I can has shower?
Damn.
Well, I'm back from AX. I'll try to make this semi-coherent for anyone that cares.
We left Tuesday afternoon after picking me up directly from work around 4:30pm. I climbed into the backseat of a van with 6 other people, one I didn't know, who turned out to be Jason's friend Dan. Other people: Jason, Joe, Andrew, Nick, and Anna. Not a bad group to travel with. I am stuck, however, in the bitch seat (the middle seat in the way back between two people) the entire. way. there. Which, by the way, was about a 16 hour car trip. I was able to move up to a middle seat when we hit LA, which isn't far from Long Beach. Whee.
So we're in the mountains, not too far from Eisenhower Tunnel, which is...oh, 4, maybe 5 hours out of Fort Collins, and the engine starts stalling. We can't figure it out. We end up pulling over a couple times, each time managing to get it started again by jamming it into gear, and end up having to pull over in the tunnel as well a couple times. Luckily, they were "cleaning" or doing something to the left lane of the tunnel, so we pulled over into the empty lane, therefore not blocking traffic. We finally got it going long enough to get over the pass, and apparently it worked fine the entire rest of the trip. Altitude, maybe? Who knows, we didn't question it when it started working.
We finally made it to our hotel around 9:30am in Long Beach, and got the car unpacked. Everyone crashed, we were exhausted. Joe and I got one bed for most of the trip, Nick and Anna got the other for a couple nights, and we all took turns sleeping on the floor, which was really just the hardest cement ever cleverly disguised with a thin piece of shitty carpet.
Hmm, what did we end up doing, I forget the order of things. Wednesday we went to Little Tokyo in LA, mostly so Joe and I could eat at Joymart again, which is a great little restaurant there. We found Dan some hakama pants and just shopped around. There's also an amazing store called Anime Jungle that we've been to twice at E3 before, the amazing shop with all the gashapon everywhere, and I bought a Sakura Wars Pinky Street figure for only $10. It's cute. We ended up at the hotel and just crashed at night from hardly sleeping in the car, what with it being so uncomfortable.
Thursday we went to Universal Studios to eat at Hard Rock cafe, which is overpriced but has good food. I ended up buying an "Angel" puppet plush (from the TV show), which was my big purchase for the week. It's soooo awesome, I'll post pics later when I get them uploaded (too exhausted to remember now). Oh hey, here's a link I just found.
I don't remember what we did in the afternoon, I think that was the day we went walking around Long Beach, right outside our hotel/the convention center was a great walkway area with restaurants, an arcade, stuff like that. In the morning we stood in line to pick up our badges. The line was probably...I'd say a mile long, it started at this one part of the convention center and nearly wrapped around a building down the street. Of course, as we were walking to stand in line, we were all dressed up in our cosplay outfits, and my damn sandal broke. It was awesome. I ended up having to walk in my socks on the burning pavement, bitching about my shoes. Joe went to get my other sandals I'm really glad I brought, since they ended up being my cosplay sandals after Saturday, but I was in such a bitchy mood the whole morning because of it. We ended up hot gluing them, and they lasted a little longer, but for the hour and a half we waited in line, it was hell. We had some pictures taken though, which was cool.
Friday was the start of the actual con. I FINALLY got to see my friend Emily whom I hadn't seen in...almost 10 years? That was pretty awesome. Nothing's really changed. <3 We got there around 10am to wait in the gigantic line for the dealer's room, which wasn't opening until noon. I ended up with a nice sunburn on my nose and a little triangle burn on my chest from where my gi didn't cover. We picked up a few things in the dealers room, I'll make a list at the end. We bought more stuff on Monday when it was on sale.
Basically the rest of the weekend was con stuff. We went to a couple panels, got a lot of pictures taken, walked around A LOT. I think I was one of about 4 total Nemu cosplayers at the entire con. On Sunday there was a Bleach gathering at this big fountain, which was really fun. They were calling people out by squad number, and when they called for group 12, which is mine, I was the only Nemu, and there were two Mayuri cosplayers. After a minute, another Nemu came running out as well, so there were only 4 of us for the whole group. Compared to other squads that had, like, 20 people in them, that was kinda sad, but still cool that I wasn't one of 1000 others like me. :D Joe was Ukitake, Anna was Nanao/Kenpachi (depending on the day), Nick was Shinsui/Byakuya, Andrew was Renji, Jason borrowed Joe's Uruhara outfit, and Dan was Ichigo, which worked out well since he didn't know we were all doing Bleach.
We tried to go see the Transformers movie they were showing on Monday, but as we got there 3 hours before it started and saw the line nearly 2 miles long (in all seriousness, I bet it was that long stretched out) we opted to go enjoy lunch instead and generally be lazy. We hit up the dealer's room again, bought a few things, then ended up packing the car that night so we could leave early on Tuesday.
Highlights:
o Cosplay was a lot of fun. Everyone's outfits turned out really really well.
o Finding the Angel plushie. ZOMG so cute.
o Eating at Joymart and going to Little Tokyo again, it's such a fun place.
o Getting a week's vacation, which I really really needed.
o The arcade at AX had Para Para Paradise!
o Hanging out with Bamboo! I miss her. :(
o Getting some really cool stuff at the dealers room.
o Getting a lot of pictures taken of us. This was my first time really trying cosplay, and it turned out great.
o Joe getting Johnny Young Bosch's autograph on a Bleach trading card.
o At the Bleach TCG gathering, I won a Shojo Beat/Shonen Jump duffle bag at the raffle. No one else won anything. :P
Downsides:
o Holy crap we spent so much money. Everywhere we ate was priceyyyy.
o Our room smelled so bad and was ridiculously cramped.
o Car trouble on the way there, and getting a flat tire on the way back. That tire was destroyed.
o The humidity and the heat sucked so much, plus I hate it when my ears keep popping.
o The car was horribly squished, and no one had any room for anything.
o In general, everything was way too expensive.
o Not getting enough sleep.
Loot:
o "Angel" plushie vampire
o full Genshiken gashapon set
o Sakura Wars Pinky Street figure
o Pinky Street figure of Alucard from Tsukihime
o Asuka "Seaside" figure
o Yaoi Exorcist fan (best thing ever)
o Bleach 2 DS game
o and some stuff for friends/family, including a Batarang Wiimote holder for Dad, something for Chris (can't write it here, she might read it before she gets it :P) and some figures for Billy and Andie.
Overall, not a bad haul.
Some pics:
Nathan in his Starcraft awesomeness
Well, I'm back from AX. I'll try to make this semi-coherent for anyone that cares.
We left Tuesday afternoon after picking me up directly from work around 4:30pm. I climbed into the backseat of a van with 6 other people, one I didn't know, who turned out to be Jason's friend Dan. Other people: Jason, Joe, Andrew, Nick, and Anna. Not a bad group to travel with. I am stuck, however, in the bitch seat (the middle seat in the way back between two people) the entire. way. there. Which, by the way, was about a 16 hour car trip. I was able to move up to a middle seat when we hit LA, which isn't far from Long Beach. Whee.
So we're in the mountains, not too far from Eisenhower Tunnel, which is...oh, 4, maybe 5 hours out of Fort Collins, and the engine starts stalling. We can't figure it out. We end up pulling over a couple times, each time managing to get it started again by jamming it into gear, and end up having to pull over in the tunnel as well a couple times. Luckily, they were "cleaning" or doing something to the left lane of the tunnel, so we pulled over into the empty lane, therefore not blocking traffic. We finally got it going long enough to get over the pass, and apparently it worked fine the entire rest of the trip. Altitude, maybe? Who knows, we didn't question it when it started working.
We finally made it to our hotel around 9:30am in Long Beach, and got the car unpacked. Everyone crashed, we were exhausted. Joe and I got one bed for most of the trip, Nick and Anna got the other for a couple nights, and we all took turns sleeping on the floor, which was really just the hardest cement ever cleverly disguised with a thin piece of shitty carpet.
Hmm, what did we end up doing, I forget the order of things. Wednesday we went to Little Tokyo in LA, mostly so Joe and I could eat at Joymart again, which is a great little restaurant there. We found Dan some hakama pants and just shopped around. There's also an amazing store called Anime Jungle that we've been to twice at E3 before, the amazing shop with all the gashapon everywhere, and I bought a Sakura Wars Pinky Street figure for only $10. It's cute. We ended up at the hotel and just crashed at night from hardly sleeping in the car, what with it being so uncomfortable.
Thursday we went to Universal Studios to eat at Hard Rock cafe, which is overpriced but has good food. I ended up buying an "Angel" puppet plush (from the TV show), which was my big purchase for the week. It's soooo awesome, I'll post pics later when I get them uploaded (too exhausted to remember now). Oh hey, here's a link I just found.
I don't remember what we did in the afternoon, I think that was the day we went walking around Long Beach, right outside our hotel/the convention center was a great walkway area with restaurants, an arcade, stuff like that. In the morning we stood in line to pick up our badges. The line was probably...I'd say a mile long, it started at this one part of the convention center and nearly wrapped around a building down the street. Of course, as we were walking to stand in line, we were all dressed up in our cosplay outfits, and my damn sandal broke. It was awesome. I ended up having to walk in my socks on the burning pavement, bitching about my shoes. Joe went to get my other sandals I'm really glad I brought, since they ended up being my cosplay sandals after Saturday, but I was in such a bitchy mood the whole morning because of it. We ended up hot gluing them, and they lasted a little longer, but for the hour and a half we waited in line, it was hell. We had some pictures taken though, which was cool.
Friday was the start of the actual con. I FINALLY got to see my friend Emily whom I hadn't seen in...almost 10 years? That was pretty awesome. Nothing's really changed. <3 We got there around 10am to wait in the gigantic line for the dealer's room, which wasn't opening until noon. I ended up with a nice sunburn on my nose and a little triangle burn on my chest from where my gi didn't cover. We picked up a few things in the dealers room, I'll make a list at the end. We bought more stuff on Monday when it was on sale.
Basically the rest of the weekend was con stuff. We went to a couple panels, got a lot of pictures taken, walked around A LOT. I think I was one of about 4 total Nemu cosplayers at the entire con. On Sunday there was a Bleach gathering at this big fountain, which was really fun. They were calling people out by squad number, and when they called for group 12, which is mine, I was the only Nemu, and there were two Mayuri cosplayers. After a minute, another Nemu came running out as well, so there were only 4 of us for the whole group. Compared to other squads that had, like, 20 people in them, that was kinda sad, but still cool that I wasn't one of 1000 others like me. :D Joe was Ukitake, Anna was Nanao/Kenpachi (depending on the day), Nick was Shinsui/Byakuya, Andrew was Renji, Jason borrowed Joe's Uruhara outfit, and Dan was Ichigo, which worked out well since he didn't know we were all doing Bleach.
We tried to go see the Transformers movie they were showing on Monday, but as we got there 3 hours before it started and saw the line nearly 2 miles long (in all seriousness, I bet it was that long stretched out) we opted to go enjoy lunch instead and generally be lazy. We hit up the dealer's room again, bought a few things, then ended up packing the car that night so we could leave early on Tuesday.
Highlights:
o Cosplay was a lot of fun. Everyone's outfits turned out really really well.
o Finding the Angel plushie. ZOMG so cute.
o Eating at Joymart and going to Little Tokyo again, it's such a fun place.
o Getting a week's vacation, which I really really needed.
o The arcade at AX had Para Para Paradise!
o Hanging out with Bamboo! I miss her. :(
o Getting some really cool stuff at the dealers room.
o Getting a lot of pictures taken of us. This was my first time really trying cosplay, and it turned out great.
o Joe getting Johnny Young Bosch's autograph on a Bleach trading card.
o At the Bleach TCG gathering, I won a Shojo Beat/Shonen Jump duffle bag at the raffle. No one else won anything. :P
Downsides:
o Holy crap we spent so much money. Everywhere we ate was priceyyyy.
o Our room smelled so bad and was ridiculously cramped.
o Car trouble on the way there, and getting a flat tire on the way back. That tire was destroyed.
o The humidity and the heat sucked so much, plus I hate it when my ears keep popping.
o The car was horribly squished, and no one had any room for anything.
o In general, everything was way too expensive.
o Not getting enough sleep.
Loot:
o "Angel" plushie vampire
o full Genshiken gashapon set
o Sakura Wars Pinky Street figure
o Pinky Street figure of Alucard from Tsukihime
o Asuka "Seaside" figure
o Yaoi Exorcist fan (best thing ever)
o Bleach 2 DS game
o and some stuff for friends/family, including a Batarang Wiimote holder for Dad, something for Chris (can't write it here, she might read it before she gets it :P) and some figures for Billy and Andie.
Overall, not a bad haul.
Some pics:
Nathan in his Starcraft awesomeness
