went for lunch at some italian place (Fat Lorenzo's?) and then went to some big park that had a waterfall and whatnot. It was pretty cool. We saw a bunch of ducks swimming against the waterfall, it was really pretty funny to see them trying to eat some plant on the bottom of the creekbed, but paddling madly to not get swept down the falls. Walked all the way to the bottom of the falls, and then had to climb the stairs back up.
After that, came back, and decided to play Lunar Rails, which we had to go send Squid out to get, but that was okay. The game itself went horribly for me, but I think it was a lot of fun anyway. (I just have such bad luck at crayon train games. Events usually hit me, and I get awful contracts, and... still, I like playing them, and most of my Seattle friends won't) We let Squiddles win for his birthday and all. After that, it was like 7pm and I had a flight at 9:38pm, so I had to skedaddle to the airport.
My airport experience wasn't bad, but my flight experience wasn't so great. I was stuck in the very last row of the airplane, and sitting next to me were two women with these two baby/toddler girls on their laps. Of course we boarded early AND the kids wouldn't shut the fuck up for the first hour of the flight. They kept throwing toys all over the place and crying and whining (plus the one toddler kept trying to grab at my bag since I have a ladybug clock keychain on it). Finally the kids passed out and I was able to get some reading and writing done. Of course, when the plane landed, the kids woke up and started screaming again, and also since we were the last row, it took like 15 minutes to get the heck off the plane.
The little monsters' names were Phoenix and Raven. Fucking hippies.
oren was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and even to wait around for the ninety years it took me to actually get outside.
Now I am home and it took me an hour to write this. Whee.
Overall
A kind of cool thing is that even though I was hanging out with Puzzle Pirates people off and on all weekend, I didn't log into the game once, and I didn't care, either.
Minneapolis is neat. I should go back sometime and see more of it.
Surprisingly, I was really worried about this weekend blowing up in my face -- like I was initially a little weirded out about staying at someone's place who I'd never met, and definitely about going to a wedding of people I'd never met and being around a big group of people I'd never met, but actually, the whole weekend worked out pretty damn well in all of those regards. Laurel and Kevin themselves are pretty cool, and I feel like I know Laurel pretty well through LJ in the last couple years anyway. The wedding group was pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a big gang of sci-fi/fantasy geeks. I got some time by myself at the Mall anyway, and I managed to get to see Stevie after all. And Brian turned out to be crazy awesome cool, so that worked out too, and of course it was great to see Squimur again since I really didn't get to talk to them at all in San Francisco last summer.
So yeah. Good times.
I'm exhausted, and have to be at work in 7 hours, so I'm signing off.
It's talk like a pirate day today, too, but I will not be indulging my tendency to shift to that dialect, fear not.
Pictures will come later, hopefully tomorrow. Though I didn't actually get any pictures of us Looterati hanging out, sadly.
This is looooooooooong so I'm being nice and LJ-cutting it. It really is quite an adventure, though.
Friday
Left work at 3:30pm or so, bussed to airport. No crazy stalkers this time. Ended up in the new shiny airport plaza area and grabbed food quickly. Not quickly enough, as the plane was calling "last boarding call" for my 5:25 flight... at 5pm. So I rushed on and ended up sitting there for half an hour anyway. There was a very nice couple from the Twin Cities sitting next to me who were somewhat confused by the idea of me going to a wedding at the Metrodome.
Got to Minneapolis at the expected 10:30pm CDT. Confusedly made my way out of the gates and through the airport to the baggage claim area, where Brian (aka Ghoti) was waiting. He had a sign that said "JANTHINA! AHOY!" but somehow I actually figured out who he was without it anyway. So we took the light rail back to his house, and sat up chatting and playing cards for a few hours, which was really pretty fun. Brian has as many fish things at his house as I have duck things at mine, which is somewhat scary, but reassuring.
Saturday
Twins Game / Wedding
I got up super-duper early, at like 7:30am CDT, and got all dressed up for a wedding! ...meaning I put on a Mariners shirt and jeans. Hot damn, it's cool to go to a wedding and not have to wear a dress. Brian gave me a ride to the light rail stop. The light rail is pretty damn cool. There was a couple on the train that looked like they were going to go get married, and as it turns out, they were. Lots of White Sox fans on the rail, surprisingly.
Showed up at the stadium at about 8:50ish, and found
jbru, who had a baseball ticket for me, and some other friends of Laurel's whose names I have forgotten or never quite caught. Apparently we were actually there BEFORE the stadium opened! So when they did open it finally at 9:10am, we plodded in. I went around for a while taking pictures of the place, since I hadn't been there before. My impression of the Metrodome is that it reminds me of the Tokyo Dome, but smaller. I don't think I'd really like seeing games there on a regular basis, but it was fun to be in a new place for once. Everybody was extremely friendly and nice.It turns out that they actually discriminate between the two levels of the place, though, and you can't just go to the lower level if you have an upper-level ticket. However, since I was so early, and my ticket did say "Multiple Matrimony" on it since Laurel's parents bought the group tickets for it, I found a very nice stairway guard lady who said she'd just let me go down, but I'd have to talk the ushers down there into letting me go in to take pictures of the ceremony. I went downstairs (and bought a long-sleeve Twins shirt because all their t-shirts were sold out except in M and XXL), and snuck into the lower field section by 115 or so where there were no ushers guarding it. There was no batting practice, but pitchers (read: Francisco Liriano) were out throwing, and some fielding practice was going on, so eventually I got Scott Baker to sign my ticket, and Matt Guerrier and J.C Romero to sign my Twins program. That was pretty cool. They were very sweet about signing stuff; it seems like the players are in general. There was a gaggle of teenage girls who kept shouting out "JOE!!!!!" "JOE, COME OVER HERE!!!!" and Joe Mauer would just look at them and wave and smile like "Oh god, not another bunch."
Eventually, there was a wedding! They led 83 couples onto the field from inside the right field stadium bowels. It was really interesting to see all the different couples. Some were getting married; some were renewing vows. Some were extremely dressed up - there were some traditional huge white wedding dresses, and a few guys in tuxes, but there was also a lot of people in Twins clothes, and what was kind of cool was how each couple was *unique* -- like, there were a few of 'em where the women used Twins homer hankies as veils; some where they weren't dressed in Twins apparel at all; some where just in jerseys and jeans; one or two couples renewing vows where they had a son or daughter with them; some hybrids where the guy was in a Twins jersey and shorts and the girl was wearing a gigantic white dress.
I spotted
kaustin and laurel as they came out, despite having never met them before. The power of LJ! Laurel was wearing a red camisole and a white floofy skirt and a Torii Hunter Twins jersey, and she had baseball Keds. Kevin had a black suit on, but with an all-black Twins jersey as his vest. It was very cool. (Later on, they had "Bride" and "Groom" baseball caps, and their parents had "Father of the BRIDE" and such baseball caps.) The ceremony was about 20 minutes long. They had the processional where everyone came in; then they had this reverend guy speaking for a while, and they had a lady come out and sing "We've Only Just Begun", and then there was more speaking, and some vows, and they put on rings, and kissed, and all that stuff. To be honest, it was a (not unexpectedly) generic wedding service. The funny part was that the Twins were stretching and running out in left field and the White Sox were in right field, while the ceremony was going on. As Laurel commented later, from her position near third base, she could see players signing stuff by the dugout. (Laurel: "Look! Little Nicky Punto is signing stuff!" Kevin: "Dear, we're getting *married* right now!") A few of the players stopped to watch the ceremony, though.
They had one of the couples throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Matthew LeCroy caught it. He was wearing a bowtie. It was PRECIOUS.
I snuck back up to the second level and found my seat. I was sitting in a row with Laurel and Kevin, and
kalikanzeros ("Oh! You're the *other* Shawn... I'm friends with McGuire.") and radparker ("You have a Sidekick too!" "Yes, I have a Sidekick 2 too." "Tutu?") and pbmath I think. Some people down our row (Carol?) had a whole bunch of signs since they had held up "CONGRATS LAUREL AND KEVIN!!" during the ceremony. So, anagramming, they figured out that we could also use those letters and spell out "SANTANA!!" since Johan Santana was pitching the game. So we did that a few times. It was funny.The game itself was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AMAZING. I am totally in awe and fear of El Presidente, Johan Santana. No, really. He was mowing the White Sox down. He had a perfect game until the 5th inning when Aaron Rowand smacked a single into center. And through the course of the first 8 innings, the White Sox only got two hits off Santana, and struck out 13 times. That's THIRTEEN STRIKEOUTS. I joked later that it was a shame he didn't get fourteen -- then you could say it was a 14-K-Rat wedding game! He ran into a little bit of trouble in the 9th, and I'm sad they even put him out there since he was up to 102 pitches. He loaded the bases, and they brought in Joe Nathan, who promptly struck out Everett, Rowand, and Dye, to win and save the game and shutout. It was amazing. I almost think I need to go buy a "Don't blame me, I voted for Santana/Nathan" shirt after that performance. The Twins' offense also didn't totally suck, and Morneau and Cuddyer both hit home runs, to boot.
(As an aside, the Twins have a LOT of really good-looking guys playing for them. Why don't the Mariners? Sigh.)
After the game, I met Laurel's family, which was pretty funny -- "This is Deanna, she flew all the way here from Seattle for my wedding, even though we'd never met before!"
Oh Mall God.
Because people were going to go do other stuff for a bit, I jumped on the light rail and rode out to the Mall of America.
The MoA is, for lack of any other word, overwhelming. I mean, seriously, I think I was there for about three hours and I don't even think I saw more than half of it. It's amazingly large and has an amazing number of shops. I thought King of Prussia was big, and this makes KoP look like a neighborhood shopping center.
Anyway, highlights for me were the Legoland thingy, where I spent a good half hour playing with stuff and deliberating over things to get (with the constraint, of course, being that I only had my backpack to put stuff in). I eventually ended up getting myself a Lego Pirate photo frame, which I'll have to find some appropriately piratey picture for, or just print out a YPP portrait :) I also got a Lego Pirate keychain for Brian, since it was nice of him to let me crash at his place this weekend and all. After the Legos, I wandered around for a while to various stores, all of which were pretty wacky. There were a lot of Minnesota-themed places and even a Wisconsin one which was full of cheese, cheese-looking hats and whatnot, and Green Bay Packers merchandise. There were also several sporting goods stores, none of which had any Twins stuff, although the third one I went to actually had the EXACT SHIRT I WANTED, a Joe Mauer #7 navy Twins t-shirt in my size. I felt a little weird because I had already bought a longsleeve Twins shirt at the stadium, but I mean, this is the shirt I wanted, so I went ahead and got it too. I'm such a dork.
I got a few other assorted things around the mall as well, including some raspberry scented stuff at the Bath and Body Works place, since I felt guilty after I wandered around testing out all of the stuff in there. (I must have come out smelling like a vanilla mango cherry blossom peach tree strawberries and cream brown sugar freesia mix. I'm not sure why I did that, except that I was feeling goofy and I don't think we have that particular store out here.) I got a bag of strawberry-based Jelly Belly jellybeans in a moment of weakness. By weight it was supposed to cost eight dollars or something, but the guy at the candy place said "ah, whatever, just make it $5", which was cool. I got a "Mall of America" rubber duck. There was also a store that had personalized rubber ducks, but of COURSE they didn't have "Deanna" or "Dee" or anything even remotely like my name. Grrrr.
There's an amusement park in the middle of the mall, and a movie theater, and apparently an aquarium in the basement, which I didn't even see. It's just craaaazy.
The wedding "reception"
Eventually I caught a shuttle to the Bloomfield Sheraton, where the wedding party was going on. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to find my way there, but I was. It was cool. It was kind of funny since Laurel introduced EVERYBODY there by their Livejournal names, so if someone actually bothered following up on me and sees this entry, hello there! Please say hi so I know or remember who you are!
Though, the first person she introduced me to was the person who showed up at the same time as me -- that was kind of funny. "Oh, Deanna, this is my friend Pamela, she's
pameladean on Livejournal." "Wait, you're THE Pamela Dean?" That was pretty funny. Of course, the guilt here lies in that I know Eli was a huge fan of hers, but I think I only read one book of hers. Heh. Well, anyway, I ended up talking to Pamela and her husband dd_b for a while about cameras, and that was kind of cool. There was another guy with a camera who does Shockwave Radio or something who I talked to about filk. I talked to Peter for a bit as well, since he was dressed up as Arthur Dent with a towel and a bathrobe that said "Host" and was manning the bar. I am not a particularly good person at random chatter with complete strangers, but it mostly worked out. At some points I could just talk about baseball with people, and at some points I could just let people tell me about their Minn-StF club, and then at one point we went out around the pool area with the big letters from the game and spelled out "CONGRATULATIONS LAUREL AND KEVIN" again, which was pretty neat.(actually, the funny part to me was that after we displayed the signs, we came back, and I had been assigned the "L A" in "congratulations", and I held them backwards like "You can call me Al!" and the person behind me who had "T I" was like "You can call me It!". We paraded around all the rooms in the suite with our letters, and I joked -- "Hey, this is the weirdest conga line ever. Or would it be a 'CONGRA' line?")
One of the wedding cakes had a baseball diamond on it in icing. Nobody seemed to actually want to cut into that part. I suggested that L & K should save the baseball diamond -- much like you normally would save the top layer if you had a multi-tiered cake -- and freeze it and eat it in a year. I also suggested they should go to Twins Spring Training for their honeymoon. Man, Laurel is totally living my dream wedding :)
Anyway, after hanging out a bit longer and all, I ended up getting Peter to give me a ride back to town, which was very nice of him (and thanks again! if you ever see this.)
Catching up with old friends
So,
cheerfulchaotic was actually in town, and I hadn't seen him in a really long time, so I met up with him at the Uptown Transit Center, since he apparently lives in Uptown (which is south of Downtown. Don't ask). He also convinced Seth Kingman to come hang out with us, which was pretty damn wacky, since I don't think I'd seen Seth since graduation in 1998. I mean, I must have seen Stevie in the last year, I just don't remember when. The three of us went to some Indian restaurant that I already forget the name of, and we split a couple vegan dishes, and caught up on stuff, most of which meant that I sat there listening to Stevie and Seth's hilarious tales of various people and things and thought, "Damn, I am *so* female and straight." (S&S are distinctly neither female nor straight.)After dinner we walked over to Stevie's house and hung out for a while, playing a game of San Juan which took like two hours because Seth is a very indecisive boy. It was mostly okay since the point was hanging out. One of Stevie's housemates has bunny rabbits and one of them actually ventured out into the living room, but immediately got frightened off.
Seth won the game by two points over me, and after that I caught a cab back towards where Brian lives, because I was sort of afraid of trying to navigate the buses or whatnot late at night on a Saturday in the not-so-great neighborhoods. It wasn't too bad. I guess I got there a bit before midnightish, and Brian wasn't back yet (he and Squimur were at a pirate party for the evening, but I decided not to go to that in favor of wedding party and catching up with CMU folks). So I sat down on a couch in the living room to read for a bit, but I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I remember, it was like 12:30 and I woke up to hearing "Wow, you must be tired." Went to sleep for real shortly after that.
Sunday
With no alarms set, I woke up around 10am, and Brian was already up and playing some puzzle videogame on his Nintendo DS. I got up for real, and put on my squid-and-crossbones shirt, since I thought that'd be appropriate for hanging out for the day. It was.
captain_squid and piratelemur showed up around 11:30? or so. Janice was wearing a St. Paul Saints shirt in katakana, which I thought was pretty cool.We went for lunch at some italian place (Fat Lorenzo's?) and then went to some big park that had a waterfall and whatnot. It was pretty cool. We saw a bunch of ducks swimming against the waterfall, it was really pretty funny to see them trying to eat some plant on the bottom of the creekbed, but paddling madly to not get swept down the falls. Walked all the way to the bottom of the falls, and then had to climb the stairs back up.
After that, came back, and decided to play Lunar Rails, which we had to go send Squid out to get, but that was okay. The game itself went horribly for me, but I think it was a lot of fun anyway. (I just have such bad luck at crayon train games. Events usually hit me, and I get awful contracts, and... still, I like playing them, and most of my Seattle friends won't) We let Squiddles win for his birthday and all. After that, it was like 7pm and I had a flight at 9:38pm, so I had to skedaddle to the airport.
My airport experience wasn't bad, but my flight experience wasn't so great. I was stuck in the very last row of the airplane, and sitting next to me were two women with these two baby/toddler girls on their laps. Of course we boarded early AND the kids wouldn't shut the fuck up for the first hour of the flight. They kept throwing toys all over the place and crying and whining (plus the one toddler kept trying to grab at my bag since I have a ladybug clock keychain on it). Finally the kids passed out and I was able to get some reading and writing done. Of course, when the plane landed, the kids woke up and started screaming again, and also since we were the last row, it took like 15 minutes to get the heck off the plane.
The little monsters' names were Phoenix and Raven. Fucking hippies.
oren was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and even to wait around for the ninety years it took me to actually get outside.Now I am home and it took me an hour to write this. Whee.
Overall
A kind of cool thing is that even though I was hanging out with Puzzle Pirates people off and on all weekend, I didn't log into the game once, and I didn't care, either.
Minneapolis is neat. I should go back sometime and see more of it.
Surprisingly, I was really worried about this weekend blowing up in my face -- like I was initially a little weirded out about staying at someone's place who I'd never met, and definitely about going to a wedding of people I'd never met and being around a big group of people I'd never met, but actually, the whole weekend worked out pretty damn well in all of those regards. Laurel and Kevin themselves are pretty cool, and I feel like I know Laurel pretty well through LJ in the last couple years anyway. The wedding group was pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a big gang of sci-fi/fantasy geeks. I got some time by myself at the Mall anyway, and I managed to get to see Stevie after all. And Brian turned out to be crazy awesome cool, so that worked out too, and of course it was great to see Squimur again since I really didn't get to talk to them at all in San Francisco last summer.
So yeah. Good times.
I'm exhausted, and have to be at work in 7 hours, so I'm signing off.
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The excursion to Minnehaha Falls was partially to dissipate the effects of some pizza that was just way too good.
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I bought a ton of jelly bellies at the Mall of Overwhemica.
For some odd reason, I really didn't have *any* Minneapolis-specific food on my trip, really.