Okay, big whoops, caught at what was almost the last possible moment where it could still be fixed, but still caught: when I booked our flights for WisCon, I put in the wrong date. We were planning on getting there Thursday the 21st, but I selected Wednesday the 20th. As in, tomorrow.

I guess that explains why the cost was unexpectedly reasonable for ~1 month in advance… it was that much farther away from the weekend.

At this point, it was impossible to change the tickets at anything like a reasonable cost, so the “fix” means just going with it and getting into Madison a day early. Sadly, the con hotel is fully booked for Wednesday, so they could only put us on a waiting list with no promises. Plan A was to stay on the waiting list while seeing if any of the people we know who are local to Madison could give us crash space.

After reflection, though, I decided that trying to find trans-friendly accommodations (preferably with someone we know) on 24 hours notice as a hedge against the wait list not coming through wasn’t a great idea, especially as everybody we know in the Madison area is going to be busy and/or already hosting guests for the con. The real kicker is the short notice thing… travel is already stressful, and we’re going to be doing it with 24 hours less lead time than we had been counting on.

So I bit the bullet and reserved us a room for one night at the hotel around the corner, the Inn on the Park. I know where it is, I’ve seen the inside, I know the logistics of getting luggage from there to the Concourse on foot, it’s in the one part of town that we know.

An extra night in a hotel plus another day of eating out will put a bit of a dent in our budget, but I think it’ll be worth it to not have to worry about logistics and uncertainty when we land. We can just shuttle from the airport more or less like normal, probably have a quiet night in, and be at WisCon central brighter, earlier, and more fresh-faced than we’d planned.

This change is going to have a pretty huge impact on my work week, though… as you might have imagined, I’ve spent the whole afternoon since I learned of my error running around trying to get trip preparations done. Between that and the fact that we’re leaving tomorrow… I don’t know what’s going to happen with Tales of MU this week. Part of it depends on how much quality writing I’m able to do with the rest of this afternoon, after having run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I will do my best to keep you all posted.