Alrighty then!
Travel (A)- Uneventful. I end up taking myself to the airport, and leave stupid early so it's still pre-dawn and thus there's not silly things like traffic there. Flight's fully on schedule and the public transit is uneventful.
Monday- It's raining! So after drying off, I scan the Big List of Things To Do and decide on MoMA, because I can't imagine anyone else would care (that'll show me). MoMA would actually be pretty great if you managed to catch it on a really off day where you could take your time and appreciate not just the art itself, but the artistry behind the exhibits and how they're arranged, but it's certainly worth doing without that.
Snowfire picks out two "okay we are entirely too whipped to do regular stuff now" activities, based on criteria I'm not entirely sure of: watching Twelve Kingdoms (which we make a good effort on but don't quite get through the first arc between here and wednesday evening) and, since I mention I hadn't, playing Celeste (which I do polish off Wednesday). Those'll get their own mentions elsewhere.
Lunch: sushi Dinner: banh-mi
Tuesday- Realizing that the rest of the week will be some combination of rain and 90 degree heat, I figure the best thing's to hit up are any outdoor-ish activities, which turns into Brooklyn Botanical and Prospect Park. Sadly the parts of the Botanical that sound coolest to me weren't open, but there's a lot to be said for the artifice of it. It's also nice and quiet, which is a plus. We managed to whiff where we wanted to go in Prospect Park as I recall, but eh, it works.
Breakfast: reunion lunch: uh... hm. Dunno! dinner: vegan wrap
Wednesday- we do the full lower manhattan tour, on the theory that Friday will be abbreviated for Mormon and I suspect Snowfire really wanted to do at least one. We also hit up the American Indian museum, which is about the crowd density I wish any Museum visit could be, although there's definitely a lot of "look the Smithsonian made us do this one, just move past it to the cool stuff we wanted to do" exhibits. Still pretty solid. Did go over where the Staten Island ferries were, since then you get a decent view of the Statue of Liberty without actually having to spend time going out there. Snowfire also insisted on what I have to assume is blackmail material, so dunno what's up there. We made an effort to get in before it got too late because literal heat advisory of course, and also figured nobody arriving that evening would want to run around that much. This seems accurate.
Breakfast: donut lunch: noodles dinner: hipster pizza
Thursday- So I had a hotel that Tal took a spare bed in, so we just killed time until everyone else got up and organized to move to the rental via semi-lengthy trips to breakfast. Otherwise since half the thursday people got there fairly early and the other half quite late, the trips this day were more about slightly-longer trips for food. Mostly today was a lot of letting the newcomers get used to all the weird in-jokes and nonsense I feel like? It's fun.
Breakfast: reunion lunch: indian dinner: um... stuuufff?
Friday- I was on something resembling my work sleep schedule most of the trip, so I was up way before everyone else except super, at which point we discovered the closest bagel shop. Mostly though a lot of just kinda waiting for everyone to be awake enough for the second round of Manhattan nonsense, which was alright. It got a bit late though so people ended up saying "yeah sure MoMA is close and also free let's do" after the shopping type stuff, which is fine aside from oops, it's free and human hell happens. On the other hand I got to proselytize so that was cool. At that point everyone is so winded it's like "hey, uh, we're gonna just head in the general direction of the theater and be there earlier, 'kay". Mormon is good. Would recommend.
Breakfast: bagel lunch: chinese, family style
Saturday- time draws short. Alas, alas.
Smorgasburg is the sorta thing I find hella fun just on principle despite the crowds but getting the most out of it would take weeks so... alas. Bowling is bowling. After that is probably the only time during the con I truly fell into passive mode I think, buuuuut it was a set of interactions I'd been hoping to catch, SO.
Breakfast: also bagel lunch: jamaican and spicy chicken dinner: korean
Sunday- I took somewhat too early of a flight really, buuut so goes.
Travel (B)- So for some reason the J train seemed to be down for half the stretch out to JFK. It also wasn't running much, but that might be normal weekend behavior for it. I just gave up and forked out the cab money, which is fine. Otherwise wholly uneventful, nothing terrible traffic-wise on my return drive home.
Mm. Gonna cut here then probably add other notes later.
