Okay, everyone has told the story pretty well, so I'll keep mine
short. After pissing and moaning on the newsgroup for a couple of
days that I wouldn't be able to go, I was able to get an affordable
package and decided to surprise everyone. That's what the strange
exchange between Larry and me was about--he had called as requested
and I told him so that I could get an idea of what to expect. He
wanted me to tell the group, but I wanted to surprise them. Billy e-
mailed me that he thought everyone would figure it out, but actually
Jeff Tundis was the only one who had, and he didn't say anything on
the group because he also thought everyone would figure it out. Oh,
and Dave knew because I had called him on Tuesday. So, I guess Ger
probably knew, also.

When I arrived at the airport, I had to wait for about a half an
hour for the shuttle to arrive, then up walks M. I recognized her
right off--I mean how many lesbians do you ever see at the Columbus
airport? We had a pleasant discussion while on the shuttle which
consisted mainly of me prattling on non-stop and her very politely
nodding at all the right places.

When we arrived at the hotel, we both checked in, both went to our
respective rooms for a few minutes, then went to the restaurant to
get lunch. We were having a pleasant chat again, with me having
calmed down and actually finally doing some listening. Then, Larry
arrived and joined us for lunch. After lunch, we went to the lobby
and sat and talked for about an hour, when Dave and Ger walked in.
They both recognized Larry and M. right off, then I stood up and
shook Dave's hand and said my name. He repeated it slowly, then
said something that I really didn't understand about how he had a
different picture of me in his head based on someone else he knows
in Texas. I didn't get it, but thought it wasn't really worth
asking about. He went off to get the letters for M. and me and the
notebooks. For the record, I can testify that M.'s eyes were big as
saucers when Dave placed them in her hands. As for me, I recognized
right off that this was a seminal occasion--an historical moment
that Larry and I were very privileged to be a part of, even if just
peripherally.

Dave sat and talked with us for about an hour. I left at some point
to get the newspaper clipping about Larry Summers that I had cut out
for him, along with the e-mail that I had sent to the author of the
editorial and her reply to me. I had saved it for him because she
(Charlotte Allen) had written something that had sounded almost
exactly like what he wrote to me about the whole Summers issue. I
imagine he will address it in his next letter to me. We (all four
of us) spoke about that for a while, along with the Douglas Jeffrey
(of Imprimis magazine) issue that Dave and I discussed for a couple
of months. (It'll all be in the second Collected Letters--be
patient.)

Then Dave went off to dinner with Andy Runton and his publisher,
along with Gerhard. When Lenny finally arrived, we Yahoos went to
dinner as well. As you know by now, Dave joined us after he
finished dinner. He sat by me, by chance, but after a while, I just
sat back and listened. Jeff Tundis had joined us by then--he and
Pat snuck in at some point and we all missed them--while Pat stayed
in the room. It was a lot of fun to just listen, as it was a good
way to get to know the guys, and it was, you know, Dave. Right next
to me!

Oh, earlier in the lobby, I mentioned to Dave how it was really
quite odd because on Saturday, I would be in line, clutching my
books to be signed, doing the fanboy thing. Yet, here we were on
Friday evening just sitting around and chatting. And, I felt that
even tho' I was meeting him for the first time in person in 10
years, I also felt like I know him very well because of all of the
letters we have written back and forth for over a year. Very
strange.

So, after dinner, we all just retired to our rooms. I woke up
around 9 the next morning, then went to Kroger to get the petunias.
Now, no one has really explained that. They were actually pansies,
as petunias don't come in season until May, said the nice lady at
the store. They were planted in a nice basket, to which I attached
a sign I made on the computer that said, "Welcome to PetuniaCon
1413. The artists will be signing for food. Bunnies to the right;
trees to the left. Please do not touch the artists." Dave was gone
from the table when I got there, so I put it on the chair next to
his. When he returned, he glanced at it and said, "Nyuk, nyuk,
nyuk." I made copies of the sign for everyone and signed one each
for Dave and Ger to take home. I think Ger got more of a kick out
of it than Dave did.

I started out by getting the stuff for Billy signed first. He had e-
mailed me requesting me to have all of the yahoos and Dave and Ger
to autograph a copy of the Mick sketch that Dave did for me all
those years ago. I had mentioned it to Dave on Friday evening and
said I thought we could go one better and Dave could do a Keef
sketch for Billy. He said yeah he could probably do that. Well, I
certainly hadn't thought about all the hair and how time-consuming
that would be and he apparently didn't think about it Friday eve.
When I got up to him on Saturday, I asked if he could do the Keef
sketch we had talked about. He glanced at the end of the line and
said okay. Well, as Larry has "hinted" at, it took a really long
time. At one point, while Lenny was keeping him occupied by the
arcane discussion of secret Jews, Dave muttered, "The hair. . .the
hair! Every time I think I've finished it, it just keeps going." A
little bit later, he pushed the sketch towards me and said, "Here,
you do the hair while I talk to Lenny," which got a good laugh. I
guess he was really happy that Keef had his head shaved in Guys.

He finally finished the sketch, and while Ger did a really cool
minimalist background, he sketched Cerebus into the group sketch
that Larry did. Later, I was in line behind Jason Trimmer and Jason
and I were discussing the fact that Larry left Jason out of it.
Dave grabbed a copy of Following Cerebus that was nearby and
confirmed that Jason was indeed in the group photo, so he asked me
for the sketch and drew Jason in. Very cool.

Around that time, I was approached by Bryan to participate in the
video. Dave had just cut off all sketches until after the Day Prize
awards ceremony, so I went with Bryan, along with Jeff T. and M. He
asked us some questions and vidoetaped our responses. I got to hear
M and Jeff, but missed Larry and Lenny's responses, along with the
other 8 or 10 people that Bryan said he got. He had taken down all
of our e-mail addresses and phone numbers, so I went down the list
and identified the ones who are yahoos. It should be a very cool
project. He said that he had given Dave the 7-minute video last
year and Dave had responded, "why don't we think big?" So, they put
their heads together and came up with this project for this year. I
think that Bryan included some of the Day Prize ceremony in with it,
too.

After the ceremony, which was momentous for all of the recipients,
but basically just another awards ceremony for non-honorees, I went
to get my books. As I had held the line up for so long earlier, I
decided to kind of hang around the end of the line and let others
who had far fewer books go first. I only intended to get one sketch
for myself, but I thought it would take a while, which it did, and I
had about a dozen issues for signatures. I took advantage of the
time to listen to Dave converse with others and to educate some of
the uninitiated on M.'s website and other ways that they could
become more indoctrinated. I pulled up a chair at one point, when
Dave went to pray, and finally read the Report to the Newsgroup that
Ger had printed off for us the previous evening. Very interesting.
I'm not sure that Dave had intended this, but the fact that he had
written four pages on canonical vs. non-canonical categories for
Cerebus stories pretty much precluded us having the anticipated (by
me anyway) roundtable discussion on Policy. We just never really
got to it, although there were several informal discussions here and
there. Nothing written in stone, though, other than Dave's report.
At one point, Dave made a point of telling us Yahoos in line that
Bryan had reported back to him on the video and had said that he was
impressed at how intelligent Dave's fans are and Dave said, "and
he's right! You guys really are an intelligent bunch." And
something about how that means a lot to him.

When I finally got to the end of the line, no one else behind me, I
said to Dave, "since you and Margaret and I are probably the only
three intentionally celibate persons in the building right now, I
was wondering if you could do a sketch of Celibate Cerebus Avoyding
Fornication in my copy of Latter Days?" I pushed a copy of Latter
Days #10 to him (it's the one with the Avoyd Fornication sign on the
cover) and he proceded to sketch an almost exact copy of it, except
that Cerebus seems to be looking more straight up (to God?); whereas
on the cover of the issue, Cerebus is looking more over his shoulder
at the sign. Margaret and I agreed that it was so close a copy that
there was no need to scan it to the group. Then Dave and Ger signed
by issues--Lenny asked me how I came about choosing such a
scattershot of issues to be signed. I had him sign the seminal two
issues (186, 265--the end of Reads and the Tangent issues); all six
of the issues in which he printed letters from me; #300 and
mistakenly #298 (I had brought that to be signed by Glenn Brewer-the
guy who won the Day Prize last year, but I missed him). That was
the end of the signing, then. I walked around the rooms looking at
stuff and getting copies of the Day Prize nominees' books. Andy and
I had a very nice chat about the importance of being nice (thanks
for the compliment, Lenny and your confirmation, Larry); I picked up
Matt Feazel's Guide to Understanding MiniComics and had one signed
for a friend; I spoke to Carl Kressback and his very strange
girlfriend and bought Chromosome Crossroads' first two issues--both
of which I threw away immediately upon having read them; I bought An
Obsessive Crush, which I also enjoyed very much; and I got Matt's
minicomic. Then, I was out of money. The con dwindled off; I saw
Dave and Ger sitting back at the table for a little while later, but
no one came up to them, so they both started looking around a little
bit.

As you know, we sat around the lobby and waited for Ger and Dave,
but they never materialized. Ger said the next day that Dave had
said he was going up to his room for twenty minutes or so, but that
he had fallen asleep for two hours. Dave really got tuckered out--
guess it was all that hair. . .

Dinner was fantastic, as was the gathering in Jeff and Pat's room
later. I slept the sleep of the dead after packing up and woke up
around 8 am on Sunday. Not wanting to miss anything, I showered
quickly and went down to the lobby, where Larry was waiting. We
talked comics for a little bit, then I got some tea and started
chatting up Nicolette. She proudly told me about having joined the
Marines and was shipping off to boot camp next week. We just chatted
for a little while, until Lenny and Jeff and Pat arrived and we got
up to go to breakfast. That was when I learned that Nikki had been
at the hotel all night without a room and was waiting for her
boyfriend to get off work at 3 that afternoon. So, I invited her to
join us for breakfast, which she reluctantly did. Larry confirmed
that we would treat her to breakfast, the bill for which Larry and I
split. We all sat at a table adjacent to Gerhard, who was reading
an biographical comic by Seth and his father. After a while, I
asked Ger a question and he wound up talking with us for a half hour
or so. It was interesting--he gave us some behind the scenes
stories about life in Kitchener and at the Off-White House. He is
in the middle of tearing up the office, as there had been some water
damage (I think) in the walls and he is having to replaster large
sections of the walls. He said the house is now 120 years old. It
was a great conversation. I made a point of quietly mentioning to
him that Nikki was joining the Marines, so he made sure to wish her
good luck when he got up to leave.

Breakfast was a good way to wind down with my new friends, whom I
fully expect will become old friends. Thanks to Jeff T for giving
me a copy of Jazz Bastards' 50 Giant Steps, which I just finished
listening to while I was typing this. Very good CD. If I lived
anywhere near you guys, I would definitely go hear you play live.
Hey, why don't you drag the guys to Columbus next year and be the
official band of SPACE 2006?

Then there was the little emergency to take care of with Nikki--
thanks to Matt and Paula for stepping up there. Sorry I took in the
stray puppy--I'm a sucker for needy girls. Thanks to Jeff and Pat
for taking Larry and me to the airport. I hung around to say
goodbye at the gate, as I was the first one leaving; did so, caught
my flight and read Owly and Obsessive Crush on the plane. It was a
mercifully short flight, followed by a cruelly long bus ride home.
All in all, the best vacation I've had in over 7 years. Thanks to
everyone, including you and Dave, Ger for a really great time!

Cordially,
Jeff Seiler