Otakon. This will be my first year attending as I have been stuck at home working in previous years. I almost didn't let him return to Otakon after 2001. He called one night that year raving madly about rats in the streets, floods and manhole covers flying through the air. I thought he was drunk as a skunk and hung up on him. I told him to call me back when he was sober. Little did I know the streets WERE flooded due to pipes rupturing from an underground tunnel fire and rats were swimming around the city. Oops. I never should have doubted him. I need to tune into the news more often. That was the last time I drove Piro to the airport and waited with him at the gate and picked him up there too - 9/11 was just around the corner. I hope this year there are no catastrophes.

I've heard Otakon is a madhouse. The funny thing is I hate crowds. Well, I hate being in crowds. If there are people out there who don't mind being cheek to jowl with others like so many cattle in a pen - good for them. I really dislike being jostled and bumped or getting swept away by a mass of people heading in the opposite direction I want to go. This applies to many venues including malls around Christmas, the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and the U of M diag at class changes.

On top of my natural dislike of crowds, I am scheduled for out patient surgery on my foot in a month and am worried about the safety of said foot with thousands of other feet tramping around. I am shocked at what the medical profession considers 'in office procedures' that can be done by a general practitioner. I'm not saying I need to stay overnight in a hospital but could it at least take place near one. This office is next to the freaking MALL. He might as well come to my house - it is much closer to the hospital should anything go wrong and there is less traffic out this way.

Yeah, I'm a little freaked. I can't imagine where on a foot you could get a shot that would not hurt like hell. They better be able to lash both, and possibly all, of my extremities down because I don't think I'm going to just sit there and take it. I can't think about this anymore. I'm going to need valium.

Well, we are leaving in 10 hours for Baltimore. I got 'Running with Scissors' on CD so I hope the time passes quickly. Of course it won't take the 19 hours that the drive back from Katsucon took and I won't have to put the strap of cell phone though my zipper pull in case we get into a wreck... I thought that would be a big pisser to get into a wreck and have a cell phone but lose it in the dark or it be out of reach while you're trapped in the wreckage. Man, that would suck. What really, really, really sucks is the fact I still have to pack!