It got off to an iffy start. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive there. At about three hours and 20 minutes the transmission suddenly started racing and wouldn't shift. We pulled off into a parking lot and turned the car off and had quiet panic attacks. It's a Saturday--no one would be able to work on the car until Monday. We made emergency plans--we spotted an Enterprise rent-a-car--realized we'd have to rent two so I could go home and take care of the animals and Bob could stay in town and get the car fixed. Then we tried turning the car back on and it worked just fine. So then we have the decision--do we turn around and go home, or go ahead to the Con and hope we didn't have a breakdown late Saturday on the way home. We went to the Con. So, admittedly we were not in the best frame of mind when we walked in.
And it sort of went downhill from there. This Con takes place in an air museum in one of the hangars. We walked in, and then stopped to let our eyes adjust. And kept trying to adjust. None of the auxiliary lights were on. And then the sweat started beading up because the AC also was not working particularly well (or they couldn't afford to run it much).
The first thing you do when you walk into a Con is to eagerly look over at the vendor tables--and, compared to previous years, there wasn't much to look over. Vendor numbers were really down. The other thing you do is look at everyone else's models--and those numbers were way down too. In general, it was rather a disappointment. To top it off, I suggested we go to the museum's snack bar for lunch (and to hope they had AC) -- we went to the next building where the snack bar *used* to be . . . . There are no eateries close by, and we didn't want to risk breaking down and not being able to retrieve the models so we were stuck in the dark, sweating and hungry, waiting the four hours for the judging. Fortunately, I know that I am subject go getting "hangry" so I had a stash of almonds and craisins with me.
There were some plusses. Bob is very very good at his models. Combine that with a lower turnout and he placed 4 of his 5 models (my Valkyrie loom didn't place, but I didn't expect it to, so that was all right.)
The other plus was the raffles. He bought a string of 30 raffle tickets, and because there weren't a lot of people there, by the time we left he had picked up 14 prizes (the prizes were still being distributed but we wanted to go ahead and leave in case the car broke down so we gave the rest of our tickets away)
And the car worked fine on the drive home. Sadly--we probably won't be going back.
Otherwise--random June:
River has taken to guarding the letter tiles when we play Scrabble.
I think one of the chicken may have hurt herself laying an egg.
The garden is still going a bit crazy
We had a large softshell turtle lay eggs in our yard
And I'm fostering three young foxes
That's enough to have kept us busy.
Reading: Anne McCaffery, Dragon Rider. This series actually started in the late 60's, in the fantasy heyday of Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. And I had never ready them. From time to time friends will mention them and be surprised that I hadn't. Now that I've started the first one, I'm thinking that maybe I've started them before and gone "meh" and put them down. I'll finish the first one and that will be enough. I know there they're popular (there are 20-something books in the series) but I find the characters and the plots to be both uneven and clichéd.
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