Friday, July 9, 2004

   2:05 AM.Fri.Jul 9: Finally, the big AX post is here...
There And Back Again:
A Tale By Karmi-Kins

July 1st: But the pool isn't open at 4:30 AM...

As y'all know, my mother, brother, and myself left on the first from San Francisco (actually, we left from the San Jose airport, but that's besides the point) to LA, from which we took a shuttle to Anaheim. All was going somoothly until we got to the hotel. It turns out that although our rooms were reserved, the weren't paid for! My mom handed over a 100$ for us to stay one night, and we went to the hotel room. She was really freaking out, so I took it upon myself to call my aunt and give her the 411. A couple hours and several phone calls later, it was all sorted out. My mom was still in "Panic Mode" though, so she she didn't sleep much that night...

(actual conversation)-

Mom: Erin, Erin wake up!
Karmi: * mumble mumble indecipherable language *
Mom: Do you know where the key to the room is?
Karmi: ...wha... * looks at clock * Holy crap! It's 4:30 AM! >.< Why are you up?!
Mom: I want to go swimming! Do you know where the key is?
Karmi: ......SWIM-oh God whatever. The key is on the counter. * collapses *
Mom: Thanks! =^.^= * goes outside and jumps the fence to get into the pool *

Yea. I have a weird mom.


July 2nd: Day One of the Expo...

We got up at 8AM in order to be there for the opening ceremonies, which started at 10. I figured given 20 minutes to get ready, 40 minutes to eat breakfast at Mimi's Cafe (the food there rocks, and the waiters are tre sexy!), and 20 to get to the convention center (which was a mile away), we'd be fine with 40 minutes left to get our badges.

...looking back on that, I find words like "naive" and "idiotic" just aren't strong enough. -.-

We spent two and a half hours in the line. And that was for pre-registered! During this time, we saw some pretty interesting cosplayers, met a 40-year-old anime freak, and used neon pink caution tape to decorate my body. The original purpose of the tape was to hold back and organize the lines, but needless to say, that failed. We saw a lot of Vashes, Wolfwoods, and Yunas. A lot.

When we finally, FINALLY, got our badges, we went outside to see al the pretty cosplayers. I took some pictures, and then we went back in and looked at fan art. I bought a cute little picture of Inu Yasha wearing a shirt that said "woof!", one of gothic Hello Kitty, and these adorable fuzzy pink cat ears. I also bought two little mini-key chains. One had a picture of chibi Link and Navi, under which it said "Link is Navi's bitch."

So beautiful.

I also purcahse one with a chibi Duo that said "Duo is my bitch." :D

Then, we went over to the HUGE hall of boothes, lovingly dubbed by me as "The Cave of Wonders." This was my first convention, so I spent a few moments in sheer awe of the beauty and magnintude of it. Once I had recovered, I took my time looking around and finally purchased the entire Excel Saga box set for 80$! There were 6 DVDs and for those of you that suck at division (like me), that's roughly 13$ per DVD!

I was a happy Karmi once I had completed that purchase.

After all of this, we went on over to the Marriott to check out a Deleter workshop on How To Draw Manga. It was really good. They covered a bunch of art basics like perspective, proportions, shading, etc, but with idea in mind that you were drawing anime versus real life. Needless to say, I was impressed. The workshop ended two hours later, and we went home and my brother and I went swimming. We then ordered pizza and I took a shower--a perfect ending to a perfect first day.


July 3rd: Day Two of the Expo...

Most of day two was spent inside "The Cave of Wonders." I made several more perchases, including a pink tee which said "Bishoujo" in both Japanese and English, an adorable Totoro and cat bus plushie, the first three Fruits Basket mangas, and a Cowboy Bebop wall scroll.

I did however go to one workshop about traditional Japanese dance. That was pretty interesting, and rather amusing. Some of these people had less coordination and grace than myself, and that's saying something. Something else very interesting also happened that day--Man Faye almost got arrested. I don't know how many of you know of Man Faye, but he's basically this very hairy guy who goes around dressed as Faye with his ass pretty much hanging out all the way. It's hilarious. However, the ACC manager didn't think so, and the security guard told him he either had to get some pants on or be arrested. Naturally, Man Faye refused, and started giving a speech to the crowd which had gathered. More and more people joined us until at least half of the convention was there, supporting Man Faye's right to not wear pants. Finally, the ACC manager succumbed and said he could wear the outfit, as long as he at least wore a woman's trenchcoat. He agreed, and everyone cheered. We were all very happy for Man Faye. ;D

We went home pretty early that night, had dinner at Mimi's, which rocked even more than their breakfast (but no sexy waiter ;-;), took showers, and went to bed.

Oh. And we saw some more cosplayers. ;)


July 4th: Day Three--OtakuBoarders Unite!

There was nothing going on that morning, so I woke up pretty late, around 10. We went to breakfast, as usual, then I hung around the fan art section until the clock struck noon. I skipped over to the registration line in hopes of meeting up with one of them, and lo and behold, there's Nick's t-shirt! (And Nick [OtakuSennen], too. ;p) We hugged and said and hi and all that good stuff, I met his family (they're nice :D), and we hung around the appointed meeting place and talked. Mike [Shinmaru] still hadn't shown up, so Nick suggested that he might have gotten the wrong staircase, and that we should go check over there, so we did.

And there he was! Nick spotted him first. >.>; More hugs passed around, and we were about to go into "The Cave of Wonders," when Kat jumped us from behind! More hugging, more greetings, and finally we were all there. We wandered around the CoW (whee for amusing abrreviations!) for a good long while, we all bought some stuff (I got a Tea Club shirt with a plump kitty-girl that said FULL), and then sat down to rest and eat ice cream (I also got Justin Cook's autograph, yay!). Nick was relatively quiet, but he talked some of the time, Kat and I were regular motor mouths, and Mike was bloody silent as the grave. I kept looking back to make sure he hadn't died or gotten seperated or something. ^^;;

We split up at 4 because I had a workshop to go to, and Nick and Kat wanted to go see some videos or something, and I went off to see Anime Hero With A Thousand Faces, which was REALLY good. If you ever get a chance to see it, take it!! I met Crispin Freeman, who was holding the workshop, he's a very intelligent and charasmatic person. ;) We then regrouped at 6, wandered around some more (somehow we ended up in an underground parking lot...o_O;;) and then at around 7 Mike had to go. T_T We hugged, he got a picture of us (in the middle of the road, nonetheless), and he and his little sister left. Nick, Kat, and I went and explored the Marriott's arcade and the Karoke Open Mic, then Nick too had to go.

Thus, it was just me and Kat, and I didn't know where my mother was. We searched around, and finally I decided to head back to the hotel alone, and Kat escorted me to the front, where I ran into my mom. Kat and I hugged and waved bye, and my mother and I walked home. She had actually filed a missing persons report because she couldn't find me, so we were waving to cops and giving them the thumbs up all the way to the hotel. Go figure it would be me. XD


July 4th-5th: Highway Fireworks

We caught the shuttle to the airport at 8:30 PM, and had a VERY long car ride with three fat old women from the Patriotic/God-worshipping convention. _._ On the brightside, we saw fireworks all along the way to the airport, almost as if there was a firework show just following us around. The fireworks were much cooler than if we had just stayed in one place, because we saw all different kinds of explosions. Once at the airport, it took 45 minutes to get the airplane tickets worked out, but we were finally given the all clear, and proceeded to our gate. The plane ride from LA to Chicago was very surreal. First of all, the plane ride was from 11:30 PM to 3:30 AM, so I was half-awake the whole time. There was also a thunderstorm going on outside, so we hit a lot of turbulence and saw lightening flashes everywhere. The airplane was almost completely dark, which all made for an extremely strange experience. But it was kind of cool too.

There was then a FIVE HOUR layover in Chicago, during which I was bored out of my mind. (or BOOMM, as I like to call it). The Chicago airport was actually pretty unique and visually appealing, but spending five hours there was just kind of exhausting. Our flight's gate switched three times, so we were running all over the airport too, which was annoying as hell. The plane eventually did arrive though, and we had a surprisingly short ride to Charleston. When someone asked why we had gotten there so fast, the pilot's response was thus,

"Well, we have a human organ on board."

Yep. Again, go figure. ^^;;

- - -

This is the way I'm going to do pictures-I'll post links to a set of them each day, so eventually we'll get through them all. Please click each link only once so as to minimize bandwith sucking. Here's the first batch.


OtakuBoard Member Moments
Sennentastic
Photogenic Shinmaru
Shin's Sammich
Shin's Love Affair
All Four Weirdos


-Karma
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