Infinitus Part 2: Saturday, Sunday, & Other Stuffs
Not as much here as the previous days, but there's still lots of stuff!
Saturday
We were exhausted Saturday. We woke up at about 7:30ish, so with less than 4 hours of sleep, we got into costume and headed over to the hotel. One presentation I was really looking forward to was that day (Living the Wizarding Lifestyle), and I got a lot of really good information out of it. I'm not about to become a lifestyler, but I can't wait to apply a few things I heard into my life. One thing they were saying was that they took the strong traits of their characters and applied them to themselves and their daily life. Also that even though it made them kinda vain, they still liked to look and feel good because dressing up in character is a fulfilling experience. I couldn't agree more with that. I feel more confident as Umbridge and I think I want to incorporate a bit of her style into my own life and work wardrobe. It will make me feel more powerful and more connected to my fandom. If it sounds like I hardly went to any programming, it is because I didn't. A lot of the time we were just busy doing something, and because I knew presentations would be put on iTunes within the next few weeks, I could be more relaxed about the schedule since I'd be hearing the talks eventually.
Then at 11:30 we went to lunch. It was the biggest mistake of the con. We went to The Islands (another one of the many hotel restaurants). We had 9 people, we told the hostess there would be 9 of us and they were fine with it. Things were not fine though. Every single order that the waiter took came wrong or cold. I got the worst of it, I think. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, well-done. Let me say this again - a fully cooked burger with bacon and cheese on it. That's it. Nothing fancy, just a nice $15 burger. After waiting about an hour, our food came
Burger 1: No bacon, had to wait 10 minutes for the waiter to take my plate and bring it back with bacon
Burger 2: Red and bloody on the inside, had to send it back because it was making me gag, by this point we had called the manager over because of all of the other orders
Burger 3: It had bacon, but it was red and bloody on the inside
Burger 4: Well done, but no bacon in sight. The bacon was brought out on a plate by a different waiter.
Every time that I got a different burger, they brought me another cup of fries. By the time the meal was over (2.5 hours!) I had 4 cups of fries, several onion rings (the menu said nothing about onion rings with the burger, so that was confusing), and tons of burger toppings. I was getting really frustrated and I was really trying not to cry. It was one really horrible meal. Stephanie snapped a really good picture of me when I was burgerless (which was most of the meal.
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The only good thing about that restaurant were the frogs. The frogs were in the conference space, too, but they were taken away on Wednesday.
Frog butts!!
After that we just decided to hang out in the common room for a bit and we noticed that on the memory table, one of the memories had "bad wolf" written on it. Every single paper on that table had Bad Wolf written on it, and we found one that said, "the bad wolf is in room 3456." So Angelica drew a TARDIS and we posted it on their door. I don't know if the people who wrote the sign were actually in 3456 (since it's such a fishy number), but we had fun doing it anyway.
I stopped into stupid_drawings's panel for a little while (next con I'm going to go to a ton of formal programming to make up for all of the awesome stuff I missed this year!) and then went to watch some Quidditch. It was freaking hot as hell. And of course, we went and had a refreshing drink in Michelle's room. Heather won tickets to the Dessert with Chris & Christian event, so while she went to that I stayed in the room while Michelle and Tara were getting ready.
Tara and Michelle as Rowena and Helena Ravenclaw
Heather was Aberforth, of course
Me with ladyoflosttimes
ramblingnic's dress was gorgeous!
I can't forget David Tennant! There was a guy that looked exactly like David Tennant and hewtab was stalking him a bit. This isn't the best picture of him, because he looks even more like him in person. I bet he gets so sick of people telling him who he looks like.
The ball was a bit different than expected. In previous cons there are always tons of people in costume and amazing dresses and this one was totally different. There were a few costumes (I'll get into this later in the post), and some really lovely dresses, but for the most part, people just went the casual route (except the tweens, who went the expected slutty route). The music was horrible, and I think it was due to the age of most of the attendees. There were a few good songs, but everything else was just...no. Also, the bartenders weren't carding and the minors knew it. I saw several obviously under 21s drinking. They did play some Journey, and it made all of us sad that the only reason the tweens knew it was because of Glee.
I was so tired though. At some point during the ball I just decided to lie on the floor. (picture stolen from stupid_drawings
Sunday
Sunday was nice, we slept in until...wait, what's that? We didn't sleep in at all? Oh yeah, we woke up at 7:30 like every other day. We got ready and headed over to the hotel to go to Mandala and Olek's vow renewal. They were doing it as Bill and Fleur's wedding and it was amazing.
After that was the leaving feast and the auction. The food at the feast was really amazing, but the most disappointing thing was that they somehow felt it was appropriate to have some wizard rock during it. Okay, you didn't get to play the night before, suck it up and act like a grown-up, don't ruin our goodbyes with your loud screechy music! The auction was sooo awkward. All of the art was Snape related, and all of the signed stuff was signed by people the older crowd didn't care about (the potter musical people) and the auctioneer was insane. She was trying to drive prices up by bidding a lot and ended up buying almost everything because of it. If she does another auction at a con, I will not be going to that particular event.
We were going to leave right after that, but the volunteer ice cream social was at 3, so we just hung around for an hour and a half before heading over. We got some ice cream and some awesome Infinitus keychains and then left. I packed up my car and drove home. It was surreal being home, too. I still haven't unpacked either. I was zombie!Shae all day at work.
And now for some other stuff...
Emily Bethke Memorial Foundation
I will start this off by saying that I didn't win. I'm pretty sad about it. No matter how I phrase this, I sound like a conceited wench, but I really think I had the best piece. The one that one was a sculpture that combined all four of the house mascots into one. I know it is horrible and self-centered, but I think my 20 hours of work was better and showed off a lot more skills. *sigh* I know I'm horrible, but I'm bummed out. Not sure if I want to sell it on etsy or keep it for myself.
Quiberon Quafflepunchers
Remember how I kept mentioning the big machine embroidery project I was working on? Well, it was for stupid_drawings! She was making a set of Quidditch robes and I did the patches for the team.
I made 2 of each patch, and the large patches took 2+ hours each. It was an absolutely exhausting project. The artwork is by Sasha, and she actually sent me the images for the team member patches (not the team logo) about 5 months ago.
Drinking
This was a drinking con. I think I drank more at this con than I have all year. It seems like I had a little something with every meal and that we stopped by Tara and Michelle's room a lot. XD
Costumes, Tweens and Wrock
I think the only complaint I really have about this conference was that the age of the attendees. Sure, you had the normal crowd, but compared to the amount of 13-18 year olds, we were nothing. Most of the tweens were there for the potter musical thing. I am going to say something and it will shock you, but I heard one admit that she was a huge potter fan and had seen all of the movies. Yeah, let that soak in a little. Painful, right?
The tweens didn't dress up, either. I have never seen so many people dressed normally. No Potter shirts, no Potter accessories, and a really tiny amount of costumes. Some people were saying that the lack of costumes was because of the wizarding world and the fact that it was FLORIDA IN JULY (seriously guys, why are there 2 more cons during JULY IN FLORIDA!?!?!). Honestly, I don't believe it. Anyone staying at the hotel has no excuse because in 10 minutes a person can be ready to go just by running to their room and putting on pants. I was very saddened by the lack of costumes.
Wrock. Ugh. Do I even need to go into it? There was wrock everywhere. People were randomly performing in the hall which is not okay during formal programming time. It is rude to mess up someone's presentation after they spent so much time researching and creating it. One thing that really bugged me was the wrock in the common room. There were many wrock events, why did there need to be a billion concerts in the common room? I know Stephanie did end up saying that she wouldn't be going to any future events if the wrock was this pervasive, and I have to agree. I'm hoping that by Ascendio 2012 the tween crowd will go away or get over themselves and the con will have more to it than potter musicals and crazy insane lines that have to be navigated around.
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Obviously I didn't post all of my photos, so if you'd like to see them they are here. If anyone else posts some good pictures of me I'll definitely be sharing within the next few days.
Saturday
We were exhausted Saturday. We woke up at about 7:30ish, so with less than 4 hours of sleep, we got into costume and headed over to the hotel. One presentation I was really looking forward to was that day (Living the Wizarding Lifestyle), and I got a lot of really good information out of it. I'm not about to become a lifestyler, but I can't wait to apply a few things I heard into my life. One thing they were saying was that they took the strong traits of their characters and applied them to themselves and their daily life. Also that even though it made them kinda vain, they still liked to look and feel good because dressing up in character is a fulfilling experience. I couldn't agree more with that. I feel more confident as Umbridge and I think I want to incorporate a bit of her style into my own life and work wardrobe. It will make me feel more powerful and more connected to my fandom. If it sounds like I hardly went to any programming, it is because I didn't. A lot of the time we were just busy doing something, and because I knew presentations would be put on iTunes within the next few weeks, I could be more relaxed about the schedule since I'd be hearing the talks eventually.
Then at 11:30 we went to lunch. It was the biggest mistake of the con. We went to The Islands (another one of the many hotel restaurants). We had 9 people, we told the hostess there would be 9 of us and they were fine with it. Things were not fine though. Every single order that the waiter took came wrong or cold. I got the worst of it, I think. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, well-done. Let me say this again - a fully cooked burger with bacon and cheese on it. That's it. Nothing fancy, just a nice $15 burger. After waiting about an hour, our food came
Burger 1: No bacon, had to wait 10 minutes for the waiter to take my plate and bring it back with bacon
Burger 2: Red and bloody on the inside, had to send it back because it was making me gag, by this point we had called the manager over because of all of the other orders
Burger 3: It had bacon, but it was red and bloody on the inside
Burger 4: Well done, but no bacon in sight. The bacon was brought out on a plate by a different waiter.
Every time that I got a different burger, they brought me another cup of fries. By the time the meal was over (2.5 hours!) I had 4 cups of fries, several onion rings (the menu said nothing about onion rings with the burger, so that was confusing), and tons of burger toppings. I was getting really frustrated and I was really trying not to cry. It was one really horrible meal. Stephanie snapped a really good picture of me when I was burgerless (which was most of the meal.
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The only good thing about that restaurant were the frogs. The frogs were in the conference space, too, but they were taken away on Wednesday.
Frog butts!!
After that we just decided to hang out in the common room for a bit and we noticed that on the memory table, one of the memories had "bad wolf" written on it. Every single paper on that table had Bad Wolf written on it, and we found one that said, "the bad wolf is in room 3456." So Angelica drew a TARDIS and we posted it on their door. I don't know if the people who wrote the sign were actually in 3456 (since it's such a fishy number), but we had fun doing it anyway.
I stopped into stupid_drawings's panel for a little while (next con I'm going to go to a ton of formal programming to make up for all of the awesome stuff I missed this year!) and then went to watch some Quidditch. It was freaking hot as hell. And of course, we went and had a refreshing drink in Michelle's room. Heather won tickets to the Dessert with Chris & Christian event, so while she went to that I stayed in the room while Michelle and Tara were getting ready.
Tara and Michelle as Rowena and Helena Ravenclaw
Heather was Aberforth, of course
Me with ladyoflosttimes
ramblingnic's dress was gorgeous!
I can't forget David Tennant! There was a guy that looked exactly like David Tennant and hewtab was stalking him a bit. This isn't the best picture of him, because he looks even more like him in person. I bet he gets so sick of people telling him who he looks like.
The ball was a bit different than expected. In previous cons there are always tons of people in costume and amazing dresses and this one was totally different. There were a few costumes (I'll get into this later in the post), and some really lovely dresses, but for the most part, people just went the casual route (except the tweens, who went the expected slutty route). The music was horrible, and I think it was due to the age of most of the attendees. There were a few good songs, but everything else was just...no. Also, the bartenders weren't carding and the minors knew it. I saw several obviously under 21s drinking. They did play some Journey, and it made all of us sad that the only reason the tweens knew it was because of Glee.
I was so tired though. At some point during the ball I just decided to lie on the floor. (picture stolen from stupid_drawings
Sunday
Sunday was nice, we slept in until...wait, what's that? We didn't sleep in at all? Oh yeah, we woke up at 7:30 like every other day. We got ready and headed over to the hotel to go to Mandala and Olek's vow renewal. They were doing it as Bill and Fleur's wedding and it was amazing.
After that was the leaving feast and the auction. The food at the feast was really amazing, but the most disappointing thing was that they somehow felt it was appropriate to have some wizard rock during it. Okay, you didn't get to play the night before, suck it up and act like a grown-up, don't ruin our goodbyes with your loud screechy music! The auction was sooo awkward. All of the art was Snape related, and all of the signed stuff was signed by people the older crowd didn't care about (the potter musical people) and the auctioneer was insane. She was trying to drive prices up by bidding a lot and ended up buying almost everything because of it. If she does another auction at a con, I will not be going to that particular event.
We were going to leave right after that, but the volunteer ice cream social was at 3, so we just hung around for an hour and a half before heading over. We got some ice cream and some awesome Infinitus keychains and then left. I packed up my car and drove home. It was surreal being home, too. I still haven't unpacked either. I was zombie!Shae all day at work.
And now for some other stuff...
Emily Bethke Memorial Foundation
I will start this off by saying that I didn't win. I'm pretty sad about it. No matter how I phrase this, I sound like a conceited wench, but I really think I had the best piece. The one that one was a sculpture that combined all four of the house mascots into one. I know it is horrible and self-centered, but I think my 20 hours of work was better and showed off a lot more skills. *sigh* I know I'm horrible, but I'm bummed out. Not sure if I want to sell it on etsy or keep it for myself.
Quiberon Quafflepunchers
Remember how I kept mentioning the big machine embroidery project I was working on? Well, it was for stupid_drawings! She was making a set of Quidditch robes and I did the patches for the team.
I made 2 of each patch, and the large patches took 2+ hours each. It was an absolutely exhausting project. The artwork is by Sasha, and she actually sent me the images for the team member patches (not the team logo) about 5 months ago.
Drinking
This was a drinking con. I think I drank more at this con than I have all year. It seems like I had a little something with every meal and that we stopped by Tara and Michelle's room a lot. XD
Costumes, Tweens and Wrock
I think the only complaint I really have about this conference was that the age of the attendees. Sure, you had the normal crowd, but compared to the amount of 13-18 year olds, we were nothing. Most of the tweens were there for the potter musical thing. I am going to say something and it will shock you, but I heard one admit that she was a huge potter fan and had seen all of the movies. Yeah, let that soak in a little. Painful, right?
The tweens didn't dress up, either. I have never seen so many people dressed normally. No Potter shirts, no Potter accessories, and a really tiny amount of costumes. Some people were saying that the lack of costumes was because of the wizarding world and the fact that it was FLORIDA IN JULY (seriously guys, why are there 2 more cons during JULY IN FLORIDA!?!?!). Honestly, I don't believe it. Anyone staying at the hotel has no excuse because in 10 minutes a person can be ready to go just by running to their room and putting on pants. I was very saddened by the lack of costumes.
Wrock. Ugh. Do I even need to go into it? There was wrock everywhere. People were randomly performing in the hall which is not okay during formal programming time. It is rude to mess up someone's presentation after they spent so much time researching and creating it. One thing that really bugged me was the wrock in the common room. There were many wrock events, why did there need to be a billion concerts in the common room? I know Stephanie did end up saying that she wouldn't be going to any future events if the wrock was this pervasive, and I have to agree. I'm hoping that by Ascendio 2012 the tween crowd will go away or get over themselves and the con will have more to it than potter musicals and crazy insane lines that have to be navigated around.
------
Obviously I didn't post all of my photos, so if you'd like to see them they are here. If anyone else posts some good pictures of me I'll definitely be sharing within the next few days.