And now I'm home, having enjoyed myself thoroughly at the convention. I'll write more about it in the coming days but now I feel I should tell you about the stupid thing I did. When I travel, I am fierce about packing everything I might need wherever I might roam. Still, even with my lists and checking and double-checking, I always manage to forget something. Sometimes, it's trivial…
But sometimes, it's pretty serious. This time, it was pretty serious. This time, it was my wallet. You know…that thing that contains money, credit cards and my picture I.D. I thought I had it but when I got to the hotel check-in, it turned out I didn't. And as the lady at the desk informed me, this hotel requires that picture I.D. to check in.
I tried pointing out that there was a picture of me in the convention program book. I was even wearing the same hat in that photo that I had on at check-in. She said no, that wouldn't do. The convention staffer who deals with the hotel ran over and assured the desk clerk that I was indeed Mark Evanier and she made me sound very important. That also would not do.
I thought for a moment I was going to have to make the 90 minute round-trip back to my home. Then the desk clerk talked to the manager and someone looked it up and saw that I'd stayed at that hotel several times before. They decided to make an exception.
Fortunately, I had my cell phone and my cell phone has Apple Pay on it so I could use it to leave the credit card deposit and later to pay for some meals. And it has Zelle and PayPal on it so some friends who were selling stuff at the con were willing to give me cash…and it wasn't a loan. They agreed that if I sent a certain amount of money to their bank accounts, they'd hand me the same amount in currency. That covered dinner at a restaurant that doesn't take Apple Pay and I also had cash for tipping purposes.
So it turned out okay but it was still a pretty stupid thing to do.