221B Con 2025: The Day Before

While technically, 221B Con starts late Friday afternoon, if you wander in from the parking lot around three PM on Thursday, chances are that there might be somebody saying hello to you. And chances are they're sitting around a table full of Sherlockians at the bar. Having had a rough night before sleeping on a massage table, a lot of standstill traffic between Nashville and Chattanooga, and not making any of my normal stops for breaks, I had to repair to my room and refresh myself before doing any socializing. But once that was done, I plopped myself down in the bar with Steve and Rusty Mason and Kristin Mertz, got to meet Brian Belanger for the first time, had my chair shaken by Curtis Armstrong, and names, names, names, names.

Eventually I persuaded Steve to stop at Best Buy on the way to dinner at Mellow Mushroom, dragging Brian, Kristin, and Rich Kriscunas well into Peachtree City so I could replace a power cord I had forgotten. Here's a picture of my pizza . . .

I am not going to get into all of the lively conversation that was had, there or later in the hotel lobby bar, but here's the one thing that was noticeably different this year. Sherlockian weekends have always been a bit of a bubble, where we focus on this hobby of ours, talk about events, creative works, our friends, etc., and not much about the world outside. Politics rarely come up. But this year? All of the chaos going on with the American government is actually affecting enough that it kept creeping into coversation. Every now and then I'd get the urge to go, "And now let's talk about something happy," and we would. But current events have definitely permeated our bubble.

Another convention was still in the hotel and the bar/restaurant had no room for us just to hang mid-evening, so I had to snag a long table by the lobby door that's in no-man's land for us to gather. The Atlanta Airport Marriott already started offering up their Sherlockian specialty drinks (The Red Claw, The Secret Weapon, and The Dressed to Kill) and Phil Bergem demonstrated that Minnesota conviviality by picking up a round for us. I gave out a few random books from my defunct dealer's table from years previous. People came and went, and at some point I decided to just start blogging at the table instead of retiring to my room to do it, and here's a picture from that. 

                                  

Plans have been made for the 221st Southumberland Waffleers to venture to a local Waffle House at 7:30 or 9:30 (early and late shifts) in the morning, as our fearless leader had already been Waffle Housing and one of the results can be seen on my head below. And with that, I have to collapse for the evening.