Rat thoughts

I'm wondering if I should skip FC this year.

It's going to cost about $400 for the hotel room, and at least $100 in gas.  And even if I cheap out and bring my own food, that's going to cost a good $50-100 more.

And what will I end up doing at FC?  Sitting behind a table all day, selling art that nobody is interested in and comics that everyone already has.  The people who I really wanted to spend time with aren't going to be there.  Without my SO  there to motivate me to do stuff, I'll just end up sitting in my hotel room the rest of the con.  And I'll probably get sick, like I do every year.

Or I could be just as bored and lonely at home, use that $600 to pay the property taxes, and save up my vacation time at work.

Anybody want a table in the dealer's room?

Well, dealer's room has closed for the last time, and everything except my clothes and personal stuff are packed in the car.  I'll be staying at the hotel for the night, then drive back home tomorrow morning.

Sales were abysmal.   I had the absolute worst table location in the entire room, off in the back of the room, in the corner, in a little alleyway that most people skipped.   You know you have a bad table position when your candy bowl is virtually untouched after 3 days.  This was the worst con, saleswise, since Confurence 13.

I screwed up a bit in my bidding in the artshow.   I'd placed a rather large bid on a Kyoht painting, Prince Of The Green, which sent it to auction.   Since I was running the table alone, I knew I couldn't defend the piece in the auction, so I figured it was a loss (especially since several other people had mentioned they were interested in it as well), and placed bids on a couple other pieces.  Lo and behold, I check with the art show pickup after the auction, and I WON the piece!  I wasn't expecting it, and with the other expenses (like a table for next year), I managed to drive my checkbook balance down to $29.   Not a problem, I thought, I'll just log onto the bank web site and shuffle funds from my savings account into my checking account until next payday.   Wrong!   The transfer won't go into effect until the next business day, which won't be until Tuesday!   Thankfully, that will also mean FC can't cash the checks until then, but I'm still going to have to be very conservative in my driving tomorrow to save fuel.   I've got about $55 in cash, enough for a tank of gas and maybe something to eat.   (I'm actually being insanely fiscally conservative, I know I've got 2 large uncashed checks floating around that probably won't be cashed for a couple months, but I hate going below 0 on paper, even if the actual current balance is much higher)

My rice cooker got a major workout this weekend.   I brought 4 kinds of rice, jasmine, brown texmati, "Royal Blend" (white, brown, red, and wild rice), and a rice & bean mixture, along with 3 kinds of bullion cubes (chicken, beef, and vegetable).  Every morning I'd fill up the rice maker with 4 cups of dry jasmine rice, some bullion cubes and water, carry it down to the dealers room, and fire it up.   It would cook the rice right there, then keep it hot all day.  I provided rice to several hungry dealers who weren't able to get away from their tables.  In the evening, I'd bring the cooker back to my room and fix some fancy rice for dinner, along with some tea.  My total food bill for this con was about $15, and that was only because I bought fancy rice.

The absence of animale , both in person and online, has made me extremely depressed, so I've spent most of the non-dealers-room time in my hotel room, watching FCTV, the official convention television station broadcasting over the hotel's cable system.

My family is gone, my SO is gone, I'm home alone at Christmas for the first time ever.

There are no decorations, no tree, no Christmas lights, no presents, no carols, no Christmas dinner.  I'm just skipping Christmas this year, waiting for the clock to run out tonight so I can get it over with.  Maybe next year, when my SO returns, I'll have an old-fashioned Christmas.  ("Pagan?"    "No...")

I find myself a bit annoyed that all the stores are closed for the day.  I'm doing laundry, and ran out of fabric softener.  And I really don't want to go anywhere tomorrow.