The day after we finished up with Indiana Comic Con 2015, I could already feel “con crud” creeping into my system. I’m no stranger to the notorious cold/flu that strikes at convention attendees after they’ve hung around a few thousand fans too many, but I’d hoped to dodge a bullet this time. Between the cool temps and Friday’s nonstop rains, my good health wasn’t meant to last.

I held out for as long as I could. I lasted three business days before I surrendered and took a sick day so I retreat into defensive hibernation. After last night proved disastrously unhelpful, today I slept till noon, took more countermeasures, and tried to keep distracted with news and hobbies and such.

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Final attendance tally on the Indiana Comic Con’s Facebook page is 36,000 this year. That’s far, far more than showed up in 2014, and even more remarkable when you consider this time everyone was allowed inside for a change, no more shutdowns to appease any pesky fire marshals. They also addressed Carrie Fisher’s GlitterGate at length, in response to complaints from fans who spent 4-8 hours in autograph lines:

Carrie Fisher’s line was the obvious glaring issue from this years convention. The majority of the negative feedback we’ve received is regarding Carrie’s line. Why is that? Because it was a very long line that moved at a very slow pace. Carrie drew the largest crowd out of everyone because people love Carrie! However, Carrie also processed attendees the slowest we’ve ever experienced, due to the ritual with the glitter and other externalities. When you mix an extremely large turnout with a very slow moving line, you’ve got the ingredients for a problem. We attempted to stop the ritual but were not successful. We appropriated and sold no more tickets for Carrie than experience has taught us someone can process at a smooth rate. We were unaware of the glitter ritual prior to this convention. Lots of attendees were frustrated by the very slow moving line, but ultimately it was out of our control due to the unforeseen glitter–as mentioned, we did all we could to lobby for a faster moving line. Sorry about that. 😦

That doesn’t address the issues with poor line management or ill-informed volunteers, but it’s more candid than I expected under the circumstances. I now have this mental image of a basically powerless showrunner approaching Fisher and asking her meekly if she’d kindly stop glittering people, followed by her response of a glitter-bomb to his face.

Sadly, we heard from a friend who braved Fisher’s line on Sunday that the con decided, if they couldn’t control their own contracted guest, then they’d see who else they could control instead. To minimize the number of glitter victims and thereby shorten the line, at some point they decreed that each person could remain in her autograph line only if each and every person had at least one autograph ticket. If a married couple bought only one ticket, then one could stay but the other got bounced. If a family of five bought less than five tickets, it was time for Sophie’s Choice.

Had this spontaneous, unwritten policy been implemented earlier on Saturday, I would’ve been among those bounced. I’ve never heard of a con resort to this kind of desperate damage control. I’m sorry to see their desire to please more fans simply created a new way to disappoint others.

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In other news from the Department of Money, we’ve now received our tax refunds, but over half the funds are already spoken for. That’s no fun.

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In happier news for us: Sleepy Hollow has been renewed! Despite falling ratings, Fox is giving them another chance, which means now I have six or seven months to think of ways to make MCC’s recaps better, faster, shorter, more accessible, or more fun to write for a general audience. Or I can just keep doing what I’m doing, even though there are now five million more fans, professionals, or hate-watchers doing the exact same thing for more fulfilling interactive and traffic results.

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Someone tried resetting the password on my ancient, moribund LiveJournal account without permission. How quaint. Do spammers really still look at those?

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More friends seem to be reading comics than normal! Granted, it’s because of Marvel’s new Star Wars line, and they seem to be reading only the Star Wars books, but it’s a start. If only I could find ways to hook them on Silver Surfer or the delightfully nutty Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I could truly enrich their lives.

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The relentlessly upbeat first episode of Netflix’s new sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was kind of adorable, but I refuse to binge-watch all thirteen episodes in a single week. That’s like devouring all your Christmas candy by 10 a.m. Christmas Day. There’s something to be said for the act of savoring. I’ll get to the rest when I get to them, possibly on a weekly basis if that’s what it takes to prolong the potential magic.

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When the con crud first struck, I hoped it would go away on its own. Alas, no such mercy. My sinuses are my biggest weakness, but the only relevant meds we had on hand were a bottle of nasal spray that caked the back of my throat and ruined last night’s sleep, and a box of TheraFlu that expired in 2007. I forgot I used up all our sinus meds last winter.

I ventured outside only once today and picked up the seven-dollar pillbox shown in the first photo. For an extra five dollars I could’ve bought the same brand’s “MAXIMUM SINUS” variant, which contained the same three drugs in identical doses, down to the milligram. I read through the mandatory “Inactive Ingredients”, which contained all the same Greco-Latin chemical names in the same order. The only differences: the seven-dollar variety contains sucralose, a.k.a. Splenda. The twelve-dollar MAXIMUM SINUS version has no Splenda, but adds food coloring instead.

That was it. Those were the differences. I stood there for several minutes re-reading the labels to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Thankfully no one sicced security on me.

They had several boxes of not-maximum and only one box of MAXIMUM SINUS left. Here’s hoping those other shoppers found comfort in the healing power of color.