So now my little “working” vacation is over, and I can tell the tale.

Dragon*Con was an interesting, entertaining, tiring, and occasionally frustrating experience, but I survived, and, in fact, mostly thrived. Our shows went well – there was some great energy in the room, and people seemed to dig our stuff, even if they didn’t buy as many CDs as we would have liked (would you like to buy CDs? Or downloads if you’re not into the whole physical media thing? follow this link for links to the usual suspects like itunes, amazon, bandcamp and such where you can purchase things), but then, we’d always like to sell more CDs.

There was some standard low-level frustration across the board (room reservations, sound snafus, hauling huge piles of gear and merch up nine flights of stairs because of elevator overload, con operations issues…the usual), though we were treated well by our immediate con contacts, and while we’ve been on the fence about going back next year (assuming the invitation comes through), we’re feeling more positive about the future. Stay tuned, as always.

As commensurate with the “working” part, we spent a great deal of the convention working the merchandise table trying to sell things. It also gave us a nice perch from which to view the various costumed folks standing in line for big panels in the Hyatt imperial ballroom (which inspired our friend Mikey Mason to compose and perform his latest hit, “Waiting to Stand In Line” on Saturday – if it’s not recorded and up for sale by the time this post goes live, I expect it will be shortly after). We entertained ourselves and passers-by by people watching, handing out business cards and flyers, occasionally selling something, and playing music from behind (or occasionally on top of) the tables.

Celebrity sightings were about as usual – I caught fleeting glipses of folks like Felicia Day, John Barrowman, Barry Bostwick, and the like, and totally missed gawping at celebrity crushes Amber Benson and Karen Gillan, but that’s the way the cons go. I did have a nice wave/thumbs up exchange with Kristian “Hodor” Nairn, and had nice conversations with Angela Webber from the Doubleclicks and comics legend Jim Steranko.

The highlight for all of us was seeing Steve Whitmire and KERMIT THE FREAKING FROG live and in the felt, sitting in on a couple of his panels talking about Muppets and the Henson company. Several of us might have gotten rather emotional when the Frog himself came out on the panel to interact with the attendees. It was awesome.

So, that was D*C. I got home really late on Monday night, and spent my built-in two days at home to recover before returning to the mundane world.

Thanks in particular to the folks who made things interesting and entertaining: Robbie, Amber, and Pat from the filk track for booking us and giving us a place to play (special thanks to Walt for the scotch ale!), our fellow players Mikey Mason, Metricula, Mark and Andrew, The Brobdignagian Bards, Foot Pound Force, Hawthorn and Holly, Tom Smith, and Pandora Celtica, Cerine for hanging out at the merch table and making life interesting, anyone else I might have missed, all the folks who came to hear us play or happened to catch some stray notes while waiting to stand in line, and of course, Scott and Kirsten for letting me tag along on these little adventures of ours.