This may be long enough to require several posts. I make no apologies.
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On Friday I had promised to come in for the staff meeting before work (it was on the way to the train station anyway), but I got there, and we didn’t have a staff meeting. This was good, considering what happened after.
I was able to catch the 9:26am into the city, which went smoothly but then I caught the slowest crosstown bus ever. It’s always amusing on Comic Con days to listen to conversations and guess who is headed to the con, so at least I had that to occupy me as we meandered through the city traffic.
I usually get there later on Friday, when the Professional registration is almost empty so the line was a bit of a shock, though not completely unexpected. I decided to check my coat first, as it didn’t seem like I’d save any time doing it the other way. This was just as well.
I got on the end of the line and I stood, reading the book I had brought for trains and lines and things. Shortly thereafter, they moved my section of the line upstairs, so I stood and read some more. The line stalled once (computer problems) and by the time, I got to the front of the line, I’d finished the book, so I put it away and got out my barcode to scan. I was then told to go to the end of the counter to wait for my badge. And I watched the clock tick and other people who had come up after me get their badges. Just as I was about to go over and get my barcode rescanned, the computers went down again. More time spent waiting, but I finally got my badge and wandered down to the food court.
I did a quick scan but didn’t spot the other Westchester Librarians, so I decided that if I wanted food, I should do that first. Got my overpriced food (thankfully, I’d packed water), and finally located the others.
The food was awful, but the conversation was good, mostly about what we were planning to see and current, past and future renovations. Eventually we split up and wandered to our various destinations.
I went off to see a panel first, “Are You There God, It’s Me Manga” about teenaged girls, manga and libraries. It turned out to be a panel about Shonen-ai, which wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was still interesting and introduced me to some manga I hadn’t known of before. I wish I had space for manga right now, but even one or two series would eat up a whole shelf by the time we moved back to our permanent location and I don’t have the space to spare.
On to the exhibit hall to wander. I managed to score an ARC of the next Tamora Pierce Beka Cooper novel, by getting into a conversation with the booth runner, picked up a lot of posters and other goodies to give away for our teen movie nights, and was in the right place at the right time to score a Grand Theft Auto t-shirt.
It also seemed to be the day to run into people I knew. I ran into people from the building where I lived by the DK booth (that was very strange), a librarian from Somers by the Grand Theft Auto Booth, and then at the Alien Entertainment/Doctor Who Store booth, I unsurprisingly ran into a few people from the Doctor Who NY group. While chatting with them, I heard my name called and I turned to see Francine and her daughter from The Voracious Reader in Larchmont. Apparently, her daughter is a big fan of Doctor Who, to the point where she has listened to some of the Big Finish audio productions and was waiting around to meet Colin Baker. This was when I turned around again and noticed that the DWNY people were talking to…Colin Baker. Not wanting to interrupt, we continued chatting about Doctor Who addictions, and I prodded one of the DWNY people for a flier and passed it along. Finally, the booth people reminded Colin he was there to sign autographs, and Francine was nice enough to snap my picture with the former Doctor.
One of the DWNY people mentioned that there was supposed to be an announcement at the IDW panel about future Doctor Who comic plans, but as I had to be back in Mamaroneck for our teen movie night, I decided to give it a pass. Instead I wandered a bit more, and was happy to find that one of the gaming companies was giving out poster holders. A few more aisles and I regretfully decided I needed to get my coat and head home.
In the queue to collect my coat, I ran into Francine again, and she offered me a lift. It might not have been faster than the bus and train, but it was lovely to sit in the car and talk about books for kids and teenagers on the way back. I expressed my envy that she’d collected a copy of the sequel to Graceling by Karen Cashore.
I got back to the library just as it was closing, said hi to Ellen, and dumped my goodies in my car. We did end up using some of the prizes for the movie night and others we saved for the game night we’re planning for next month.
This is definitely long. I think I shall end here and post Day 2 later today.
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