I'm going to write this one day at a time, so it may not be fully written until later. I'm lazy. Nyeah. Also, if I omit details, please tell me. My memory gets jigsawed when I try writing journals like this. *cries* THURSDAY Crazy day. I got no sleep the night before, what with packing, jitters, and an assignment I had to finish by 7am. I got about 1 hour of sleep before being driven to UVic, dropping off my assignment, going home, and immediately passing out for another 2 hours. I headed for the airport, and began my journey. It really wasn't that eventful. There was an incredibly friendly Frisco native on my 4-hour flight, who asked me lots of questions about the world outside of the US. I slept through the rest. Arriving at DFW, I promptly began to get pissed off as I realized that there was no shuttle to my hotel. So, at 11pm, I grabbed a taxi. The driver got lost. Several times. He took $5 off my fare. Great! So it only cost me $60. RRGH. I head to my room, and pass out. FRIDAY Alright! I figured out the 10-minute walk from my hotel (Hampton Inn & Suites, which RULED. Free internet.), after the complimentary breakfast. The locals were all so friendly. Late check-in was a breeze, and I immediately bumped into TwinTwist. Then, I saw Tricky and Draven by the Botcon Official Dealer Stand. They didn't see me. So I snuck up on them, and spent about 2 minutes pulling all manner of poses behind Draven without his noticing. He was in a conversation with one of the event staff, and I didn't want to interrupt, so...yeah. I grabbed the rest of the exclu-...."souvinirs" that I wanted, along with a Hardtop. The rest of the day was pretty much spent hanging out. I skipped most of the panels, as almost all of them were repeating later in the weekend, and I wanted to talk to all the people I'd not seen in over a year. I'd also gone to the TF Idol (ugghh...that name...) thing, and felt I'd done alright. I did a self-narrative progression from normal, to heroic, to badass loner, to evil, and then back to heroic (with a touch of badass). Later on, the Dealer Room opened up for those of us that paid exorbant amounts of money, and I immediately noted that...it was small. And there was no art room. I'd finally remembered to bring my TFTM music video from a few years ago, only to learn that there was no multimedia section. Seeing the Art -TABLE- only made me more disappointed. What WAS there was great, though. And I couldn't help but snicker at the lack of "Large Diorama" entries. My day was made, however, when it was announced that I was one of the finalists in the voice acting contest! As the event came to a close at 5pm, I felt pretty good. The next two days loomed in the distance, and I couldn't wait to dive into them. Oh wait! Enter: CASINO NIGHT. This was really, really weird. Basically, I wandered around the room, quite confused, until I sat down at a Texas Hold'em table. Karl Hartman and Pete Sinclair were there too. Pete rocked. He had PILES of money, kept winning, yet somehow he kept needing to ask the dealer what to do next. I blew my first 1000 credits quickly, but decided to drop another $20 and have another go. I popped my prize balloon, and received...another 1000 credits! I eventually turned this into 4100 before cashing out and looking for people in the lobby. I'd found the crew, and was introduced to the Picard song (either then, or Saturday night, I can't remember...). Later on, I headed down to Charity Auction... ...and won a small yellow piece of paper. With 4100, after over an hour, I managed to grab it before walking out. I really, REALLY wish they'd at least said something like "If you have less than 8000 credits, you probably won't even get to make an opening bid". There were people there with 3500-or-less, and they looked pretty disappointed. Yes, it's all charity, and there's gambling involved, but almost EVERY SINGLE THING went for 8000-100,000 credits. With no way to gauge what "a lot" of credits were, barring sitting through the auction for an hour, I totally sympathized with everyone that felt a bit slighted. This was where my Lingering Doubt muscle got its first twinge. Anyway, I danced back to the Hampton with my magic autographed yellow slip, and went to sleep.
I's been sidetracked by cleaning my warehouse of a basement so my bro and his girlfriend can stay here comfortably. They're arriving... AHG HOLY SHIT, TOMORROW!! O_O I promise I'll put time into finishing this up soon, though!
