tiredI'm back from Baycon - I just spent all of Memorial Day weekend there, as usual, on newsletter staff. It had its moments, and I guess I'm glad I went, but it turned out being a thoroughly tiring experience.
Newsletter staff was plagued with personal and technical issues all weekend; nobody got any real down time. My "go out and have fun" window was mostly limited to six hours on Sunday night. Sleep was at a premium. Half of our staff didn't arrive until Friday evening. There were a few explosions of emotional drama that don't need recapping (and none directly involve me, so I won't do more than mention it by way of context). And I had some Return Of Son Of Intestinal Issues as the con started ... recovered pretty well, but left me physically drained most of the trip. I started the weekend exhausted and finished it exhausted. Going to try to catch up on some sleep tonight.
The newsletter itself felt like work in a way that it usually doesn't. But we got some quality material out of it, at least. As I remarked to my fellow staffers, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to pluck for our hoax issue (2.2mb PDF at link).
So, bax to the grind.
This was probably my last real vacation, except for MythiCalia, until next year. Money's tight with
kadyg in school, the debts from last year's hike are still lurking in the background, and I can't afford to have social ambitions for a while.--
Edited to add: I don't blame anyone for the issues that cropped up, and I'm not trying to be passive-aggressive by mentioning them. They are things that simply happened, as these things do. A mix of the expected (e.g., a staff member's Friday graduation) and unexpected (e.g., our rented copier ran out of toner on Saturday and we could only get a fraction of what we still needed) just snowballed to the point where everyone was permanently on edge. I know I wasn't the only one cursing, and I wasn't the only one relieved when we booted all our visitors out on Sunday and locked the door. We're done now, and next year will go better.
Update 2: JYHANHEN'S TOOTH, MAKE THE WEEKEND STOP. Was unable to lock up when I left work, and was unable to go inside when I got home, due to mislaying my keyring inside one of my many random Convention Stuff boxes -- finally found it and had to go back and fix everything. Also discovered I left yesterday's leftovers (which were going to be tonight's dinner) out on the counter all night when I came home yesterday. Dropped large bottle of juice while carrying things inside and got it everywhere. Okay, who put Planet Baxil into retrograde?
]B=8p