Part Three: "Mmm, unprocessed fiiish stiiicks..."
(Or Something Of The Sort)


Saturday, July 20th:

For some ungodly reason, I woke up at seven in the flippin' a.m. Saturday morning, got up and dressed and went out with my mother hunting for some breakfast. We found a Starbucks within walking distance and had coffee--well, my mom had coffee, I had orange juice--and assorted things from their bakery. When we walked back there were more people in the lobby, so we stayed there and chatted incessantly. We also clogged the hallway, but we didn't mind. ;-) Jerle showed up and I directed her to the coffee, which resulted in there being a photo somewhere out there of her standing in front of Starbucks with a cup of coffee in each hand.

While we were standing in the hallway talking several strange things happened. First of all Frodo appeared out of nowhere and I managed to guess who he was for no good reason, given that I'd always pictured him as Captain Locke from Ozy and Millie. Then lonely took a picture of Fahrmboy's ear for no particular reason. It came out rather well, actually, for a picture of an ear. Then lonely spontaneously bent down on one knee and proposed to me for Fahrmy with a 100% aluminum key ring. I would have accepted (once I stopped laughing nervously and waiting for people to take pictures) but I had a suspicion that my mother would have leapt in and chewed my head off. Ow.

Not long after the string of strange events people started to consider going to the first museum, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology so I randomly shouted out that we had three extra seats in our car. Scraper was going to hitch a ride but decided to go with someone who was bringing her stuff and knew where they were going. (Unlike us.) Instead Erithan, Lord Hydronium and Marcel (MPaans) hitched a ride and Kirsehn lent us a map of Philly, so we semi-lost our way down there. Luckily Anna Catherine, her father and assorted people followed us so we were able to stop and confer regarding directions on a not-so-busy street. We found a place and parked, then trooped into the museum just in time, since the rest of the group had just arrived.

After everyone bought their tickets sepdet was going to give us a tour of at least part of the museum, including the Roman and Greek world, but apparently the third floor had no access whatsoever. None of the stairs or elevators went up there, and it turned out that the Roman world was being reconstructed along with another exhibit up there. So sepdet took us on a tour of the Egyptian rooms, which was great fun. She also told us a bit about the Chinese and Arabian exhibits before turning us loose to wander on our own for the rest of the time.

I wandered around a little sort of on my own and watched lonely take lots of pictures of Danny. Then I sort of followed him and Al downstairs, since there was no air conditioning in the building and I figured it would be cooler downstairs. They took yet more pictures but I didn't, since my camera's evil flash would reflect off the glass protecting some of the exhibits. Then somebody found a way up to the Greek Room up on the third floor via some obscure staircase, so we went up along with Lord Hydronium, Saphira, Zabe, Frodo and one other person who I can't remember and is going to kill me for forgetting. When we got to the top of the stairs there were two doors, but one was locked and alarmed so we went in the other door, which happened to be a fire door. And lo and behold, there was actually air conditioning in the Greek Room, so we stayed a lot longer than Al liked; he kept insisting that we probably shouldn't be up here and were going to get in trouble over this.

Then when we wanted to leave the only exit was through the same fire door, which said that once the door was opened the alarm would sound in fifteen seconds. Eight of us got out the door in seven seconds (Lord Hydronium counted) and then we ran back downstairs and acted like nothing ever happened. Scraper had us pose for a group photo, the entire group raided the gift store and then all embarked on a search for lunch at the museum cafe.

Lunch was pretty good; Danny got out his iBook (yes, he was carrying it around the entire time in a big metal case) and showed off some spiffy animation things. Then my mother got directions from Kha'tie and Jerle to get to the Franklin Institute, I grabbed Lord Hydronium and Erithan, and we set off again. But first, we had to find Marcel, who was nowhere in sight. I'd seen him walking down on the first floor through a window at lunch, but that was the last I'd seen of him, so we embarked on the quest to find Marcel. Which didn't turn out very well.

When we couldn't find him anywhere on the first floor we had the woman at the front desk contact security with a description of him to see if they could find him. We hung around for a while and waited while the reports came in and discovered that...there was no Marcel in the entire building. So we decided that if he really was there and locked in an obscure place somewhere that he'd just have to fend for himself, because we left without him. Halfway to the Franklin Erithan got a call on her cell phone from Jerle, though, explaining that Marcel had been at the Franklin the entire time. At that point we decided that continuing the tradition of "pulling a Drew" was not a good thing.

We got to the Franklin late and couldn't find anybody, so Erithan called Jerle again and had her walk us to where everyone was. They were posing for group photos and we'd missed out on a lot of them, but we managed to sit in for a few of them. Someone took one with my camera, but it came out too blurry to use. :-(

After we gave Scraper lots and lots of money and she gave us stickers, we all split up. Well, sort of. A lot of people just followed me up to the fourth floor and we worked our way down to the first floor again. We spent a lot of time in an exhibit on the "secrets of aging" where lonely, R-chan, Fahrmboy and I watched a video on Alzheimer's that went on for so long we thought we were getting Alzheimer's.

Somewhere along the way D'stin appeared out of nowhere and drafted us to search for Scraper and bring her to the front of the museum gift shop on some top-secret mission. We found her and dragged her down there, collecting lots of Mysteriumites as we went along. It turned out that D'stin had found some penguin building blocks in the gift store and wanted to send a bunch of them along to RAWA. After much debate we finally bought sixty of the things and decided that each of us would sign them later. There was more throwing money at Scraper, and then everybody wandered off to the kids' exhibit for goodness-knows what reason.

After another hour at around five we left with just Lord Hydronium (thank you to Erithan and Marcel for telling us they were leaving with someone else...) and drove back to the hotel. Jerle invited my mother and I to go with her and Danny R to the Chinese restaurant we'd eaten at before, since we'd told a few people that it was pretty good and nearby. When we got there--surprise!--there was already a table of Mysteriumites already there. Kha'tie and family, Lee "Booklover" and Marcel invited us to sit with them, so we added on an extra table and sat down. Then sepdet, Tanika and M'lah showed up with M'lah in full (and very cool looking) black goth garb so they ate with us as well. There were probably some other people there too, but I forget who they were. Again. We just ordered one thing for every two people and passed them around and discussed how we were all getting to the Merriot for the special presentation.

Jerle offered to take us in her mini-van along with Danny, sepdet, M'lah and Tanika, so we hurried back to the hotel with her after eating and looked around for M'lah, who had gone to get her laptop earlier. With ten minutes to go before the presentation Tanika went on a mad search for M'lah and I went to get a map from our room so my mother could navigate for Jerle and, after we all set land speed records, we lost Tanika. Oops. But we found them again right before we left and Jerle drove like a maniac to get us to the Merriot on time. We made it to the Merriot and up to the fifth floor with about one minute to spare, but the presentation started late anyway, so we were safe.

In regards to the special presentation, I can't say much beyond what's already said in my To D'ni section. I can, however, tell you the explanation behind this particular journal's title. In the Age we visited in Myst Online, we managed to catch a glimpse of a fish swimming around. IMForeman, who was running the presentation, commented to RAWA and Rand over the mic, "Mmm...unprocessed fiiish stiiicks..." This was so hilarious to us, us being excited and just about pinging off the walls as it was, that we've been saying it ever since.

Yeah, I know, we're weird.

As is well known by now, we were also personally invited by Rand and RAWA to come to Spokane for Mysterium in 2003. Kha'tie is still plotting for a "MYSTery Mobile" (pun intended) bus to come and kidnap--err, take people along for the ride to Spokane. Keep bugging her for it to make it work, folks. ;-)

After the presentations IMF graciously lent his computer out (okay, okay, so we hijacked it) so we could all log on to CyanChat and say hello to all the folks at UnMysterium. M'lah even got to chat in CC for the first time. Of course, eventually they had to take IMF's computer away, so give-a-way prizes were awarded via drawing numbers out of a hat to distract us. They gave away some great stuff, including Channelwood posters, copies of sketches from Myst III: Exile and Exile t-shirts. I can't rightly remember who got what, though I do remember that lonely got yet another thing to add to his Myst Stuff Collection. Yes, that's right, he won the Myst III: Exile sketches of Achenar. You can all mug him later.

People gathered around and talked for a little while afterwards, but people were starting to get a little tired, especially my mother. So the Jerle-Mobile crew piled back into her mini-van and drove back to the Best Western--getting lost along the way, mind you, as we did going just about anywhere in Philly--and made it back right in time to go sign penguins for RAWA in Scraper's room. After signing my name on one of the penguins of doom, I said goodbye to anybody I could find (since I had to leave early Sunday morning) and then turned in.

And Sunday, since I wasn't there for EDGE and spent most of it in a car looking for the other end of Ohio, wasn't very interesting at all.

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