Vacation! and CCEE!
May. 23rd, 2012 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaSince I had to bow out of Sakuracon this year due to no one being able to go and not wanting to spend 24 hours on the bus, I decided to take the time off anyway and have more of a "stay-cation" instead. It would be the perfect time and ability to go visit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raspberrybelle in Lethbridge and then spend a couple days in Calgary with my wifey and baby before going home. We drove to Calgary on Thursday night, and then on Friday I took the Greyhound out to Lethbridge.
In terms of things happening, it was very uneventful lol. Denton came out from Medicine Hat for a few hours where we went to a cafe and ate a lot and talked for a few hours. We watched an almost obscene amount of Reboot - the last half of Season 2 and 3/4 of Season 3. I had kinda forgotten exactly how awesome that series is. Joe and I played Draw Something a lot and giggled over our drawings while sitting next to each other. We ate more delicious food. We tried to go shopping on Easter Sunday, but eeeeeveryone was closed. The mall's website said they were open, but the only thing actually open was the movie theatre. I guess that's a small town for you, but even in Edmonton very little is open on Easter Sunday...
My bus left Monday at 5pm, so we left around 11 to go out to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which was only about an hour away :D I've wanted to go for years but it's a considerable drive even from Calgary, never mind Edmonton. You start at the top of the cliff, which isn't very impressive from there, and then head back into the museum and work your way down to the bottom again. We joined up with a tour group of some sort, led by an interpreter who, I believe, is part of the Blackfoot tribe. If he said it, we came in a bit after they'd started. He talked about how the jump was used and life around the hunt, the processing of the buffalo at the bottom and what kinds of things were made, how the hunt was conducted, etc. It was really fascinating. At the bottom, we were looking at some photos taken around the turn of the last century and he approached the two of us and said something like "You wanna see a dinosaur?" Heck yes! He took us into an area marked "employees only" and showed us a couple of really cool books, beads made from elk teeth, more photos, really cool stuff :) Then we walked the lower part of the trail, and the jump is MUCH more impressive from the bottom D: The cliff is 10m tall now, but at the beginning of when the jump was being used, it was twice as tall. You could almost picture hundreds of buffalo being stampeded over the edge onto the ground below.
We got back into the city around 3 and went shopping then, drove around a bit, and then Joe dropped me off at the station and I was on my way to Calgary. I missed my brain-half a lot! (And still do.)
Calgary was pretty uneventful too lol. We went to the mall for a bit and later went to the gaming store to play D&D. The day I left, it was raining hard and cold and trying to snow. Bus ride was just long, as it took almost an hour to get from downtown to the highway, but it was plenty of time to catch up on Doctor Who :D
A few weeks later it was back to Calgary for the Comic & Entertainment Expo! It was a huge HUGE event this year as they'd gotten all nine primary cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation in for a reunion show in addition to the other bits. I heard the official attendance was 45k people, which I can totally believe. Early afternoon Saturday, the Fire Marshal had come to the building and shut the doors. If you were outside, you couldn't get in, and if you left, you couldn't get back in for several hours. The whole building was packed with people. Cell phone service was next to impossible. There was so much to see! I hadn't been since the first and only time I went in 2006 and gotten roped (willingly) into volunteering and it's gotten soooo much bigger. In addition to the TNG cast, they had several pro wrestlers, numerous voice actors (including the original voice of Bob from Reboot!), the Weasley twins from HP, David Prowse, BSG cast members, James Marsters, Adam West... Plenty more whose names I can't remember. Dzi and I wanted a picture with Patrick Stewart but by the time we got into line to purchase it, they were sold out, so I got one with the twins instead XD Luckily, one of my con buddies was also getting photos, so I got to spend the 2 hour wait hanging out with her, her brother (also a con buddy) and his gf :D It was super awesome.
In the dealer's hall, they had a Delorean done up like the one in Back to the Future, which for $20 you could sit in it (!!!) and have your pic taken, and then they would also take a couple pics with your own camera :D!!! So worth it! At the TNG event, they had a couple surprise guests including John De Lancie (Q) and Garrett Wang (Lt Kim from Voyager) who was in the dealer's hall Sunday signing autographs. He was super nice and posed for a candid shot for me, and then Dzi and I went through the (very very short) line so she could tell him that his experience with TNG as a child was the same as hers with TOS XD Super nice guy. This is where Bob's VA was, and he was also signing autographs. I may have made a bit of a fool of myself... We finished the weekend watching back to back talks of James Marsters and Patrick Stewart, and then ate deeeelicious Peter's hamburgers and milkshakes :D
I'd gone down with my dear friend's soon-to-be-ex-husband which was really weird cuz I'd never met him before, but it was all good :) Came back with my sister's roommate. We got home super late, like after 10pm. And while I'd been standing in line for my photo with the twins, my boss had had her baby! Five weeks early. The work week was fun, as we'd all thought we had more time lol.
Just before going down for CCEE, I'd thrown my back out again, and was in so much pain that I was in tears (which was really fun leaving the chiropractor's office hehehe. Hopefully the people in the waiting room knew that HE hadn't made me hurt. You don't go to a chiropractor because you want to hurt MORE). It only took a week and four treatments and $140 to fix this time. Heh.
raspberrybelle in Lethbridge and then spend a couple days in Calgary with my wifey and baby before going home. We drove to Calgary on Thursday night, and then on Friday I took the Greyhound out to Lethbridge.In terms of things happening, it was very uneventful lol. Denton came out from Medicine Hat for a few hours where we went to a cafe and ate a lot and talked for a few hours. We watched an almost obscene amount of Reboot - the last half of Season 2 and 3/4 of Season 3. I had kinda forgotten exactly how awesome that series is. Joe and I played Draw Something a lot and giggled over our drawings while sitting next to each other. We ate more delicious food. We tried to go shopping on Easter Sunday, but eeeeeveryone was closed. The mall's website said they were open, but the only thing actually open was the movie theatre. I guess that's a small town for you, but even in Edmonton very little is open on Easter Sunday...
My bus left Monday at 5pm, so we left around 11 to go out to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which was only about an hour away :D I've wanted to go for years but it's a considerable drive even from Calgary, never mind Edmonton. You start at the top of the cliff, which isn't very impressive from there, and then head back into the museum and work your way down to the bottom again. We joined up with a tour group of some sort, led by an interpreter who, I believe, is part of the Blackfoot tribe. If he said it, we came in a bit after they'd started. He talked about how the jump was used and life around the hunt, the processing of the buffalo at the bottom and what kinds of things were made, how the hunt was conducted, etc. It was really fascinating. At the bottom, we were looking at some photos taken around the turn of the last century and he approached the two of us and said something like "You wanna see a dinosaur?" Heck yes! He took us into an area marked "employees only" and showed us a couple of really cool books, beads made from elk teeth, more photos, really cool stuff :) Then we walked the lower part of the trail, and the jump is MUCH more impressive from the bottom D: The cliff is 10m tall now, but at the beginning of when the jump was being used, it was twice as tall. You could almost picture hundreds of buffalo being stampeded over the edge onto the ground below.
We got back into the city around 3 and went shopping then, drove around a bit, and then Joe dropped me off at the station and I was on my way to Calgary. I missed my brain-half a lot! (And still do.)
Calgary was pretty uneventful too lol. We went to the mall for a bit and later went to the gaming store to play D&D. The day I left, it was raining hard and cold and trying to snow. Bus ride was just long, as it took almost an hour to get from downtown to the highway, but it was plenty of time to catch up on Doctor Who :D
A few weeks later it was back to Calgary for the Comic & Entertainment Expo! It was a huge HUGE event this year as they'd gotten all nine primary cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation in for a reunion show in addition to the other bits. I heard the official attendance was 45k people, which I can totally believe. Early afternoon Saturday, the Fire Marshal had come to the building and shut the doors. If you were outside, you couldn't get in, and if you left, you couldn't get back in for several hours. The whole building was packed with people. Cell phone service was next to impossible. There was so much to see! I hadn't been since the first and only time I went in 2006 and gotten roped (willingly) into volunteering and it's gotten soooo much bigger. In addition to the TNG cast, they had several pro wrestlers, numerous voice actors (including the original voice of Bob from Reboot!), the Weasley twins from HP, David Prowse, BSG cast members, James Marsters, Adam West... Plenty more whose names I can't remember. Dzi and I wanted a picture with Patrick Stewart but by the time we got into line to purchase it, they were sold out, so I got one with the twins instead XD Luckily, one of my con buddies was also getting photos, so I got to spend the 2 hour wait hanging out with her, her brother (also a con buddy) and his gf :D It was super awesome.
In the dealer's hall, they had a Delorean done up like the one in Back to the Future, which for $20 you could sit in it (!!!) and have your pic taken, and then they would also take a couple pics with your own camera :D!!! So worth it! At the TNG event, they had a couple surprise guests including John De Lancie (Q) and Garrett Wang (Lt Kim from Voyager) who was in the dealer's hall Sunday signing autographs. He was super nice and posed for a candid shot for me, and then Dzi and I went through the (very very short) line so she could tell him that his experience with TNG as a child was the same as hers with TOS XD Super nice guy. This is where Bob's VA was, and he was also signing autographs. I may have made a bit of a fool of myself... We finished the weekend watching back to back talks of James Marsters and Patrick Stewart, and then ate deeeelicious Peter's hamburgers and milkshakes :D
I'd gone down with my dear friend's soon-to-be-ex-husband which was really weird cuz I'd never met him before, but it was all good :) Came back with my sister's roommate. We got home super late, like after 10pm. And while I'd been standing in line for my photo with the twins, my boss had had her baby! Five weeks early. The work week was fun, as we'd all thought we had more time lol.
Just before going down for CCEE, I'd thrown my back out again, and was in so much pain that I was in tears (which was really fun leaving the chiropractor's office hehehe. Hopefully the people in the waiting room knew that HE hadn't made me hurt. You don't go to a chiropractor because you want to hurt MORE). It only took a week and four treatments and $140 to fix this time. Heh.
