The Las Vegas airport has free wi-fi, which is bad-ass since I can now blog and watch the Series at the same time and not spend all my time at the goddamn slot machines.
This past weekend I spent out in San Diego at JournalCon turning a bunch of total strangers into best friends. It started out as somewhat of a fiasco, since on the day I was flying out, both Karl and Sara (the only two JC attendees I actually knew) ending up cancelling. So the whole flight in, I was starting to feel a little queasy. I still get bouts of pathological shyness sometimes, and here I was going totally alone and defenseless to a place where complete strangers will be gathering to drink themselves silly for 48 hours. With my freshly minted 2 Year AA chip still warm in my pocket.
My sobriety was going to be a contestant on “Survivor: San Diego”, and if it got voted off the island it wasn’t gonna be pretty.
I needn’t have worried. I’m usually utterly incapable of walking up to strangers and saying “Hi, I’m Ray”, but I managed to fake it well enough. And when Trance Jen arrived, she spotted me across the room and gave me a big booming “Hey, Ray!”. Carol gave me a big hug as if we’d actually been friends a long time. Chuck was also a very friendly guy, and Minarae was a total sweetie. What a lovely welcoming bunch of people.
And today I had my first hangover in two years. Apparently if you stay out til 3am with a bunch of drunks all weekend long, you get a hangover even if you don’t drink anything.
I don’t miss hangovers.
I miss my new friends though. All weekend I’ve been acquiring new pals the way you keep acquiring new layers of clothes when it’s freezing cold out. And then all morning Sunday I’ve been shedding the friends again, one at a time…Chuck and Beth leave, then Carol, then Mo, then we all say goodbye to LA and Weetabix and share a cab to the airport and one by one I lose Fredlet and Jen and Amy and now I’m all alone again, stuck in Vegas.
I wanna go back.
JournalCon
Posted in blogging
I wanna go with you next year!
How could a girl help but give you a big welcoming hug, Ray?
BTW, thanks for helping to keep me grounded re: Bad Timing Guy. I really appreciate it. And I miss you too!
I’m very glad you came to JournalCon. It was so hard to say goodbye at the gate. Trance and I finally found ours, and due to delays, were able to spend more time together. I loved every minute I spent with you – it sounds dirty; it’s not – but I have to say, I really enjoyed watching and listening to you explain baseball to Mare. And, of course, I loved the visual aids… salt, pepper and knives are handy like that. Miss ya.
Damn, I’m sorry I hadda miss that. Damn and Damn.
I will never use a cocktail napkin again without wondering if it’s bases are loaded. That was awesome. Thank you.
next year- journalcon Portland (I can dream, right?) and for sure I’ll be there. all weekend I was wishing I were there.
I’m so glad I met you, Ray! And you’re right — you do get a slight hangover if you hang out with drinkers and don’t drink, because I did (get a non-drinking hangover, that is). And here’s the HOTG link for NOLA music:
http://homeofthegroove.blogspot.com
I managed to avoid the hangovers I was more or less expecting – I didn’t drink all that much, but there was a lot of staying up past my usual bedtime. Did enjoy meeting you and Bozoette and Trance and LA and CI and and and and…
I am so glad you came out Ray! I’m just bummed I didn’t get to talk to you as much as I would have liked (that’s always my biggest regret about JournalCons….too damn short to spend as much time with people as I would like to).
Ah well, there’s always next year….
Ray, it was great to meet you this year, I hope to see you at many more.
Alone in Vegas? Valueless. I did it once and it sucked. Of course, the time before that, I got married (which lasted a whole month). There was still a bitter taste in my mouth.
One cool thing was that the bartender at the Maxim (where we stayed) remembered me and my wife . . . and the sign of any good bartender, what I drank.
Congrats on your two years sober. I really respect that.
It was really rude of that cabbie to yell that we were hugging too long, but I suppose half an hour is a bit more than he was willing to sit there. =;)
Sigh.
I really didn’t want to go.
hee.
It was great to meet you! I had a non-hangover on Sunday too. The “end of the night” pictures that I took of you on Friday would make anyone doubt your tale of sobriety, but I can bear witness
Home again. Missing everybody. Sending one final group hug over the cosmic consciousness. ~LA
I hope you got home ok! It was so awesome to meet you!