Robots strike again
So does post-travel disease. I'm home sick today with vertigo, nausea, and a fever. Super exciting. I blame the small child I spent my Sunday night red eye sitting next to. The one who kept trying to sleep and slobber all over me. ... Well, that and the sleep deprivation.
Or maybe it was my relatives. Two thirds of them were sick, and I did spend a fair amount of time around them.
I need an icon of someone faceplanting for days when I am exhausted or unwell.
ANYWAY, I went to BotCon again this year! It was in California (again), but not Pasadena. It will almost assuredly be in Pasadena next year, though. Kinda sick of Pasadena, though I like the number of friends it brings in.
Before we really get typing, though, I promised to link to both the 2011 (pt2) and 2012 entries. There ya go!
I flew out a day early this year! Wednesday afternoon. My flight from here to JFK was delayed a little on account of lightning in the area preventing them from refueling, and a couple people had total snitfits about it, one guy even loudly calling his father and telling him to come back, he'll have to fly tomorrow because there's no way he'll make his connection blah blah blah. Honestly, if your flights are so close together that a 30 minute delay will cause you to miss your connection, maybe you and not the airline/weather are the problem. I had a good few hours, so I was not worried.
Unfortunately, my flight out of JFK was not a very nice one. Well. The flight itself was absolutely fine. It was the people I was sitting near. They were a fairly large family, and they had an itty bitty baby with them. And she cried mostly the entire way. And they kept playing Pass The Baby. So sometimes the shrieking baby was in front of my, sometimes she was in the other aisle, and sometimes she was right next to me. Not fun. I had a headache and my pants had baby on them by the time we finally landed. My cousin-in-law picked me up from the airport. I had to ask her if we could stop at anywhere so I could pick up a set of pajamas, since I'd remembered mid-flight that, whoops, I'd forgotten to pack any. (Why do I keep doing that??) And even though she was feeling pretty sick, we went on a clothes-finding adventure. She's a total sweetheart, though, I'd forgotten how much I adored her. (This is the woman who had to do jailtime on account of shit lawyers and our bugfuck legal system.) Anyway, we got to their little apartment and I finally met my ... first cousin once removed? Their son. I was super tired on account of plane travel being exhausting and the three hour time difference, but I stayed up a few hours to talk. AND THEN I PASSED OUT. And apparently missed all sorts of sick child drama, I don't know how that happened. I guess the kiddo threw up on himself? The guest bed is actually the bottom half of his bunk bed, and they had to come in and clean him up and wash the bedding and everywhere, and I just, zonk, slept right through it. Next day, my cousin went to work before I got out of bed (I guess he has a physical therapist who comes in at like 5am or something to get him ready and then he gets transportation to his job - this is the one who's a quadriplegic), and the other two were sick, so there was no grand day of exploring San Diego (maaan, I wanted to go to the zoo!), though I did get to play with two teeny little kittens (awww, bbs!). Also Kiddo is into Transformers, and I'd brought him a bunch of mine that I no longer wanted, so we played ROBOT WAR.
WAIT. REWIND. ... NO NOT THE CHARACTER. I wore a Transformers shirt on Wednesday, that one with Dreamwave art of Optimus, Hot Rod, Bumblebee, Prowl, and Jazz. Kiddo was super excited to see it, and informed me it had his favourite character on it (no points for guessing it was the yellow kid appeal one). He was also able to recognise Optimus, and he made a good stab at Roddy, but Hot Shot and Hot Rod are not quite the same guy. He had no idea who Prowl was, but then when I pointed to Jazz, he got excited again. Oh, oh! I know that guy! That's Captain America!
I COULD NOT EXPLAIN TO HIM WHY THIS WAS HILARIOUS.
So yeah back to Thursday. Robots at war. I got the play the vastly outnumbered Decepticons.
So the seven year old played the Autobots and also cheated because when Movie Frenzy threw his ... murder CD thing, it rebounded off of, uh. Geez, somebody and became a missile of Goodness, and it came back and hit Frenzy and turned him into an Autobot. TF:A Lockdown was devastated. But not for long, because soon Megatron was the only Decepticon left. He was too evil to be saved.
HOWEVER, it was not a complete bust because, for the first time EVER IN MY LIFE, I managed to get TF:A Starscream fully back into jet mode. Look! No hands holding him together! That'll probably never happen again. We sat around for Kiddo's karate lesson, then went home to gather ourselves and stuff together to head over to the hotel. I'd had to text my roommate,
grumpyjet, hereafter referred to as Tainry, for the hotel name since I'd been stupid enough to not write it down anywhere, but I did have the street address! And I knew the convention center was right next to it. So I figured it'd be fine.
Also, we stopped for dinner at a place called Fins, and right across the parking lot was a massive Mormon Temple. I'd been looking down when we entered the area, so for the scenery to go from boring boring boring to this was a bit jarring. I blurted out, the hell did THAT come from? And then was laughed at because, haha, no, not Hell.
Anyway, they decided it would be better to have me pick up my registration stuff before finding the hotel, and no amount of THE LINE IS SUPER LONG AND SLOW and also the convention is AT THE HOTEL convinced anyone otherwise, so we circled the actual, huge San Diego Convention Center for... a while before I finally got that cleared up. I had to start texting Tainry again for proof of my not being mad and the hotel and con really being elsewhere. It was exhausting. And then I stood in line with my suitcase! And got my stuff! (LOOK AT THE PRICE STICKER glorious. The first day pin matched it.) And then proceeded to actually find Tainry and talk forever because I have no filter when exhausted. Picked up some Rainmakers and a shirt for Becca and a comic for Okami Myrrhibis. Tainry bought the Mirage/TC pack, which we split, and I really need to crunch numbers and get her her money.
And then I think we mostly passed out and slept. All right!!
Also the hotel room was cute and didn't have any carpeting, which was kinda awesome. PICS:
FRIDAY!
We both got up early enough to eat delicious malted waffles at the breakfast cafe thing. They said it was casual! THEY LIED. But there was real maple syrup, and the waffle was amazing, so so what if we were both grossly under dressed. MSTF was on again, at 9 in the morning why, and of course you can't miss that. This year's was fantastic, oh man. I wish I remembered, um, any of the jokes. They mocked "A Prime Problem" from G1, "Call of the Wild" from BW, "Sparkwar Pt. I: The Strike" from BM, and "Nightmare Planet" from G1, along with performing other wacky antics. That was followed by the film fest, which, while small, had some fun stuff. Also, Bumblebee forgot his jacket and Prime was distressed.
And then we just killed time until it was time to get in line for the dealers room. The BotCon photographers had a lot of fun capturing that line, I think. Tainry, we show up 8 times in the line shots from the Friday gallery.
The Puggle table was RIGHT at the entrance, so of course it was mobbed. I did not buy any on Friday. What I DID get was a pack of TF:A playing cards and a copy of this print by Josh Burcham. I also picked up a poster and a ridiculously cheap G2 Thundercracker for Aniko (the club store was having a Make An Offer sale on Friday. He's missing both missiles and a launcher and I got him for $22) (haha, it was weird, I never see or meet anyone else from Vermont, but both the guys working the store were from here! And earlier they'd been talking to someone from Essex! It would figure I'd have to go to California to meet other Vermonters who like giant robot aliens). And then I was out of cash. I ambushed David Sobolov at his table and secured his autograph, and then I called it a day.
... Or an afternoon, anyway. At around 7, Tainry and I wandered out to where they were going to be showing the 2007 movie and grabbed a dinner of hot dogs and cotton candy from the snack bar. THEN WE DANCED AND SANG ALONG TO THE BEACH BOYS until they actually started the movie. Only they had Technical Difficulties and first the video and then everything cut out. We blamed Blackout, since this was right in the beginning of the film. Glenn Morshower popped up to reenact his scenes for us while they fixed it. Apparently his panels were hilarious, so I'm kinda sad I missed them. Oh, well...
Watching the movie again was fun, but Ironhide's comment about his foot rusting after Mojo peed on it is no longer funny at all. Ironhiiiiide! ToT
SATURDAY MORNING I meant to wake up early and storm the dealers room as we did last year, but, um. That didn't happen. Dragon woke me up with a text a couple hours after my alarm went off. We scarpered over, though then I had to backtrack and raid the ATM to buy more puggles than one ever really needs, let's be honest. We caught up with them shortly after (not before the staff camera crew found them, though) and we had a few minutes to say hello and squeal and then it was time for a voice actor panel!! Yaaay. Depth Charge/TF:P Shockwave and TF:P Wheeljack. We smuggled Autumn in, because the dude guarding the door was an idiot who told her she wasn't allowed in with general admission, but that once the lights went down, she could sneak through. Guess when the lights go down in voice actor panels? Yeah, never. So screw him. Tainry and I just hauled her through the door. No one stopped us. We were caught scheming on camera, though.
That was followed by the Hasbro panel where they mostly talked about stuff I didn't care about, failed to say anything about bringing over any more Masterpiece figures, but did at least promise us a Tailgate and a Swerve and a Whirl from MTMTE. ALL. OF. MY. GLEE. Also a new Waspinator, that's cool, too. Also, Ultra Magnus and BW Megs were the fan choices for the Hall of Fame. That, as far as I know, is all that was said about it.
Then it was time for another spin through the place of buying! BBTS was actually present this year (holy cow!) and they'd brought a bunch of Metroplexes with them (HOLY COW!). He is HUGE. It was pretty exciting. I did not buy one. Instead, I bought a Fall of Cybertron Blaster. I passed on Soundwave. I'm going to regret it eventually. Also, I looked through the display cases by Hasbro's booth and decided I did actually have to buy Sandstorm. So I spent most of the afternoon hunting him down. (He's not actually out yet, but I'm never going to see him in stores here.) I did find him later in the afternoon.
And about then my relatives showed up and I was dragged away from the party. (Really, it wasn't that terrible. They're nice, even if I do get sick of hearing about God and RELIGION!! from my cousin.) I showed them around the dealers room, told them who was being cosplayed, told them who the various guests were... we all went on a hike to the semi-near mall for lunch... and then we ran back for the Rescue Bots panel, since Kiddo watches that. I don't, but the panel was a lot of fun, anyway. The relatives seemed to really enjoy it. Then I took Kiddo to meet Shockwave and Wheeljack and, he being the height of creativity, asked them to say his name in their voices. (He was the one who asked what Starscream's and Cody's voices sound like during the Q&A, which got reinterpreted as, what would happen if Starscream and Cody met?) He has his picture taken with some of the folk in costume and bought a loose Cybertron Hardtop figure. (Me, I'd've picked someone without a Cyberkey and with instructions, but hey. I am not a kiddo anymore.) Then he handed it to me and asked me to transform it, so I mostly sat around fiddling with it. Man, I did not like that toyline. We did eventually beat it into shape, though, and he promptly put it back into robot mode WHY
Also we picked up the free Kre-o figure, a bright orange Devastator. Kiddo proclaimed him Starscream. Whatever. Convention was winding down and I was rounded back into the herd as we all went for dinner at Charlie's, where the food is good but the service is slooooow.
Fortunately, we had the puggles with us.
Tracks felt left out and so resorted to photobombing.
And, there are no photos of it, but then finger-football was played. Mostly with Sideswipe, he flew the best. Also there were many jokes (OR WERE THEY???) about orgies. And a group photo!
And a small boy who kept coming over and saying random things to us. Possibly he was somewhere on the autistic spectrum? Whatever. We skipped casino night because 4/6 of us couldn't have gone even if we'd wanted to. I gave Ravyn my money again, and this year she won a Slicer. Woohoo! And after dinner, Tainry, Autumn, and I all flopped around on my bed and chattered until Way Too Late At Night.
... and then we remembered we had to check out in the morning, so we still didn't get to bed. Ack! But that all went fine (though I was out of cash and tried to raid another atm but, alas, BotCon had struck again and they were all empty). We forced Autumn to attend again on Sunday by buying her another round of admittance, and then we went to the Prime Script Reading panel! It wasn't a real episode this time, so it got really goofy. Also Wally Burr kept losing his place, but I guess that's Kup for you. And that was the last panel I attended!
Autumn, Tainry, and I went out for lunch after that. I did not want a burger or a salad, having eaten both of those recently, and the soup sounded terrible, so I had apple pie. They were out of colossal cookies. Tainry had a fruit platter and was scolded by Autumn because didn't we already have enough fruit with her around? Also there were birds inside.
Also no one told us there was a register to go to when we were all done. Derp.
Eating shenanigans finished, we all skulked around the dealers room, mostly along the wall, being lunatics. And then right near the end Dragon found someone selling the Tetrajet seekers! And so of course she bought them! And they are VERY PRETTY!
... but they are also all duckfaced, ahahaha oh geez. OBSERVE HER DELIGHT.
(I had fallen over in exhaustion - too many late nights plus allergy attack - and was using Autumn's knee as a pillow - shut up, she's comfy - hence the strange angle.)
ALSO YES YOU DID JUST SEE A PONY
robot robot robot pretty pony
No one won the free trip for next year and then we were all kicked out. And I discovered the most posh bathroom OF ALL TIME
what is going on
THE MURDER-PLOTTING PICTURES CONTINUE
We decided to gather at Charlie's again, because what the heck, we had almost two hours to go before any of us had to leave...
We sat outside this time.
We had not counted on the service being even slower. Though we did just manage to get our food eaten and paid for before Tainry and I had to run off (she had a cab, and my cousin et al arrived shortly after).
Things: Autumn had really, really awesome Legend of Zelda fingernails. And also boobs.
There was inappropriate consuming of milkshakes and more jokes that couldn't really be called on the innuendo side of things.
I went from that to hanging out with a trio of Mormons on a Sunday. AND WE WENT TO THE MORMON BATTALION MUSEUM.
It was a bit awkward for my brain to adjust to, hahaha.
Then I beat the kiddo at Star Wars Guess Who a few times and had some kind of stalemate with my cousin because there was too much arguing in the car so we lost track of everything so we had wrong information.
And then I barely made it to the airport and through security and to my gate in time, but I still backtracked to buy some tissues, 'cause I'd burned through all of mine. And THEN I almost left my suitcase on the chair in the waiting area, aaaauugh.
Also I was sitting next to another small kid, but he wasn't a teeny baby, and he mostly behaved aside from how he kept trying to sleep on me instead of on his mother. Made it back to JFK no problem, but then there were DELAYS so I had to hang around for like 6 hours (after no sleep on account of being in a plane and I can't sleep on those) before finally heading back home. But I made it! And I even was awake enough to go grab a few grocery essentials!
... And then I took a 7 hour nap that I only woke up from because my brother called me to make sure I didn't just keep sleeping and wake up at midnight and be really, really sad.
So instead I was awake for a few hours and we started playing FFXI: CHALLENGE MODE. It's already tricky and it's only going to get WORSE. Oof.
(So, totally, totally unrelatedly, did you know someone figured out how to make a private server for FFXI? Can you imagine how weird - and hard! - it would be to play an MMO with only, what, maybe two people? You'd have to make all your gear, farm all your materials, solo all the missions! Golly. You'd have to be some kind of crazy to try that.)
AND THEN I WENT TO BED AND LIFE RESUMED AS NORMAL. Until today when I was sick.
Which, speaking of, guys, I'm really not feeling great and really don't feel like writing html to all the photos I took of the costumes and the scenery and everything. Here's the Facebook album. HAVE AT.
Oh, oh, right, one last thing before I go: I was given a copy of the Puggle Print for free (possibly for spending too much money?), but I do not want it. I did not realise they had given it to me until later because it was hidden in my bag. Does anyone want it? It looks like this. You'll just have to cover the shipping.
Also, I present to you the most bewildering comment thread on all of my Facebook. Cookies to anyone who can make sense of it.
[Crossposted from DW. Comments:
]
Or maybe it was my relatives. Two thirds of them were sick, and I did spend a fair amount of time around them.
I need an icon of someone faceplanting for days when I am exhausted or unwell.
ANYWAY, I went to BotCon again this year! It was in California (again), but not Pasadena. It will almost assuredly be in Pasadena next year, though. Kinda sick of Pasadena, though I like the number of friends it brings in.
Before we really get typing, though, I promised to link to both the 2011 (pt2) and 2012 entries. There ya go!
I flew out a day early this year! Wednesday afternoon. My flight from here to JFK was delayed a little on account of lightning in the area preventing them from refueling, and a couple people had total snitfits about it, one guy even loudly calling his father and telling him to come back, he'll have to fly tomorrow because there's no way he'll make his connection blah blah blah. Honestly, if your flights are so close together that a 30 minute delay will cause you to miss your connection, maybe you and not the airline/weather are the problem. I had a good few hours, so I was not worried.
Unfortunately, my flight out of JFK was not a very nice one. Well. The flight itself was absolutely fine. It was the people I was sitting near. They were a fairly large family, and they had an itty bitty baby with them. And she cried mostly the entire way. And they kept playing Pass The Baby. So sometimes the shrieking baby was in front of my, sometimes she was in the other aisle, and sometimes she was right next to me. Not fun. I had a headache and my pants had baby on them by the time we finally landed. My cousin-in-law picked me up from the airport. I had to ask her if we could stop at anywhere so I could pick up a set of pajamas, since I'd remembered mid-flight that, whoops, I'd forgotten to pack any. (Why do I keep doing that??) And even though she was feeling pretty sick, we went on a clothes-finding adventure. She's a total sweetheart, though, I'd forgotten how much I adored her. (This is the woman who had to do jailtime on account of shit lawyers and our bugfuck legal system.) Anyway, we got to their little apartment and I finally met my ... first cousin once removed? Their son. I was super tired on account of plane travel being exhausting and the three hour time difference, but I stayed up a few hours to talk. AND THEN I PASSED OUT. And apparently missed all sorts of sick child drama, I don't know how that happened. I guess the kiddo threw up on himself? The guest bed is actually the bottom half of his bunk bed, and they had to come in and clean him up and wash the bedding and everywhere, and I just, zonk, slept right through it. Next day, my cousin went to work before I got out of bed (I guess he has a physical therapist who comes in at like 5am or something to get him ready and then he gets transportation to his job - this is the one who's a quadriplegic), and the other two were sick, so there was no grand day of exploring San Diego (maaan, I wanted to go to the zoo!), though I did get to play with two teeny little kittens (awww, bbs!). Also Kiddo is into Transformers, and I'd brought him a bunch of mine that I no longer wanted, so we played ROBOT WAR.
WAIT. REWIND. ... NO NOT THE CHARACTER. I wore a Transformers shirt on Wednesday, that one with Dreamwave art of Optimus, Hot Rod, Bumblebee, Prowl, and Jazz. Kiddo was super excited to see it, and informed me it had his favourite character on it (no points for guessing it was the yellow kid appeal one). He was also able to recognise Optimus, and he made a good stab at Roddy, but Hot Shot and Hot Rod are not quite the same guy. He had no idea who Prowl was, but then when I pointed to Jazz, he got excited again. Oh, oh! I know that guy! That's Captain America!
I COULD NOT EXPLAIN TO HIM WHY THIS WAS HILARIOUS.
So yeah back to Thursday. Robots at war. I got the play the vastly outnumbered Decepticons.
So the seven year old played the Autobots and also cheated because when Movie Frenzy threw his ... murder CD thing, it rebounded off of, uh. Geez, somebody and became a missile of Goodness, and it came back and hit Frenzy and turned him into an Autobot. TF:A Lockdown was devastated. But not for long, because soon Megatron was the only Decepticon left. He was too evil to be saved.
HOWEVER, it was not a complete bust because, for the first time EVER IN MY LIFE, I managed to get TF:A Starscream fully back into jet mode. Look! No hands holding him together! That'll probably never happen again. We sat around for Kiddo's karate lesson, then went home to gather ourselves and stuff together to head over to the hotel. I'd had to text my roommate,
grumpyjet, hereafter referred to as Tainry, for the hotel name since I'd been stupid enough to not write it down anywhere, but I did have the street address! And I knew the convention center was right next to it. So I figured it'd be fine.
Also, we stopped for dinner at a place called Fins, and right across the parking lot was a massive Mormon Temple. I'd been looking down when we entered the area, so for the scenery to go from boring boring boring to this was a bit jarring. I blurted out, the hell did THAT come from? And then was laughed at because, haha, no, not Hell.
Anyway, they decided it would be better to have me pick up my registration stuff before finding the hotel, and no amount of THE LINE IS SUPER LONG AND SLOW and also the convention is AT THE HOTEL convinced anyone otherwise, so we circled the actual, huge San Diego Convention Center for... a while before I finally got that cleared up. I had to start texting Tainry again for proof of my not being mad and the hotel and con really being elsewhere. It was exhausting. And then I stood in line with my suitcase! And got my stuff! (LOOK AT THE PRICE STICKER glorious. The first day pin matched it.) And then proceeded to actually find Tainry and talk forever because I have no filter when exhausted. Picked up some Rainmakers and a shirt for Becca and a comic for Okami Myrrhibis. Tainry bought the Mirage/TC pack, which we split, and I really need to crunch numbers and get her her money.
And then I think we mostly passed out and slept. All right!!
Also the hotel room was cute and didn't have any carpeting, which was kinda awesome. PICS:
FRIDAY!
We both got up early enough to eat delicious malted waffles at the breakfast cafe thing. They said it was casual! THEY LIED. But there was real maple syrup, and the waffle was amazing, so so what if we were both grossly under dressed. MSTF was on again, at 9 in the morning why, and of course you can't miss that. This year's was fantastic, oh man. I wish I remembered, um, any of the jokes. They mocked "A Prime Problem" from G1, "Call of the Wild" from BW, "Sparkwar Pt. I: The Strike" from BM, and "Nightmare Planet" from G1, along with performing other wacky antics. That was followed by the film fest, which, while small, had some fun stuff. Also, Bumblebee forgot his jacket and Prime was distressed.
And then we just killed time until it was time to get in line for the dealers room. The BotCon photographers had a lot of fun capturing that line, I think. Tainry, we show up 8 times in the line shots from the Friday gallery.
The Puggle table was RIGHT at the entrance, so of course it was mobbed. I did not buy any on Friday. What I DID get was a pack of TF:A playing cards and a copy of this print by Josh Burcham. I also picked up a poster and a ridiculously cheap G2 Thundercracker for Aniko (the club store was having a Make An Offer sale on Friday. He's missing both missiles and a launcher and I got him for $22) (haha, it was weird, I never see or meet anyone else from Vermont, but both the guys working the store were from here! And earlier they'd been talking to someone from Essex! It would figure I'd have to go to California to meet other Vermonters who like giant robot aliens). And then I was out of cash. I ambushed David Sobolov at his table and secured his autograph, and then I called it a day.
... Or an afternoon, anyway. At around 7, Tainry and I wandered out to where they were going to be showing the 2007 movie and grabbed a dinner of hot dogs and cotton candy from the snack bar. THEN WE DANCED AND SANG ALONG TO THE BEACH BOYS until they actually started the movie. Only they had Technical Difficulties and first the video and then everything cut out. We blamed Blackout, since this was right in the beginning of the film. Glenn Morshower popped up to reenact his scenes for us while they fixed it. Apparently his panels were hilarious, so I'm kinda sad I missed them. Oh, well...
Watching the movie again was fun, but Ironhide's comment about his foot rusting after Mojo peed on it is no longer funny at all. Ironhiiiiide! ToT
SATURDAY MORNING I meant to wake up early and storm the dealers room as we did last year, but, um. That didn't happen. Dragon woke me up with a text a couple hours after my alarm went off. We scarpered over, though then I had to backtrack and raid the ATM to buy more puggles than one ever really needs, let's be honest. We caught up with them shortly after (not before the staff camera crew found them, though) and we had a few minutes to say hello and squeal and then it was time for a voice actor panel!! Yaaay. Depth Charge/TF:P Shockwave and TF:P Wheeljack. We smuggled Autumn in, because the dude guarding the door was an idiot who told her she wasn't allowed in with general admission, but that once the lights went down, she could sneak through. Guess when the lights go down in voice actor panels? Yeah, never. So screw him. Tainry and I just hauled her through the door. No one stopped us. We were caught scheming on camera, though.
That was followed by the Hasbro panel where they mostly talked about stuff I didn't care about, failed to say anything about bringing over any more Masterpiece figures, but did at least promise us a Tailgate and a Swerve and a Whirl from MTMTE. ALL. OF. MY. GLEE. Also a new Waspinator, that's cool, too. Also, Ultra Magnus and BW Megs were the fan choices for the Hall of Fame. That, as far as I know, is all that was said about it.
Then it was time for another spin through the place of buying! BBTS was actually present this year (holy cow!) and they'd brought a bunch of Metroplexes with them (HOLY COW!). He is HUGE. It was pretty exciting. I did not buy one. Instead, I bought a Fall of Cybertron Blaster. I passed on Soundwave. I'm going to regret it eventually. Also, I looked through the display cases by Hasbro's booth and decided I did actually have to buy Sandstorm. So I spent most of the afternoon hunting him down. (He's not actually out yet, but I'm never going to see him in stores here.) I did find him later in the afternoon.
And about then my relatives showed up and I was dragged away from the party. (Really, it wasn't that terrible. They're nice, even if I do get sick of hearing about God and RELIGION!! from my cousin.) I showed them around the dealers room, told them who was being cosplayed, told them who the various guests were... we all went on a hike to the semi-near mall for lunch... and then we ran back for the Rescue Bots panel, since Kiddo watches that. I don't, but the panel was a lot of fun, anyway. The relatives seemed to really enjoy it. Then I took Kiddo to meet Shockwave and Wheeljack and, he being the height of creativity, asked them to say his name in their voices. (He was the one who asked what Starscream's and Cody's voices sound like during the Q&A, which got reinterpreted as, what would happen if Starscream and Cody met?) He has his picture taken with some of the folk in costume and bought a loose Cybertron Hardtop figure. (Me, I'd've picked someone without a Cyberkey and with instructions, but hey. I am not a kiddo anymore.) Then he handed it to me and asked me to transform it, so I mostly sat around fiddling with it. Man, I did not like that toyline. We did eventually beat it into shape, though, and he promptly put it back into robot mode WHY
Also we picked up the free Kre-o figure, a bright orange Devastator. Kiddo proclaimed him Starscream. Whatever. Convention was winding down and I was rounded back into the herd as we all went for dinner at Charlie's, where the food is good but the service is slooooow.
Fortunately, we had the puggles with us.
Tracks felt left out and so resorted to photobombing.
And, there are no photos of it, but then finger-football was played. Mostly with Sideswipe, he flew the best. Also there were many jokes (OR WERE THEY???) about orgies. And a group photo!
And a small boy who kept coming over and saying random things to us. Possibly he was somewhere on the autistic spectrum? Whatever. We skipped casino night because 4/6 of us couldn't have gone even if we'd wanted to. I gave Ravyn my money again, and this year she won a Slicer. Woohoo! And after dinner, Tainry, Autumn, and I all flopped around on my bed and chattered until Way Too Late At Night.
... and then we remembered we had to check out in the morning, so we still didn't get to bed. Ack! But that all went fine (though I was out of cash and tried to raid another atm but, alas, BotCon had struck again and they were all empty). We forced Autumn to attend again on Sunday by buying her another round of admittance, and then we went to the Prime Script Reading panel! It wasn't a real episode this time, so it got really goofy. Also Wally Burr kept losing his place, but I guess that's Kup for you. And that was the last panel I attended!
Autumn, Tainry, and I went out for lunch after that. I did not want a burger or a salad, having eaten both of those recently, and the soup sounded terrible, so I had apple pie. They were out of colossal cookies. Tainry had a fruit platter and was scolded by Autumn because didn't we already have enough fruit with her around? Also there were birds inside.
Also no one told us there was a register to go to when we were all done. Derp.
Eating shenanigans finished, we all skulked around the dealers room, mostly along the wall, being lunatics. And then right near the end Dragon found someone selling the Tetrajet seekers! And so of course she bought them! And they are VERY PRETTY!
... but they are also all duckfaced, ahahaha oh geez. OBSERVE HER DELIGHT.
(I had fallen over in exhaustion - too many late nights plus allergy attack - and was using Autumn's knee as a pillow - shut up, she's comfy - hence the strange angle.)
ALSO YES YOU DID JUST SEE A PONY
robot robot robot pretty pony
No one won the free trip for next year and then we were all kicked out. And I discovered the most posh bathroom OF ALL TIME
what is going on
THE MURDER-PLOTTING PICTURES CONTINUE
We decided to gather at Charlie's again, because what the heck, we had almost two hours to go before any of us had to leave...
We sat outside this time.
We had not counted on the service being even slower. Though we did just manage to get our food eaten and paid for before Tainry and I had to run off (she had a cab, and my cousin et al arrived shortly after).
Things: Autumn had really, really awesome Legend of Zelda fingernails. And also boobs.
There was inappropriate consuming of milkshakes and more jokes that couldn't really be called on the innuendo side of things.
I went from that to hanging out with a trio of Mormons on a Sunday. AND WE WENT TO THE MORMON BATTALION MUSEUM.
It was a bit awkward for my brain to adjust to, hahaha.
Then I beat the kiddo at Star Wars Guess Who a few times and had some kind of stalemate with my cousin because there was too much arguing in the car so we lost track of everything so we had wrong information.
And then I barely made it to the airport and through security and to my gate in time, but I still backtracked to buy some tissues, 'cause I'd burned through all of mine. And THEN I almost left my suitcase on the chair in the waiting area, aaaauugh.
Also I was sitting next to another small kid, but he wasn't a teeny baby, and he mostly behaved aside from how he kept trying to sleep on me instead of on his mother. Made it back to JFK no problem, but then there were DELAYS so I had to hang around for like 6 hours (after no sleep on account of being in a plane and I can't sleep on those) before finally heading back home. But I made it! And I even was awake enough to go grab a few grocery essentials!
... And then I took a 7 hour nap that I only woke up from because my brother called me to make sure I didn't just keep sleeping and wake up at midnight and be really, really sad.
So instead I was awake for a few hours and we started playing FFXI: CHALLENGE MODE. It's already tricky and it's only going to get WORSE. Oof.
(So, totally, totally unrelatedly, did you know someone figured out how to make a private server for FFXI? Can you imagine how weird - and hard! - it would be to play an MMO with only, what, maybe two people? You'd have to make all your gear, farm all your materials, solo all the missions! Golly. You'd have to be some kind of crazy to try that.)
AND THEN I WENT TO BED AND LIFE RESUMED AS NORMAL. Until today when I was sick.
Which, speaking of, guys, I'm really not feeling great and really don't feel like writing html to all the photos I took of the costumes and the scenery and everything. Here's the Facebook album. HAVE AT.
Oh, oh, right, one last thing before I go: I was given a copy of the Puggle Print for free (possibly for spending too much money?), but I do not want it. I did not realise they had given it to me until later because it was hidden in my bag. Does anyone want it? It looks like this. You'll just have to cover the shipping.
Also, I present to you the most bewildering comment thread on all of my Facebook. Cookies to anyone who can make sense of it.
[Crossposted from DW. Comments:
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