con woman

[juliamon]

Putting off watching T&B 14/15 for the moment because I just don't have the energy to watch videos yet. (also in my backlog: Kaiji 13, DBZ Abridged 24, last week's Tales from the Table, and the last two weeks' Extra Credits) But the spoilers I've seen make it sound like Keith pulled a Jim Hawking?

(Oh god, I think I totally just dated myself there. Who even makes Outlaw Star references? Get with the decade, self.)


Thursday, 30 June

• Arrived at LAX shortly after midnight. The flights weren't terrible, but the girl I was sitting next to in the 5-hour flight kind of freaked me out. My luggage took forever to come out, it was very annoying. At least it didn't get lost, I guess?
• We went home and I got to sleep around 2-ish I think? Maybe a bit earlier than that. Not really important though.
• Got up .....enough hours later (I wasn't a sleep-deprived zombie at least) and we bought some yogurt parfaits and Kraken at the supermarket before heading over to Al's friends' place to carpool to LACC for Day 0.
• Arrived at LACC just in time to start the second section of the line, the section in the sun. We let about a dozen people go ahead of us because there was some tree shade I wanted to take advantage of in exchange for the couple extra minutes longer we'd have to wait in the end. I forgot my sunscreen at the house because I'm an Iop-brain so the shade was pretty important. As the hours went by the shade started to retreat, and Al went on an ultimately futile journey to find a drugstore to buy some sunscreen for me. Fortunately it was past peak sunlight and I only got the slightest burn on my right forearm, enough for my skin to be giving off heat for the rest of the day but I was perfectly fine the next day and it never peeled or anything. The only evidence is that it's sliiightly tanned while the rest of my body is still white.
• Apparently bees don't know the difference between flowers and Sugar 'n Cream yarn, because one spent the better part of 5 minutes trying to get pollen out of the tote bag I was making.
• There was a Vector cosplayer that I didn't bother trying to get a picture of because I figured I'd run into him again at some point since if he's at Day 0 he's gonna be there all weekend, right? So of course I never saw him again. Ah well.
• The badge issue we were worried about DID surface, but they were able to get it straightened out in under 5 minutes. Props to the AX crew!
• We had a fun time upon finding that someone had parked right behind our car, and also someone had moved dumpsters right IN FRONT OF our car as well. 30-point turn LOL
• Spent the rest of the afternoon in Little Tokyo, ate at Curry House and did a spot of grocery shopping for Kinoko no Yama cookies for D.
• When we got back home I spent the rest of the evening styling my wig with Al's help, and taking a shower not with Al's help.

Friday, 1 July

• We had lunch at Panera before heading to our hotel. Their frozen strawberry lemonade beats the pants off of McD's.
• Our room was thankfully ready before normal checkin time, so we checked in early and admired the room for a bit before I got into my costume. It was pretty sweet, except for two things which we were not yet aware of. I'll get to them later.
• The first cosplayer we ran into at the hotel was a Tiger. I was quite pleased. He let me know there was an Origami Cyclone somewhere, but unfortunately I never did run into them ;_;
• Getting my costume on went fairly smoothly, except for the ears which were a bit tricky since I hadn't really tried to put them on before. Al managed to spill some of the spirit gum onto my costume, but it was fortunately not a big deal! There's a spot on the left armhole that's stiff and slightly darker red than the rest of the ribbon, but the wig falls over it anyway so you wouldn't know unless I specifically pointed it out. You can't even see it in the photos.
• We conveniently happened to head out at the same time as the console gaming lead staff, so he showed us the way to LACC from the hotel.
• Someone took my photo before I even got inside LACC, so somewhere out there is a photo of me with Rubilax before I got him peacebonded. Speaking of, we'd purposely checked out where peacebonding was on Thursday so we could go there right away, only to find out that they'd gone and moved it anyway. THANKS, AX STAFF.
• Went to watch the T&B screening because I figured that was the only way I'd ever get Al to actually watch it dohohoho. They only showed the first three episodes even though it was supposed to be 1-4, I was pretty annoyed! Al forgot his hat in the room, we picked it up at the lost and found on Monday.
• Did a quick walk through Artist Alley to kill time until the Wakfu panel. Found LMC and bought her T&B print and a copy of ALTS, failed to find Zambicandy and Momo's table though.
• Got to the Wakfu panel 30 minutes early, only to find out the room was running about an hour late. We went to an open area nearby and bought some drinks and sat for a bit to kill time. When we went back, there was confusion on where the line was, and it ended up being outside. At least we were only there for about 5 minutes.
• Since I couldn't wear my glasses with my costume (combination of wig, headband and ear prosthetics made it impossible) it was pretty much impossible to read the dialogue in the video they put together for the panel, which made me feel even MORE dumb for losing track of time on the day they were 'filming' it and missing out on participating.
• It was pretty cool of them to choose an episode (9) that wasn't one of the two that have been floating around for awhile, it means they're still working on dubbing it and not just sitting on it! And even though I understand why they wouldn't choose an ep with Nox in it (there were a lot of people there who hadn't even heard of Wakfu before seeing the panel in the schedule), it's still a bit of a shame we couldn't hear his voice. (I'm also apparently in the minority that prefers "Saddy" over "Dally" on the basis that he only gives his full name like 3 times ever, so why would you base the nickname on his surname (Percedal) rather than his given name?)
• They threw plush into the audience a couple times, but each time I failed to get one. I also didn't get drawn in the raffle. But after the panel ended they came up to me and gave me a Boufball and asked if there was anything I wanted to say to Ankama via the videocamera they abruptly focused on me. OMG WHY AM I GETTING FILMED AT EVERY CONVENTION I GO TO THIS YEAR??? What's next, will WMUR show up at AAC?
• We went back to the hotel so I could drop off my Boufball and we could plan what to do for dinner... but by the time everything was settled, every goddamn fast-food restaurant was closed. WHAT THE HELL LA, THAT'S REALLY LAME. We ended up at a 24-hour Denny's, along with about 100 other con-goers, mostly Homestuck cosplayers. GO AWAY HOMESTUCKS, EATING ALL THE PANCAKES AND LEAVING US WITH UNDERCOOKED ONES. Effffff.

Saturday, 2 July

• I took the day off from cosplaying due to the fact that I would be spending most of the day either in the console gaming room or in Club Nokia, neither of which would be good opportunities for photos. Plus I wanted to wear my glasses at the concert so I could SEE the girls. Also, I needed to do some costume repairs: the velcro on one of my shin guards came unglued and we'd temporarily fixed it with spirit gum but it was obviously not gonna last a second day, and the paint on Rubilax's eye was chipping off (also temp fixed with spirit gum). A supermarket hunt was in order before I could get back into costume.
• We discovered that there was a Ralph's just a couple blocks away from our hotel, so we bought some essentials (superglue for repairs, minibagels and cream cheese for breakfast/snacks, Coke to mix with the Kraken, and a big sandwich for lunch) and some Udi's cookies to bring home for mom because I know it's prohibitively expensive for her to buy them online and they don't sell them on the east coast.
• I noticed that the Panera cups (which we'd been too lazy to throw away and had instead left in the car) had dome lids that looked juuust the right size to fit over Rubilax's eye like a contact lens, and lo and behold they did! So I superglued them on, and there was no more paint chipping issues. :3
• Al made it to the second round of the MvC3 tournament, but got beaten down pretty hard. It was for the best though, since if he'd gotten much farther we probably would have ended up missing the Kalafina concert.
• Thanks to the tourney we missed out on the bomb scare in the exhibit hall. Oh well! Since it was open again by the time we were done with the tourney, we did a quick run through the Alley again, failed to find Zambi/Momo AGAIN, and then got distracted by gunpla.
• Turns out Club Nokia has a "strict" no-cameras policy (they don't prohibit smartphones though lollll) and they also don't have a bag check, so Al had to go running back to the hotel with our stuff. Fortunately the staff member on the left side of the floor was a cool guy who saw I was waiting for someone and let me "reserve" a spot in the front level for Al when he came back. Thanks, dude!
• The concert was pretty great, even though they didn't sing Red Moon (my favorite song) but it's understandable since they probably wanted to stick to their anime-related songs. They were all sooo adorable~ I don't know how anyone could prefer going to the Miku concert instead. Give me real people with real talent any day!
• Hotel annoyance #1: the maids took our slightly-used bar of soap and never replaced it. FOR THE ENTIRE STAY. We had to use body wash instead. Seriously, who withholds soap from CON-GOERS? That goes against every Con Funk PSA ever.
• We ordered pizza for dinner, it was AMAZING.
• Hotel annoyance #2: the bathroom door slides open past one of the most easily-accessible outlets in the room. If you have something plugged into it, you have to be careful with the door and only open it enough to squeeze in. We learned this the hard way when my netbook and Rozzy's 3DS were plugged in and one of us needed to wash our hands after the pizza. The 3DS adapter's prongs got bent out of shape and the outlet plate cracked in half and broke off. We tried to superglue it back on, but we just kept accidentally whacking it with the door again and again, because it's not habit to be cautious when opening a bathroom door, right? NOT OUR FAULT YOUR ELECTRICIANS/DECORATORS ARE RETARDED.

Sunday, 3 July

• Back into costume! This time I figured out a better way to put the ears on. Also, my wig brush broke trying to get the knots out of my wig, so now I need a new one dammit.
• Since we didn't have anything on our schedule until night, we decided to once again hunt for Zambi/Momo. This time we found them! I bought a bunch of prints from them.
• Apparently all the Wakfags have Alley tables because I kept getting asked to stop for pictures. It's a lil' hard to pose with a giant sword in the middle of a severely crowded aisle, but hey, whatever they want. I tried to make it a habit of buying something from anyone who asked for a picture.
• Only saw one person with a Heroman print, which made me sad because WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LOVE HEROMAN ;_; so I bought it.
• Since I knew we'd be going back to the hotel afterwards, I also took the opportunity to revisit the gunpla booth and buy the Roll and Blues kits. And drool over the Perfect Grades, of course XD
• The masquerade was alright, I liked it better than the others because I'm not as spoiled I guess? I'm just used to masquerades being mediocre or something. I also didn't completely disagree with the grand prize winner, because man you could tell they'd put a lot of thought and work and effort into it. Plus, it was Nadesico. I think, aside from it and the Metal Gear Crisis skit with Snake and Priss, every other entry was based on an anime from within the past 2-3 years. Multiple PSG, multiple Kuroshitsuji, multiple Star Driver... look, you don't HAVE to do a skit from a brand-new show if an older one still has solid potential! And that's why I'm happy the Nadesico skit won. The end.
• For dinner we walked a couple blocks to a gas station Subway. I'm glad I left Rubilax at the hotel because by the time we left there were a whole bunch of cops loitering.

Monday, 4 July

• Did some packing first-thing so that we could grab and go if we ended up cutting it too close to check-out time.
• Today's agenda was to check out the exhibit hall one last time so I could ONCE MORE go to the alley and buy some earrings from a girl who I'd promised on Sunday I'd come back and buy but then couldn't find her again. Buuuut it didn't open for another hour, so we went to the con feedback session instead so we could whine about online prereg and it's utter ridiculousness. Apparently they're working on getting a badge-mailing system set up, which would be totally sweet if it works out!
• By the time the panel was done we figured we wouldn't have time to make it to the Alley and back to the hotel in time, so I gave up and looked up the girl online later. She does have a site so I will be buying those squid earrings later this month! (Right now I kind of need to stop buying frivolous things so that I can pay Al my share of the hotel costs. Which requires me remembering to ask for my paycheck at work. Which I didn't remember to do this weekend. Because I'm an Iop-brain.)
• After getting back to the house, it was time for Pancake House lunch where I taught everyone the magic of baked applesauce pancake. Ah, childhood memories! Afterwards we went to Sam's Club for some July 4th dinner fixin's, and I learned of beef flap. Honestly, it's not bad but I still prefer steak tips 'cos they're juicier. Man, who knew steak tips were a New England thing?? I learned a lot of things on this trip.
• With the nonstop stimulus that was AX now gone, my mind had a moment to breathe and decided to reward me with a panic attack. I had to run upstairs and cry it out, and then listen to music and play Sudoku on my phone until I calmed down enough to sleep. I feel like I ruined everyone's night and then felt even worse when I woke up in the middle of the night and Al was sleeping on the couch downstairs. Dude, you could have woken me up, that would have been fine.

Tuesday, 5 July

• Al woke me up with a bagel and some coffee. I'd forgotten to explain to him about my thyroid meds though, so I had to not touch it for 30 minutes, which was just cruel. It still tasted good when I got to eat it, anyway. I guess that's the upside of being a lazy type of person who usually eats her bagels cold and plain.
• This was sort of a downtime day, we watched Ponyo and lazed around for the most part.
• Dinner was Olive Garden, so finally I HAVE been there. They never gave us refills on our salad though, douches.
• Round 1! This is the best place ever and I absolutely want to go there again next year. Al won me a Minion and gave me a little help in winning a pink Domo. I like that the machines are mainly skill-based, so I was able to learn which ones I could win without too much wasted credits.

Wednesday, 6 July

• It was hot so we went to Cold Stone and then Toys 'R Us because airconditioning! Totally worth it because I got to introduce them to Loaded Questions, which we played later and it was lots of fun to play with new people!
• Didn't really do much else other than pack, though. Dinner was pizza with the NYY-CLE game on, it was nice watching the Yankees lose again~
• REALLY didn't want to go home, but didn't have much choice--I was out of meds and also scheduled to work Friday morning.
• LAX uses those backscatter machines! That was an interesting experience, especially because I'm an Iop-brain and forgot to take my cards out of my back pocket despite the million signs telling me to do so.