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Apr. 13th, 2009 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaSakuracon!
Thursday
We had intended to leave stupid early in the morning, like at 4am, and be in Seattle by 6pm or something like that, but that so didn't happen. Between this, that and the other thing, we got on the road and on our way at 2pm. Really nothing interesting happened, just a long drive, very few breaks to try to save time, some hilarious commentary, and an uneventful border crossing. Shilo made it to the hotel about an hour before we did. About the only fun part to the night was that some time past 3am, Shilo was asleep, Nicole and I both had ear plugs in, and Jaseena got locked out of the hotel room. We proceeded to completely NOT hear her, to the point that hotel staff had to snip the bolt off of the door so she could get back in the room ^^;;
Friday
I got up first, around 10... boring stuff like getting dressed happened, LOL. I wore the wa-loli outfit I made in about 8 hours, including a headdress with a bird on it :D Shilo wore her yukata hiked up to her knees and stompy boots, fully ready for concert-ness! Jaseena wore plaid loli, Allan wore Red Mage, and Ryan wore Ouendan. Jay just wore clothes lol. NO one cares, I know. Nicole stayed in the room to finish some sewing before coming later. Got to the con just after noon. The lines were BANANAS. We were in the pre-reg line for 2 hours, and poor Ryan was in the reg line for almost SIX. WE're going to have T-shirts next year that read "I survived the Sakuracon reg line". We rushed off to get the event wristbands, then Shilo and I ran off to find food. Headache was foregone for me at this point. We'd been up and about for over 4 hours, and all I'd eaten was some cookie pieces and drank a water bottle. Everywhere had a huge line for food, except for the cafe/coffeehouse on the main level, whose sandwiches tasted like they came from the gods. Om nom nom. Then Jaseena, Shilo and I went and plunked our butts down in the autograph hall at about 2:40 to wait to be "seated" for the Girugamesh concert.
Concert was good. Jaseena and I sat down (I don't do mosh pits, even tame ones, and especially not when I'm dehydrated and headachey) to the side, on an aisle. The woman in front of us questioned a staff member on why they were "promised front row center seats" and there were no seats in the front row. I was annoyed. The guy apologized to her over and over again. I think the website itself, and the program book, said what kind of bands were playing at this concert. You expected front row center seats at a rock concert? Good luck with that. Then the guys behind us were creepy and gross about some of the girls close to the stage. Yuck. THEN, the lead singer for the Slants walked down the aisle, high-fiving me and the woman in front of me XD They were pretty good too. Both guitarists were friggin adorable. Girugamesh was totally awesome, as well. I couldn't see the stage well, obviously, being seated on the side, but I did catch glimpses and the music was of course great. Shilo reported some jerks behind her trying to mosh, when they were all specifically told not to push forward, because if the barrier at the front of the stage moved, the concert was going to be over.
Since seating and concert had started late, it finished aroun 6:30-ish? 6:45? Somewhere in there. We stopped to get some water (thoughtfully provided at the back of the hall - points for that, seriously. Had I known it was there sooner, I wouldn't have spent the entire 2 hours of concert being desperately thirsty) and fix Shilo's outfit (the moshers had managed to pull bits of it from her body......) before getting in line for autographs. Long story short here, the staff had NO FUCKING IDEA what they were doing. We got four different stories about what could and could not be signed, and in the end, I had a very short thread of patience left, with only one sandwich sitting in my stomach, so I decided to go peek on the dollmeet (since I didn't know if![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maeveth would be there or not. My iTouch's wireless died for some weird reason right before we left the house, I had no idea what plans were), and try to find something sweet to drink. All of the fast food places were busy, and the cafe was closed (truly, delicious sandwiches), but there was a mini-cafe of some kind set up in the hall outside of the autographs/main events hall? Bought a Coke, sat down to wait for Shilo and Jaseena. They reported more fuck-wittery with the autographs line, and I'm sure they nearly had a riot on their hands. Many of the people there were more "old" fans of the band, rather than people who just dropped in to see what was going on and wound up liking what they heard, so they had things like Japanese release CDs, Japanese printed magazines (I saw one girl holding a Cure mag), and other official merchandise. The staff were being told that we could ONLY have American-release CDs signed, to which most of the people holding Japanese-release ones were going "OH FUCK NO." The website and other signs only said "official release", of which all of this was, so I really don't blame them. Anyway, Shilo got her favourite album signed without having to buy another copy of one she already had, Jaseena picked up a copy of the american release, and she was was much happier and swore to be my packmule for the rest of the weekend XD
We were going to have supper at Cheesecake Factory, but the line was out the door, so we decided to go change and see what else might be tasty and delicious. Ended up at Benihana's a block from the hotel, which was BEYOND DELICIOUS, making friends with the other 7 people at our grill, and getting back around 11ish...? Ahhh sleepytimez.
Saturday
Shilo and I got up and got dressed long before most of the others were ready ^^;; We left for the con around 11:30ish. It took me awhile to get dressed in my baby, including fake eyelashes (that was an experience; first time I ever managed to get them on and STAYING on all day), but oh, it was worth it. I'm so happy I got that thing done. We went to the delicious cafe of amazingness to sample their pastries for breakfast first, and then up to the dollmeet to catch up with Kate/mako :3 I got thoroughly glomped XD And then as we were chatting, maeveth found me too :D Yaaaay happy weekend is now made! Shilo and I went into the dealers hall for a rather thorough stroll (but as it turned out in the end, not thorough enough), locating a coin-"distributing" block from Mario, a plushy for Steph, one for Shilo's sister, some other little trinkets and a hoodie, a Girugamesh t-shirt and the discovery that you could get your pic taken with the band the next day if you bought said shirt, I bought Gosu-rori 12, and then we went back out to collect Kate and go for lunch. First we stopped off at the hotel again to drop off Shilo's bags, ran into and dragged Nicole along, and had delicious delicious lunch at Cheesecake Factory. Eating cream sauces while wearing vinyl/black is fuuuun XD Theeeeen it was off to the park for photos. I don't think many of mine turned out? I was laughing too much and chasing pigeons. Baaaack to the hotel to pick up the dolls, and then off to the second meet of the day. Shilo is really not into dolls, so she just sat nearby while I relaxed with some other owners. The girl dressed as Ariel was friggen hilarious. She cracked my shit up, and seemed to have a ton of fun posing my SoulKid with hers, and we even traded heads shortly XD (much easier than undressing them). Kate traded clothes between Rem and Saki, which was funny. Rem was looking smokin' in Saki's clothes, while Saki silently plotted my demise for putting him in a dress (only because he hates being naked more, I swears!). I guess it was around 9 when we decided to leave and go for supper. It was nice to chill with maeveth for however short a time that was, and see her little ones :3 Last time, there was only Ilari, and he's long since moved on to greener pastures (I hope, anyway; he was friggen cute) We went back and retrieved Nicole and went to Elephant & Castle for some good old-fashioned pub food, except that I will making you some REAL home-baked mac and cheese some day, Shilo.
When we got back, we just packed up our suitcases as much as possible to make things easier in the morning.
Sunday
Sunday was the usual fun of checking out and packing things into bags that was way more than we'd originally come in... The weather was crap-tastic, and Nicole's costume was both delicate and gapping FAAAAR too much, so she went out in a wig and regular clothes when we finally did get out of the hotel. I wore Orihime anyway, and the bellhop asked me if I was "Inoue-san", which threw me for a loop because I've never heard ANYONE refer to her by her last name before XD I was impressed, and pleased, Bellhop, you were adorable. The boys and Shilo took down her luggage and the first round of our own, which was mostly the big, heavy stuff. Jaseena went down to sort out our bill, which was fine, and Shilo left straight from there to go wait in line for the band's booth appearance/photo op. Allan, Ryan and I started browsing the dealer's hall shortly before 12:30, becuase I remember the cheer from the crowd when Girugamesh showed up lol. I bought some cute Bleach charms (of which I have a double, so flist gets dibs, more on that later) and that's pretty much it... A girl dressed in all-out rave gear and her Bleach-dressed friend wanted hugs and offered me candy :D We collected Shilo from the booth, photo in camera, and browsed a bit more. She found a shirt that Scott would have loved, but they only had small and medium left. If only we had looked a little closer the day before! Alas.
We were all hungry, so we went to Cheesecake Factory again for lunch. Allan managed two full-size entreés, which impressed the waitress, who turned out to be not only a Sakuracon-goer, but a cosplayer as well XD We all stuffed in some cheesecake, even Ryan who doesn't even like cheesecake, and I managed to eat the entire slice, because it was that delicious. Allan and I ended up with, in Patrick's words, "second-trimester food-babies". I honestly didn't eat again until like 11pm, and only then because it was more that I felt I should, not to mention I didn't want my sandwich bread to get soggy. So, if you go to Cheesecake Factory any time soon, get the Wild Blueberry special cheesecake, its amaaaaaaazing. Shilo and I went back to the con to find Jay and Jaseena, while the other three went to find the Hot Topic downtown (which ended up being closed). I had a photo op with another Arrancar Orihime, and we sat and chatted while we waited. Dealer's hall closed, our party was full, and we headed back to the hotel.
But first, I felt the uirge to potty... this is important, promise XD Shilo had just waited in a tiny bathroom with three stalls for a potty break, and my urge started just as she was coming out, so I decided to go to the main hall where I knew there was a potty with many many stalls. Totally missed the one right inside the doors, and wound up in the one in the main events hall, which was showing AMVs. As we were leaving, a Transformers one to the tune of Styx's Mr Roboto started, and I wanted to watch a few seconds of it since we'd been going "domo - domo" all day the day before. Well, it wound up being friggen hilarious, complete with a bouncing sing-a-long and a DDR-ing Optimus Prime getting down with his bad self (in Shilo's words), and I had to see it all ^^;; Whoever made that, I want to shake his or her hand, it was AWESOME. I have zero attention span for AMVs and I would so watch that one again. Went back to Jay and Jaseena, made our way back to the hotel, obtained a bag of American M&Ms and then we went to collect our vehicles and go our separate ways.
A round-about route back to Sumas, due to Sheila's amazing ability to get us lost. No trouble at the border again, a stop at Timmy's, some HORRID rain/snow/slush mess on the highway, topping us out at one point at 40km/h, and an otherwise rather uneventful trip back to Edmonton, aside from some yucky rain. WE got back into the city at 7:30pm, which is the earliest we've ever been back, so yay for that :)
All in all, it was a great weekend, it was so wonderful to see Shilo,mako and maeveth again, and I had a lot of fun :3
Thursday
We had intended to leave stupid early in the morning, like at 4am, and be in Seattle by 6pm or something like that, but that so didn't happen. Between this, that and the other thing, we got on the road and on our way at 2pm. Really nothing interesting happened, just a long drive, very few breaks to try to save time, some hilarious commentary, and an uneventful border crossing. Shilo made it to the hotel about an hour before we did. About the only fun part to the night was that some time past 3am, Shilo was asleep, Nicole and I both had ear plugs in, and Jaseena got locked out of the hotel room. We proceeded to completely NOT hear her, to the point that hotel staff had to snip the bolt off of the door so she could get back in the room ^^;;
Friday
I got up first, around 10... boring stuff like getting dressed happened, LOL. I wore the wa-loli outfit I made in about 8 hours, including a headdress with a bird on it :D Shilo wore her yukata hiked up to her knees and stompy boots, fully ready for concert-ness! Jaseena wore plaid loli, Allan wore Red Mage, and Ryan wore Ouendan. Jay just wore clothes lol. NO one cares, I know. Nicole stayed in the room to finish some sewing before coming later. Got to the con just after noon. The lines were BANANAS. We were in the pre-reg line for 2 hours, and poor Ryan was in the reg line for almost SIX. WE're going to have T-shirts next year that read "I survived the Sakuracon reg line". We rushed off to get the event wristbands, then Shilo and I ran off to find food. Headache was foregone for me at this point. We'd been up and about for over 4 hours, and all I'd eaten was some cookie pieces and drank a water bottle. Everywhere had a huge line for food, except for the cafe/coffeehouse on the main level, whose sandwiches tasted like they came from the gods. Om nom nom. Then Jaseena, Shilo and I went and plunked our butts down in the autograph hall at about 2:40 to wait to be "seated" for the Girugamesh concert.
Concert was good. Jaseena and I sat down (I don't do mosh pits, even tame ones, and especially not when I'm dehydrated and headachey) to the side, on an aisle. The woman in front of us questioned a staff member on why they were "promised front row center seats" and there were no seats in the front row. I was annoyed. The guy apologized to her over and over again. I think the website itself, and the program book, said what kind of bands were playing at this concert. You expected front row center seats at a rock concert? Good luck with that. Then the guys behind us were creepy and gross about some of the girls close to the stage. Yuck. THEN, the lead singer for the Slants walked down the aisle, high-fiving me and the woman in front of me XD They were pretty good too. Both guitarists were friggin adorable. Girugamesh was totally awesome, as well. I couldn't see the stage well, obviously, being seated on the side, but I did catch glimpses and the music was of course great. Shilo reported some jerks behind her trying to mosh, when they were all specifically told not to push forward, because if the barrier at the front of the stage moved, the concert was going to be over.
Since seating and concert had started late, it finished aroun 6:30-ish? 6:45? Somewhere in there. We stopped to get some water (thoughtfully provided at the back of the hall - points for that, seriously. Had I known it was there sooner, I wouldn't have spent the entire 2 hours of concert being desperately thirsty) and fix Shilo's outfit (the moshers had managed to pull bits of it from her body......) before getting in line for autographs. Long story short here, the staff had NO FUCKING IDEA what they were doing. We got four different stories about what could and could not be signed, and in the end, I had a very short thread of patience left, with only one sandwich sitting in my stomach, so I decided to go peek on the dollmeet (since I didn't know if
maeveth would be there or not. My iTouch's wireless died for some weird reason right before we left the house, I had no idea what plans were), and try to find something sweet to drink. All of the fast food places were busy, and the cafe was closed (truly, delicious sandwiches), but there was a mini-cafe of some kind set up in the hall outside of the autographs/main events hall? Bought a Coke, sat down to wait for Shilo and Jaseena. They reported more fuck-wittery with the autographs line, and I'm sure they nearly had a riot on their hands. Many of the people there were more "old" fans of the band, rather than people who just dropped in to see what was going on and wound up liking what they heard, so they had things like Japanese release CDs, Japanese printed magazines (I saw one girl holding a Cure mag), and other official merchandise. The staff were being told that we could ONLY have American-release CDs signed, to which most of the people holding Japanese-release ones were going "OH FUCK NO." The website and other signs only said "official release", of which all of this was, so I really don't blame them. Anyway, Shilo got her favourite album signed without having to buy another copy of one she already had, Jaseena picked up a copy of the american release, and she was was much happier and swore to be my packmule for the rest of the weekend XDWe were going to have supper at Cheesecake Factory, but the line was out the door, so we decided to go change and see what else might be tasty and delicious. Ended up at Benihana's a block from the hotel, which was BEYOND DELICIOUS, making friends with the other 7 people at our grill, and getting back around 11ish...? Ahhh sleepytimez.
Saturday
Shilo and I got up and got dressed long before most of the others were ready ^^;; We left for the con around 11:30ish. It took me awhile to get dressed in my baby, including fake eyelashes (that was an experience; first time I ever managed to get them on and STAYING on all day), but oh, it was worth it. I'm so happy I got that thing done. We went to the delicious cafe of amazingness to sample their pastries for breakfast first, and then up to the dollmeet to catch up with Kate/
mako :3 I got thoroughly glomped XD And then as we were chatting, maeveth found me too :D Yaaaay happy weekend is now made! Shilo and I went into the dealers hall for a rather thorough stroll (but as it turned out in the end, not thorough enough), locating a coin-"distributing" block from Mario, a plushy for Steph, one for Shilo's sister, some other little trinkets and a hoodie, a Girugamesh t-shirt and the discovery that you could get your pic taken with the band the next day if you bought said shirt, I bought Gosu-rori 12, and then we went back out to collect Kate and go for lunch. First we stopped off at the hotel again to drop off Shilo's bags, ran into and dragged Nicole along, and had delicious delicious lunch at Cheesecake Factory. Eating cream sauces while wearing vinyl/black is fuuuun XD Theeeeen it was off to the park for photos. I don't think many of mine turned out? I was laughing too much and chasing pigeons. Baaaack to the hotel to pick up the dolls, and then off to the second meet of the day. Shilo is really not into dolls, so she just sat nearby while I relaxed with some other owners. The girl dressed as Ariel was friggen hilarious. She cracked my shit up, and seemed to have a ton of fun posing my SoulKid with hers, and we even traded heads shortly XD (much easier than undressing them). Kate traded clothes between Rem and Saki, which was funny. Rem was looking smokin' in Saki's clothes, while Saki silently plotted my demise for putting him in a dress (only because he hates being naked more, I swears!). I guess it was around 9 when we decided to leave and go for supper. It was nice to chill with maeveth for however short a time that was, and see her little ones :3 Last time, there was only Ilari, and he's long since moved on to greener pastures (I hope, anyway; he was friggen cute) We went back and retrieved Nicole and went to Elephant & Castle for some good old-fashioned pub food, except that I will making you some REAL home-baked mac and cheese some day, Shilo. When we got back, we just packed up our suitcases as much as possible to make things easier in the morning.
Sunday
Sunday was the usual fun of checking out and packing things into bags that was way more than we'd originally come in... The weather was crap-tastic, and Nicole's costume was both delicate and gapping FAAAAR too much, so she went out in a wig and regular clothes when we finally did get out of the hotel. I wore Orihime anyway, and the bellhop asked me if I was "Inoue-san", which threw me for a loop because I've never heard ANYONE refer to her by her last name before XD I was impressed, and pleased, Bellhop, you were adorable. The boys and Shilo took down her luggage and the first round of our own, which was mostly the big, heavy stuff. Jaseena went down to sort out our bill, which was fine, and Shilo left straight from there to go wait in line for the band's booth appearance/photo op. Allan, Ryan and I started browsing the dealer's hall shortly before 12:30, becuase I remember the cheer from the crowd when Girugamesh showed up lol. I bought some cute Bleach charms (of which I have a double, so flist gets dibs, more on that later) and that's pretty much it... A girl dressed in all-out rave gear and her Bleach-dressed friend wanted hugs and offered me candy :D We collected Shilo from the booth, photo in camera, and browsed a bit more. She found a shirt that Scott would have loved, but they only had small and medium left. If only we had looked a little closer the day before! Alas.
We were all hungry, so we went to Cheesecake Factory again for lunch. Allan managed two full-size entreés, which impressed the waitress, who turned out to be not only a Sakuracon-goer, but a cosplayer as well XD We all stuffed in some cheesecake, even Ryan who doesn't even like cheesecake, and I managed to eat the entire slice, because it was that delicious. Allan and I ended up with, in Patrick's words, "second-trimester food-babies". I honestly didn't eat again until like 11pm, and only then because it was more that I felt I should, not to mention I didn't want my sandwich bread to get soggy. So, if you go to Cheesecake Factory any time soon, get the Wild Blueberry special cheesecake, its amaaaaaaazing. Shilo and I went back to the con to find Jay and Jaseena, while the other three went to find the Hot Topic downtown (which ended up being closed). I had a photo op with another Arrancar Orihime, and we sat and chatted while we waited. Dealer's hall closed, our party was full, and we headed back to the hotel.
But first, I felt the uirge to potty... this is important, promise XD Shilo had just waited in a tiny bathroom with three stalls for a potty break, and my urge started just as she was coming out, so I decided to go to the main hall where I knew there was a potty with many many stalls. Totally missed the one right inside the doors, and wound up in the one in the main events hall, which was showing AMVs. As we were leaving, a Transformers one to the tune of Styx's Mr Roboto started, and I wanted to watch a few seconds of it since we'd been going "domo - domo" all day the day before. Well, it wound up being friggen hilarious, complete with a bouncing sing-a-long and a DDR-ing Optimus Prime getting down with his bad self (in Shilo's words), and I had to see it all ^^;; Whoever made that, I want to shake his or her hand, it was AWESOME. I have zero attention span for AMVs and I would so watch that one again. Went back to Jay and Jaseena, made our way back to the hotel, obtained a bag of American M&Ms and then we went to collect our vehicles and go our separate ways.
A round-about route back to Sumas, due to Sheila's amazing ability to get us lost. No trouble at the border again, a stop at Timmy's, some HORRID rain/snow/slush mess on the highway, topping us out at one point at 40km/h, and an otherwise rather uneventful trip back to Edmonton, aside from some yucky rain. WE got back into the city at 7:30pm, which is the earliest we've ever been back, so yay for that :)
All in all, it was a great weekend, it was so wonderful to see Shilo,
mako and maeveth again, and I had a lot of fun :3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 03:29 pm (UTC)There you could get pretty much anything you wanted signed as long as you bought -something- in the way of tour goods, even a $5 sticker, which was very nice of them as a band. But then the organizers made people line up to buy -merch- and THEN go through for autographs, which ended up causing huge delays while the little fangirls flipped coins over which kawaiii photoset to buy. The second day they just took orders going down the line, that was a little better.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 11:34 pm (UTC)