Friday night was a whirlwind with the friends I had there at the convention; Imperious, Cassius, Aurkae, and Marco, and two new folks from SL that I’d never met; “Grumpy” and “Chilled Steel”. And then we found Tursi, who had flown in from China! Also, one of my roommates, Scott, went with me as I had a big room at the hotel, and Clinton also showed up and palled around for the weekend.
It was awesome. 🙂
So eventually Saturday morning rolled around, and after breakfast and coffee we wandered the convention looking at things, pricing things we thought we wanted in the dealer’s room, haunting the halls a bit, and eventually laying siege to the hotel bar – where we met Tony. Tony would become our personal waiter / bartender / hotel representative for the weekend – and he’s really a great guy.
Ask for him if you find yourself in the Hilton Anaheim. 😀
During one of the various trips through the dealer’s room I discovered that Agnes Garbowska, one of the MLP comic book artists, was doing these quick sketchy watercolors of ponies – and just had to get one!
So, here’s Ri’Hahn as doodled by Agnes Garbowska:
Saturday night I took everyone over to McCormick & Schmick’s for dinner, which was also amazing – even if Imperious did pour half a Blue Moon into my lap on accident. 😀
Sunday arrived with another breakfast and coffee session, and then we collectively descended upon the dealer’s room to snap up all the stuff we wanted at Sunday Discount prices! See, I used to sell stuff at conventions for a living back in the early 90’s – so I know all too well how it works; anything on the table after about 4pm on Sunday has to be packed, and schlepped, and checked for travel, and – it’s a pain in the butt. So you can always get dealer’s room deals on Sunday.
So Imperious got the stuffed Rainbow Dash he’d been lusting after since Friday morning. A $300 hand made one of a kind from a rather well known seamstress Rainbow Dash mind you…
Then Marco picked up the most accurate stuffed Celestia ever made – for SL’s very own Stuffed Celestia; Aurkae:
Cassius picked up a big floppy stuffed Shining Armor, and Marco not to be left out picked up a tiny stuffed Nessie – because Nessie is an honorary pony, or something. 🙂
I did not buy into the stuffed animal craze; I am above such things (and I’m still waiting for my $1500 custom 28″ tall fully pose-able accessory-laden Alicorn to be finished.)
I did pick up a second watercolor from Agnes Garbowska though; this one of the Empress herself – the world’s most famous OC Alicorn…
I also picked up this really nice sterling silver feather bookmark from a silver smith that was at the convention.
Following the buying frenzy we all headed off to the bar once more to waylay the buyer’s remorse by getting too drunk to care – only to be told that Tony was working the pool bar. So we headed off to the pool to sit outside and get hammered.
During this Marco and Imperious decided that, well, enough was never enough! And with a Mad Max-esque “WITNESSSSS MEEEEE!!” went full hooah.
Never go full hooah…
Especially when the waiter / bartender is being friendly and mixing with a very heavy hand…
The end result was Imperious blacking out and not really remembering much. And poor Marco … well … Marco ended up in the fetal position in the shower for about two hours…
All was well though! No harm done – except to maybe some pride. 😉
Once that was all resolved I called it an early night as I had to be up at 4:30 for a 6am trip to LAX.
I hate LAX…
The flight was fine though, and I made it home in one relatively large piece and am taking it easy to be ready for tomorrow… I’ve been away from work for a week – I’m not sure what I will find tomorrow, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty…