Pre-Con Commentary

I attended my third Xena convention this past weekend, spanning Saturday and Sunday. My first convention was in San Francisco two years ago. That was an interesting experience on how Creation runs a convention, compared to the gaming conventions that I'm used to. Last July my brother Chris and I attended a convention in Memphis. It was small, more intimate, and we had a good time touring Memphis and attending the con. This third convention was held in Palo Alto at the Hyatt Rickeys, close to where Dave used to work off of San Antonio Road.

Before I arrived there were a couple of things that I was apprehensive about. One was that I had agreed to drive Sarah Packard, one of the HLML members, to her friend's place in San Francisco after Saturday, and then drive her to and from the con on Sunday. My problem is that I want to be friendly, but I don't want to be too friendly. Same problem I have with all women I meet so I am used more or less used to it.

Second problem was the extra set of tickets that I had bought. Since I hadn't given them away by Saturday, I thought I'd just give them to someone who had no tickets. So my second problem (and if you think about it these problems aren't really problems with most people, it's just the way I relate with strangers and maybe a clue as to why I have few friends) is that since these seats are next to mine, I don't want to pick somebody that I don't think I'll want to be next two for two days. I'm shallow that way. I didn't want to pick a pretty girl because that would be too forward and I didn't want to pick a guy because that's just weird and I probably have way too many social hangups for me to deal with.

In the end I shouldn't have worried so much. Sarah is a nice girl attending East Michigan University studying Psychology. We didn't talk much except in the car and she's really into Xena. I watch Xena and I only go to the cons to see Ms Leick but Sarah is into the whole scene -- seen every episode multiple times and seems to know everything about the show. Another interesting tidbit is that she loves 80's music. KIOI was doing an "80's Weekend" and I happen to have left it there so she was all "ooh, I love this song... and this song too!" The youngsters amaze me with their enthusiasm. Sarah also has a really cool personal web site (which is not up right now due to the host computer dying and the provider not having adequate backups). It has her thoughts and experiences and is not just another canned website.

The other person I met at the convention is Christine Jarosz from Dallas. She is in the area visiting her mom but her truck died so she has to wait until it's fixed before she can drive back. Meanwhile she decided that as long as she was here she'd go to the convention. Luckily she just happened to be right behind me in line so I gave her my extra tickets and she was quite grateful since her truck is going to take a lot of money to fix. Anyway, Christine is Director of Fundraising for a some sort of women's support group in Dallas (geez my memory sucks). She is a very nice lady and also quite enthusiastic about Xena. I'm always impressed that people have such passion for anything as I don't really have that kind of drive (maybe I'm dead inside). Christine had taken 3 hours to get to the con since bus transportation in the Bay Area is not that great in many places. She got a ride home from her brother on Saturday but Sunday she was going to depend on public transportation all the way so I offered to give her a ride too.

So that's a little background on the convention. In the next journal entry I'll go more into the actual events on Saturday, when Willa O'Neill and Hudson Leick were the featured guests. Of the three, this is the best Xena convention I've been to because of the people I met, the guests (four total, including Ebonie Smith and William Gregory Lee on Sunday), and the charity breakfast on Sunday.