"You owe me $15." "Have you got change?" "Not in dollars!"
I started writing this on Sunday night but didn't get very far before I got tired out. So I saved it as a private entry and haven't updated it til tonight, Thursday. So do excuse if half of this sounds like it's happening today and then it changes. That's because that's exactly what happened!
Anyway, this is Collectormania-age!
Today was a very long day that in actual fact began yesterday. I got the 23.22 bus into York, sat in the pub for an hour with a book and a Coke, before heading down to the station for the 01.15am bus to Milton Keynes. I managed to get a seat without anybody next to me, and even when we stopped in Doncaster nobody sat down. Woo! So I slept (not as well as I usually do on coaches, I think the fact that Lemsip knocked me out yesterday afternoon didn't help, it meant I wasn't tired!) til MK, where I arrived just before 5 this morning. I got off the bus and went into the portakabin cafe, which was FREEZING. And the toilets had no hand dryers for me to use to warm up. Over the course of the next three and a half hours I had two hot chocolates, a lemsip, a sausage sandwich, listened to a Danny Wallace podcast, read Love It and watched three episodes of Middleman. By the time it came to 8.30 and I walked up to the Centre, I realised it was actually warmer outside than in the stupid bloody cafe.
In an inexplicable example of accidental good timing, I arrived at the centre just as jainaj sent a text saying she was there, told her I was at Next and we decided to head back to her car so that I could regain feeling in my toes, since there wasn't a single queue anywhere outside. And as we were walking back to the car, we spotted mrbuttmonkey waving at us! So the three of us went and sat in Jaina's car for an hour, which was lovely. When we went back to the Centre just before 10, the doors were open. We didn't need any Virtual Queue tickets so went straight for Starbucks (I'd been planning to get a ticket for the Mercedes McNab photoshoot but as it was at 10.55 I decided I couldn't really be bothered) and hung around in the general area until it opened, without looking like crazed coffee addicts.
We got our coffees and went to sit out by the fountain in the sun (on the sundial) and watched kids run around the edge of the fountain, willing them to fall in. None of them did, damnit. So our attention wandered to other people, and we started making up stories about them. We found a GCWOK! They were having fun taking questionable photos with a statue of a family. It was odd. But it amused us for a while!
Then there was some stall wanderage, and then we bumped into Bob. We chatted for a while, and then he went off to see what number John Rhys-Davies was signing up to, and we went to try and give Mark Sheppard some Jaffa Cakes. We wanted to see how long we could talk to him without buying anything. So Jaina went first, waving the cakes of Jaffa, and he summoned us forth. So forth we went. He asked how we were (he actually started with "hello, ladies!" to which we laughed at Ryan), we made small talk with the Jaffa Cakes, and then I said "You owe me $15." To his credit, he TOTALLY remembered exactly why. He just stared at me and said "you hated it?" (Backstory: At Serenity Complete in April he told me that regardless of what I thought of the miniseries of BSG, I couldn't possibly watch 33 and not admit it was a fantastic hour of television. And said he'd give me $15 if I didn't like it. Which I didn't.)
I told him yes, and he said "Then you don't deserve the money!" I told him that's not how bets work and he got out his wallet, counted out some $1 bills, and then realised he only had 20s. So he gave me the $20 and asked if I had change. I said "Not in dollars!" (though I was tempted to go and find out the exact exchange rate and give him it in pounds, but I couldn't be arsed) and now I owe him $5 back. lmao. He then spent the rest of the time we were up there saying "I'm not talking to you!!" any time I said anything. To which I just told him "Maybe not but I'm still talking at you!"
Jaina and Ryan had their day ruined when he told them there wasn't going to be any more Middleman made. He seemed quite certain about it, too!
Then we went to Amber. Oh, Amber, how I love thee! I wanted to get my Lovers, Liars and Lunatics DVD signed. As we got up to the desk, we had to hang fire while Amber and Mercedes' agent/manager/pa/assistant/random American lady asked them what they wanted to do for lunch, if they just wanted to go to the green room or what. They said they went to Nando's yesterday, and decided to try Pizza Express instead. At 12.30! It almost made us go there for lunch instead of Nando's, but Nando's won in the end! Anyway, Amber finished talking about food and turned back to us, I gave my DVD cover and ticket thing to the assistant and she passed it to Amber, who stared at Michael Muhney's sig for a while before looking at me and saying "Is this Michael?"
I said yes, and she got all goey and squeeish, it was so cute! She started gushing about how awesome Michael is, and isn't he a sweetheart, this that and the other. I told her about he and I sharing a birthday and the fact he'd asked me what year and when I told him he said "You're a DECADE younger than me!" She told me I should have lied, and I said I would have done if I'd realised beforehand! She laughed. Then she signed my DVD (in silver, just to match Michael), and I told her about fray101's DVD that arrived signed by Amber, and when Michael signed it, he'd decided Amber's autograph wasn't good enough and signed it again as Amber! She thought that was hysterical and said "that sounds just like Michael!"
So after she signed that, I said to her that Jaina and I had wanted to ask her about Drones. She looked a bit taken aback that we knew about it and were asking, and really pleased to be asked, too! So she told us they're almost done cutting it together, and that it looks really good. We told her about jonathan-woodward.com and she squealed - "Oh! I love my Jonathan!!" and then gushed for a good five minutes about how amazing he is in it, and how he's the lead, he's in every scene and all that jazz. And that there's an article that 225 Magazine from Baton Rouge did on the movie that mentions Jonathan if we want to put that stuff on our site. Jaina asked her if he dies in it, and she said nope, it's not a dying type of movie. And we said good, because Jonathan always dies in things! And she laughed and told us that she knows how he feels! Jaina got her auto (and yet another "What a pretty name!" comment) and we both got photos at the desk. Love Amber!
After that we went back to sit down for a bit. And then I went to see Mercedes - Ryan looked after the bags, and Jaina came in the queue with me to take a picture. She was really nice and sweet, commented on the number of sigs in my Watcher's Guide and asked who I was missing, I said it's not as many as it looks, there's just some people who sign big! She said "Do you have James? Oh yeah, there he is! He's one of the worst." I don't know if she meant worst for taking up space or worst as in hardest to get hold of, but anyway I laughed, and then got a picture with her.
We went back to Ryan, and met Bob too, who was also finished seeing everybody he wanted to see. He went to dump his stuff in the car and then came to meet us in Nando's, where we had got a nice table for four. While we were sitting there, kathygascoigne and her friend came in! So we had a brief between tables chat with her, and then after sitting and chatting for a long time, we finally left. Headed back via the ski slopes to have a look, and then Jaina and I went to be paparazzi for a bit taking pictures of Amber and Mercedes.
Then I texted emailitin, went outside to meet her and Andy, and we left! We went the long way from Milton Keynes to Yorkshire which involves going an hour further south so that we could drop Andy home, and then after the Great Witney Petrol Hunt of 2008 (and some texting Alison about me being in Witney) we headed home. On the way after eating some Haribo, I finally zonked out for an hour, waking up just as Quinn decided to stop at the services near Wakefield for a pee. Which was awesome as I'd needed the loo since Witney.
And then she dropped me off and that was that! Fun times at Collectormania!
Anyway, this is Collectormania-age!
Today was a very long day that in actual fact began yesterday. I got the 23.22 bus into York, sat in the pub for an hour with a book and a Coke, before heading down to the station for the 01.15am bus to Milton Keynes. I managed to get a seat without anybody next to me, and even when we stopped in Doncaster nobody sat down. Woo! So I slept (not as well as I usually do on coaches, I think the fact that Lemsip knocked me out yesterday afternoon didn't help, it meant I wasn't tired!) til MK, where I arrived just before 5 this morning. I got off the bus and went into the portakabin cafe, which was FREEZING. And the toilets had no hand dryers for me to use to warm up. Over the course of the next three and a half hours I had two hot chocolates, a lemsip, a sausage sandwich, listened to a Danny Wallace podcast, read Love It and watched three episodes of Middleman. By the time it came to 8.30 and I walked up to the Centre, I realised it was actually warmer outside than in the stupid bloody cafe.
In an inexplicable example of accidental good timing, I arrived at the centre just as jainaj sent a text saying she was there, told her I was at Next and we decided to head back to her car so that I could regain feeling in my toes, since there wasn't a single queue anywhere outside. And as we were walking back to the car, we spotted mrbuttmonkey waving at us! So the three of us went and sat in Jaina's car for an hour, which was lovely. When we went back to the Centre just before 10, the doors were open. We didn't need any Virtual Queue tickets so went straight for Starbucks (I'd been planning to get a ticket for the Mercedes McNab photoshoot but as it was at 10.55 I decided I couldn't really be bothered) and hung around in the general area until it opened, without looking like crazed coffee addicts.
We got our coffees and went to sit out by the fountain in the sun (on the sundial) and watched kids run around the edge of the fountain, willing them to fall in. None of them did, damnit. So our attention wandered to other people, and we started making up stories about them. We found a GCWOK! They were having fun taking questionable photos with a statue of a family. It was odd. But it amused us for a while!
Then there was some stall wanderage, and then we bumped into Bob. We chatted for a while, and then he went off to see what number John Rhys-Davies was signing up to, and we went to try and give Mark Sheppard some Jaffa Cakes. We wanted to see how long we could talk to him without buying anything. So Jaina went first, waving the cakes of Jaffa, and he summoned us forth. So forth we went. He asked how we were (he actually started with "hello, ladies!" to which we laughed at Ryan), we made small talk with the Jaffa Cakes, and then I said "You owe me $15." To his credit, he TOTALLY remembered exactly why. He just stared at me and said "you hated it?" (Backstory: At Serenity Complete in April he told me that regardless of what I thought of the miniseries of BSG, I couldn't possibly watch 33 and not admit it was a fantastic hour of television. And said he'd give me $15 if I didn't like it. Which I didn't.)
I told him yes, and he said "Then you don't deserve the money!" I told him that's not how bets work and he got out his wallet, counted out some $1 bills, and then realised he only had 20s. So he gave me the $20 and asked if I had change. I said "Not in dollars!" (though I was tempted to go and find out the exact exchange rate and give him it in pounds, but I couldn't be arsed) and now I owe him $5 back. lmao. He then spent the rest of the time we were up there saying "I'm not talking to you!!" any time I said anything. To which I just told him "Maybe not but I'm still talking at you!"
Jaina and Ryan had their day ruined when he told them there wasn't going to be any more Middleman made. He seemed quite certain about it, too!
Then we went to Amber. Oh, Amber, how I love thee! I wanted to get my Lovers, Liars and Lunatics DVD signed. As we got up to the desk, we had to hang fire while Amber and Mercedes' agent/manager/pa/assistant/random American lady asked them what they wanted to do for lunch, if they just wanted to go to the green room or what. They said they went to Nando's yesterday, and decided to try Pizza Express instead. At 12.30! It almost made us go there for lunch instead of Nando's, but Nando's won in the end! Anyway, Amber finished talking about food and turned back to us, I gave my DVD cover and ticket thing to the assistant and she passed it to Amber, who stared at Michael Muhney's sig for a while before looking at me and saying "Is this Michael?"
I said yes, and she got all goey and squeeish, it was so cute! She started gushing about how awesome Michael is, and isn't he a sweetheart, this that and the other. I told her about he and I sharing a birthday and the fact he'd asked me what year and when I told him he said "You're a DECADE younger than me!" She told me I should have lied, and I said I would have done if I'd realised beforehand! She laughed. Then she signed my DVD (in silver, just to match Michael), and I told her about fray101's DVD that arrived signed by Amber, and when Michael signed it, he'd decided Amber's autograph wasn't good enough and signed it again as Amber! She thought that was hysterical and said "that sounds just like Michael!"
So after she signed that, I said to her that Jaina and I had wanted to ask her about Drones. She looked a bit taken aback that we knew about it and were asking, and really pleased to be asked, too! So she told us they're almost done cutting it together, and that it looks really good. We told her about jonathan-woodward.com and she squealed - "Oh! I love my Jonathan!!" and then gushed for a good five minutes about how amazing he is in it, and how he's the lead, he's in every scene and all that jazz. And that there's an article that 225 Magazine from Baton Rouge did on the movie that mentions Jonathan if we want to put that stuff on our site. Jaina asked her if he dies in it, and she said nope, it's not a dying type of movie. And we said good, because Jonathan always dies in things! And she laughed and told us that she knows how he feels! Jaina got her auto (and yet another "What a pretty name!" comment) and we both got photos at the desk. Love Amber!
After that we went back to sit down for a bit. And then I went to see Mercedes - Ryan looked after the bags, and Jaina came in the queue with me to take a picture. She was really nice and sweet, commented on the number of sigs in my Watcher's Guide and asked who I was missing, I said it's not as many as it looks, there's just some people who sign big! She said "Do you have James? Oh yeah, there he is! He's one of the worst." I don't know if she meant worst for taking up space or worst as in hardest to get hold of, but anyway I laughed, and then got a picture with her.
We went back to Ryan, and met Bob too, who was also finished seeing everybody he wanted to see. He went to dump his stuff in the car and then came to meet us in Nando's, where we had got a nice table for four. While we were sitting there, kathygascoigne and her friend came in! So we had a brief between tables chat with her, and then after sitting and chatting for a long time, we finally left. Headed back via the ski slopes to have a look, and then Jaina and I went to be paparazzi for a bit taking pictures of Amber and Mercedes.
Then I texted emailitin, went outside to meet her and Andy, and we left! We went the long way from Milton Keynes to Yorkshire which involves going an hour further south so that we could drop Andy home, and then after the Great Witney Petrol Hunt of 2008 (and some texting Alison about me being in Witney) we headed home. On the way after eating some Haribo, I finally zonked out for an hour, waking up just as Quinn decided to stop at the services near Wakefield for a pee. Which was awesome as I'd needed the loo since Witney.
And then she dropped me off and that was that! Fun times at Collectormania!