On the road again: Balticon, day 1

After three not very restful hours of sleep, I got out of bed with every intention of showering, packing, and being on the road in 45 minutes. I then checked work email.

Two hours later, we left.

This delay caused us to hit heavy rush-hour traffic on both the D.C. and Baltimore beltways. Wow, was that traffic intense. I have trouble picturing the inducement it would take to make me commute in that rough snarl every day.

Ultimately, though, we made it to the con hotel. My room is nice, easily the best I've had here, but the bandwidth sucks. We are talking peak rates around 24KBps--and all the fans haven't hit yet. I may need to take up residence at a local Panera just to be able to work.

Kyle met us at the hotel a bit later, and we headed off to dinner at Dogwood, a place in Hampden that none of us had visited before. Dogwood emphasizes local sourcing and training people from the community. It's a very socially conscious place that also serves good food. I love its motto:

Eat well. Do good.

All the dishes we tried were quite tasty.

If you live around here and haven't eaten at Dogwood, give it a try. I'd definitely go back.

After hanging out for a while, I turned to work, to which I shall return now.