Bill Roper's Journal

And I'm back from Capricon.

This is a slight exaggeration, because I commuted to Capricon this year, living about 15 minutes from the hotel and having discovered that there were no rooms with two beds available in the block when I was looking to reserve a room. (The hotel would rent me a king room in the block or a double/double outside of the block. Neither of those would have been particularly helpful.) Anyway, the result was that I was commuting to the con with a whole passel of kids.

The good news is that sales at this year's Capricon were better than the sales at my last pre-COVID Capricon back in 2020. That is largely because the sales at that previous Capricon were abjectly terrible. (Pulls up old tax paperwork to check. Yes, terrible.)

Looking at the tax paperwork causes me to realize that what I paid for two tables and a membership this year was the same as I paid for three tables and multiple memberships back in 2020. This is not a complaint that's unique to Capricon. *All* of the general-interest SF cons that I go to have boosted their table prices substantially post-COVID at the same time that their membership has gone down noticeably. This is why I no longer attempt to deal at Confusion -- there's just no prospect of making enough sales there for it to make any sort of economic sense.

Now, I understand that conventions are trying to get enough income to survive. I have worked enough cons over the years for that to be clear. But it doesn't *appear*, for instance, that the rates that are being charged to artists are a lot higher than before. (I can't speak exactly to the amounts that the artists are paying for hanging space, but that 10% commission is the same before and after COVID, to the best of my recollection.)

When I questioned the rate increase for the tables at Windycon, I was told that this is what other nearby cons charge and I *think* that referred to anime and possibly furry conventions in the area that have more members than Windycon or Capricon. I could be wrong about which cons they were referring to, as I didn't feel like it was even worth trying to make an argument (and I am *on* the Windycon concom).

All that said, my sales at Capricon were definitely ok. They were a bit less than at Windycon and I have no idea what the actual attendance at the con was like, because you couldn't divine it from the badge numbers. Maybe it was announced at Closing Ceremonies, but I was busy knocking down the table. :)

I just feel like the cons are going to price too many dealers out of the market. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe other dealers are doing a lot more volume of sales than I am, but that's not the impression that I get. I will make money on Capricon this year, but only because I commuted to the con and am only charging one membership against the table. (Which is fair, because I was really the only person who worked the table, which meant I was pretty tied to it.)

This is not a complaint about Capricon. The folks who ran the Dealers' Room were nice and competent and good to me and I *appreciate* that. This is a complaint about general-interest SF cons in general. It would be good if they were not trying to balance their budgets on the backs of the dealers, because having a large and diverse selection of dealers is an asset for a convention, IMO. And if I am going to spend all of my daytime during a convention sitting behind a dealer table, I need to be making my nut or the IRS is going to wonder what I am doing -- and so am I. Witness that I don't try to deal at Confusion any more. :)

Ok, all of that rant out of the way, I had a good time at Capricon. I had some nice conversations. I enjoyed the two panels that I was on. It would have been nice to have a concert, but that didn't work out for whatever reason. Maybe next year. The art auction was a lot of fun and it is great to have K there auctioning beside me and Dr. Bob and Mike. And K's friend from school and Julie ran art along with Lisa and did a fine job. I had fun at the open filking on Saturday -- I was too tired on Friday and had to get back early to open the dealer table (there is a recurring theme here :) ).

The new hotel seems workable, although the restriction on taking things out of the con suite was a bit of a problem when you're a dealer. It is, in any case, in the suburbs, which means that it is much easier for me to deal with. And being able to do move in on Friday made a *big* difference for me.

So I am happy to be back at Capricon for the first time since the remote con in 2021 which was the last time where I ran filking for the con. :) My perfect attendance run is well and truly blown by 2022-2025 and that's ok.

We'll try it again. :)

I need to finish shaving and then I can run over and unload the van for Capricon.

The new CPAP worked admirably last night.

Sam, Bonnie, and I packed out of the room at Confusion at check out time, loaded the car, and just kept going, stopping for a nice lunch at the BBQ place in Chelsea. The weather was good and we made excellent time getting home.

I had a good time. I didn't manage as much music as I'd hoped (and never got to the Dealers' Room), but Clif's and my concert went well, and I had a lot of good conversations.

On the way home, Sally called to let me know that Capricon had resolved their insurance problem, so I should be in the Dealers' Room there -- but not until Friday, because given the amount of time that I've taken off, working a full day on Thursday seems like a really 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!

The prize for not going to Capricon is the opportunity to get some things done around the house this weekend.

We'll see how that goes...

It all starts with getting K to rehearsal tomorrow morning. Happily (for me), it is Gretchen's turn.

The windshield of Gretchen's minivan was a casualty of an errant foul ball at Saturday's softball game. The windshield repair service has been booked and a replacement windshield will be installed tomorrow morning.

Because of this, I will be taking a trip off to Home Depot to acquire some more of the mounting strips for the I-Pass transponder so that it can go back onto the new windshield just as soon as possible. I note that our transponder was scheduled to expire in 11/20, but -- since we've received no notification from the Tollway that it needs to be replaced -- I'm going to assume that expiration date has become obsolete post-COVID. Since I'm going to Home Depot, Gretchen has asked me to hunt down marigolds in the garden section to join the rest of the cavalcade of flowers on the back patio, so I'll take care of that in a few minutes.

Earlier today, we went to Sam's Club and I found a couple of nice steaks that I'll be grilling for Father's Day dinner, along with a steak that we've rescued from the freezer for K. Hmm. I still need other bits for dinner, so I guess I'll stop at the grocery store on the way home from Home Depot. :)

Grilling is going to become marginally more complex in the future, as we use newspaper as fire starter in the chimney, as well as to line Ruby's kennel. While I have over a hundred unread copies of the Chicago Tribune in my garage, we are going to eventually deplete the supply, as I canceled my subscription to the Trib this morning in the wake of the Alden buyouts. I felt a little sorry for the fellow on the end of the phone line this morning when I called to cancel (which appears to be the only way to do it), as he sounded like he had taken a *lot* of phone calls. He asked why I was canceling and I explained that I had a hundred unread copies of the Trib in my garage and that, honestly, you would have to pay *me* to read their remaining columnists. He said he would pass along the feedback.

Gretchen and I had lunch today over at City Barbeque in Park Ridge, where I tried the Chipotle BBQ sandwich, which was quite tasty. I like City BBQ, but I still miss Ted's.

In other news, in and around laundry last night, I downloaded the latest Cubase point update, which seems to have cleared up a lot of stability issues with the point-zero release. The big demo that they sent ran well. Then I pulled up the tracks from the Thieving Magpies concert at Capricon last year. That sounded good too and wasn't trying to crash the machine.

So, having pulled that up and listened to it, a rapid mixdown copy went off to my cohorts in crime today. :)

Ok, off to Home Depot and the grocery store...

I (and the rest of the Capricon committee, along with the Long (Distance) Play concom which is six hours in our future) have officially gone off duty for now, although the Virtual Capricon Dead Goat filk sing is now entering its eighth hour. :)

As the Capricon filk head, I would like to thank everyone who made this happen. This includes all of the people at Capricon who made the tech work, because without the tech, we would have been absolutely nowhere.

I would like to thank our guest of honor, Dr. Cacophonie Tamayo, who played a lot of great music, led panels and theme filks, and who I saw listening whenever I looked in the circle.

I'd like to thank our guest moderators for the open filk (U.S. side of the pond): Merav, Carole, Jesse, and Alyssa, who kept things running smoothly.

I would like to especially thank Xap, our Cafe head, for the incredible amount of work that she did to make the filk track run, as well as Pat, who worked with her to make all of these things happen.

And I would like to thank Lissa and Marilisa (as well as Annie) from Long (Distance) Play for being willing to work together with us across a wide ocean so that we could, with a minimum number of seams, produce a lot of filk programming for our fannish community.

And I would like to thank all of *you* for coming.

I am going to go to bed now. :)

We're in the middle of the Friday Cafe concert schedule for our virtual Capricon. Come on by and drop in!

Progress was made on Capricon things today, which was good, although I still have more pushing to do. But progress is progress. :)

In other news, I figured out how to attach the boom mic stand that I got for Christmas to my desk. Unfortunately, it turns out that the best choice is to attach it to the *front* of the desk, which means that I really don't want to *leave* it there, so I figured I'd unmount it and put it in the closet.

Now the closet in my office (which is also Gretchen's sewing room) is a bit of a mess. Actually, the big problem is the debris field that we've allowed to accumulate in front of it, which we just need to process and make go away. But within the last few weeks, K and Gretchen were looking for fabric for a Christmas project that K wanted to do, so they were trying to get into the largely blockaded closet. I conclude that K tried pushing the closet door in a direction that was blocked, because when I went to move that door today, it really didn't want to move.

A short inspection indicated that the doohickey that lets the door hang from the track had been ripped half out of its socket by brute force. (Which is why I suspect K in this.) Great. I figured I would unmount it and take a good look at it to see if it could be repaired or whether it needed to be replaced. I unscrewed it from the door and the doohickey split into two pieces. The good news is that it could be reassembled, tightened, and fastened back to the door with the original screws and holes, aided and abetted by a unshelved loose-leaf binder from the debris field which made a fine classical plane which, when shoved under the door, elevated the unsupported end of the door to the right height.

So all things are reassembled now, except the debris field now looks like the Incredible Hulk has rampaged through it (as I was not at all gentle about getting things out of my way), so maybe we should look at putting all this stuff away tomorrow.

Somewhere. :)

I am still not nearly back to 100%, but I am largely functional today, save for my voice, which is going to be a longer recovery project, and the continuing need to clear crap out of my lungs. Overall, this makes me happy. :)

In other news, the last meeting for the 2020 Capricon was today, so that's cleaned up and done with.