I always get surprised by how fast Gally is over on Sunday. Objectively, it’s a shorter day, ending after Closing Ceremonies around 7pm instead of programming running into late night hours. But even knowing that and that LobbyCon will still be in full swing into the wee hours like every other night, I can never quite believe it’s time to say goodbye to my friends for another year.

The day started off great, though, as I finally had the chance to spend time with my local friends. We had a lovely time together, and they got me back in plenty of time to go grab my badge and such and head down to the con floor.

Aside from snagging my last couple of autographs, my first event was a panel called Stories from the American Trenches [Panel: Ken Deep, Jan Fennick, Steven Warren Hill, Jennifer Adams Kelley, Shaun Lyon, Robert Warnock]. It covered both the production and contents of the book Red White and Who: The Story of Doctor Who in America. The main goal of the work is (I would say) to collect, clarify, and preserve stories and facts about fandom in the US, from the beginning until 2017. The result is a 700-page tome filled with treasures.

Although when specific experiences were discussed, they were pretty much those of the panelists and thus primarily from the perspective of those who came to the show as children in the Classic era, there is more in the book. I found myself having an odd reaction to the conversation, and realizing I fit in a really weird in-between space. I am of an age with those panelists, and have an innate cultural understanding of things like the public television pledge drives that were such a big part of American fandom in the 1980s—but my own fandom is only ten years old. That made for something of a surreal panel.

It’s feels really strange to be posting my first update when the con is effectively half over already, and yet here we are. Though Gally “officially” opens on Friday morning, there’s an organized event on Thursday evening (the ice cream social and dance), and LobbyCon begins well before that.

As I understand it, the term LobbyCon began as a description for the pre-con socializing in the lobby on the Thursday night before Gally. Over the years, though, as people arrive earlier and earlier (some folks get in on Monday or even Sunday), LobbyCon has expanded to fill the available space. There was already plenty of LobbyCon’ing happening on Wednesday night (my first night this year), and I imagine there was even some on at least Tuesday.

As for ribbon trading, that began in earnest this year in the early afternoon on Thursday, an hour or two before registration even opened for folks to pick up their badges. I didn’t bother to attach them all to my badge that night, starting fresh on Friday, and I literally have a stack of ribbons 2-3 inches thick waiting for attention. The ribbon game is still strong.

However, I think I can safely say this year that a trend I had started to notice in the last couple years is now a full-blown Thing: ribbons aren’t the only tradables changing hands. Aside from my friend’s fabulous and ever-popular commemorative coins, people are making their own knitted ribbon/badge bling, tiny bowties, or buttons. So. Many. Buttons.

Sundays at Gally always have their own peculiar flavor. There is still a lot to do and see, but the specter of the end of the con hangs over everything, too. At the beginning of the day, though, it’s relatively easy to pretend there’s another two days of the con to go.

This year I spent most of my day in Program D at the discussion panels rather than in Program A at the main stage big events and interview panels as I have often done. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the day I wanted to be in both places at once. Program A held a live commentary screening of The Waters of Mars with actual NASA scientists giving the commentary. I know I would have loved it, and been nodding along (perhaps even noticing some of the same things as they were said), and both the tweets I read and personal accounts I heard indicated it was a hoot.

Instead, though, I chose to go to the panel about diversity in Doctor Who. It’s unfortunate that programming came down to a single panel encompassing every type of human diversity in a mere fifty minutes (that’s hardly enough to talk about any one, let alone all of them), but it was still good to have the conversation. Interestingly, the only time casting a new Doctor came up was at the end, when it was noted that it felt like this had been the only panel of the weekend that hadn’t discussed it.

It’s Gally time again, and the con has officially been in full swing since Thursday night. Unofficially, though, there have been folks around since at least Monday. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, but only made my way over to the Marriott Lobby (I’m staying elsewhere this year) on Thursday morning. Every year, it seems, things ramp up earlier and earlier as folks make the most of opportunities to play tourist while in town.

On Friday, the non-con story of the day was rain. The local news seemed to be making it out to be fairly apocalyptic—and to be fair, in some parts of the region there have been several inches since the storm broke—but near LAX, and for a Midwesterner, the rain seemed steady but light. I was fortunate enough to make it to the Marriott before the rain started, and I was extremely glad not to be out in it once the wind picked up.

I thus spent a couple of hours in the Lobby chatting with random folks until the con’s opening salvo: the Radio Free Skaro live episode. I sat through the first two sections (interviews with Paul McGann and with Philip Hinchcliffe and Roger Murray-Leach, respectively) before making a couple of passes around the Dealers’ Room to ogle swag and grab some autographs.

Saturday at Gally always feels most hectic, though not in a frenetic way. The stress, at least for me, tends to come from the fact that there’s always awesomeness available than it’s ever possible for a single person to partake in (though I’ll admit I’ve seen a few folks with time turners…). On the up side, programming never begins first thing in the morning. For some attendees, that means they have time recover a little from the previous night’s hangover; for me, it means time to blog.

So after getting my Day One recap finished and posted, I had plenty of time to laze about our hotel room and get dressed in my cosplay for the day before my first event. That happened to be the second of my two panels. Just as my first one, “Ninth Symphony” (a review of Series Nine) proved to be a fascinating discussion with lots of input from both the panelists and audience members.

From there, I headed straight to the Verity! meetup where they were giving away Verity! tumblers, candy, and ribbons (each Verity had her own color). Someone even brought a cake to share (including the inscription “Because cake should be a business expense”). Everyone, fans and podcasters alike, was lovely, and I was sad to duck out early.