The exciting Saturday segment of my report!
I had the same happen that did in Philly -- I slept for bout four hours, then snapped awake and could not get back to sleep. So I slept in and Nin went on ahead. Unfortunately that meant I missed Natsuko's auction segment. I was looking forward to seeing her again too. At Bridging the Knight 11 years ago, I won a lunch with her, and she was a real sweetheart. She auctioned off the Forever Knight prop skull, and as the price climbed, Jen told me she became afraid to hold it anymore! It ended up fetching $800, I believe. Around 10am, Nin came back to the room to move me along and she brought me a lovely mug she'd gotten me at Starbucks! It has a gorgeous autumn leaf painted inside on the bottom. We headed down, and came to find Nigel had made a surprise appearance. He'd flown in for the day and had to head back that night to deal with some play production related business. But he was able to MC for the day.
At this point, I was starving, and I don't even remember who the guests were. We decided to get an early lunch and went to a microbrew pub called B.J.'s. It's a small chain and it's really good! I had a couple pints of their Berry Burst Cider in Snakebite form. Really yummy! We actually got back to the hotel before the ballroom was reopened! Not late for once. The afternoon session started with the woman who does the Bart Simpson voice, Nancy Cartwright. I'm not a Simpsons fan, but she was very entertaining. She's also a motivational speaker, so she had a good panel. Then she started to auction, and boy, did she get into it! She's very hyper! She was auctioning off a basket of stuff from her show, and as the price started going up, she tossed in a phone call from her as Bart to anyone the winner wanted. That drove the price up to nearly $2000 in the end.
( And now we move on to the sex and smut portion of the afternoon... )