What makes a delightful convention? Seeing as how I’m not on staff for Capricon, it’s mostly about seeing friends, making some new friends, and since 2019, helping to host a Box Fort-themed party.
The Box Fort parties are always hosted at Capricon; our first two were at a hotel in Wheeling. I built a box fort in my living room in 2021, when the convention went virtual because of the pandemic, and we built our box forts in a downtown Chicago hotel this year and last. Our space this year was humongous: a Presidential Suite, which has about 2,400 square feet (almost twice the size of my house!). We didn’t use all that space, the bedroom and master bathroom were reserved for the group members staying in the room. That still left us with four distinct areas: the entry from the hall (which is where the arch appeared), the bar area (placed by the attached kitchen), the center area (with a low table, perfect for coloring or drawing), and the lounge side where we ran movies.
The convention theme was the afterlife, so our party theme was Schrödinger’s Box Fort, which meant there were cat cutouts (paper and cardboard) spread throughout the boxes. By the end of the weekend, some of them had been colored by attendees.
In addition to the parties, I volunteered to be on some panels, managed to attend a couple panels and a concert, and did a little bit of shopping. And a decent amount of walking – only about 3 miles a day, down from the Chicon average of 5 miles a day. (To be fair, the hotel layouts were different.)
I have made myself a mental note to take the Monday after Capricon off next year to recover. We estimate it took about 9 hours to build the box fort; disassembling all of the boxes on Sunday morning took about 3. (That doesn’t even include the other clean-up.) All in all, I had a great time and look forward to next year’s Box Fort, when we celebrate our 5th anniversary. (We’re not counting the virtual one, OK?)