Dear Anime Boston....
Friday morning (because, y'know, going to bed at 4 AM), I got no sleep. I was packed and dressed and out the door, somehow, before 6:30, and made it to Port Authority perfectly on time. Ths bus ride up to Boston was uneventful, and we got into South Station just after one.
The hotel, though, wasn't ready until 3:00 on the nose (which, y'know, is check-in time, but still), and so that was a big timesink for us. We were able to meet Mabel in the hotel lobby, and we just sat around bullshitting. The room itself was tiny, but we managed. It did, however, have a great view of FENWAY that I screamed over.
ignore the depressing sign in the front The Red Sox aren't home until Friday, so there were lots of tours going through.
Once we were unpacked and settled and changed, we headed over to the con, but by then it was about five in the afternoon. Whoops. Anyway, Es was Sister Sweden, I was Finland, we ran into Holly cosplaying Norway, and Mabel was Jade.
We REALLY need a Denmark and an Iceland.
Nicest Homestuckers we've ever met. Not the greatest cosplayers, but they were just so chill and not Homestucky.
We thought we were too late for the Dealer's Room so we ran around the Artist Alley instead. Saw a couple of good things, picked up Red String #6 right away. Didn't buy much else though. We stopped at the Paul Reveres table so Mabel could chat. Saw a bunch of pretty cool people cosplaying some pretty cool shit. Es wasn't feeling well, so we sent her home, and before long, Mabel and I realized we had nothing to do. We'd wandered around, but we were pretty much done. We sat in a corner and decided to people-watch.
Oh but right after we sent Es home, I found BRUINS GUY who I missed last year! And while the costume idea is awesome and i might steal it fuck the Bruins. :D
And the Yankees. I love Boston.
Anyway, people-watching. A little boy, couldn't have been more than five, dressed as Link happened by. He was so cute! I didn't see a parent, though, so I didn't wanna run over for a picture. His mother happened by eventually, and with a tinier Zelda in tow.
SO PRECIOUS.
So, then, I ran over, determined, and how surprised was I when I realized I knew those people. The kids were Ed and Winry (yes, those are their actual names), and their mother Kim, was on the PianoSquall forums with me waaaaaaaaaay back in the day. So Kim and I caught up a little bit, and yeah. More people came by to take pictures of the kids, including a pair of really excited girls.
They were unnecessarily excited, I thought, until they pulled out a sheet of paper and mentioned a scavenger hunt. O_O WHAAAAAT? So I asked them about it and they told me where I could find out more information and... we did. Mabel and I went off to the Information Desk and got a scavenger hunt sheet. Shit was HELLA easy and we finished it in about half an hour (maybe forty-five minutes. Tops), and we returned to the Info Desk to turn it in and say the game was awesome. Only... there wasn't anyone there. It took us a minute, but we noticed that the bottom of the scavenger hunt sheet said to turn the page in at Masquerade HQ. When we figured out where that was, the room was closed.
Giggling, because I thought it was fun to have another scavenger hunt after the scavenger hunt, we went over to Con Ops, and asked when Masq HQ would be open. Since the Anime Dating Game was happening, they said that someone would be back after it was over, which was midnight, which was two hours from then. Since Mabel and I didn't have anything to do, we camped out in front of the room and waited with Holly and some of her friends who'd found us while we were doing the scavenger hunt. Thank goodness I had my deck of cards with me (and that I haven't lost my Bullshit skills).
We were there about an hour when some other staffers (Dustin!) came out of a side room and we asked them if someone was going to be by to open Masq HQ soon. When they said no, we had a bit of a shit-fit, since we'd been waiting so long doing nothing (even though we had to kill time until midnight, since that's when Finn's train from Philly was coming in). We took some pictures to prove we were there at a certain time -- since the list said only the first five teams to return a list would get prizes -- and headed out.
It was cold outside, but getting Finn was easy, at least! We didn't have to walk very far from the Hynes; it amounted to just one T stop. So Finn, Mabel, and I caught up a bit on the way back to the hotel, and once we got in, we woke up Esmeralda and the four of us were talking and laughing and shit for a good long while. The room phone rang. The front desk called about a noise complaint because we were being too loud and the pregnant woman in the next room was trying to sleep. We don't know why it was so important that she was pregnant, but we figured since we were being a bit rowdy and it was late, we should get to sleep.
Saturday morning, Finn, Mabel and I woke up and eventually made it down to breakfast; Esmeralda couldn't be dragged out of bed and stayed behind. We also came back, got dressed, and left for the con without her, and all was well, or so we thought.
Not too long after we left, Esmeralda got up and was almost in the shower when she heard a noise coming from near the door. When she went to check it out, it was PREGNANT BITCH trying to get into our room with her key! Es was stupefied and amazed that anyone would actually try that. She told Es "we need to talk about last night," got the front desk involved and everything (and about the room, she claimed that she thought she was returning to her own room. I can't believe how anyone else would allow that shit to fly). Long story short here, Preggo was upset that she could hear things in our room like the shower or the toilet flushing and thought it was making too much noise, like we could help it. Once Esmeralda got to the con (at, like, five) and told us all this, naturally, we were making fun of it all night.
Pregnant bitches are crazy.
Anyway, at the con, the first thing Mabel and I did was turn in the scavenger hunt, and we got our fill of cheap dollar-store trinkets as prizes. And then there was a MASTER LEVEL scavenger hunt, so of course we snatched that up. A lot of the stuff on the list was really obscure, though, and a pain in the ass to find. A costume themed around the Vice Presidential Primary? Really? It took us all day, but we managed to finish it, too. Along the way....
We stopped at the Paul Reveres table again, since Mabel and Finn were cosplaying Johnny and Paul. I found Stef in her Beatrix cosplay. So many people took pictures of me as Toph, and complimented my costume (it's not that great! It's still not finished and I don't have my space bracelet and my hair was half-assed and....). I found Puerto Rico when Finn and I had to make a pit stop at Walgreens, Kendra was such a pretty Tiana, Andrea and Trev were LSP and Marshall Lee, there was a Dr. Cube (I still haven't forgiven him for AB '06), there were some Vietnam guys (so random), Katara yelled at me, and I got the barrel (finally, after running into nothing but Good people all day).
I am not Toph, I am BARREL LORD!
I got the barrel twice this weekend AND I was able to hold onto it on Saturday for like an hour! I won it with steady rocks, and kept defending it throwing nothing but rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. I was Toph; I don't know how people didn't catch on! So we took one last look around, found a Tin Tin and a Korra, and Kiera as Derpy Hooves. I lost the barrel somewhere in all that (which is cool because I was returning it to Con Ops anyway), and yeah. That was Saturday. Saw this ad in the Hynes T stop:
Wish we had cool ads like this for NYCC-- oh wait, it sucks. :|
We played a round of Apples to Apples and some other trivia shit once we got back to the room, and we had to pack while being relatively quiet because Mabel was afraid of offending Preggo. I couldn't believe it; it was just one more night, she'd never see us again, and seriously, she's crazy anyway for freaking out over us flushing the toilet. I'd say fuck her, but someone already did, ew. :| I won Apples to Apples handily.
I also got this fantastic nerdy!America print (print has a different background that isn't so ... screaming). Oh my gosh, I love me some nerdy America. *A* Mabel started doing her Nerdmerica voice and I kept being squealy. And lookit all the matching and details~~!!
Finn accurately describes how the four of us felt about the entire weekend.
Sunday was pretty chill. We got breakfast (all of us, this time), got dressed, checked out, headed to the con, checked our bags, went to Masq HQ for more scavenger hunt stuff. We got our ribbons, big obnoxious blue things. BUT WE EARNED THEM and life was beautiful. Everyone else was Homestuck; I was England because it was the eighth and Entente Cordiale~ (and I managed not to run into a single France somehow?) and I hadn't worn the costume in ages, I don't think. A couple more cosplay photos, some running around the Dealer's Room and Artist Alley one more time, and that was it. Aside of that, it was just eating and changing and getting back on the bus with a few minutes to spare.
I wrote this post mostly on the bus on the way home from the con, but couldn't post because there was no internet and it was spotty on the way up and they were charging ridiculous amounts in the hotel, so now I'm really glad I'm home because I love you, internet. *hugs*
Monday was a lot of sleeping. Tuesday happened and ... things!
So R.A. Dickey was doing a book signing of his autobiography (look, I don't care if he's only 37, he's still my favorite Met pitcher, and a really interesting guy to boot O K A Y), so hell yeah, I was all over that. I was in line for just less than an hour. And we couldn't take pictures with him, so I just got a picture of the guy in front of me.
He's making a derp face because he was in the middle of looking up and that was something I hadn't anticipated.
So I got tongue-tied and didn't really know what to say (and I didn't wanna be an obnoxious fan, and I didn't want to make him be there longer than he had to be, even if it were just a second or two), so I just said hi, how are you, thanked him and left.
BUT I DON'T CARE BECAUSE I GOT MY BOOK SIGNED!
So then I went to IKEA with Guillermo, and we gorged ourselves on meatballs and mashed potatoes so much that we could hardly shuffle through the halls. I wasn't really looking for it, but I found a neat swivel chair and wound up buying it. The mission of the day, though, was rugs to cover the new floor, and it was successful. I also got some lignonberry sauce because FUCK YEAH, a new wastepaper basket and a recipe card for some salmon casserole that's gonna be all up in this bitch sometime next week. I would have taken the frozen food home, but it was like "DO NOT FREEZE AFTER THAWING" and it takes me two hours to get home from Brooklyn. ._. Okay.
But yeah, check it out, if you'll ignore the rest of the mess. There's another little rug right at the doorway; I was standing on it when I took that photo.
This pretty much took all day, as I got home at 8:30, just in time to watch the Mets lose their first game of the season. ;a; But that's okay because my IKEAdventure (i.e., putting my chair together) was totally smooth sailing. I'm sad to get rid of the bench I used before because I've had it since I was ten, but it's uncomfortable and pretty wobbly. trying to squash my hoarding tendencies because in eight hours it'll be gone forever and i have to understand that that's okay
Aaaaaaand yeah. I've earned my sleep. NHL playoffs start tomorrow! \o/
The hotel, though, wasn't ready until 3:00 on the nose (which, y'know, is check-in time, but still), and so that was a big timesink for us. We were able to meet Mabel in the hotel lobby, and we just sat around bullshitting. The room itself was tiny, but we managed. It did, however, have a great view of FENWAY that I screamed over.
ignore the depressing sign in the front The Red Sox aren't home until Friday, so there were lots of tours going through.
Once we were unpacked and settled and changed, we headed over to the con, but by then it was about five in the afternoon. Whoops. Anyway, Es was Sister Sweden, I was Finland, we ran into Holly cosplaying Norway, and Mabel was Jade.
We REALLY need a Denmark and an Iceland.
Nicest Homestuckers we've ever met. Not the greatest cosplayers, but they were just so chill and not Homestucky.
We thought we were too late for the Dealer's Room so we ran around the Artist Alley instead. Saw a couple of good things, picked up Red String #6 right away. Didn't buy much else though. We stopped at the Paul Reveres table so Mabel could chat. Saw a bunch of pretty cool people cosplaying some pretty cool shit. Es wasn't feeling well, so we sent her home, and before long, Mabel and I realized we had nothing to do. We'd wandered around, but we were pretty much done. We sat in a corner and decided to people-watch.
Oh but right after we sent Es home, I found BRUINS GUY who I missed last year! And while the costume idea is awesome and i might steal it fuck the Bruins. :D
And the Yankees. I love Boston.
Anyway, people-watching. A little boy, couldn't have been more than five, dressed as Link happened by. He was so cute! I didn't see a parent, though, so I didn't wanna run over for a picture. His mother happened by eventually, and with a tinier Zelda in tow.
SO PRECIOUS.
So, then, I ran over, determined, and how surprised was I when I realized I knew those people. The kids were Ed and Winry (yes, those are their actual names), and their mother Kim, was on the PianoSquall forums with me waaaaaaaaaay back in the day. So Kim and I caught up a little bit, and yeah. More people came by to take pictures of the kids, including a pair of really excited girls.
They were unnecessarily excited, I thought, until they pulled out a sheet of paper and mentioned a scavenger hunt. O_O WHAAAAAT? So I asked them about it and they told me where I could find out more information and... we did. Mabel and I went off to the Information Desk and got a scavenger hunt sheet. Shit was HELLA easy and we finished it in about half an hour (maybe forty-five minutes. Tops), and we returned to the Info Desk to turn it in and say the game was awesome. Only... there wasn't anyone there. It took us a minute, but we noticed that the bottom of the scavenger hunt sheet said to turn the page in at Masquerade HQ. When we figured out where that was, the room was closed.
Giggling, because I thought it was fun to have another scavenger hunt after the scavenger hunt, we went over to Con Ops, and asked when Masq HQ would be open. Since the Anime Dating Game was happening, they said that someone would be back after it was over, which was midnight, which was two hours from then. Since Mabel and I didn't have anything to do, we camped out in front of the room and waited with Holly and some of her friends who'd found us while we were doing the scavenger hunt. Thank goodness I had my deck of cards with me (and that I haven't lost my Bullshit skills).
We were there about an hour when some other staffers (Dustin!) came out of a side room and we asked them if someone was going to be by to open Masq HQ soon. When they said no, we had a bit of a shit-fit, since we'd been waiting so long doing nothing (even though we had to kill time until midnight, since that's when Finn's train from Philly was coming in). We took some pictures to prove we were there at a certain time -- since the list said only the first five teams to return a list would get prizes -- and headed out.
It was cold outside, but getting Finn was easy, at least! We didn't have to walk very far from the Hynes; it amounted to just one T stop. So Finn, Mabel, and I caught up a bit on the way back to the hotel, and once we got in, we woke up Esmeralda and the four of us were talking and laughing and shit for a good long while. The room phone rang. The front desk called about a noise complaint because we were being too loud and the pregnant woman in the next room was trying to sleep. We don't know why it was so important that she was pregnant, but we figured since we were being a bit rowdy and it was late, we should get to sleep.
Saturday morning, Finn, Mabel and I woke up and eventually made it down to breakfast; Esmeralda couldn't be dragged out of bed and stayed behind. We also came back, got dressed, and left for the con without her, and all was well, or so we thought.
Not too long after we left, Esmeralda got up and was almost in the shower when she heard a noise coming from near the door. When she went to check it out, it was PREGNANT BITCH trying to get into our room with her key! Es was stupefied and amazed that anyone would actually try that. She told Es "we need to talk about last night," got the front desk involved and everything (and about the room, she claimed that she thought she was returning to her own room. I can't believe how anyone else would allow that shit to fly). Long story short here, Preggo was upset that she could hear things in our room like the shower or the toilet flushing and thought it was making too much noise, like we could help it. Once Esmeralda got to the con (at, like, five) and told us all this, naturally, we were making fun of it all night.
Pregnant bitches are crazy.
Anyway, at the con, the first thing Mabel and I did was turn in the scavenger hunt, and we got our fill of cheap dollar-store trinkets as prizes. And then there was a MASTER LEVEL scavenger hunt, so of course we snatched that up. A lot of the stuff on the list was really obscure, though, and a pain in the ass to find. A costume themed around the Vice Presidential Primary? Really? It took us all day, but we managed to finish it, too. Along the way....
We stopped at the Paul Reveres table again, since Mabel and Finn were cosplaying Johnny and Paul. I found Stef in her Beatrix cosplay. So many people took pictures of me as Toph, and complimented my costume (it's not that great! It's still not finished and I don't have my space bracelet and my hair was half-assed and....). I found Puerto Rico when Finn and I had to make a pit stop at Walgreens, Kendra was such a pretty Tiana, Andrea and Trev were LSP and Marshall Lee, there was a Dr. Cube (I still haven't forgiven him for AB '06), there were some Vietnam guys (so random), Katara yelled at me, and I got the barrel (finally, after running into nothing but Good people all day).
I am not Toph, I am BARREL LORD!
I got the barrel twice this weekend AND I was able to hold onto it on Saturday for like an hour! I won it with steady rocks, and kept defending it throwing nothing but rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. I was Toph; I don't know how people didn't catch on! So we took one last look around, found a Tin Tin and a Korra, and Kiera as Derpy Hooves. I lost the barrel somewhere in all that (which is cool because I was returning it to Con Ops anyway), and yeah. That was Saturday. Saw this ad in the Hynes T stop:
Wish we had cool ads like this for NYCC-- oh wait, it sucks. :|
We played a round of Apples to Apples and some other trivia shit once we got back to the room, and we had to pack while being relatively quiet because Mabel was afraid of offending Preggo. I couldn't believe it; it was just one more night, she'd never see us again, and seriously, she's crazy anyway for freaking out over us flushing the toilet. I'd say fuck her, but someone already did, ew. :| I won Apples to Apples handily.
I also got this fantastic nerdy!America print (print has a different background that isn't so ... screaming). Oh my gosh, I love me some nerdy America. *A* Mabel started doing her Nerdmerica voice and I kept being squealy. And lookit all the matching and details~~!!
Finn accurately describes how the four of us felt about the entire weekend.
Sunday was pretty chill. We got breakfast (all of us, this time), got dressed, checked out, headed to the con, checked our bags, went to Masq HQ for more scavenger hunt stuff. We got our ribbons, big obnoxious blue things. BUT WE EARNED THEM and life was beautiful. Everyone else was Homestuck; I was England because it was the eighth and Entente Cordiale~ (and I managed not to run into a single France somehow?) and I hadn't worn the costume in ages, I don't think. A couple more cosplay photos, some running around the Dealer's Room and Artist Alley one more time, and that was it. Aside of that, it was just eating and changing and getting back on the bus with a few minutes to spare.
I wrote this post mostly on the bus on the way home from the con, but couldn't post because there was no internet and it was spotty on the way up and they were charging ridiculous amounts in the hotel, so now I'm really glad I'm home because I love you, internet. *hugs*
Monday was a lot of sleeping. Tuesday happened and ... things!
So R.A. Dickey was doing a book signing of his autobiography (look, I don't care if he's only 37, he's still my favorite Met pitcher, and a really interesting guy to boot O K A Y), so hell yeah, I was all over that. I was in line for just less than an hour. And we couldn't take pictures with him, so I just got a picture of the guy in front of me.
He's making a derp face because he was in the middle of looking up and that was something I hadn't anticipated.
So I got tongue-tied and didn't really know what to say (and I didn't wanna be an obnoxious fan, and I didn't want to make him be there longer than he had to be, even if it were just a second or two), so I just said hi, how are you, thanked him and left.
BUT I DON'T CARE BECAUSE I GOT MY BOOK SIGNED!
So then I went to IKEA with Guillermo, and we gorged ourselves on meatballs and mashed potatoes so much that we could hardly shuffle through the halls. I wasn't really looking for it, but I found a neat swivel chair and wound up buying it. The mission of the day, though, was rugs to cover the new floor, and it was successful. I also got some lignonberry sauce because FUCK YEAH, a new wastepaper basket and a recipe card for some salmon casserole that's gonna be all up in this bitch sometime next week. I would have taken the frozen food home, but it was like "DO NOT FREEZE AFTER THAWING" and it takes me two hours to get home from Brooklyn. ._. Okay.
But yeah, check it out, if you'll ignore the rest of the mess. There's another little rug right at the doorway; I was standing on it when I took that photo.
This pretty much took all day, as I got home at 8:30, just in time to watch the Mets lose their first game of the season. ;a; But that's okay because my IKEAdventure (i.e., putting my chair together) was totally smooth sailing. I'm sad to get rid of the bench I used before because I've had it since I was ten, but it's uncomfortable and pretty wobbly. trying to squash my hoarding tendencies because in eight hours it'll be gone forever and i have to understand that that's okay
Aaaaaaand yeah. I've earned my sleep. NHL playoffs start tomorrow! \o/