Con, splat, etc

[serinde]

Brief capsule:

- Arisia: not so great. The hotel is a fine enough hotel, but wildly unsuited to the purpose at hand. People being spread across three widely-spaced hotels[1], the difficulty of getting between floors, the complete lack of parking (thank fuck it wasn't a usual Boston winter), and the compressed function space... well, it was not All That. Much of what I go for is rendezvousing with friends, and there was not a lot of that due to the above issues. We did have a great time at dinner Saturday, but that was as a result of diligent rounding up of people for hours beforehand and going way offsite to Mary Chung's. My spies tell me that the con is locked into this hotel for another year, and if that's so I don't think I'll be going. (We were also underwhelmed by the hotel's nickel-and-dime policies. $25/night for a crappy small dorm fridge? $50 for late checkout? Yer what?)

- Failed to go up and see my sister on the Sunday, which I feel guilty about, especially since it was her birthday. I suck.

- Was dog-tired last night but woke up at some dark hour and had a devil time getting back to sleep; I don't even know why. Sublimated stress, possibly. This too shall pass.

- Generally achy today, shoulders and back and knee. My kingdom for a hot tub. This has given more impetus to my thought that next month's Doing Stuff should be a trip to the Russian baths.

[1] which contributed heavily to my lack of hot!kinky!hotel!sex goddammit, though being the group den-mother didn't help either

Comments

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I've never had hot!kinky!hotel!sex, sigh.

I don't suppose you were at the Websnark Marriage Proposal Panel?

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

NO. Woe!

[sweh.livejournal.com]

The first time I met Tori was for hot!kinky!hotel!sex! I travelled from England to Boston for it, and it was very much fun :-)

[nancaurelia.livejournal.com]

ooh! Russian baths! I have heard much good of these and I wanna go!

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

We went for missionista's birthday a few years ago and I was pretty well blown away. Especially the birch branch massage thing. You'd think it would be horrid unless you're used to it, but it was a religious experience.

[wednesday]

I didn't even know you were at the con!!

AAAAA!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

You were there too? Didn't know that...
Well, I SMS'd syringavulgaris but got no reply. Dunno if that was a Nicolai avoidance measure or an american telephony failure :)

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Argl? I texted you back Saturday night.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Note to self: SMS still doesn't work in the USA. Stop Trying To Use It.
(I bet your telco couldn't route back to me. Is it Sprint?)

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Verizon.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

But but but I put it in my LJ...wah! You didn't put it in YOURS!

Woe all around!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

You should only be charged $33 for the late checkout and it should have been until 18:00 (if that was an issue). Contact the innkeeper (I think) about it.
The hotel seems not to have automatically applied all the con deals, they tried to charge me for some of the wifi days (but took it off when I mentioned it while checking out).
I dunno that Mary Chung's is "way off" bearing in mind the shuttle bus, compared to (say) getting to Chinatown from the Park Plaza. We went off to various Central Sq restaurants for our evening meals and the usual round trip time including eating was about 1.5 hours via the shuttle buses, which I don't think is too bad.
Eating -in- the hotel, other than the lobby snackbar, was fairly lame, yes.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Eh, when we called and asked and they said "$50" we said "Um nevermind".

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Ah, OK.
It's a pity the hotel wouldn't do a free as-available 2 hour, say, late checkout delay. Charging for the 18:00 late checkout does not seem entirely unreasonable to me, since it's basically the time they'd usually schedule for cleaning and making up the room.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

We specifically said "for an hour or two" and they said...well, see above. And yeah, if it was til 6pm that would be much more fair, I agree.

[darkteddybear.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth the late night convo in your room was one of the highlights of our con experiance.

But yea, we agree. Not so great as we would have liked overall.