From Dragon*Con TV…

Re Your Brains
Wii Safety Video

Back from Dragon*Con!!

Wow, what a weekend…I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked, but the ones that I did take are up in the photo gallery already. I took some video as well, which will be up as soon as I can wade through it and edit it.

We arrived in Atlanta on Thursday evening after being stuck in a traffic jam in Chattanooga for about an hour. We located the Hilton quickly enough, parked the car, and checked into the hotel. There were already people in costume roaming about, even though the con didn’t officially start until Friday afternoon. After we found our room, we relaxed for a bit and then went down to registration over in the Hyatt. The line was really long, but it was moving quickly, so it only took us about 20-30 minutes to get our pre-reg badges.

On Friday, we went to a panel on how to build combat robots (for stuff like Robot Battles and BattleBots, etc.), which was pretty interesting. Later that day, we saw Michael Winslow, the “Man of 10,000 Voices” from “Police Academy” and “Spaceballs.” He was really entertaining and did a scene from Star Wars using only his voice, as well as Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix performances (I have all this on video). Friday night, we went to the Mystery Science Theatre 3000: A New Hope showing. Ben wasn’t finding it as funny as I was, so we ended up leaving about half way through. After that, we caught up with my friend Chris and some of his friends and hung out and walked around a bit.

Saturday morning, I meant to get up to see the parade, but was too tired. However, the Mythbusters panel was at 11:30, so I got up for that and headed over to the Hyatt. The line was crazy and no one really knew where it was, considering they had decided at the last minute to move the panel to a different room. I finally made it inside, but Ben was away at the consuite getting food, so he did not before they closed the doors. They showed a Blooper reel (which I have on video) and then did a Q&A session. They revealed some of the things that would be coming up on the show and Kari showed off some bobble head figures of the team she apparently made and would be selling at the Walk of Fame. I stopped by the Walk of Fame later that afternoon and got a picture with the three of them. Yay!!!

On Saturday night, I went and saw a showing of “The Last Unicorn” with commentary from the author, Peter Beagle, which was really interesting. I had heard that a live action movie was being made, but what I didn’t know was that Peter doesn’t have the rights to it anymore, and they are basically planning on screwing up the story. They are trying to raise money to get the rights back. When I was at the Walk of Fame earlier that day, I was going to get an autographed copy of the book (with the proceeds going toward this purpose), but he was away doing a reading, so I decided I would come back on Sunday.

After that, we were going to try to catch one of the costume contests, but the fire marshall had shut down the Hyatt because of the number of people in the hotel. When we finally got inside, the room was full. We decided to go back to the hotel and ordered pizza and watched the Dawn costume contest on Dragon*Con TV.

Sunday, Ben was going to be in the Heroscape tournament. It was at 1:00, so after eating lunch at the consuite (I’m so sick of PB&J sandwiches….), we went over to the Marriott to find out what was going on. There were about 15 people that showed up for the tournament. They played four rounds of games. Ben ended up only winning one of his four, but came SUPER close on two of them (only one guy was left on the map at the very end). If they had ranked everyone by points instead of games won, he would have come in fifth. He still got a prize of a wooden box to put miniatures in and a t-shirt.

While he was playing, I went back down to the Walk of Fame to get my autographed book. But….they were sold out!! I wanted to kick myself for not going ahead and buying one the day before and just coming back to get him to autograph it. He said that if I signed up for his email list, they would be selling them to everyone who was unable to get them at the con, autographed and everything. Which is cool, but still not really the same as having him autograph it in person. But I guess it will do.

After the tournament was over, we went downstairs to wait in line for the Whose Line Is It Anyway? finals. It turned out to be a lot funnier than I was expecting, although there were a few parts that were just kind of painful to watch because of how bad they were doing, hehe. Then we went back to the Hilton to our room and watched the Masquerade on Dragon*Con TV, where these really awesome Wallace & Gromit costumes won Best of Show for the Masters category. I wanted to run over to the Hyatt to get pictures, but didn’t figure I would have time, so I guess I will have to wait until they put out the DVD. Chris and a couple of his friends came over after that and we played several games of Fluxx before we went to bed.

On Monday, I wanted to go watch the Robot Battles, but Ben had to be at work at 5 that evening. So after going around the Dealer’s Room once, we headed out.

Overall, I had a ton of fun!

I’m leaving for Dragon*Con tomorrow!

I’m soo excited. I think I’ve been rambling on about it to anyone who would listen for the past week (okay, so maybe the past year…). My goals for the weekend are:
* to get a picture with Kari, Grant, and Tori from the Mythbusters build team
* to get an autographed copy of “The Last Unicorn”
* to meet Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)
* to see Episode IV in Mystery Science Theatre 3K style
* to watch Ben win a Heroscape tournament
* to take a ton of pictures
* to have A LOT OF FUN!!

I will be available by cell phone most of the time and possibly by email if the Hilton really does have free wireless as they claim. If they do, I will try to put pictures up periodically.

All set for Dragon*Con!

I reserved a hotel room at the Hilton for D*C today, since someone so kindly posted the group code over at the Livejournal community. Someone posted the Marriott code a few days ago, but I was iffy about getting a room there since there’s supposedly all these renovations going on and no one is sure what (if anything) will be going on in the hotel and it sounded like most things were being moved over to the Hilton.

So, if anyone wants to come, I’ve got a room now and memberships are still only $50 until mid-February.

Now I just need to finish my costumes. Well, I need to finish my MTAC costumes first…

Happy 2007!

I am not making resolutions this year, though I did fairly well at keeping the one I made for 2006 (to keep up with the news better). However, I do have several goals that I intend on trying to meet by the year’s end. These include buying a house around the time my lease is up (beginning of October) and buying a new or new-to-me car around November. I’d like to buy a car before then, but having car payments would severely lower the amount of a mortgage loan I can get. So my goal for the first half of the year is to get my credit cards as paid off as possible. This means attempting to be frugal with money for a few months, so I’m having to cut a few things. Like I doubt I’m going to continue my ballet classes until next year, probably not going to go out very often, and, well, just plan on coming to visit me if you want to see me. I just really, really want a house so I think I can make a few sacrifices for a little while. I might even consider getting a second part-time job to supplement the savings process.

I am, however, still planning on going to both MTAC and DragonCon this year, since tickets to both were purchased prior to me coming to this decision. Probably not going to make it to MomoCon this year and AWA is iffy (especially since it will be right when I’m trying to close on a house). I will be putting off a few costumes until I get the house, such as Presea, since I will need a large space (such as a garage or a yard) for working on her axe. The costumes I plan to complete this year are: FFVI’s Celes (Amano version), FFVI’s Locke (for Ben), Death Note’s Misa, and Dragon Quest VIII’s Jessica. The former three I hope to finish in time for MTAC and have Jessica in time for DragonCon. I’m only planning on working on one costume during the summer since I assume my spare time will be mostly taken up by house hunting.

Anywho, that’s my 2007 plans. Here’s hoping everything goes well!

I can’t believe it’s already November.

Halloween was good. I came in first place in our office costume contest and our department won the haunted house decorating contest (well, we tied with administration anyway). You can see pictures of the office party in the gallery.

My birthday is in less than two weeks. I have no idea what the plans are, but something is scheduled for November 18th. However, this is the day before the Wii comes out, which means at midnight I’m leaving the party to go pick up the system. But I don’t really think we’ll be having a Wii-party that night, since I’ll still only have one Wii-mote. I might buy another, but seeing as they are $60 each, I doubt I’ll be getting three extras right away for all that multiplayer goodness.

Speaking of buying stuff, it’s November, so I promise not to buy myself anything other than: Nintendo Wii, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Final Fantasy III. Only cause I have all those pre-ordered. Anything else is fair game if you wish to buy me a present. And, as always, here is my wishlist. Remember to sort by priority! I’d like to buy myself a new outfit for my party but I don’t know if I’ll have the money.

I bought memberships to Dragoncon 2007 today. I was so sad about missing it this year that I went ahead and secured my place in next year’s convention. It is $45 per person right now, the cheapest tickets get and that price goes up on November 15. So if you want to go with us, hurry and get your memberships. Don’t forget, it’s $85 at the door, so $45 doesn’t sound so bad.