Canada
Busily doing nothing
I’ve achieved very little over the few days. The weather has been nice and sunny, and the flat has been pleasantly warm. I’ve used most of the time to get some housework done – but I’ve not had as much time as I thought. My body clock is still out-of-whack and it’s still adjusting to a normal sleeping pattern.
Popped over to Fife on Thursday – felt kinda weird coming back on a normal working day, even if it was Good Friday. The train takes about 20 minutes to get to and from Fife which works pretty well. LSD and I wound up playing Singstar and the Guitar hero Band game. I must be getting old, as I didn’t recognise many of the songs or bands!
ORC was at the Meadows bar on Saturday, where Abe (the Squib Jedi) was back (and causing chaos) in the Star Wars Saga RPG. The Meadow Bar does a very tasty burger, and it looks like it’ll be a decent venue in the future – there’s printing and internet as well as beer, so it’ll serve us gamers well!
I proceeded to get pretty bladdered afterwards with a couple of mates – certainly put a fair bit away, but couldn’t really face a curry as well! As a result, it was a fairly quiet day yesterday. I spent most of it sitting down playing Vampire Wars on Facebook.
I’ve uploaded my Canada photos to my Facebook profile. If I’d thought about it better, I could have used Picasa from Google – I could then import it into my blog via an XML import. Oh well.
Blame Canada pt.6
I’m actually writing this back in the UK. I slept away the whole morning today, after a pretty gruelling flight. We were pretty exhausted when we left on Monday. The flight did give me a chance to catch up on a few movies: Eagle Eye, Transporter 3, Wanted and WALL-E. I’m pretty sure I watched a couple of others on the way over but can’t recall.
Robert Picardo, Mr. Reserved, lost his temper with his handler at the convention. We weren’t there but apparently he told them “Look, can you just f**k off? I’m going out to the balcony for a cigarette. I can look after myself!”. From the folk I was speaking to, he got some kudos for that! I don’t think I’d go to a convention like that again, there’s too many weirdos and geek-snobbery there. Only a few people made us feel welcome.
Canada was great though. Vancouver’s so clean, and the people are marvellous.
Peter DeLuise (Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis‘ Creative Consultant/Director) met LSD in the lift while she was helping a girl find a lost friend. He was staying in one of the Executive floors apparently (the fancy suites at the top of the Hilton).
Sunday saw us wandering over to Deer Park Lake (we’d grown a bit tired of the convention by then), a huge park in the centre of Vancouver. It was 18 degrees and LSD and I both got a little sunburned! Amazing place: just a huge piece of wild forest and parkland in the middle of a city. Most of the trees were probably older than Vancouver itself.
In other news, Wizards of the Coast have now suspended all new and existing PDF sales on both their website and places like DrivethruRPG and RPGnow. It’s a knee-jerk response to folk file-sharing their Player’s Handbook online. Unfortunately it covers ALL Wizards PDF line. So no old books available for sale as PDF. Naturally, this coincides with me redoing Ashes of Freedom in 3.5.
Blame Canada pt.5
We weren’t feeling up to much yesterday – we’d had such a good time in the pub and at the cocktail party that we just chilled out. It didn’t help that the tour we were supposed to be going on left at 9.30, not 9.45 as advertised. David Nykl was on the Atlantis set to greet visitors apparently – and we missed a chance to get filmed with the Stargate itself. Unfortunately, we missed that, while we were waiting we ran into the bitchy volunteers who upset LSD and I. We decided to get out while we could and avoided the convention and its menagerie of freaks (not the cast!) until later.
The autograph line was a long wait – but it was worth the 2.5 hour wait! Joe Flanigan (Mgr. John Shephard) walked down the line signing autographs and was amused by the pic of him in relaxed mode during the Atlantis episode "Irresponsible". He said "I’m thinking it’s 15 hours, can we wrap it yet?". He’s taller than he looks on TV, but he was amused to see a photograph that wasn’t stock publicity as it were.
Michael Shanks was interested in the Essential Scripts book and flicked through them before signing, wondering what ones they were. He’s a nice guy, and was genuinely pleased to see an alternative item to sign. LSD got the classic "Daniel" grin.
Amanda Tapping looks amazing – she too was interested in the scripts book, and commented on it to LSD. Both she and Michael Shanks seemed genuinely pleased when we thanked them – it’s not something that the other convention goers were doing! I guess they get tired of signing stock photos.
Paul McGillion remembered us from the other night 
– he wrote "You cheeky bugger!" in my Atlantis book. He’s quite taken with LSD and bantered with her for a while.
Robert Picardo, was, well Robert Picardo – I get the feeling he was tired and had a long day. He’s got our email addresses though for his kids when they come over to Scotland.
The talent has not been treated well at this convention. They’re treated like prize cattle – in the UK this would have been run by fans, who wouldn’t be anywhere like as disrepectful. They’d also say thanks. I’ve enjoyed meeting the members of the cast, but I hated the convention itself. Everything else has been great: the accommodation, the people, the city. I’d love to come back again. We’ve also met a couple of guys: Tommy and Iain, who are a lot more down-to-earth than other fans.
