India Fisher and Paul McGann at their panel.

Photo of Paul.

Paul McGann signs Lance’s t-shirt.

Paul signs a photo for dark_pheonix while holding her surrogate.

We’d been having a blast so far this convention, but unfortunately, tragedy has struck! judiang has fallen ill! 🙁 After the autograph session, she took ill and has been sick now for several hours. elsaf and I are worried about her and have done what we can to help her out (Elsa doing the most – wonderful woman). I’m sure she’ll lick it, but bleh, I really feel sorry for her right now! Poor baby!

Before this unfortunate happenstance, things were going well today. We breakfasted at Steak & Shake with hergrace and her family, Estelle & her son, and Mona. While there, Steph and I discovered they had Egg Nog shakes! Hmmmm, perhaps Steak & Shake might make a good lunch as well. I had the bagel, egg, cheese & bacon sandwich and a hot cocoa. Pretty good eats.

We returned to the hotel to sit at our “usual” table near the main ballroom and folks chatted. I did another run of the Dealer’s room and this time bought myself an MP3 CD of Death Comes to Time. I have the original CD, but wanted to check out the bonus features of the enhanced CD set. $38 was a bit more than I had planned on paying, but hey, it was my only purchase this con (other than the $2 PMEB button for charity and the $6 t-shirt that Estelle was selling for the McGann Library patrons). Oh yeah, there was food and drink that I bought, but that doesn’t count.

After wiling away the morning, Steph, Mona, Elsa and I returned to Steak & Shake for lunch. And as we’d pondered doing earlier, Steph and I had egg nog shakes with our lunch. Yummy! I picked up another egg nog shake and a chocolate shake for Judi and miz_em and then we stopped at Krispy Kreme so that Elsa could buy 2 dozen donuts for the PMEBers and McGann Library patrons. Our final stop was the liquor store where Steph and I picked up two bottles of wine and a six-pack of Guiness for the evening party. While on the way back, Mona played some tunes from Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical in which Steph’s brother is a puppeteer.

The panel that we were all waiting for was the McGann panel which started at 3:30pm. Jason Haigh-Ellery, India Fisher, and Gary Russell from Big Finish were there, as well as Paul McGann and a late arrival Yee Jee Tso (who was stuck doing autographs). It was an entertaining panel, with Paul getting the most questions and the most laughs. I did ask Yee Jee a question when I wondered whether he actually got to meet the Muppets when he was in the recent Christmas special. The sad answer, no.

After the panel we headed off to the autograph session. Judi and I got a decent place in the line (thanks to the reserved seats) and Elsa joined us shortly as Official Photographer. Lance was very good in the line and got many pets from folks to-ing and fro-ing. We were in line for half an hour before we got to McGann and co. I bought 2 photos – one for me and one for dark_pheonix (surprise!). I also bought a photo of India for her to sign. Alas, I had nothing for Rob Shearman to sign – though he was entertained by Lance. India signed my picture and soon Judi was in front of McGann.

“I have something that really takes the cake here,” she said. “Will you sign my dog?” Paul laughed and said “You are joking, aren’t you?” But Judi had picked up Lance and pulled his shirt down tight. And Paul, laughing the whole time, signed Lance’s t-shirt. So, after that moment of silly, I didn’t feel bad at all for asking Paul to hold onto a small stuffed Penguin while he signed the photo for dark_pheonix. So there ya go – your surrogate has met Mr. McGann!

It was after the session that Judi started feeling poorly (and quickly!) I brought left-over donuts and the bottle of wine I bought to the Room Party room, where several ladies were already gathered. We decided to give Chinese food a try and I thought egg drop soup might be something that Judi could eat. (Turns out, no – she’s not eaten anything yet, but she’s not been sick lately, so there’s improvement!) Elsa got egg drop soup and I got pork lo mein. The entire order for all of us at the room party was over $100. Emily called it in and I collected money. We got a nice tip for the lady who delivered it (in a huge box on a little cart), too.

The party broke up when it was nearly time for the TV Movie to be treated to MST3K-style treatment. I headed down to watch, but they were waiting on the judging for the masquerade yet. So they were doing a Doctor Who-themed Match Game. Some funny stuff there. The masquerade winners were eventually announced and the TV Movie was finally started. I watched (as I often do) until we got to the “These shoes!” bit, and then I headed back to the room, where I am typing all of this up. Judi’s not been sick for over an hour now, so there’s progress! Get well soon, Judi!