I could learn to hate Baltimore.
For one thing, it's humid and hot in the summer which I think you know is my least favorite aspect of the south. For another, it's got the worst service of any large city I've ever visited. Cab drivers routinely drove five miles under the speed limit and then made wrong change, waiters ignored me or gave me attitude, and blank looks of incomprehension were the order of the day among gift shop personnel.
I will credit the Hyatt Inner Harbor with excellent staff attitude but they screwed up my reservation all the same. I couldn't figure out why my roomie, Sarah Prince, hadn't turned up. They said the guest in "my" room had extended her stay so they checked me into another room, upgrading me to a harbor view. I enjoyed the view very much, but only realized when it was too late the treated glass of the windows acted as a one way mirror solely during daylight hours. At night you could see every blessed thing in the room, including me wandering around naked admiring the view. It turned out, of course, that the guest was Sarah who'd already checked in, but for about 24 hours we independently roamed around the convention worried about where the other was, buttonholing our mutual friends with plaintive requests for sightings of the missing roomie. When we were finally reunited everyone cheered.
The convention itself was the tamest thing I've been to in years. I had an excellent time but Worldcons are supposed to be crazy, zany, wacky, and over the top. Not this one. Thanks to highly restrictive liquor laws and astoundingly expensive hotel costs for any party with alcohol, the party scene was low key and the normal centers of socializing were broadly dispersed. Hanging out in a hotel's bar is not my idea of a fun place to see my friends. It's not that I require vast amounts of alcohol to fuel a great weekend, but dammit, roaming from room party to room party is a big part of the evenings at science fiction conventions. No one could afford to give them. I blame Baltimore.
This doesn't mean I got any extra sleep, mind you. I was very busy meeting up with people and galavanting from hotel to hotel looking for clusters of my friends. The attendence was low for an east coast Worldcon. If there were more than about 3500 people there I'll eat my spacesuit. There ought to have been at least 5000. Without the vast hordes to sort through I was able to find everyone I wanted to find quite easily (except Sarah that first night). I was disappointed in my fondest hope, however. I did not see a Kosh costume. I saw a pretty good Centauri or two, and an astonishing blue creature that could have escaped from Cirque du Soleil, but no elaborate group costumes or fanatically accurate Alien costumes. My main delight, apart from seeing friends, was eating crab at every meal. The best thing about Baltimore is the abundance of excellent crab.
Tomorrow I'll have more details on stingrays, the embassy bombings in Africa, and the Babylon 5 blooper reel, but for now sleeping in my own bed sans air conditioning, elevator noises, and early morning housekeeping calls sounds too good to resist. Bonne nuit.
