GrangeCon4 2010

GrangeCon.org

2010 Photos

Scheduled Events

(that actually happened)

FRIDAY

Dueling Quotes

SATURDAY

Breakfast @ Eden Resort

Book Group

Dinner @ Cat's Meow 5PM

SteamWerk Ball @

Chameleon Club 9PM

SUNDAY

Skiffy Surprise Scavenger

Hunt

Paper Airplane Contest

Bake Off

Fireworks by

ExplosionMaster Paul

Name That Tune with

TuneMaster Bill

MONDAY

Breakfast @ Eden Resort

GrangeCon4 was held at the Eden Resort on July 4th weekend. This year we had a 2 floor Villa, #547, instead of the usual 2 suites in the main building. This gave us much needed space as well as a full kitchen but due to the additional cost there was a registration fee this year: $10 for the weekend, $5 for a day.

GrangeCon4 began on Friday evening July 2 and ended Monday July 5 at 1pm. GrangeCon4 was the most fun yet! We had 14 attendees staying over in the hotel and 7 who joined us every day.

Jess & Green joined GrangeCon for the first time (first SF Con?) and Kira, who was visiting the Raffensperger’s for the weekend, also attended for the first time.

Friday evening was quiet: settling in, visiting, catching up. All of the “con committee” (read that as gang, melee, or chaos) had an unbelievable amount of stuff to cart in, with Bret being the undisputed king of stuff (2 car loads). But WOW what great contributions. Bret is now officially our con decorator! He brought a stellar mobile of the solar system, which was hung from the chandelier; a green inflatable alien, which stood on the landing to the main floor, arm raised in greeting; an inflatable Dalek which was given its own name tag reading “Dale K Fleet”;and many posters which were hung around the main room. Everyone got take out for dinner and afterward we attempted Dueling Quotes, in which everyone attempted to guess the source of a given quote. This was only marginally successful – if any attendees have suggestions to improve this event please let us know!

Since we had a full kitchen with a built in eating area we had plenty of space for lots of munchies and drinks.

As Con Suites go, or even con parties, GrangeCon4 was better dressed and better stocked than any I have been to in a long time!

Traditional Saturday evening dinner

We convoyed out to Manheim to the Cat’s Meow for dinner. The Katz Klan, who had spent the day at Hershey Park, met us there as did as did Steph’s fiancé Tim, bringing the head count to 22 for dinner. A record?

New This Year! Paper Airplane Contest

Bill organized a paper airplane contest. Since the main floor had a cathedral ceiling and an open stairway to the 2nd floor it was ideal for this event. Everyone who wanted to take part made up to 3 designs. The flights were judged for time in the air and distance, with awards (books or DVDs) to the best in each category.

Skiffy Surprise

As promised, Skiffy Surprise Scavenger Hunt returned this year. The prizes this year were SF books and DVDs. Although there were multiple ways you could win a Skiffy Surprise the most fun, by far and away, was the Skiffy Surprise Scavenger Hunt for the hidden winning stickers on Sunday afternoon.

Bake Off

Bret won the coveted Frying Pan of Doom for his Vegetarian Chili. This year all the top contenders were main dishes or appetizers: Steph’s Sausage Dip, Roger’s BBQ chicken, and, of course, Bret’s chili. Green recognized the source of the Bake Off (the only person to do so!) and even though it was her first GrangeCon she brought her ‘Mum’s Muffins’ as an entry.

Bake Off Entries

Fireworks

After the Bake Off 10-12 of us trooped over to the empty parking lot across from the Eden Resort to set off fireworks. Unfortunately a security guard showed up so we decided to adjourn to a field down the street. The uneven surface did not lend itself to fireworks but we persevered. One of the most entertaining fireworks were the pyramids that whistle and sail off into the trees, onto housetops, etc. Green proved unusually adept at locating the spent pyramids, even in the dark!

Name That Tune

As usual, Name That Tune Tune (actually Name That Film from a snippet of its score) stumped everyone most of the time. No surprise there. Bill always has more faith in our memories than is warranted by our yearly performance. It does, however, elicit a discussion of films. In between Bill’s tracks Bret offered snippets of TV themes. This proved to be Pat’s forte. He astounded Bret by getting them within a few bars, often a few notes, and in some cases singing the entire theme song!

Source That Dialogue

Bill tried something long suggested by Cat, playing bits of dialogue extracted from films and asking the audience to identify the films. Unlike the movie scores game, this one proved too easy, partially because the extracted quotes were so well-known, but more so because in many cases the actor’s voice was immediately identifiable. The suggestion for next year is to have the excerpts printed out and read aloud by Bill (or whomever) to eliminate that identifier.

There were late night discussions; movies & movie discussions; communal breakfasts; gaming; and the Lancaster SF & Fantasy Book Group discussed Robert Sawyer’s WWW.Wake, a Hugo nominee, at pool side. Nate, Paul, and Bill created the GrangeCon4 (faux) Program Book for the entertainment of all. Hopefully we will have it uploaded and available for viewing on the site.

Attendees – Staying over

  1. Cat Calhoun – leader of the Lancaster SF/Fantasy Book Group & co-chair of GrangeCon

  2. Paul Calhoun - author in residence & explosion master

  3. Bill Brown – co-chair of GrangeCon

  4. Bret Bowen – leader of the E-town SciFi Group

  5. Steph Allen

  6. Nate Snelbaker - our master of hilarity

  7. Roger Katz

  8. Marisa Katz

  9. David K

  10. Christine

  11. Ryan

  12. Megan

  13. Pat O’Neill

  14. Jill O’Neill

Attendees – Day Trippers

  1. Jackie

  2. Bryan

  3. David R

  4. Racheal

  5. Kira

  6. Jess

  7. Green

Cat 8.10.10