[January 26-29, 2012 - Key West, FL - USA]

So, this is the third annual Key West Food and Wine Fest and it’s the third time for me too. Great as always. This time I stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria The Reach which is right next to Waldorf-Astoria Casa Marina. The Casaa Marina is truly “Waldorf-Astoria” class but The Reach really isn’t. They ought to rename it “Hilton The Reach Resort” or something similar.

The Food and Wine fest has it’s Friday event at a different locale every year and this year it was at the Aquarium. It was a cool setting and the number of people attending made the place really hopping. Saturday was the “Duvall Uncorked” event where ticket holders walk from one end of Duvall Street to the other and stop by where ever the sponsors for that year are, from restaurants, shops, etc. to art galleries. I bumped into a couple, Tom and Lynn, along the way and we had a blast. Here are the pics:

3rd Annual Key West Food and Wine Fest

© 2012, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[January 13-16, 2012 - Long Beach, CA - USA]

A steampunk convention was helf aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. The location was unique and the ship fit the steampunk them extremely well. This was a four day convention so it was nice and long. As with any ship I board, whether sea or air, I walked fore to aft, starboard and port. The more interesting parts of the ship were all blocked and locked off, which was annoying, but the open parts were interesting as it were…

There was a “con suite” but it was usually devoid of people. It seemed there were more people who knew each other than just broke off into their own little gatherings. Otherwise, it was basically just what was scheduled. There were no party rooms either. Of the pictures I took, a lot more than usual were blurry, so there aren’t too many pictures (sorry). The surviving pictures are below, click on the pic as usual to get more:

Steam Powered Giraffe on stage aboard the Queen Mary

If these few pics of the Queen Mary intrigue you, you can get more information on the ship here queenmary.com.
 
 
 

© 2012, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[November 12-19, 2011 - Miami - St. Martin - St. Thomas - Bahamas]

Okay, went on another SinglesCruise.com cruise. This time I hit all the islands (St. Martin, St. Thomas and The Bahamas) that I have not yet been to, so that was a bonus. I think this was the biggest singles group I was with, something like 120 or so cruisers.

In addition, the NCL Epic has a “studio lounge” section where solo travelers can get a room by themselves and not pay the double-occupancy rate. There is an accompanying solo lounge and we also have our own ship’s solo cruisers gathering every night at 5:30 for an hour or two. We get our own cruise director, Natalie and our own bartender, Joyce. So that was an awesome setup. Skip the massive hoards of people on deck. (And the lounge turns into a breakfast area with Yvette in the morning so again, a nice quite private area in the morning.)

So between the SinglesCruise.com activities, Solo Lounge Activities, and my own island exploration, it was a hopping cruise. Here are the pictures from the cruise. I shot about 900 pictures and edited the list down to 453. (That’s a record number of pictures I took in a week). Even with 900, I still ha non-duplicated fuzzy pictures so I loaded those on the slide show too. Have fun!

Singles Cruise on the NCL Epic

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[Oct 29, 2011 - New Orleans, LA, US]

Halloween. What to do?

This year, I went to New Orleans, LA (US) for the Endless Night Steampunk Vampire Ball on Oct 29, 2011 at the House of Blues. Started around 9:30pm and I got back to my hotel room around 3:00am. Luckily, I didn’t have to wake up till 9:00am on Sunday so I did get some sleep… SO, here are the pics:

Endless Night Steampunk Vampire Ball New Orleans Oct 29, 2011

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[October 20-23, 2011 - Seattle, WA, US]

Flew from DCA to DFW to SEA, second week in a row… It was a “mileage run” but there was a handy con in Seattle so that was cool.

On top of that, my work buddy collects mugs so he wanted me to go to the first Starbucks store in downtown Seattle so I figured what the heck. And my friends Charissa and Kevin were supposed to fly to Seattle last year for SteamCon II as a wedding gift but they didn’t make it so I got an extra one for her.

I was at the SeaTac Airport Hilton so I hopped on the light rail (which took 45 minutes) to get to downtown Seattle. Got the mug and hung out at the Pike Place Market and went to a French restaurant (Maximilien). They had Absinthe on the menu so I had to have one. That was cool.

After that mini-adventure, I attended ZomBcon 2011. There were a lo of zombies and zombie killers running around. Is there something in the air in Seattle that this con didn’t have a con suite and didn’t have any party rooms? (If you recall my last post on SteamCon III, they didn’t have a con suite; and they had only a few party rooms which were insufficient for the attendance. Oh well.) Anyway, here are the pics from the con…

Seattle, Starbucks First Store, Absinthe at Maximillien and ZomBcon 2011

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[October 13-16 , 2011 - Seattle, WA, US]

Flew from DCA to DFW to SEA. Left 2:00pm Eastern and got to my hotel 1:00am Pacific. Ug, so I slept a bit late…

Hotel was nice and huge with people milling around all day and night. I was at SteamCon II and it was so so, but hey, it was their second year. I thought they would get it together this time but sadly, not quite. There was a major lack of party rooms – I mean attendance was in the thousands and there were a whopping 3 party rooms per night. And it had no con suite! I mean really? There was a volunteers’ room that was about 99.999% empty about 99.999% of the time. That could have been a con suite right there. (And you really don’t have to stock it with goodies, just a few snacks so people can gather and mingle – that’s the whole point – so it can be uber-low cost.)

There were two bars in the hotel so people split between the two and there never was a “place to hang out”. Oh well. Maybe next year. A lot of people were there during the day but dissipated into the ether as it got into the evening. Not a good thing. Well, with all of the handicaps that were there, the intrepid people did hang out and have fun.

Here are the pics from the con…

Girl Genius at SteamCon III

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[September 29, 2011 to October 2, 2011 - Whitefish, MT US]

This was a long trip (and a ton of air miles of course) from DCA (Washington DC) to DFW (Dallas) to SEA (Seattle) to FCA (Glacier Park International Airport). Went to my Cousin Stephanie’s wedding. My dad went too. Stephanie’s dad (my Uncle Jerry) was there of course but the other two uncles from Arizona did not make it. It’s weird to go to a ski resort when there is no snow. Took so many pictures I actually drained the battery in my camera. I took over 500 pics. Here are the 253 better ones…

Stephanie and Jason cutting the cake

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[September 22-25, 2011 - Addison, TX, US]

Flew in the DFW airport and hopped into a limo and went to FenCon in Addison, TX (US). It was a nice hotel and the con was hopping with a lot of people. A great full blown con with a real nice con suite (hospitality room) and there were room parties! So it was a great time! Handed out my ToServeFan.com website cards and a few people signed up for the FaceBook.com/ToServeFan and ToServeFan Twitter page so that was icing on the cake.

Here are the pics from the con…

Honor Harrington, FenCon 2011

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[September 19, 2011 - Alexandria, VA, US]

My friends from college who live in the DC area and I went to dinner at the Bilbo Baggins Pub in Alexandria, VA. Well, we thought it was a dinner. We ordered the 11 beer flight that we shared. Ordered the food and we were merrily tasting away the selections and we “noticed” we didn’t get our food. The server forgot to enter the order! Wow, that was like bizarre. We’ll we were all kinda full on the beer and bread anyway, so we canceled the food. At least I got the Green Dragon beer glass for free!

Here are the pics from the pub…

Bilbo Baggins Pub, Alexandria, VA

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.

[Sep 01-06, 2011 - London (UK)]

Ah, nothing like going to your favorite spot and doing nothing. Okay, well, close to nothing. Went and visited Rob who I have originally met at San Diego ComicCon and a few other places after that. So he was in town and we went to Camden (Camden Town stop on the tube) and had a beer or two. Okay, I had a beer or two, he had coffee

Went back to Camden Stables (famous for shopping bazaar) and walked around a lot the following day in the rain. Got some Indian food from one of the hundreds of food vendors there. Was pretty good. Got a jacket I will need to ‘augment ‘ into steampunk wear

Here are the pics from London…

Camden Docks

© 2011, theGeneral. All rights reserved.