I'm planning to snuff out all the sabre-tooth tigers, and the plotting involved is astronomical!
*started to be written last Thursday, May 31st*
So, here I sit in my room at Decalogy, watching House and writing about Saturday at Breakout. I probably won't get very far, since there's only one plug socket in the room (kettle and hairdryer are wired into the wall!) and it's working the TV, so I can't plug my laptop in. Oh well, I'll do what I can! (It also means I'm distracted and working fast, so I'll probably forget stuff, too.) I'm going back down to the bar when House is done - I wanted to watch it, but I feel a little sad because I'm missing out on the Butlins-esque stuff going on down there! It's weird! There are parents wrapping their children in toilet paper! And I think that Compere Dave is a little bit sexy. Ahem.
So Saturday, we got up around 7.30ish, and got ready for breakfast. We met Karen and Max on the way to the lift, and everybody else was already hanging out when we got there, so we headed off straight for breakfast. Once again, we had our issue with tables, so Ryan and Kathy joined Mel and Mark on the other table (for once we weren't shunning Karen and Max, I'm sure they felt so loved!) and we did the breakfast thing. It was a very uneventful breakfast (once we'd figured out that there was one more chair than there was place settings - we decided that they'd seen us leaving a chair free for guests at the M&G and thought that was just the way we did things ;-)!), other than the fact that a few of us started talking about football since the FA Cup Final was in the afternoon, and Max supports Man Utd - I think a few people walked past the geek table, heard the football talk and were confused!
When Almar and Marguerite went to do their stewarding duties on photo sales, and Mel and Mark left to go do whatever, Ryan and Kathy came to join us at our table for a while. The orange juice on our table was all gone, but Ryan's table had been vacated completely so I stole the jug from over there.
Then we got ourselves ready for the photo sessions, before going to figure out where they were. We did that with relatively little pain, though it turned out they had some strange plan where if you had multiple photo shoots, you had to leave the room entirely and go back in, instead of just skipping to the end of the queue like we usually would - just because of the way the room was laid out.
First up, they were trying to get Jason's queue done, but put us into Michael's. After some serious floor sittage waiting for the guys to turn up, Michael walked up and down his queue, making sure everybody got a hug - and then placed himself just behind the photographer, next to where Jason's queue was snaking by - so that whenever anybody went for a photo with Jason, they had to go past Michael and got a hug. So you got a picture with Jason and a hug from Michael - it was a great extra!
They stopped us from skipping over into Jason's queue - I think because he'd been standing there a while and there was a lot of camera flashes, and it is a bit unfair to make them stand there forever when the flashes are so bright, I agree. So my first picture was with Michael, who was as lovely and cuddly as was expected, hugging all the girls without even having to be asked. I was wearing my Super Mario t-shirt that I had delivered to Shirley's house to save on shipping, and when I got up to Michael, he told me he loved it, which I was pleased about! The photo is pretty cute - I'm always unsure about hug photos, Sean Maher's hug photos always look weird, but Michael's came out great! Then as I was leaving, I turned around to see what he was doing to Hilary - he was standing behind her with his arms around her neck instead of the usual hug thing. I think (well, I know!) she was a bit annoyed as she'd been wanting to “play it cool” after the way she liked her Brandon Routh one from Collectormania, but it came out really great! I'm jealous!
After that we did Jason, and it's a good thing they weren't using the black background this time as he would have been the floating head - he'd pretty much suited up! But with a black shirt as well as black trousers. He looked totally smart compared to Michael and Mark, who had just come like they were ready to hang out, bless him! (I don't know if he felt embarrassed or whatever, because on Sunday he was wearing hang-out-y clothes. Or maybe that was always his plan! Smart on Saturday, cool on Sunday.)
We also did Mark, at some point, who looked just like he always does! And then we left, and got halfway back to the stairs when I remembered where we were, and that we could go the other way and get back to our rooms easier. I led the way, and nobody believed that I had a good plan until we got there and I proved it.
Back in the room, we did some hanging out online, in which Karen and I got the geekiest we've ever been and were posting to each other online from along the corridor - “you come to our room!” “no, you come to ours! There are more people in here!” We're big saddos - new level of nerd-dom! I was also extremely classy and drank Irn Bru from a wine glass, which became my thing for the weekend. (Okay, battery dying now. Everything from now on was actually written the night of posting!)
First talk of the day was Michael and Mark - with a lot of swearing and the start of Michael's “it's totally impossible to go for a long walk on a beach” rant. And poor Mark, with everybody asking Michael questions, and then when people asked Mark questions and were like “When you died...” and he was like “When I died in WHAT? I die in everything!”
After that it was Stacy Keach, so we did our good VM fan thing and left to go get lunch at McDonalds. I decided that after breakfast, I wasn't really hungry, and it was quite warm, so I just got one of the Cadbury's Caramel McFlurry's, which took me ages to eat because I kept waiting for the sun to come back out. And I remember making a mess of it, too. Sigh. I'm such a three year old sometimes. They were giving out turtles again, so it was great considering that's the McDonalds that Michelangelo was born in. Even though I wasn't there for that.
Later was Jason's talk, which we obviously went back for. He was a little quiet to begin with (well, in fact, he was just a little quiet) and I'm not sure giving him a solo talk on the first day was the best idea, but he held his own. He answered the questions quite well and I was surprised (over both days) that there were no Scientology questions. There was a point when he answered questions being yelled by his wife because people ran out of things to ask, hee. This was also the day that the people gave him the gift thing with loads of letters and stuff inside it - giving presents is all well and good but people, don't do it in the talk! Please! It's just not the time and it's not interesting for the audience. And also, it's really just showing off.
By the end of the talk I'd almost had a seizure from the amount of times he said “or whatever...” and also he said “stuff like that” a lot, too. Maybe it was nerves, but it was annoying! I was starting to flinch every time he said it!
After that, Hilary and I went to distribute photos, but they weren't around yet. So Gemma told us to come back after we'd gotten our autographs, which we duly went to get, except they started distributing them unsigned just after she said that. Never mind. And when we went back later, she told us she didn't need us then either and just to come back tomorrow if we wanted. We said we didn't mind staying as long as we didn't miss Doctor Who, but she said she was going to close for Doctor Who anyway, and really, it was okay if we left.
We hung out on the sofas for a while and then moved when some really rude people came and smoked in our faces. Then we saw Michael and Jason going to the toilet and tried to get Melissa to send Mark up to see what colour the bathroom was and pee next to them. Unsurprisingly, he refused. Hilary tried to get the FA Cup latest on her phone and discovered she was out of credit somehow, so I went off to the Polo bar to take a peek at the TV and find out the score. When we got back, we decided to go for our autographs.
So it was autograph session time. I felt a little bit like we should get autographs from the Prison Break people just because they were there and it was free, and since all the guests were in the same room it would only mean a little bit of extra queueing. No con book, so we went for the extra cheap look and got our badges signed. We were watching while Max got the same thing done a few people in front of us, and were a bit annoyed at Stacy Keach for a) not making eye contact and b) taking up the whole of the white bit! Was it not obvious we might be wanting TWO people to sign it? Sigh. Then it was Robert Knepper's turn, and he managed to do a decent job of signing on the front of the badge even though it was a quite detailed badge with prison bars on it making it hard to sign over. Scarily, I got an “xoxo” on mine, which Max didn't (not really surprising), but also neither did Hilary! What did I do to deserve that?!
Anyway, then it was on to Michael. Hilary was a bit disappointed because the person in front of her in the queue had stuff that was signed by Charisma and she'd been wanting to see if Michael or Jason said anything, though Michael's comment that he's “heard that lady needs to learn to be nicer to people” was interesting! So Hilary joined in and said something about her being nice when we saw her at LFCC and he made some comment about maybe she's gotten nicer/wiser with age. Or something.
Then he said something to them about being a Gemini, and I made a noise and Hilary told me to shut up, and Michael looked over at me and said “Who hates Gemini's?” and I said “No, it's just I have the same birthday as you.” and he said “June 12th? And I said yes, and he said “What year?” and I said “'85,” and he said “Fuck! You're a whole DECADE younger than me!” And then he asked me what time, and I said “6.35” and he said “11.18!” and I feel we bonded right there. And then he carried on signing for the other people, til me and Hilary moved up.
Then he started to sign her DVD right in Jason's spot, and she told him off. And so he ended up writing on her 10x8 that she shouldn't yell at him any more. And also he signed her copy of L, L & L with a fake Amber Benson autograph which he thinks is better than the one Hilary's DVD already had on it, though in fairness it doesn't actually look like Amber's actual autograph. It would just be a nice signature for Michael to have if HIS name was Amber Benson and that's how he wanted to sign things.
When he was signing my 10x8, he looked at my post-it note and said he was double checking how I wanted my name spelled. And then he said “Because it really irks me when people spell names wrong. I mean, my name is Michael - you know that already, I don't know why I said that - and I hate it when people spell it wrong.” It was the picture of him at the desk on the phone, and he'd been drawing little speech bubble type things on everybody's pictures. Mine said “Rachael... wanna hang?” - he was at great pains to explain it didn't say “wanna wang”, it said “hang” and his writing just sucked. It amused me that in trying to make it look less like wang and more like hang, he'd only succeeded in making it look like “bang”.
Then he signed my VM S2 DVDs, and I asked him to sign on the back by the pier photo, because there's no specific picture of him with the rest of the cast inside, and I just thought it would look cool signed there. And I was right! When he turned over to sign it, he went “I don't think I've ever seen the back of the DVDs before!” which was a little crazy, and then he drew me a tiny little stick!Lamb who was randomly smoking. I don't think it was supposed to be Lamb when he drew the cigarette and the smoke, and then he decided to put a sheriff badge on it.
Hilary and I also had the freebie cast shot that we'd got for getting our insane combinations of 10x8s and photo session tickets, so we'd bought badgers to get that signed. Then when we gave the badgers to Hayley for Michael to sign the cast shot too, she was like “Why have you given me these?” and we explained that they were supposed to be a personal item, and she seemed confused, and then gave them back to us and said “I've got to be consistent!”
Jason was nice too, though again Hilary's Charisma-thunder was stolen. I'd seen that he wrote a LOT on Hilary's Kristen/Jason 10x8, not leaving much space should Kristen make it to Breakout Beyond, so I made sure he got the solo shot first so he'd write the most on that. He copied my name carefully from the post-it, and then stared at it for at least twenty seconds. I was starting to think he'd forgotten how to write! Then my Kristen/Jason 10x8 got a “ooh, I haven't seen this one before!” reaction from Naomi, and then an “OH!” from Jason, too. I can't believe that by that point in the autograph session, nobody had got this shot signed!
Anyway, then it was Mark. Hilary got Mark to sign her photo book, and was pleased that Mark's PA was the woman who'd been Christina's PA at S4 and she didn't need to explain that it had been okayed by Sean. Mark looked through it and Hilary had to stop him from signing inside it beside a picture of himself, instead of at the front with the rest. Then I had Mark sign my Firefly tin, which once again impressed the PA like it had in Glasgow, whereas Mark was much more “Yeah, this is Australian!” about it. Hee!
Then we went back to our room, where Kat was seriously stressing out, having gone through the autograph session getting playing cards signed in the time while we were still in the room - she'd been all alone in there when Sean Harry came out of the autograph room door and hung out on the balcony RIGHT outside out bedroom window (literally right in front, at a waveable distance. If we'd wanted to wave. In fact, that doesn't even explain how close it was. Right outside the window, was a fairly thin fire escape staircase, and then the balcony where they were. RIGHT THERE.) for about fifteen minutes. By the time we got back, he'd gone, but Robert Knepper was standing there with his PA, smoking and reading what looked like letters from fans. We were scared to move! Luckily the net curtain was closed, and while we debated opening the net and waving, instead we settled for me and Kat sitting down in front of the window so that Hilary could pretend to be taking a picture of us and instead take a totally stalkery picture of Robert instead. Which is quite possibly the stalkeriest photo ever, not that you can tell who it is.
After a while he left, having found out in the autograph session that Chelsea won the FA Cup, and we pulled back the net in case Michael or Jason came out, but they didn't. Instead I spotted Shirley and Verdie through the open door to the autograph room as they were leaving out of the other door. Pulling back the net curtain will be important later.
As it got closer to Doctor Who time, people started gathering in our room to watch it. Ryan phoned to ask if we were still watching it there, and I said yes, and he said “Can we come up now, then?” and I said “No, we don't want you!” and he went “....whaaat?” and sounded really hurt. Poor Ryan. I laughed and was like “Of course you can! Come now!” and he said later that he hadn't been awake for very long when he phoned, lmao.
So we watched Doctor Who, and it was “42”, the real-time episode with Michelle Collins and stuff. While the episode itself wasn't particularly memorable, the whole “BURN WITH ME!!!” thing would provide us with endless amusement on Sunday. So stay tuned for that! (I'm making you work this time! There are things to remember all over the place!)
We went to the main hall for the fancy dress at some point too, grabbed a table and loads of seats so that we could all sit down this time, and then I went back to the room to grab a jumper. Karen and Max were waiting outside our room which was amusing, as I was just about to go to THEIR room and tell them where we were. We went inside and had a quick chat and show off of autos and photos, and just as we were leaving, everybody else came traipsing down the corridor to tell us there'd only been two entries in the fancy dress so they put Prison Break on and everybody left. Well, our everybody, anyway.
Then we put Joseph on, and decided to go about ordering pizza. Mel and Mark decided to go to the restaurant instead, and therefore missed out on a huge chunk of the hilarity that followed! We managed to get a Dominos menu on Kat's laptop, and finally decided on an order. Then Kathy went to try and ring it in, but couldn't get any signal on my phone and when she finally got through, they didn't say anything and then went away. Then after that when she tried from her own phone in her room, it wouldn't connect. So we think their phone broke.
Before Kathy came back upstairs, a man walked up the fire escape beside our window. This is where the fact that we pulled back the nets becomes important. We think he worked for the hotel, but it was all very odd! Karen was sat on the windowsill, so he was literally RIGHT beside her. He smiled at us, and I was feeling friendly, so I waved at him! We knew he could definitely see us, you see, because earlier Kat had half climbed out of the window so she could look inside and see if you could see. He waved back, and then went to try and get in the back of the meet & greet room... which was locked and would only open from the inside. So he kept turning back to us and motioning for us to let him in, as if we could do something about it. We all got an insane fit of the hysterical giggles, I laid down and laughed and I think Verdie fell on the floor from laughing.
He kept looking back, and then Kathy came in just as we were all laughing our hardest and saw the man, and waved! We were like “Noooooo!” and then started laughing harder while we tried to explain to her, and then we waited until he turned back to the door and shut the net curtain so damn fast before he turned around again! Then we gave up on pizza entirely, and I sent a text to Jaina about not being able to order pizza without her (she told me to send the order and she'd do it from home, lmao, but by that point we'd decided on the restaurant) and then we went downstairs, where Mel and Mark were still eating when they seated us.
We managed to be quite scarily rowdy in the restaurant, too. I think they wanted us to go away, but never mind! Hilary told me off for not tipping as much, but I have this issue with when they put service charges on bills when I'm not that impressed with the service in the first place.
Then we headed down to the Main Hall to do some Mario Kart-ing. In the meantime, I managed to get Karen to come with me while I found meimei42 to get my Brooke Nevin autograph and pay her for it, because I suck at going up to people and saying “I'm Rach!” I got annoyed because Karen and I made to go back out into the lobby and everybody tried to come with us! I was like “People! STAY HERE! We're going to for a few minutes and there's NO NEED for everybody to come too!” I think they thought something covert was going on but not really..
By the time Karen and I got back from putting the autograph down in our room, everybody was about ready to give up and come looking for us, I think! So then we finally made it into the main hall, where Almar and Kat actually did some dancing, and I proved to be more awesome at Mario Kart than I expected when playing against people. Eventually, after watching the crazy con dancing (it took most of us about half an hour to realise that Marwen wasn't saying “contracts”, which doesn't make any sense - he was saying “con tracks”, which does) and being traumatised, and after being called geeks and having people take pictures of us, we decided to call it a night and head for bed.
3870 words. Shorter than usual for a Saturday, probably because I barely mentioned anything from the guest talks. Sorry it took so long, but I was working non-stop between Breakout and Decalogy! Hopefully I'll get Sunday done before I go back to work on Wednesday. And since I've decided not to do a Decalogy report, I'm writing a "Things I learned at Decalogy" list instead, which hopefully will cover all the important con-points!
So, here I sit in my room at Decalogy, watching House and writing about Saturday at Breakout. I probably won't get very far, since there's only one plug socket in the room (kettle and hairdryer are wired into the wall!) and it's working the TV, so I can't plug my laptop in. Oh well, I'll do what I can! (It also means I'm distracted and working fast, so I'll probably forget stuff, too.) I'm going back down to the bar when House is done - I wanted to watch it, but I feel a little sad because I'm missing out on the Butlins-esque stuff going on down there! It's weird! There are parents wrapping their children in toilet paper! And I think that Compere Dave is a little bit sexy. Ahem.
So Saturday, we got up around 7.30ish, and got ready for breakfast. We met Karen and Max on the way to the lift, and everybody else was already hanging out when we got there, so we headed off straight for breakfast. Once again, we had our issue with tables, so Ryan and Kathy joined Mel and Mark on the other table (for once we weren't shunning Karen and Max, I'm sure they felt so loved!) and we did the breakfast thing. It was a very uneventful breakfast (once we'd figured out that there was one more chair than there was place settings - we decided that they'd seen us leaving a chair free for guests at the M&G and thought that was just the way we did things ;-)!), other than the fact that a few of us started talking about football since the FA Cup Final was in the afternoon, and Max supports Man Utd - I think a few people walked past the geek table, heard the football talk and were confused!
When Almar and Marguerite went to do their stewarding duties on photo sales, and Mel and Mark left to go do whatever, Ryan and Kathy came to join us at our table for a while. The orange juice on our table was all gone, but Ryan's table had been vacated completely so I stole the jug from over there.
Then we got ourselves ready for the photo sessions, before going to figure out where they were. We did that with relatively little pain, though it turned out they had some strange plan where if you had multiple photo shoots, you had to leave the room entirely and go back in, instead of just skipping to the end of the queue like we usually would - just because of the way the room was laid out.
First up, they were trying to get Jason's queue done, but put us into Michael's. After some serious floor sittage waiting for the guys to turn up, Michael walked up and down his queue, making sure everybody got a hug - and then placed himself just behind the photographer, next to where Jason's queue was snaking by - so that whenever anybody went for a photo with Jason, they had to go past Michael and got a hug. So you got a picture with Jason and a hug from Michael - it was a great extra!
They stopped us from skipping over into Jason's queue - I think because he'd been standing there a while and there was a lot of camera flashes, and it is a bit unfair to make them stand there forever when the flashes are so bright, I agree. So my first picture was with Michael, who was as lovely and cuddly as was expected, hugging all the girls without even having to be asked. I was wearing my Super Mario t-shirt that I had delivered to Shirley's house to save on shipping, and when I got up to Michael, he told me he loved it, which I was pleased about! The photo is pretty cute - I'm always unsure about hug photos, Sean Maher's hug photos always look weird, but Michael's came out great! Then as I was leaving, I turned around to see what he was doing to Hilary - he was standing behind her with his arms around her neck instead of the usual hug thing. I think (well, I know!) she was a bit annoyed as she'd been wanting to “play it cool” after the way she liked her Brandon Routh one from Collectormania, but it came out really great! I'm jealous!
After that we did Jason, and it's a good thing they weren't using the black background this time as he would have been the floating head - he'd pretty much suited up! But with a black shirt as well as black trousers. He looked totally smart compared to Michael and Mark, who had just come like they were ready to hang out, bless him! (I don't know if he felt embarrassed or whatever, because on Sunday he was wearing hang-out-y clothes. Or maybe that was always his plan! Smart on Saturday, cool on Sunday.)
We also did Mark, at some point, who looked just like he always does! And then we left, and got halfway back to the stairs when I remembered where we were, and that we could go the other way and get back to our rooms easier. I led the way, and nobody believed that I had a good plan until we got there and I proved it.
Back in the room, we did some hanging out online, in which Karen and I got the geekiest we've ever been and were posting to each other online from along the corridor - “you come to our room!” “no, you come to ours! There are more people in here!” We're big saddos - new level of nerd-dom! I was also extremely classy and drank Irn Bru from a wine glass, which became my thing for the weekend. (Okay, battery dying now. Everything from now on was actually written the night of posting!)
First talk of the day was Michael and Mark - with a lot of swearing and the start of Michael's “it's totally impossible to go for a long walk on a beach” rant. And poor Mark, with everybody asking Michael questions, and then when people asked Mark questions and were like “When you died...” and he was like “When I died in WHAT? I die in everything!”
After that it was Stacy Keach, so we did our good VM fan thing and left to go get lunch at McDonalds. I decided that after breakfast, I wasn't really hungry, and it was quite warm, so I just got one of the Cadbury's Caramel McFlurry's, which took me ages to eat because I kept waiting for the sun to come back out. And I remember making a mess of it, too. Sigh. I'm such a three year old sometimes. They were giving out turtles again, so it was great considering that's the McDonalds that Michelangelo was born in. Even though I wasn't there for that.
Later was Jason's talk, which we obviously went back for. He was a little quiet to begin with (well, in fact, he was just a little quiet) and I'm not sure giving him a solo talk on the first day was the best idea, but he held his own. He answered the questions quite well and I was surprised (over both days) that there were no Scientology questions. There was a point when he answered questions being yelled by his wife because people ran out of things to ask, hee. This was also the day that the people gave him the gift thing with loads of letters and stuff inside it - giving presents is all well and good but people, don't do it in the talk! Please! It's just not the time and it's not interesting for the audience. And also, it's really just showing off.
By the end of the talk I'd almost had a seizure from the amount of times he said “or whatever...” and also he said “stuff like that” a lot, too. Maybe it was nerves, but it was annoying! I was starting to flinch every time he said it!
After that, Hilary and I went to distribute photos, but they weren't around yet. So Gemma told us to come back after we'd gotten our autographs, which we duly went to get, except they started distributing them unsigned just after she said that. Never mind. And when we went back later, she told us she didn't need us then either and just to come back tomorrow if we wanted. We said we didn't mind staying as long as we didn't miss Doctor Who, but she said she was going to close for Doctor Who anyway, and really, it was okay if we left.
We hung out on the sofas for a while and then moved when some really rude people came and smoked in our faces. Then we saw Michael and Jason going to the toilet and tried to get Melissa to send Mark up to see what colour the bathroom was and pee next to them. Unsurprisingly, he refused. Hilary tried to get the FA Cup latest on her phone and discovered she was out of credit somehow, so I went off to the Polo bar to take a peek at the TV and find out the score. When we got back, we decided to go for our autographs.
So it was autograph session time. I felt a little bit like we should get autographs from the Prison Break people just because they were there and it was free, and since all the guests were in the same room it would only mean a little bit of extra queueing. No con book, so we went for the extra cheap look and got our badges signed. We were watching while Max got the same thing done a few people in front of us, and were a bit annoyed at Stacy Keach for a) not making eye contact and b) taking up the whole of the white bit! Was it not obvious we might be wanting TWO people to sign it? Sigh. Then it was Robert Knepper's turn, and he managed to do a decent job of signing on the front of the badge even though it was a quite detailed badge with prison bars on it making it hard to sign over. Scarily, I got an “xoxo” on mine, which Max didn't (not really surprising), but also neither did Hilary! What did I do to deserve that?!
Anyway, then it was on to Michael. Hilary was a bit disappointed because the person in front of her in the queue had stuff that was signed by Charisma and she'd been wanting to see if Michael or Jason said anything, though Michael's comment that he's “heard that lady needs to learn to be nicer to people” was interesting! So Hilary joined in and said something about her being nice when we saw her at LFCC and he made some comment about maybe she's gotten nicer/wiser with age. Or something.
Then he said something to them about being a Gemini, and I made a noise and Hilary told me to shut up, and Michael looked over at me and said “Who hates Gemini's?” and I said “No, it's just I have the same birthday as you.” and he said “June 12th? And I said yes, and he said “What year?” and I said “'85,” and he said “Fuck! You're a whole DECADE younger than me!” And then he asked me what time, and I said “6.35” and he said “11.18!” and I feel we bonded right there. And then he carried on signing for the other people, til me and Hilary moved up.
Then he started to sign her DVD right in Jason's spot, and she told him off. And so he ended up writing on her 10x8 that she shouldn't yell at him any more. And also he signed her copy of L, L & L with a fake Amber Benson autograph which he thinks is better than the one Hilary's DVD already had on it, though in fairness it doesn't actually look like Amber's actual autograph. It would just be a nice signature for Michael to have if HIS name was Amber Benson and that's how he wanted to sign things.
When he was signing my 10x8, he looked at my post-it note and said he was double checking how I wanted my name spelled. And then he said “Because it really irks me when people spell names wrong. I mean, my name is Michael - you know that already, I don't know why I said that - and I hate it when people spell it wrong.” It was the picture of him at the desk on the phone, and he'd been drawing little speech bubble type things on everybody's pictures. Mine said “Rachael... wanna hang?” - he was at great pains to explain it didn't say “wanna wang”, it said “hang” and his writing just sucked. It amused me that in trying to make it look less like wang and more like hang, he'd only succeeded in making it look like “bang”.
Then he signed my VM S2 DVDs, and I asked him to sign on the back by the pier photo, because there's no specific picture of him with the rest of the cast inside, and I just thought it would look cool signed there. And I was right! When he turned over to sign it, he went “I don't think I've ever seen the back of the DVDs before!” which was a little crazy, and then he drew me a tiny little stick!Lamb who was randomly smoking. I don't think it was supposed to be Lamb when he drew the cigarette and the smoke, and then he decided to put a sheriff badge on it.
Hilary and I also had the freebie cast shot that we'd got for getting our insane combinations of 10x8s and photo session tickets, so we'd bought badgers to get that signed. Then when we gave the badgers to Hayley for Michael to sign the cast shot too, she was like “Why have you given me these?” and we explained that they were supposed to be a personal item, and she seemed confused, and then gave them back to us and said “I've got to be consistent!”
Jason was nice too, though again Hilary's Charisma-thunder was stolen. I'd seen that he wrote a LOT on Hilary's Kristen/Jason 10x8, not leaving much space should Kristen make it to Breakout Beyond, so I made sure he got the solo shot first so he'd write the most on that. He copied my name carefully from the post-it, and then stared at it for at least twenty seconds. I was starting to think he'd forgotten how to write! Then my Kristen/Jason 10x8 got a “ooh, I haven't seen this one before!” reaction from Naomi, and then an “OH!” from Jason, too. I can't believe that by that point in the autograph session, nobody had got this shot signed!
Anyway, then it was Mark. Hilary got Mark to sign her photo book, and was pleased that Mark's PA was the woman who'd been Christina's PA at S4 and she didn't need to explain that it had been okayed by Sean. Mark looked through it and Hilary had to stop him from signing inside it beside a picture of himself, instead of at the front with the rest. Then I had Mark sign my Firefly tin, which once again impressed the PA like it had in Glasgow, whereas Mark was much more “Yeah, this is Australian!” about it. Hee!
Then we went back to our room, where Kat was seriously stressing out, having gone through the autograph session getting playing cards signed in the time while we were still in the room - she'd been all alone in there when Sean Harry came out of the autograph room door and hung out on the balcony RIGHT outside out bedroom window (literally right in front, at a waveable distance. If we'd wanted to wave. In fact, that doesn't even explain how close it was. Right outside the window, was a fairly thin fire escape staircase, and then the balcony where they were. RIGHT THERE.) for about fifteen minutes. By the time we got back, he'd gone, but Robert Knepper was standing there with his PA, smoking and reading what looked like letters from fans. We were scared to move! Luckily the net curtain was closed, and while we debated opening the net and waving, instead we settled for me and Kat sitting down in front of the window so that Hilary could pretend to be taking a picture of us and instead take a totally stalkery picture of Robert instead. Which is quite possibly the stalkeriest photo ever, not that you can tell who it is.
After a while he left, having found out in the autograph session that Chelsea won the FA Cup, and we pulled back the net in case Michael or Jason came out, but they didn't. Instead I spotted Shirley and Verdie through the open door to the autograph room as they were leaving out of the other door. Pulling back the net curtain will be important later.
As it got closer to Doctor Who time, people started gathering in our room to watch it. Ryan phoned to ask if we were still watching it there, and I said yes, and he said “Can we come up now, then?” and I said “No, we don't want you!” and he went “....whaaat?” and sounded really hurt. Poor Ryan. I laughed and was like “Of course you can! Come now!” and he said later that he hadn't been awake for very long when he phoned, lmao.
So we watched Doctor Who, and it was “42”, the real-time episode with Michelle Collins and stuff. While the episode itself wasn't particularly memorable, the whole “BURN WITH ME!!!” thing would provide us with endless amusement on Sunday. So stay tuned for that! (I'm making you work this time! There are things to remember all over the place!)
We went to the main hall for the fancy dress at some point too, grabbed a table and loads of seats so that we could all sit down this time, and then I went back to the room to grab a jumper. Karen and Max were waiting outside our room which was amusing, as I was just about to go to THEIR room and tell them where we were. We went inside and had a quick chat and show off of autos and photos, and just as we were leaving, everybody else came traipsing down the corridor to tell us there'd only been two entries in the fancy dress so they put Prison Break on and everybody left. Well, our everybody, anyway.
Then we put Joseph on, and decided to go about ordering pizza. Mel and Mark decided to go to the restaurant instead, and therefore missed out on a huge chunk of the hilarity that followed! We managed to get a Dominos menu on Kat's laptop, and finally decided on an order. Then Kathy went to try and ring it in, but couldn't get any signal on my phone and when she finally got through, they didn't say anything and then went away. Then after that when she tried from her own phone in her room, it wouldn't connect. So we think their phone broke.
Before Kathy came back upstairs, a man walked up the fire escape beside our window. This is where the fact that we pulled back the nets becomes important. We think he worked for the hotel, but it was all very odd! Karen was sat on the windowsill, so he was literally RIGHT beside her. He smiled at us, and I was feeling friendly, so I waved at him! We knew he could definitely see us, you see, because earlier Kat had half climbed out of the window so she could look inside and see if you could see. He waved back, and then went to try and get in the back of the meet & greet room... which was locked and would only open from the inside. So he kept turning back to us and motioning for us to let him in, as if we could do something about it. We all got an insane fit of the hysterical giggles, I laid down and laughed and I think Verdie fell on the floor from laughing.
He kept looking back, and then Kathy came in just as we were all laughing our hardest and saw the man, and waved! We were like “Noooooo!” and then started laughing harder while we tried to explain to her, and then we waited until he turned back to the door and shut the net curtain so damn fast before he turned around again! Then we gave up on pizza entirely, and I sent a text to Jaina about not being able to order pizza without her (she told me to send the order and she'd do it from home, lmao, but by that point we'd decided on the restaurant) and then we went downstairs, where Mel and Mark were still eating when they seated us.
We managed to be quite scarily rowdy in the restaurant, too. I think they wanted us to go away, but never mind! Hilary told me off for not tipping as much, but I have this issue with when they put service charges on bills when I'm not that impressed with the service in the first place.
Then we headed down to the Main Hall to do some Mario Kart-ing. In the meantime, I managed to get Karen to come with me while I found meimei42 to get my Brooke Nevin autograph and pay her for it, because I suck at going up to people and saying “I'm Rach!” I got annoyed because Karen and I made to go back out into the lobby and everybody tried to come with us! I was like “People! STAY HERE! We're going to for a few minutes and there's NO NEED for everybody to come too!” I think they thought something covert was going on but not really..
By the time Karen and I got back from putting the autograph down in our room, everybody was about ready to give up and come looking for us, I think! So then we finally made it into the main hall, where Almar and Kat actually did some dancing, and I proved to be more awesome at Mario Kart than I expected when playing against people. Eventually, after watching the crazy con dancing (it took most of us about half an hour to realise that Marwen wasn't saying “contracts”, which doesn't make any sense - he was saying “con tracks”, which does) and being traumatised, and after being called geeks and having people take pictures of us, we decided to call it a night and head for bed.
3870 words. Shorter than usual for a Saturday, probably because I barely mentioned anything from the guest talks. Sorry it took so long, but I was working non-stop between Breakout and Decalogy! Hopefully I'll get Sunday done before I go back to work on Wednesday. And since I've decided not to do a Decalogy report, I'm writing a "Things I learned at Decalogy" list instead, which hopefully will cover all the important con-points!