I lost 1 pound on the Anthrocon diet!--AC 2010 trip summary

More on that in a minute. I'm not sure if the is the right forum category for this but it'll work. Once again Anthrocon was an excellent experience for me and my friend/roomie. We got a late start leaving home on Wednesday because a morning thunderstorm created a lake where our trip car was parked and threatened to flood the basement. After a couple hours of getting things taken care of we finally hit the road. The trip there was largely uneventful, the dash board toaster oven pizza was "meh", and we saw a couple cars with furries in them. Must have been some sort of strange coincidence that they were on the road at the same time we were headed to a furry convention.

The usual stuff: arrived Wednesday afternoon, all excited, saw fursuiters before getting out of the car, waited for a luggage cart, got all our stuff to our room, met up with friends who were already there. Regarding the Anthrocon diet, I decided that just like the last two years I would take the stairs as much as possible in the interest of exercise. It turned out our room was on the 11th floor but I stuck with it anyway. At least 90% of the time I took the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. In the end when getting home I was discouraged to see that I'd only dropped one pound of weight but I'm sure I was all the better for having the exercise. Anybody else have any good stories of losing weight by taking the stairs and all the walking at AC?

It was good to see the former Steel City location open with Big Momma's new restaurant and we enjoyed some pulled pork the first evening for dinner. We tried letting them know the extent of how busy they'd be and Big Momma appreciated the advice, but unfortunately each subsequent day they seemed unprepared for the crowd. Hopefully things will improve next year now that they have firsthand knowledge about how big the AC dining crowd is. Cory's across the street worked hard at doing a great job to take care of everybody's chowtime needs.

Each day passed with lots of great friends (old and new), meeting lots of great artists (who I paid a lot of money for more badges), and lots of great panels and shows. 2's Rant, Uncle Kage's Story Hour, the charity performance, JR & Jibba's standup performances, the Masquerade, and Anthropoly were all tremendous fun. I had fewer conflicting schedules of panels I wanted to attend this year so happily I was able to see more of them.

The hotel staff and housekeeping were all very helpful to us and the Westin provided another comfortable stay. After my roomie had been talking with our daily housekeeper Pearl, I was dismayed to hear that the tips she'd made over the past several days had been dismal (after 4 days she'd only made $60 in tips from the entire floor, and $20 of that was from our room alone). Not to seem preachy but every room should be able to tip at least a dollar or two to housekeeping each day. I understand when traveling budgets are tight, but the housekeepers deal with trashed rooms and sometimes multiple bags of trash each day from some rooms. They really do appreciate the gesture of a tip:

Overall it was an outstanding convention and I'm already looking forward to when pre-reg opens for next year!

Thanks, Anthrocon!

Skyfox