Because you're Harry Potter.
I wish I could augment this with tons of photographs, but for some reason my camera is not wanting to transfer them to my computer. And, well. Most of my pictures wouldn't really be appropriate in this context anyway. But. slkjdflsk
Wednesday:
I showed up at the airport with time to spare, but after a nasty miscalculation regarding the security checkpoint, they were calling my name over the loudspeaker by the time I got into the terminal. What a way to start the trip. I ran across the airport and arrived just as they were about to shut the door of the plane. Unfortunately (not that any of this was fortunate), my seat was at the very back, so I had to squeeze down the narrow walkway of the entire plane to get there, and of course I wound up whacking people's shoulders with my carry-on bag more than once. "OUCH!!" yelled a large midwestern hausfrau as I schlepped past. "Sorry, sorry," I called over my shoulder. To make the flight even stranger, I wound up with French speakers on one side of me, and some sort of Slavic speakers on the other.
When I arrived in Las Vegas, I quickly realized I'd have no real way of meeting up with Aspen and Pea - LAS sections off each of their terminals so only those with flights departing/arriving from those select airlines can get back there. Totally lame! I don't consider PDX podunk, and you can get to any terminal there once you pass a security checkpoint. Unimpressed! Anyway, I waited around aimlessly for a few hours in the hopes that I would magically spot them in the luggage claim area (and because I was kind of afraid to venture to the Marriott alone), and eventually wound up talking to the guy who held up the Lumos 2006 sign.
"What's your name?" he asked me, looking at a ream of print-outs.
"Katie Common-Surname," I answered.
"I'm not seein' ya on here, Katie," he answered. He had some kind of east coast accent that made him sound like either a Mafioso or someone who would sell you a lemon of a car. "But I see a Mary Common-Surname! Thaaat's probably you." He proceeded to cross poor Mary off the list.
"Um," I said nervously. "Is there an Aspen Realname or Pea Realname on there?"
The answer was no.
"I don't really know," he said conversationally, as I stood there frantically worrying it was actually Tuesday or something. He waved his arms as he spoke, thus lowering the Lumos 2006 sign to the point of zero visibility. "They just threw this at me. It could be a lot more organized. These drivers, I'm tellin' ya. I like one of them okay, but the other one, he's such an asshole. When I first met him, I said, 'I don't like you. You're a prick.' And he is!"
I quietly goggled. Having the guy who holds the sign for the happy little Harry Potter convention cussing at me about one of his coworkers made me feel like I was suddenly and abruptly initiated into Vegas. People just don't do that anywhere else. He proceeded to tell me about the resort, making a lot of insinuations about how I must have money if I was going there, to which I was like, "well... most of us are sharing rooms..." He remained unconvinced, and filled me in on where and when to gamble. I didn't mention that I can't legally gamble in Nevada yet.
Miraculously, as I was wondering if the guy with the sign was going to club me over the head and stuff me in his trunk, Aspen and Pea walked by! I had spent so long trying to see their faces in those of strangers that seeing them in the flesh was surreal. They were exhausted from walking all over the airport looking for the guy with the sign (they weren't missing much), so we piled into the shuttle and eventually took off for the hotel, along with a bunch of Mugglenet people. Oh, Mugglenet people. It took us awhile to figure out whotf they were. A girl sitting nearby asked us if we had any "website affiliation", and we were all really confused. "Li...vejournal...?" offered Pea or Aspen, before I could cavalierly suggest nonconchanbuttsex.com. "Oh," she said. "I'm from the Mugglenet forums!" And suddenly, so much was made clear.
Wandering through the Marriott to our room was, for me, kind of like coming downstairs on Christmas morning. It's a blur in my mind now, but at the time I felt like I was going to explode with excitement and over-stimulation. There were Potter peeps everywhere, and already a ton of cosplayers. Aspen and I stared, starry-eyed, when we passed a full-on Lucius and Harry sitting on a bench and chatting together amicably. I can honestly say that I have never been around cosplayers, especially not HP ones, so it gave everything an amazing dream-like quality.
We eventually wound up safely in our hotel room, where we exclaimed a lot over its size. ("TWO BATHROOMS?!?!?!" we yelled at each other. Multiple times.) Neither Aspen nor I were feeling much up to massive socializing, but drunk slasher hotties were wandering all over the place, and we wound up with goldie and bloodybrilliant in our room with casino champagne. It was completely surreal to look up and suddenly have Goldie be there! I later felt like a tard for not reacting in a manner more befitting the occasion, but at the time I was just reeling from everything happening so fast. bloodybrilliant was about the sweetest person I've ever met, and actually knew who I was, which was exciting! I was very anonymous for most of the event, so having someone be like, "Oh, I recognize you!" gave me a real thrill.
They ducked out to the hot tub (oh, the hot tub...), and Aspen and I eventually wound up following so we could say hi to everyone. I saw a ton of people I recognized due to their LJ names, which was fun and, again, surreal! It was blazing hot outside, though, and Aspen and I were fully dressed (and prudishly intended to stay that way) so we mosied back up to the hotel room, Styrofoam cups of champagne in tow.
I'm a little murky on the exact timing of this, but I believe when we came back, incognito was there. She slipped in at some point during this, anyway! Becca is one of those people who is instantly likeable, and definitely rounded out the best room ever. When Aspen and I returned, she and Pea set off in search of more booze, and over the course of the night retrieved a bottle of wine, multiple strawberry daiquiris and Long Island iced teas, and a few pina coladas. They got BFFy with the bartender in the casino, so he kept making their drinks stronger and stronger, which made them get very drunk. This night we made the biggest push in our five-day glass collection.
As soon as the wine was finished, we collectively realized that we suddenly had a bottle, and you know where that leads. The grand tradition of Suite 5241 was started...
Thursday:
After having slept just enough to no longer be drunk, we all rolled out of bed and set off to get registered. Actually having my lanyard in hand made Lumos feel like it had officially started. It was kind of the real-life equivalent of having an LJ icon or not having one. That's maybe the most geeky analogy I've ever made, but you get what I mean. Having a lanyard means you're INVOLVED. You're ACTIVE. You're one of the crowd. People have something to peer at when they pass you.
We browsed the art gallery, since we were in that neck of the woods anyway. It was delightful to see fanart up close like that (I'm not an H/D person, but I loved staring at Sherant's piece). I was hoping to see the life-sized working model of Molly Weasley's clock, but it wasn't there at that point. Fie! >:( We also wandered through the vendors room, but we couldn't find the temporary Dark Marks anywhere. (Note to WhimsicAlley: put those suckers somewhere PROMINENT next time! We didn't find them until the very last day.) We went and had a look at the "common room" while we were there, but I think we were all kind of... unimpressed by it. I was assuming there would be common rooms for each of the houses (because, come on, how hard would that have been? how cool would that have been?), so it was a little underwhelming. We did have many opportunities to scope more cosplayers while there, though - we saw a very convincing Azkaban-era Sirius being led around on a chain and collar by a Lupin. That was... really something. The fact that Sirius was lazily smoking a cigarette made it that much more amazing.
Everyone felt hungry by this point, so we popped into the Irish Pub for lunch. The first H/D party of the day was going on in there, so our meal was punctuated by gleeful screams from that corner of the room. Aspen and I started our what turned into another Lumos tradition of getting chicken tenders for lunch. Mm, those chicken tenders....
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in our hotel room, and decided to be rebellious and skip the Welcoming Feast. We also decided to be rebellious and skip the Harry and the Potters concert! Instead, we ventured back to the pub, where the nighttime edition of the H/D party was in full swing. I was carded at the pub (for doing nothing! just standing there!), but the waitress we had was really nice about it, and gave me a hand stamp to denote that I was underage, so I narrowly escaped being punted out of Ye Olde European Drinking Hole. (Psst: Pea totally orally passed me Butterbeer at the party anyway. I think we shocked some nearby people with that trick.) Which is good, because I got all kinds of slashy swag at the party! Some really awesome person put together goody bags for everyone who showed up, which included pins (which promptly went on my lanyard, and now are on my purse), acid pops, and those keychain thingummies where you look into them and can see a picture, with H/D fanart! We also got door prizes - Aspen and I got messenger bags that say Voldemort Returns on them, and Pea got H/D coasters! So delightful. ♥_♥!! My favorite thing acquired at the party was totally the rainbow lightning bolt pin in the goody bag. It's just SO HP and SO GAY, I will pretty much kill myself if I ever lose it.
Then it was off to dramaphile's birthday party, which took place in Goldie's suite. SHEER INSANITY. I had no idea a hotel room could fit that many people into it! I met a lot more people here - lazy_daze, longleggedgit, kerryblaze, spurious, sioniann, shabzilla, emmagrant01, swtjems, songs_mistress, furiosity... probably lots of others who I am forgetting/whose LJs I don't know. It was crazyjampacked! And there was so much booze. It was breath-taking. I nursed a cranberry-something and apple-vodka (apparently this was called a "crapple") as I took lots of papparazzi-style pictures of people and munched on Goldie-provided pocky and tim-tams! It was very multicultural and filling.
As the evening wound down (or heated up, depending on your perspective), a ton of people wound up out in the hot tub, and a decent amount wound up in our room! cmere, starrysummer, and xylodemon joined the rest of us for a ROUSING game of spin-the-bottle that culminated in our first noise complaint of the trip! Oh yes.
Friday:
Pea's first panel was bright and early, so naturally she almost slept through it! Aspen and I, despite earnest efforts to go be supportive, wound up... falling asleep the second Pea and her cohorts left the room. We slept until about three in the afternoon, because we are bums.
We had the rather brilliant idea to go to a nearby grocery store to stock up on food that didn't cost $15 a pop, and valiantly endeavored to make it happen, but we were foiled. :( Apparently there was a grocery store about two blocks away from the hotel, but in 106+ degree heat, that's kind of... impossible. I called us a cab to take us there ("That's right across the street," said the bemused dispatcher.), but apparently all cabs in Las Vegas SUCK? I don't know, but after something like an hour and a half, they were still not there! We waited around the casino entrance that entire time, where we saw a lot of weirdos, culminating in a spotting of bloodybrilliant, swtjems, and their gang. They were taking a cab to a liquor store (where else?), and their cab actually showed up, so we ditched the idea of getting food and got them to pick up vodka, rum and coke for us. Highly nutritious! A scary drunk guy showed up outside the casino just as everyone was departing in their cab. "Is this some kind of reality TV show?" he drunkenly demanded. We were all afraid.
We hung around in the hotel for the rest of the day, slowly getting trashed on What Was Gleaned on that liquor store excursion. We tooled around on Pea's computer quite a bit, having a read-aloud of xylodemon's Harry/Draco/Lupin/Sirius fic and a viewing of a ton of superhot porny fanart by reallycorking. After panting over seriously hot Harry/Luna art, I wound up being like, "Someone give me paper, I'm totes writing Harry/Luna pegging fic!!" Pea and Aspen then downloaded femdom porn on Pea's computer, which they played in the background as I frantically scribbled in Aspen's spiral notebook. SO WHEN THAT FIC IS POSTED, YOU CAN SMUGLY KNOW ITS ORIGINS. Aspen then decided to cobble together the hot art with the hilarious dialogue of femdom porn (seriously, so bad) and make this wallpaper, which lurked on Pea's desktop for the rest of the weekend.
We got increasingly unfocused the drunker we got, and Aspen and I eventually degenerated to singing along to random music on Pea's computer. We were belting out "Piano Man" when the lovely redpiratemel dropped by to talk to Pea about their femslash panel. (For the record, that's the best song to sing drunkenly, if you're going to go that route.) We had moved into Eisley numbers by the time they were done, and Mel gave us awesome Femslash ♥er pins! Mine is now on my purse with my other totally slashy pins! Seriously, I am pretty sure a conservative need only glance at that thing before bursting into flames.
incognito arrived shortly after this, and the two of us decided to go venture down to the slash-o-rama downstairs and recruit people for spin-the-bottle. Because we're hobags. We wandered around the hot tubs, which were DEVOID OF SLASHERS for pretty much the only time all weekend long (I came close to mauling some nice, normal people who were in one. probably participants in that US Dry Bean convention I kept hearing so much about.), and finally tracked everyone down in one of the hotel's many ambiguous lobby-like pockets. There were a cluster of artists doing an impromptu round-table (I do believe sherant and glockgal were among them!), and a lot of people hanging around there, so we loitered for awhile. We were able to nab a handful of hottiest for spin the bottle back in our room, but about five minutes into the game, our good friends Hotel Security showed up being all, "Check yourself before you wreck yourself! You have had a billion noise complaints!"
Everyone dispersed and wound up at the hot tub and, after a game effort to locate the then-missing incognito, I did too. This was the Night of a Thousand Boners that anyone who mentions the hot tub is probably referring to - there was SO MUCH hooking up going on in there, it was insane. Crazy, crazy girl-on-girl action as far as the eye could see. I was a very demure hot tub participant, for the record - I basically just sat there delicately, watching everyone else with buggy eyes. I only did a wee bit of tongue-slipping. I did drink some kind of booze (what was that? whiskey?) that was in a bottle on the side of the hot tub, which everyone else was taking swigs of, so I guess that has to count as like seven people. Mostly I just watched and boggled and realized that unless I become some kind of rock god at some point in my life, I'll probably never again be in a hot tub full of drunk, fine lesbian girls.
Pea and I slogged back to our hotel room at something like three in the morning, dripping water everywhere. It had a real walk of shame feel to it.
Saturday:
Aspen and I slept in shamefully late again, missing Pea's femslash panel. We spent most of the afternoon loitering around in the hotel room and obstinately refusing to attend any panels. We downloaded Teen Girl Squad (Pea hadn't seen them!) and gay porn from the_gloryhole and held private viewings on one of our room beds. "There needs to be more ball-sucking in fic," one of us would say as we watched two hot guys go for it. "There needs to be more 69-ing in fic," someone else would reply, lilting to one side for a better view. It was extremely slashucational. I did more work on my paper-and-pen fic, and drank sweet sweet butterbeer.
We eventually wandered down to the Irish Pub for one last meal of chicken tenders. Afraid we might miss the PoA movie if we lingered, we scarfed our food, threw what was left in to-go boxes, and wound up showing up to the screening with time to spare. PFFTT!! But we had a chance to say goodbye to our awesome waitress from the pub, who had served us every time we went in there (and had been so cool about not kicking out my underage ass). I'm pretty sure this is when incognito and kerryblaze showed us the awesome HP tattoos they acquired that day, too - they were so amazing! Becca got a lightning bolt and Kerry got a chess piece, and I'm still very covetous of both. I want a Harry Potter tattoo! ('Cept the only character I've had a long-time affection for is Tom Riddle, and I don't think my love for a genocidal sociopath goes deep enough for me to get a skull-and-snake tattoo. But I digress.)
The PoA screening itself was totally one of the best things I did at Lumos. It was fun and hilarious and made me feel a real love for other HP fans. Everyone was screaming and hollering and yelling out suggestive things the entire time. I clapped my hands raw making noise for... man, it seemed like everything! I yelled and clapped when Ron and Hermione held hands, I shouted YES MA'AM at the top of my lungs when the trio had their threesome hug, I screamed so loud during the Sirius/Remus hug that I thought I was going to lose my voice. And I don't even really ship any of those things hardcore! There was just such a thrilling feeling of camaraderie, like everyone else watching just GOT IT in that way that I did. When everyone yelled, "Stroke it, Harry!" when the Monster Book of Monsters showed up, I just wanted to run around hugging them. My people! The chill-inducing scene where Harry summons the Prongs patronus was made even more amazing by the whole room yelling "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" along with him. It was just. Incredible. So much Harry Potter love.
We decided to not stick around for the GoF screening (it was getting kinda crazy in that room. although we did get to see a very convincing Snape in a nightgown, so that was a fair trade-off...), and wound up going up to our room. We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out and enjoying being roomies. It was so sad to realize we were going to go home the next day, although I have to admit, I was so exhausted by that point that the idea of collapsing into my own bed did have a certain appeal. We stayed up until the sun rose, though we all wound up passing out in spite of our efforts to just pull an all-nighter. Suite 5241 went out in a blaze of sleepy sunlit glory.
Sunday:
I felt vaguely loopy from lack of sleep, but we managed to pack everything up and exit the room in an orderly fashion. We made it to the leaving feast just as they were kicking everyone out to make room for another event, so we ate breakfast on the floor of the general convention lobby. I had bangers and mash, because if you can't eat weird British food at Lumos, where CAN you eat it? It was actually really good, but I'm overly fond of mashed potatoes anyway.
We decided to circle through the vendor room again (a better thing to do at the end of the con than at the beginning, because really, what better way to blow your last bits of money?), and I got two Dark Mark tattoos (finally!) and a button with Sirius' wanted poster on it. They had really high quality costumes there (their site is whimsicalley.com, fyi), and I was covetously making grabby hands at everything I saw. I was down to my last pence, though, so I was stiff upper-lipping my lack of a scarf when Aspen totally reenacted Harry getting Ron Omniculars and bought me one!! :o! So now I own a GORGEOUS Slytherin scarf in the secondary style! And even though it is August, I refuse to take it off. ♥_♥
Our times were mixed-up on the departing Night Buses (thanks, lumos2006.org!), so we wound up having to get a taxi to the airport. I'm glad we stuck around as long as we did into Sunday, though, because we were able to hang out in the hotel lobby for awhile and say goodbye to a lot of people! The taxi ride wasn't all that bad - in fact, our taxi driver was this kind of hilariously weird grizzled old guy who told us that he had a chimpanzee as a passenger earlier that week, for some kind of poker tournament. OH, LAS VEGAS. We also got to pass through the strip, which was my one and only experience with that part of Vegas. Preeeeeeeeeetty sure I don't ever want to see that up close and personal.
My flight was for 11:50pm, and the airline would only let me check in within six hours of my flight (I WAS THAT EARLY. SOB.), so with one last kiss and hug, I saw cursescar and foreword off on their elevator to the sky and settled in by the check-in area of US Airways. I pretty much spent enough time in the airport that the security guards assumed I was a bum taking up residence there. I just whiled away the hours writing porn (Aspen generously donated her spiral notebook to the Save Katie's Brains fund). So, so much porn....
I was shuffling around in the terminals that evening, trying to find the gate they had switched my flight to, when the strains of a conversation on buttsex and incest floated out to me from a Cinnabon. Aha, I thought. Sure enough, lazy_daze, shabzilla, balefully and karaz were there! They were very sweet and awesome and invited me to sit, so I spent the next hour or two with them. A lovelier group of ladies you could not ask for, and even though I was so exhausted that I could barely see straight, they kept me cracking up with their hilarious conversations and stories. I'm pretty sure they had the Cinnabon employees horrified by the time we cleared out.
Against all odds, I finally made it to my plane, where I collapsed in a half-dead heap of tired joy. It has taken me this long to recover. lskjfldj
Final Thoughts:
Absolutely, positively one of the best experiences of my life! And that's not even hyperbolic. It was just... man! I have been in fandom since I was thirteen, and have been involved in so much during those seven years, it was amazing to finally see it all come alive like that. I though more than once that it would have been way more fitting for me to have gone to Nimbus 2003, since that was when I was the most active in fandom, but I don't feel that way at all anymore. It wouldn't have been the same experience without those people (the drunkies! the 5241ers!), those activities, those situations. And it really served to make me realize how much Harry Potter will always be a huge part of my life. I'm thrilled to have made so many new fandom friends, and committed to new fandom activities! A week later, that "I love you all!" high that the PoA screening gave me hasn't worn off a bit. If anything, it's morphed into a nice hazy bubble of satisfaction.
Wednesday:
I showed up at the airport with time to spare, but after a nasty miscalculation regarding the security checkpoint, they were calling my name over the loudspeaker by the time I got into the terminal. What a way to start the trip. I ran across the airport and arrived just as they were about to shut the door of the plane. Unfortunately (not that any of this was fortunate), my seat was at the very back, so I had to squeeze down the narrow walkway of the entire plane to get there, and of course I wound up whacking people's shoulders with my carry-on bag more than once. "OUCH!!" yelled a large midwestern hausfrau as I schlepped past. "Sorry, sorry," I called over my shoulder. To make the flight even stranger, I wound up with French speakers on one side of me, and some sort of Slavic speakers on the other.
When I arrived in Las Vegas, I quickly realized I'd have no real way of meeting up with Aspen and Pea - LAS sections off each of their terminals so only those with flights departing/arriving from those select airlines can get back there. Totally lame! I don't consider PDX podunk, and you can get to any terminal there once you pass a security checkpoint. Unimpressed! Anyway, I waited around aimlessly for a few hours in the hopes that I would magically spot them in the luggage claim area (and because I was kind of afraid to venture to the Marriott alone), and eventually wound up talking to the guy who held up the Lumos 2006 sign.
"What's your name?" he asked me, looking at a ream of print-outs.
"Katie Common-Surname," I answered.
"I'm not seein' ya on here, Katie," he answered. He had some kind of east coast accent that made him sound like either a Mafioso or someone who would sell you a lemon of a car. "But I see a Mary Common-Surname! Thaaat's probably you." He proceeded to cross poor Mary off the list.
"Um," I said nervously. "Is there an Aspen Realname or Pea Realname on there?"
The answer was no.
"I don't really know," he said conversationally, as I stood there frantically worrying it was actually Tuesday or something. He waved his arms as he spoke, thus lowering the Lumos 2006 sign to the point of zero visibility. "They just threw this at me. It could be a lot more organized. These drivers, I'm tellin' ya. I like one of them okay, but the other one, he's such an asshole. When I first met him, I said, 'I don't like you. You're a prick.' And he is!"
I quietly goggled. Having the guy who holds the sign for the happy little Harry Potter convention cussing at me about one of his coworkers made me feel like I was suddenly and abruptly initiated into Vegas. People just don't do that anywhere else. He proceeded to tell me about the resort, making a lot of insinuations about how I must have money if I was going there, to which I was like, "well... most of us are sharing rooms..." He remained unconvinced, and filled me in on where and when to gamble. I didn't mention that I can't legally gamble in Nevada yet.
Miraculously, as I was wondering if the guy with the sign was going to club me over the head and stuff me in his trunk, Aspen and Pea walked by! I had spent so long trying to see their faces in those of strangers that seeing them in the flesh was surreal. They were exhausted from walking all over the airport looking for the guy with the sign (they weren't missing much), so we piled into the shuttle and eventually took off for the hotel, along with a bunch of Mugglenet people. Oh, Mugglenet people. It took us awhile to figure out whotf they were. A girl sitting nearby asked us if we had any "website affiliation", and we were all really confused. "Li...vejournal...?" offered Pea or Aspen, before I could cavalierly suggest nonconchanbuttsex.com. "Oh," she said. "I'm from the Mugglenet forums!" And suddenly, so much was made clear.
Wandering through the Marriott to our room was, for me, kind of like coming downstairs on Christmas morning. It's a blur in my mind now, but at the time I felt like I was going to explode with excitement and over-stimulation. There were Potter peeps everywhere, and already a ton of cosplayers. Aspen and I stared, starry-eyed, when we passed a full-on Lucius and Harry sitting on a bench and chatting together amicably. I can honestly say that I have never been around cosplayers, especially not HP ones, so it gave everything an amazing dream-like quality.
We eventually wound up safely in our hotel room, where we exclaimed a lot over its size. ("TWO BATHROOMS?!?!?!" we yelled at each other. Multiple times.) Neither Aspen nor I were feeling much up to massive socializing, but drunk slasher hotties were wandering all over the place, and we wound up with goldie and bloodybrilliant in our room with casino champagne. It was completely surreal to look up and suddenly have Goldie be there! I later felt like a tard for not reacting in a manner more befitting the occasion, but at the time I was just reeling from everything happening so fast. bloodybrilliant was about the sweetest person I've ever met, and actually knew who I was, which was exciting! I was very anonymous for most of the event, so having someone be like, "Oh, I recognize you!" gave me a real thrill.
They ducked out to the hot tub (oh, the hot tub...), and Aspen and I eventually wound up following so we could say hi to everyone. I saw a ton of people I recognized due to their LJ names, which was fun and, again, surreal! It was blazing hot outside, though, and Aspen and I were fully dressed (and prudishly intended to stay that way) so we mosied back up to the hotel room, Styrofoam cups of champagne in tow.
I'm a little murky on the exact timing of this, but I believe when we came back, incognito was there. She slipped in at some point during this, anyway! Becca is one of those people who is instantly likeable, and definitely rounded out the best room ever. When Aspen and I returned, she and Pea set off in search of more booze, and over the course of the night retrieved a bottle of wine, multiple strawberry daiquiris and Long Island iced teas, and a few pina coladas. They got BFFy with the bartender in the casino, so he kept making their drinks stronger and stronger, which made them get very drunk. This night we made the biggest push in our five-day glass collection.
As soon as the wine was finished, we collectively realized that we suddenly had a bottle, and you know where that leads. The grand tradition of Suite 5241 was started...
Thursday:
After having slept just enough to no longer be drunk, we all rolled out of bed and set off to get registered. Actually having my lanyard in hand made Lumos feel like it had officially started. It was kind of the real-life equivalent of having an LJ icon or not having one. That's maybe the most geeky analogy I've ever made, but you get what I mean. Having a lanyard means you're INVOLVED. You're ACTIVE. You're one of the crowd. People have something to peer at when they pass you.
We browsed the art gallery, since we were in that neck of the woods anyway. It was delightful to see fanart up close like that (I'm not an H/D person, but I loved staring at Sherant's piece). I was hoping to see the life-sized working model of Molly Weasley's clock, but it wasn't there at that point. Fie! >:( We also wandered through the vendors room, but we couldn't find the temporary Dark Marks anywhere. (Note to WhimsicAlley: put those suckers somewhere PROMINENT next time! We didn't find them until the very last day.) We went and had a look at the "common room" while we were there, but I think we were all kind of... unimpressed by it. I was assuming there would be common rooms for each of the houses (because, come on, how hard would that have been? how cool would that have been?), so it was a little underwhelming. We did have many opportunities to scope more cosplayers while there, though - we saw a very convincing Azkaban-era Sirius being led around on a chain and collar by a Lupin. That was... really something. The fact that Sirius was lazily smoking a cigarette made it that much more amazing.
Everyone felt hungry by this point, so we popped into the Irish Pub for lunch. The first H/D party of the day was going on in there, so our meal was punctuated by gleeful screams from that corner of the room. Aspen and I started our what turned into another Lumos tradition of getting chicken tenders for lunch. Mm, those chicken tenders....
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in our hotel room, and decided to be rebellious and skip the Welcoming Feast. We also decided to be rebellious and skip the Harry and the Potters concert! Instead, we ventured back to the pub, where the nighttime edition of the H/D party was in full swing. I was carded at the pub (for doing nothing! just standing there!), but the waitress we had was really nice about it, and gave me a hand stamp to denote that I was underage, so I narrowly escaped being punted out of Ye Olde European Drinking Hole. (Psst: Pea totally orally passed me Butterbeer at the party anyway. I think we shocked some nearby people with that trick.) Which is good, because I got all kinds of slashy swag at the party! Some really awesome person put together goody bags for everyone who showed up, which included pins (which promptly went on my lanyard, and now are on my purse), acid pops, and those keychain thingummies where you look into them and can see a picture, with H/D fanart! We also got door prizes - Aspen and I got messenger bags that say Voldemort Returns on them, and Pea got H/D coasters! So delightful. ♥_♥!! My favorite thing acquired at the party was totally the rainbow lightning bolt pin in the goody bag. It's just SO HP and SO GAY, I will pretty much kill myself if I ever lose it.
Then it was off to dramaphile's birthday party, which took place in Goldie's suite. SHEER INSANITY. I had no idea a hotel room could fit that many people into it! I met a lot more people here - lazy_daze, longleggedgit, kerryblaze, spurious, sioniann, shabzilla, emmagrant01, swtjems, songs_mistress, furiosity... probably lots of others who I am forgetting/whose LJs I don't know. It was crazyjampacked! And there was so much booze. It was breath-taking. I nursed a cranberry-something and apple-vodka (apparently this was called a "crapple") as I took lots of papparazzi-style pictures of people and munched on Goldie-provided pocky and tim-tams! It was very multicultural and filling.
As the evening wound down (or heated up, depending on your perspective), a ton of people wound up out in the hot tub, and a decent amount wound up in our room! cmere, starrysummer, and xylodemon joined the rest of us for a ROUSING game of spin-the-bottle that culminated in our first noise complaint of the trip! Oh yes.
Friday:
Pea's first panel was bright and early, so naturally she almost slept through it! Aspen and I, despite earnest efforts to go be supportive, wound up... falling asleep the second Pea and her cohorts left the room. We slept until about three in the afternoon, because we are bums.
We had the rather brilliant idea to go to a nearby grocery store to stock up on food that didn't cost $15 a pop, and valiantly endeavored to make it happen, but we were foiled. :( Apparently there was a grocery store about two blocks away from the hotel, but in 106+ degree heat, that's kind of... impossible. I called us a cab to take us there ("That's right across the street," said the bemused dispatcher.), but apparently all cabs in Las Vegas SUCK? I don't know, but after something like an hour and a half, they were still not there! We waited around the casino entrance that entire time, where we saw a lot of weirdos, culminating in a spotting of bloodybrilliant, swtjems, and their gang. They were taking a cab to a liquor store (where else?), and their cab actually showed up, so we ditched the idea of getting food and got them to pick up vodka, rum and coke for us. Highly nutritious! A scary drunk guy showed up outside the casino just as everyone was departing in their cab. "Is this some kind of reality TV show?" he drunkenly demanded. We were all afraid.
We hung around in the hotel for the rest of the day, slowly getting trashed on What Was Gleaned on that liquor store excursion. We tooled around on Pea's computer quite a bit, having a read-aloud of xylodemon's Harry/Draco/Lupin/Sirius fic and a viewing of a ton of superhot porny fanart by reallycorking. After panting over seriously hot Harry/Luna art, I wound up being like, "Someone give me paper, I'm totes writing Harry/Luna pegging fic!!" Pea and Aspen then downloaded femdom porn on Pea's computer, which they played in the background as I frantically scribbled in Aspen's spiral notebook. SO WHEN THAT FIC IS POSTED, YOU CAN SMUGLY KNOW ITS ORIGINS. Aspen then decided to cobble together the hot art with the hilarious dialogue of femdom porn (seriously, so bad) and make this wallpaper, which lurked on Pea's desktop for the rest of the weekend.
We got increasingly unfocused the drunker we got, and Aspen and I eventually degenerated to singing along to random music on Pea's computer. We were belting out "Piano Man" when the lovely redpiratemel dropped by to talk to Pea about their femslash panel. (For the record, that's the best song to sing drunkenly, if you're going to go that route.) We had moved into Eisley numbers by the time they were done, and Mel gave us awesome Femslash ♥er pins! Mine is now on my purse with my other totally slashy pins! Seriously, I am pretty sure a conservative need only glance at that thing before bursting into flames.
incognito arrived shortly after this, and the two of us decided to go venture down to the slash-o-rama downstairs and recruit people for spin-the-bottle. Because we're hobags. We wandered around the hot tubs, which were DEVOID OF SLASHERS for pretty much the only time all weekend long (I came close to mauling some nice, normal people who were in one. probably participants in that US Dry Bean convention I kept hearing so much about.), and finally tracked everyone down in one of the hotel's many ambiguous lobby-like pockets. There were a cluster of artists doing an impromptu round-table (I do believe sherant and glockgal were among them!), and a lot of people hanging around there, so we loitered for awhile. We were able to nab a handful of hottiest for spin the bottle back in our room, but about five minutes into the game, our good friends Hotel Security showed up being all, "Check yourself before you wreck yourself! You have had a billion noise complaints!"
Everyone dispersed and wound up at the hot tub and, after a game effort to locate the then-missing incognito, I did too. This was the Night of a Thousand Boners that anyone who mentions the hot tub is probably referring to - there was SO MUCH hooking up going on in there, it was insane. Crazy, crazy girl-on-girl action as far as the eye could see. I was a very demure hot tub participant, for the record - I basically just sat there delicately, watching everyone else with buggy eyes. I only did a wee bit of tongue-slipping. I did drink some kind of booze (what was that? whiskey?) that was in a bottle on the side of the hot tub, which everyone else was taking swigs of, so I guess that has to count as like seven people. Mostly I just watched and boggled and realized that unless I become some kind of rock god at some point in my life, I'll probably never again be in a hot tub full of drunk, fine lesbian girls.
Pea and I slogged back to our hotel room at something like three in the morning, dripping water everywhere. It had a real walk of shame feel to it.
Saturday:
Aspen and I slept in shamefully late again, missing Pea's femslash panel. We spent most of the afternoon loitering around in the hotel room and obstinately refusing to attend any panels. We downloaded Teen Girl Squad (Pea hadn't seen them!) and gay porn from the_gloryhole and held private viewings on one of our room beds. "There needs to be more ball-sucking in fic," one of us would say as we watched two hot guys go for it. "There needs to be more 69-ing in fic," someone else would reply, lilting to one side for a better view. It was extremely slashucational. I did more work on my paper-and-pen fic, and drank sweet sweet butterbeer.
We eventually wandered down to the Irish Pub for one last meal of chicken tenders. Afraid we might miss the PoA movie if we lingered, we scarfed our food, threw what was left in to-go boxes, and wound up showing up to the screening with time to spare. PFFTT!! But we had a chance to say goodbye to our awesome waitress from the pub, who had served us every time we went in there (and had been so cool about not kicking out my underage ass). I'm pretty sure this is when incognito and kerryblaze showed us the awesome HP tattoos they acquired that day, too - they were so amazing! Becca got a lightning bolt and Kerry got a chess piece, and I'm still very covetous of both. I want a Harry Potter tattoo! ('Cept the only character I've had a long-time affection for is Tom Riddle, and I don't think my love for a genocidal sociopath goes deep enough for me to get a skull-and-snake tattoo. But I digress.)
The PoA screening itself was totally one of the best things I did at Lumos. It was fun and hilarious and made me feel a real love for other HP fans. Everyone was screaming and hollering and yelling out suggestive things the entire time. I clapped my hands raw making noise for... man, it seemed like everything! I yelled and clapped when Ron and Hermione held hands, I shouted YES MA'AM at the top of my lungs when the trio had their threesome hug, I screamed so loud during the Sirius/Remus hug that I thought I was going to lose my voice. And I don't even really ship any of those things hardcore! There was just such a thrilling feeling of camaraderie, like everyone else watching just GOT IT in that way that I did. When everyone yelled, "Stroke it, Harry!" when the Monster Book of Monsters showed up, I just wanted to run around hugging them. My people! The chill-inducing scene where Harry summons the Prongs patronus was made even more amazing by the whole room yelling "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" along with him. It was just. Incredible. So much Harry Potter love.
We decided to not stick around for the GoF screening (it was getting kinda crazy in that room. although we did get to see a very convincing Snape in a nightgown, so that was a fair trade-off...), and wound up going up to our room. We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out and enjoying being roomies. It was so sad to realize we were going to go home the next day, although I have to admit, I was so exhausted by that point that the idea of collapsing into my own bed did have a certain appeal. We stayed up until the sun rose, though we all wound up passing out in spite of our efforts to just pull an all-nighter. Suite 5241 went out in a blaze of sleepy sunlit glory.
Sunday:
I felt vaguely loopy from lack of sleep, but we managed to pack everything up and exit the room in an orderly fashion. We made it to the leaving feast just as they were kicking everyone out to make room for another event, so we ate breakfast on the floor of the general convention lobby. I had bangers and mash, because if you can't eat weird British food at Lumos, where CAN you eat it? It was actually really good, but I'm overly fond of mashed potatoes anyway.
We decided to circle through the vendor room again (a better thing to do at the end of the con than at the beginning, because really, what better way to blow your last bits of money?), and I got two Dark Mark tattoos (finally!) and a button with Sirius' wanted poster on it. They had really high quality costumes there (their site is whimsicalley.com, fyi), and I was covetously making grabby hands at everything I saw. I was down to my last pence, though, so I was stiff upper-lipping my lack of a scarf when Aspen totally reenacted Harry getting Ron Omniculars and bought me one!! :o! So now I own a GORGEOUS Slytherin scarf in the secondary style! And even though it is August, I refuse to take it off. ♥_♥
Our times were mixed-up on the departing Night Buses (thanks, lumos2006.org!), so we wound up having to get a taxi to the airport. I'm glad we stuck around as long as we did into Sunday, though, because we were able to hang out in the hotel lobby for awhile and say goodbye to a lot of people! The taxi ride wasn't all that bad - in fact, our taxi driver was this kind of hilariously weird grizzled old guy who told us that he had a chimpanzee as a passenger earlier that week, for some kind of poker tournament. OH, LAS VEGAS. We also got to pass through the strip, which was my one and only experience with that part of Vegas. Preeeeeeeeeetty sure I don't ever want to see that up close and personal.
My flight was for 11:50pm, and the airline would only let me check in within six hours of my flight (I WAS THAT EARLY. SOB.), so with one last kiss and hug, I saw cursescar and foreword off on their elevator to the sky and settled in by the check-in area of US Airways. I pretty much spent enough time in the airport that the security guards assumed I was a bum taking up residence there. I just whiled away the hours writing porn (Aspen generously donated her spiral notebook to the Save Katie's Brains fund). So, so much porn....
I was shuffling around in the terminals that evening, trying to find the gate they had switched my flight to, when the strains of a conversation on buttsex and incest floated out to me from a Cinnabon. Aha, I thought. Sure enough, lazy_daze, shabzilla, balefully and karaz were there! They were very sweet and awesome and invited me to sit, so I spent the next hour or two with them. A lovelier group of ladies you could not ask for, and even though I was so exhausted that I could barely see straight, they kept me cracking up with their hilarious conversations and stories. I'm pretty sure they had the Cinnabon employees horrified by the time we cleared out.
Against all odds, I finally made it to my plane, where I collapsed in a half-dead heap of tired joy. It has taken me this long to recover. lskjfldj
Final Thoughts:
Absolutely, positively one of the best experiences of my life! And that's not even hyperbolic. It was just... man! I have been in fandom since I was thirteen, and have been involved in so much during those seven years, it was amazing to finally see it all come alive like that. I though more than once that it would have been way more fitting for me to have gone to Nimbus 2003, since that was when I was the most active in fandom, but I don't feel that way at all anymore. It wouldn't have been the same experience without those people (the drunkies! the 5241ers!), those activities, those situations. And it really served to make me realize how much Harry Potter will always be a huge part of my life. I'm thrilled to have made so many new fandom friends, and committed to new fandom activities! A week later, that "I love you all!" high that the PoA screening gave me hasn't worn off a bit. If anything, it's morphed into a nice hazy bubble of satisfaction.