Quickie update for now
...possibly followed by DragonCon recap and photos.
The laptop has been behaving. NO idea what caused the spazz-out, but for now its a non-issue. It self-healed, apparently, because the issues arose after a system recovery, but are no longer presenting in any way.
So...onward!
On Tuesday (Aug 31st), I went with my sister to the tattoo parlor for my birthday present, a cartilage piercing. True to form, I forgot my ID, so we got all the way there and had to go back home. My anxiety did not approve of such antics. After dinner, my mom volunteered to come with me again if I wanted, so off we went. The piercing guy was very cool, and very pierced. He lives near us actually, (we found that out earlier) and had been piercing for a very long time. He also did most of his own piercings. I was very impressed with his work, he didn't even use a clamp, just marked my ear and pushed the needle thru with his bare (gloved) hands. The piercing itself actually hurt less than putting the earring in, tho neither hurt as much as I might have expected. Guess I really do have a high pain tolerance. I didn't bleed much that I noticed, and he read me the riot act of aftercare, I bought my piercing deep cleaning soap, and out we went.
I'm going to jump right into the DragonCon stuff now, cause I'm feeling it and if I wait it'll be another week or so. Eventually it'll never get written, like my honeymoon to Seattle. *eyeroll* Also...I had planned to write this out as a day by day, but at this point I think I'll end up with highlights more than anything. :)
So, Wednesday morning, Sept 1st found us packed and ready, with the exception of some toiletries and odds. We got the cat all set up for mom to have an easy time taking care of him, vacuumed the carpet, changed the litter and got out the door by 2:45...only 15 minutes later than I originally planned.
patsytheloomer was scheduled to arrive on the train a little after 3, so mom drove us over to pick him up before stopping at the convenience store for late lunch. The plan was to eat cheaply then, and save ourselves the starvation vs expense in the airport or elsewhere. By the time we arrived in Atlanta, dinner would be appropriate.
After food, we headed right to the airport, which is 20 minutes from my house, and VERY small. :) But the flight was non-stop, and only $150ish round trip, per person. Upon arrival, as we exited the car to collect our bags, a wind kicked up the edge of Patsy's kilt. Nothing too scandalous, and I'm used to being around kilted men, but when I looked up at the ladies in the SUV parked behind us, the driver was grinning ear to ear.
Yeah...and we were off to a good start. :D
Inside the airport, things went pretty much as planned. Patsy had done check in for us the day before (I was at work, sans internet) so we just got our checked bags tagged, and headed to security. I packed with a purpose, so security was a breeze. No stops, tho the guy with the wand made me take off my finger splint and run it thru the x-ray machine. o_O
The next time someone cries "Racial Profiling!", I'm going to slap them. Short, slightly chubby white girl gets aluminum finger splint x-rayed. I assure you, I look nothing like Middle Eastern.
Moving on, we got our gear back in order and made our way to the gate. The plane was scheduled to depart a bit after 6pm...so we had 2.5 hours plus to wait. I called my MIL to thank her for my birthday gift, which arrived just before we left. We left on time, and the flight was blessedly uneventful. Just 2 hours, so we amused ourselves with books and music. I think M may have dozed off a bit. :)
Arrival in Atlanta around 8:30pm was smooth. We were going to a hotel this time, so no one to meet us or pick us up. Baggage claim was pretty quick and we already made some friends (a family of three) while figuring our next course of action. Of course, the rail didn't pass by our hotel, so we opted for a taxi. $35.50 for the three of us was a bit steep, but we just wanted to get settled. We checked into a room on the 14th floor (actually the 13th, but you know how that goes) and the air was set on 60 degrees! We turned that up a bit, mostly for my benefit, and set about unpacking. We hopped on the internet with the laptop and found a local chinese place that delivered. They had Mongolian Beef on the menu!!! I ordered that, and shared an order of crab rangoons with Patsy. My dinner was awesome, M didn't like his, and I think Patsy may have been too hungry to care. :D Bed followed at some point after.
Thursday found us with a whole day to do as we wished, after registration at 10am. They'd bumped it up to 10am from 2pm in an effort to curb the lines somewhat. For us it worked. We got there precisely at 10 (my friend carterpickles and her hubby Chris, with their friend Rick had already been in line) and walked RIGHT in the doors. We made it halfway thru the ballroom before stopping. Once you enter the ballroom, you have about 3/4s of a very large ballroom set up with zigzagged velvet ropes, before everyone is distilled down to vertical rows of lines for the first letter of your last name. Good for organization, not so good for people with last names starting with common letters...C, L, M, R, S, T... We waited a total of 1 hr, 40 minutes, with Patsy escaping with somewhat less, since the line for his last name was nonexistent when he got into it, and we got paired with M's, so had to wait about 30 minutes longer. We heard later that people getting in line in the afternoon (after work, class, whatever) still had waits upwards of 3 hours. Some people in line with us had taken off work, or skipped classes, purely for the purpose of getting thru the lines faster.
After that was handled, we called the free shuttle from the hotel (discovered AFTER we got there. It would have been handy for the airport) and went back to the hotel. We attempted to walk to the nearest store for provisions, but that wasn't as good an idea as we'd hoped. The closest place proved to be a gas station/convenience store, which lacked what we wanted. SO, we called the shuttle for a ride, and asked to be taken to a nearby grocery store. We spent about an hour in there and left with food, drink, water and a cooler. :) Dinner wasn't memorable...because I cannot remember what we ate. :P I think we ate in the food court, because I didn't have anything but a Dairy Queen Blizzard. :D Later, we met up with Heather and the gang, and went to check out the drum circle at 11:30 (they have one every night). It was as expected, a fistful of drummers of varying skill and delusion, along with several women with NO bellydance skill whatsoever. TWO women knew how to dance. More or less we sat far enough away to not be distracting, and watched and/or chatted. The guys, with the exception of Patsy, went to the next hall to watch a heavy metal band. They turned out to be mediocre, and we were bored, so we went out to find them. Everyone was kind of tired, so we all split up, with M, Patsy and I grabbing a $12 taxi back to the hotel (shuttle stops running at 11).
Friday was Con Day 1! We were up and at em early. We wanted to be awake by 8, but some asshat in the room before us turned down the volume on the alarm and we didn't think to check it. For whatever reason I didn't set my cell phone alarm...so we woke at 9. 10am found Mikey and I just getting into the True Blood panel with Pam, Lafayette and Sam. Literally. We were five rows from the back. :P It was a good panel. Lafayette turns out to be very shy in person and very soft spoken. He said he got his feminine mannerisms for the show from his mother and sisters. Pam was thanked for her work with animals, which made her tear up. :D She's beautiful on the show, but 1,000 times more gorgeous in person. She also told us about learning to speak Swedish from Alexander Skarsgard, who records the sentences for her to memorize. She would ask him after the take if it was good and he would tell her, "...No." :P She also asked him how he talked with the fangs...and he told her she just had to "take the pain." Her first take was so garbled with them, that they let her practice as she had asked to. hehehe Sam was asked about being naked on the show...so he told us how the scene was filmed on his GGGrandfather's land, and they made him wear a "sock" to cover his bits, which is created just for that purpose. he also said the ground was rough, so they gave him the sock and a pair of beige jazz slippers. Very attractive, as he put it. Almost as much as seeing yourself run naked thru a field (said with dripping sarcasm). He figures his ancestors were flipping in their graves. :P
After that panel we made for the Pirates!! Arrrr!! panel, featuring Lee Arenberg (Pintel) and Martin Klebba (Marty) from Pirates of the Caribbean. This was a good time. :D Both guys are wonderful people, and we got some insight into the bone cage from POTC2. Turns out they were really in it, strapped in, and hung from a huge crane. They were tethered to one side of the chasm and let go to swing. Martin said the first few swings were good and thrilling, but by the eighth swing, it would start to spin, and Martin was yelling to be let out. He ran behind some props or machinery and puked, only to find out the cameras followed him. :P We also found out that neither of them will be in the 4th Pirates movie. :( :( :( They were written out by someone who was fired for the decision, but it was too late to write them back in. :(
At this point, it was 12:30, so we went off to another hotel to hit the Walk Of Fame, meet some celebrities, and get signatures and whatnot so that it was done and out of the way. We got in line, got in easily at 1pm when it opened, and I immediately went to see Kevin Sorbo, who was right there with no one in line. (John deLancie, LeVar Burton and Brent Spiner [Q, Geordie and Data) were closer than him, but busy, and lower on my list). I bought a photo of him from the movie Kull, which he signed. We didn't say much as he was sort of distracted, but he was very nice. After that we headed over to speak to John deLancie, mostly for cryspyx, but I like him as well. I bought her a pic of him that a friend of his drew, and he signed it to her. Again, chat was short and sweet, but he was very very cool. We wandered a bit, took some photos, and found the True Blood people. Lafayette and Sam were together, while Pam was at her own table. I got in the line of about 10 people, bought my little ticket for Lafayette, and got to talk to him for a few seconds. He was so quiet, and signed so quickly, that I didn't notice and the facilitator had to ask me (very nicely) to keep the line moving. (Speaking of facilitators, the girls organizing the lines were VERY nice and very informed. They made it so easy) I did manage to tell Lafayette that he had beautiful eyes before I cloaked myself in mild embarrassment and stepped aside to talk to Sam. I felt bad I didn't have his photo for a signature, but spoke to him anyway. We talked about M and I making a weekly date of watching True Blood, on a 40" flat panel, which he agreed was the best way to go about it, LOL. We talked about how Sam is getting a bit more interesting on the show and how we're glad to hear it. I thanked him for his work and took my leave. I got back with M and we went over to see Lee Arenberg for a photo op. He expressed his delight in the photo ops cause he can come out from behind the table for a hug. :D We discussed the panel a bit, and how nice he and Marty were, thanking us for their hard work...and I thanked HIM for sharing his talent with us. He's such a normal, nice man. I was very pleased to meet him and told him so. Again we moved on...Marina Sirtis (Troy) was at her table, so M and I went over, I took a few pics and M bought a photo-op with her. He was very pleased. LOL. Her hair was straight...I really missed the beautiful curls they put in it on the show. After seeing her, we stopped at Pam's table because I knew I could afford the signature, and I bought a pic for missamerika because she told me she loved Pam, and she wasn't feeling well, and because she wasn't expecting it. :D I texted her a pic of it later and was rewarded with much excitement. heheh Proclaiming the Walk of Fame finished, we went down into the dealers room (the dungeon, I call it) to sell some of M's Magic the Gathering cards that he knew were worth something. The book he brought he figured would net us $600...and we ended up with $758. My brain actually refused to accept that number and for a moment I thought he meant $7.58. So, WOW!!!
After that wonderful little surprise, we headed over to get in line for Kevin Sorbo's panel. They had switched the lines for his panel with Laurel K Hamilton, so after much confusion and in/out on our part, we finally got in the right line (worked out well, since Laurel's was LONG as hell, outside and around the corner...and Kevin's was just 15 people long). I made friends with the kid in front of us and chatted a bit, while we and the girls for Laurel's line across from us directed traffic. :P I was in the second row during the panel. Turns out Kevin Sorbo is a bit of a flirt (not with me...he just said he was), and told us many stories about working with his friends, and the death of Kevin Smith (who played Ares on Hercules). Nothing really stands out in my mind, it was just a nice, slightly sillie hour of chat. :D
I'm going to end here for now...I have more written but I will save it for later as the order of things and the details are a touch fuzzy. M is asleep, so I can't confirm with him, Patsy or Heather. Hopefully I can continue tomorrow. *crosses fingers*
The laptop has been behaving. NO idea what caused the spazz-out, but for now its a non-issue. It self-healed, apparently, because the issues arose after a system recovery, but are no longer presenting in any way.
So...onward!
On Tuesday (Aug 31st), I went with my sister to the tattoo parlor for my birthday present, a cartilage piercing. True to form, I forgot my ID, so we got all the way there and had to go back home. My anxiety did not approve of such antics. After dinner, my mom volunteered to come with me again if I wanted, so off we went. The piercing guy was very cool, and very pierced. He lives near us actually, (we found that out earlier) and had been piercing for a very long time. He also did most of his own piercings. I was very impressed with his work, he didn't even use a clamp, just marked my ear and pushed the needle thru with his bare (gloved) hands. The piercing itself actually hurt less than putting the earring in, tho neither hurt as much as I might have expected. Guess I really do have a high pain tolerance. I didn't bleed much that I noticed, and he read me the riot act of aftercare, I bought my piercing deep cleaning soap, and out we went.
I'm going to jump right into the DragonCon stuff now, cause I'm feeling it and if I wait it'll be another week or so. Eventually it'll never get written, like my honeymoon to Seattle. *eyeroll* Also...I had planned to write this out as a day by day, but at this point I think I'll end up with highlights more than anything. :)
So, Wednesday morning, Sept 1st found us packed and ready, with the exception of some toiletries and odds. We got the cat all set up for mom to have an easy time taking care of him, vacuumed the carpet, changed the litter and got out the door by 2:45...only 15 minutes later than I originally planned.
patsytheloomer was scheduled to arrive on the train a little after 3, so mom drove us over to pick him up before stopping at the convenience store for late lunch. The plan was to eat cheaply then, and save ourselves the starvation vs expense in the airport or elsewhere. By the time we arrived in Atlanta, dinner would be appropriate.
After food, we headed right to the airport, which is 20 minutes from my house, and VERY small. :) But the flight was non-stop, and only $150ish round trip, per person. Upon arrival, as we exited the car to collect our bags, a wind kicked up the edge of Patsy's kilt. Nothing too scandalous, and I'm used to being around kilted men, but when I looked up at the ladies in the SUV parked behind us, the driver was grinning ear to ear.
Yeah...and we were off to a good start. :D
Inside the airport, things went pretty much as planned. Patsy had done check in for us the day before (I was at work, sans internet) so we just got our checked bags tagged, and headed to security. I packed with a purpose, so security was a breeze. No stops, tho the guy with the wand made me take off my finger splint and run it thru the x-ray machine. o_O
The next time someone cries "Racial Profiling!", I'm going to slap them. Short, slightly chubby white girl gets aluminum finger splint x-rayed. I assure you, I look nothing like Middle Eastern.
Moving on, we got our gear back in order and made our way to the gate. The plane was scheduled to depart a bit after 6pm...so we had 2.5 hours plus to wait. I called my MIL to thank her for my birthday gift, which arrived just before we left. We left on time, and the flight was blessedly uneventful. Just 2 hours, so we amused ourselves with books and music. I think M may have dozed off a bit. :)
Arrival in Atlanta around 8:30pm was smooth. We were going to a hotel this time, so no one to meet us or pick us up. Baggage claim was pretty quick and we already made some friends (a family of three) while figuring our next course of action. Of course, the rail didn't pass by our hotel, so we opted for a taxi. $35.50 for the three of us was a bit steep, but we just wanted to get settled. We checked into a room on the 14th floor (actually the 13th, but you know how that goes) and the air was set on 60 degrees! We turned that up a bit, mostly for my benefit, and set about unpacking. We hopped on the internet with the laptop and found a local chinese place that delivered. They had Mongolian Beef on the menu!!! I ordered that, and shared an order of crab rangoons with Patsy. My dinner was awesome, M didn't like his, and I think Patsy may have been too hungry to care. :D Bed followed at some point after.
Thursday found us with a whole day to do as we wished, after registration at 10am. They'd bumped it up to 10am from 2pm in an effort to curb the lines somewhat. For us it worked. We got there precisely at 10 (my friend carterpickles and her hubby Chris, with their friend Rick had already been in line) and walked RIGHT in the doors. We made it halfway thru the ballroom before stopping. Once you enter the ballroom, you have about 3/4s of a very large ballroom set up with zigzagged velvet ropes, before everyone is distilled down to vertical rows of lines for the first letter of your last name. Good for organization, not so good for people with last names starting with common letters...C, L, M, R, S, T... We waited a total of 1 hr, 40 minutes, with Patsy escaping with somewhat less, since the line for his last name was nonexistent when he got into it, and we got paired with M's, so had to wait about 30 minutes longer. We heard later that people getting in line in the afternoon (after work, class, whatever) still had waits upwards of 3 hours. Some people in line with us had taken off work, or skipped classes, purely for the purpose of getting thru the lines faster.
After that was handled, we called the free shuttle from the hotel (discovered AFTER we got there. It would have been handy for the airport) and went back to the hotel. We attempted to walk to the nearest store for provisions, but that wasn't as good an idea as we'd hoped. The closest place proved to be a gas station/convenience store, which lacked what we wanted. SO, we called the shuttle for a ride, and asked to be taken to a nearby grocery store. We spent about an hour in there and left with food, drink, water and a cooler. :) Dinner wasn't memorable...because I cannot remember what we ate. :P I think we ate in the food court, because I didn't have anything but a Dairy Queen Blizzard. :D Later, we met up with Heather and the gang, and went to check out the drum circle at 11:30 (they have one every night). It was as expected, a fistful of drummers of varying skill and delusion, along with several women with NO bellydance skill whatsoever. TWO women knew how to dance. More or less we sat far enough away to not be distracting, and watched and/or chatted. The guys, with the exception of Patsy, went to the next hall to watch a heavy metal band. They turned out to be mediocre, and we were bored, so we went out to find them. Everyone was kind of tired, so we all split up, with M, Patsy and I grabbing a $12 taxi back to the hotel (shuttle stops running at 11).
Friday was Con Day 1! We were up and at em early. We wanted to be awake by 8, but some asshat in the room before us turned down the volume on the alarm and we didn't think to check it. For whatever reason I didn't set my cell phone alarm...so we woke at 9. 10am found Mikey and I just getting into the True Blood panel with Pam, Lafayette and Sam. Literally. We were five rows from the back. :P It was a good panel. Lafayette turns out to be very shy in person and very soft spoken. He said he got his feminine mannerisms for the show from his mother and sisters. Pam was thanked for her work with animals, which made her tear up. :D She's beautiful on the show, but 1,000 times more gorgeous in person. She also told us about learning to speak Swedish from Alexander Skarsgard, who records the sentences for her to memorize. She would ask him after the take if it was good and he would tell her, "...No." :P She also asked him how he talked with the fangs...and he told her she just had to "take the pain." Her first take was so garbled with them, that they let her practice as she had asked to. hehehe Sam was asked about being naked on the show...so he told us how the scene was filmed on his GGGrandfather's land, and they made him wear a "sock" to cover his bits, which is created just for that purpose. he also said the ground was rough, so they gave him the sock and a pair of beige jazz slippers. Very attractive, as he put it. Almost as much as seeing yourself run naked thru a field (said with dripping sarcasm). He figures his ancestors were flipping in their graves. :P
After that panel we made for the Pirates!! Arrrr!! panel, featuring Lee Arenberg (Pintel) and Martin Klebba (Marty) from Pirates of the Caribbean. This was a good time. :D Both guys are wonderful people, and we got some insight into the bone cage from POTC2. Turns out they were really in it, strapped in, and hung from a huge crane. They were tethered to one side of the chasm and let go to swing. Martin said the first few swings were good and thrilling, but by the eighth swing, it would start to spin, and Martin was yelling to be let out. He ran behind some props or machinery and puked, only to find out the cameras followed him. :P We also found out that neither of them will be in the 4th Pirates movie. :( :( :( They were written out by someone who was fired for the decision, but it was too late to write them back in. :(
At this point, it was 12:30, so we went off to another hotel to hit the Walk Of Fame, meet some celebrities, and get signatures and whatnot so that it was done and out of the way. We got in line, got in easily at 1pm when it opened, and I immediately went to see Kevin Sorbo, who was right there with no one in line. (John deLancie, LeVar Burton and Brent Spiner [Q, Geordie and Data) were closer than him, but busy, and lower on my list). I bought a photo of him from the movie Kull, which he signed. We didn't say much as he was sort of distracted, but he was very nice. After that we headed over to speak to John deLancie, mostly for cryspyx, but I like him as well. I bought her a pic of him that a friend of his drew, and he signed it to her. Again, chat was short and sweet, but he was very very cool. We wandered a bit, took some photos, and found the True Blood people. Lafayette and Sam were together, while Pam was at her own table. I got in the line of about 10 people, bought my little ticket for Lafayette, and got to talk to him for a few seconds. He was so quiet, and signed so quickly, that I didn't notice and the facilitator had to ask me (very nicely) to keep the line moving. (Speaking of facilitators, the girls organizing the lines were VERY nice and very informed. They made it so easy) I did manage to tell Lafayette that he had beautiful eyes before I cloaked myself in mild embarrassment and stepped aside to talk to Sam. I felt bad I didn't have his photo for a signature, but spoke to him anyway. We talked about M and I making a weekly date of watching True Blood, on a 40" flat panel, which he agreed was the best way to go about it, LOL. We talked about how Sam is getting a bit more interesting on the show and how we're glad to hear it. I thanked him for his work and took my leave. I got back with M and we went over to see Lee Arenberg for a photo op. He expressed his delight in the photo ops cause he can come out from behind the table for a hug. :D We discussed the panel a bit, and how nice he and Marty were, thanking us for their hard work...and I thanked HIM for sharing his talent with us. He's such a normal, nice man. I was very pleased to meet him and told him so. Again we moved on...Marina Sirtis (Troy) was at her table, so M and I went over, I took a few pics and M bought a photo-op with her. He was very pleased. LOL. Her hair was straight...I really missed the beautiful curls they put in it on the show. After seeing her, we stopped at Pam's table because I knew I could afford the signature, and I bought a pic for missamerika because she told me she loved Pam, and she wasn't feeling well, and because she wasn't expecting it. :D I texted her a pic of it later and was rewarded with much excitement. heheh Proclaiming the Walk of Fame finished, we went down into the dealers room (the dungeon, I call it) to sell some of M's Magic the Gathering cards that he knew were worth something. The book he brought he figured would net us $600...and we ended up with $758. My brain actually refused to accept that number and for a moment I thought he meant $7.58. So, WOW!!!
After that wonderful little surprise, we headed over to get in line for Kevin Sorbo's panel. They had switched the lines for his panel with Laurel K Hamilton, so after much confusion and in/out on our part, we finally got in the right line (worked out well, since Laurel's was LONG as hell, outside and around the corner...and Kevin's was just 15 people long). I made friends with the kid in front of us and chatted a bit, while we and the girls for Laurel's line across from us directed traffic. :P I was in the second row during the panel. Turns out Kevin Sorbo is a bit of a flirt (not with me...he just said he was), and told us many stories about working with his friends, and the death of Kevin Smith (who played Ares on Hercules). Nothing really stands out in my mind, it was just a nice, slightly sillie hour of chat. :D
I'm going to end here for now...I have more written but I will save it for later as the order of things and the details are a touch fuzzy. M is asleep, so I can't confirm with him, Patsy or Heather. Hopefully I can continue tomorrow. *crosses fingers*