It’s February! Usually right about now I’d be spamming my readers with all the thoughts about how I’m looking forward to my annual visit to Los Angeles for Gallifrey One and letting you all know when to expect my upcoming daily recaps. However, thanks to the US’s dismal response to the COVID pandemic so far, Gallifrey One has long since made the responsible decision to cancel this year’s con, postponing Thirty-Second to Midnight until 2022.

So instead of being on a plane (or at least at an airport) when this posts, I’ll be at home—like all of my Gally friends—thinking about all the things I love about going to that con, and keeping my fingers crossed that things will go to plan next year. Since I won’t have that Gally content to share this year, I’ll just share a short list of the things that make Gally so special to me. Maybe some of you will see familiar themes, too. (Feel free to share some of your favorite parts of attending your favorite con in the comments.)

• Thursday night dinner
  It’s become a tradition to have dinner with friends (particularly Derek) at Aliki’s, a fabulous, tiny little Greek restaurant about a ten-minute walk from the Marriott where Gally happens. The food is always delicious, and it’s one of the few times I really get to sit down and just chat with this particular group of friends.
• Being the first Gally person Jeff sees
  It seems that when my friend Jeff arrives at the Marriott, somehow I am always sitting in the lobby, and thereby end up being the first of his Gally friends/acquaintances that he sees. Perhaps one year out of the past five or so has someone else held that honor. It’s now become my goal to ensure I retain this particular crown.
• Hanging out with Seth in person
  How many of you have close online friends, those people you talk with daily, or nearly so? How often do you get to spend time with them in meat space? Any of you who have that kind of friend know how precious those hours spent together “in real life” can be. That’s one of the things I’ll miss most about Gally this year. It’s not like I won’t talk with him anyway, but there’s just something about the in-person experience that can’t be replaced.
• Seeing all those once-a-year friends
  Speaking of which, there are a great many people I met at Gally who are dear to my heart, but I only get to see face to face for this one weekend every year. (And sometimes not even that, as from time to time one or another of them can’t make it to the con for some reason.) I may keep in touch with them vaguely through the year on various social media platforms, but we can slip easily back into that comfortable kind of interaction no matter when we see each other again, and that’s priceless.
• HUGS
  Nuff said.
• Paneling with awesome folx
  When I first started going to Gally, I didn’t know anyone else, and so it was all about meeting the celebrity guests and sitting in on their panels. By now, I’ve seen several of those guests multiple times, and guests are generally less of a draw for me. But the general panels, in which attendees discuss various topics, are still a great place to share one’s opinions, hear new perspectives, and just generally re-energize oneself and one’s love of the show.
• Standing in line
  Yeah, I know this one’s weird. But in all my Gally experiences, never once have I not gone to stand in some line or another—photo ops, autographs, getting into a panel. Although the (in)famous carpet is gone, there’s something about just standing around on the ballroom level of the Marriott with a bunch of other con-goers that just feels like Gally.
• Actually, the food trucks
  Although they’re a recent addition to the Gally experience, I’ve found that I really, really enjoy having the food trucks there. It used to be that I’d have to walk several minutes to a nearby fast food joint for a repetitive meal that I didn’t particularly enjoy, and take a lot of time away from the venue (and often also my friends) to do so. With the food trucks right there on the patio outside the convention hall, mealtime becomes yet another social experience. Plus, the food is pretty darn good.

This year would have been my tenth Gally, which aligns nicely with my ten years of blogging (it’s kind of a bummer I won’t be able to keep that alignment). Despite how desperately I’ll miss it, though, I’m really glad the concom has straight out canceled/postponed this year’s event. There is no way I would feel comfortable (a) traveling, (b) staying in a hotel, or (c) congregating with 3000 of my closest friends(!) at this point in the pandemic, and the FOMO would have been fierce.

So I’ll continue to dream of next year and take comfort in the contact I still have with friends online. After all, the spirit of Gally will continue. All the waiting will just make 2022 all the sweeter.