This Seemed Like a Good Idea

Well, I had *planned* to take the Dealer Table to Capricon this year now that they have moved back to the suburbs. Then I got this email today:

"Sorry for this late request but all dealers are to have the following
requirements to be a Dealer at the Marriott.

Certificate of Insurance (COI) that shows:
1.1 Comprehensive general liability insurance, including contractual
liability and liability for personal injury, bodily injury, property damage
and $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 general aggregate.
1.2 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp.), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as Additional Insured.
1.3 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as an Additional Loss
Payee.
1.4 The certificate must provide General Liability coverage.
1.5 Automobile liability insurance including all owned, non-owned, and
hired vehicles used in conjunction with the Vendor’s services for bodily
injury or property damage with a combined single limit of not less than
$1,000,000 each occurrence."

This was accompanied by two recommendations for event insurance. The first one won't sell me a general liability policy because I don't make any money. The second one will sell me a policy (maybe) for $99 for the weekend, which is simply one more expense than I can manage given the level of sales that I expect to make. The policy would be half that amount if Capricon were a three-day convention, but -- of course! -- it is not.

I am ticked off beyond belief.

Now I have to figure out what the family is going to be doing about the convention as a whole. At least I haven't reserved a hotel room yet.

ETA: Helen Montgomery has responded on Facebook to note that they are having a discussion with the hotel about this now. Thank you all for your feedback!

Moderately Fantastic

We did a lot of cleaning in the family room today, assisted massively by the kids. Many things were dispatched to where they belonged, as opposed to where they were, which was mostly "in the way". This is a good thing.

This evening, Gretchen and I watched the new Fantastic Four movie. I did not like it as much as I did the new Superman movie, but I also didn't go to a theater and pay to see it, so these things average out. All things considered, it was better than I had expected. The bits online that had complained about Sue being the leader of the Fantastic Four were, in my opinion, wrong. She was leading the Future Foundation, but that's a diplomatic function as set up in the film and that's really not Reed's area of interest. And Sue's invisible force field has always been one heckuva weapon, so it was nice to see her making good use of it.

And the retro setup, with the FF being the only superheroes in the universe, was handled nicely. Obviously, this is going to stop being a thing (no pun intended) since they are coming back in "Avengers: Doomsday", but that seems to be a big cross-universe adventure. When it's over, I expect the MCU to be thoroughly mix-mastered with the Avengers, FF, and the X-Men all operating in the same universe.

But we'll see.