Dragon*Con 2003

For awhile I was hunting for a ride to this con and was tossed around for people to go with. My first ride cancelled on me giving me a week to find another. There was Anna but she wasn’t sure if shed end up being able to get her days off. Then D’s friend Brian who called me at 10pm the night before I left to the con. In the end anna got time off afterall so we drove up right after work Friday. Drive was pretty rough as rain got horribly bad midway through. At one point I slammed on the breaks, hydroplaned and skidded off road for a bit to avoid cars in front of me. Luckily I didn’t fully go into the medium ditch and managed to swerve back into the road. There had been a hefty slip and slide accident involving three SUVs a truck and some cars. We made it to the con at decent time around 8ish. Parking garages were all full but we found a $5 lot to go to that was only two blocks from the Hyatt. Thankfully this time I wasn’t traveling with a cosplayer! The only downside is that the parking required us to renew our spot every morning.

In the lobby I first saw Lindze with the rest of the Genki Gang walking around and the place was crowded about now but not packed. In our room was Cramer, Carolyn, Anna, Asia, Mark, and Mike. Getting a room on the 4 t h floor made life sooo much easier as elevators were the usual hell to go up or down on again this year. Schu, Dan, D, and I swung by the con suite to get some muchies and it turned out they were serving ice cream! Vanilla with chocolate syrup, whip cream and sprinkles! It was so nice! I hung out in the lobby for awhile just getting pictures of costumes and meeting up with everyone. Terra was here! For almost two years I had just heard rumors that she went to France to be a model or japan or something else. She had just got back from Montreal and was happy to see me too. More friends started showing up in groups. Elly, Gabbi, Yaya, Nikki, Derek, Alisa, Kimmy, and later on Hex, Dommi, Val, and Lisa.

Party hopping began in Fershad’s room on the 17 t h floor. It seemed to be the biggest and loudest one going on and definitely had plenty of room (and patio!) space for all of us. The peach schnops was sooo watered down since it had been in an ice cooler for so long. "Dido And Dance Music", ha ha! The music was so corny our little group made fun of it. We needed some good drinks so we all went up to D’s room where my stash was. His party wasn’t in full gear yet but we stayed here and down the hallway for awhile drinking. Then since we had gotten good stuff here we wanted to go back up and try to get the good liquor in the previous party. I had Hex do a distraction dance while I check out what they had in their stash but Fershad caught me and thought I was stealing it so he booted me out and turned on all the lights. "Party’s Over!" and sure enough it was! I had killed the Green Room party and was banned! Aiiee~! I took off, changed into a disguise (Orgasm Donor) and went back to D’s room. Lots more people here now, and everyone was like "OMG! Yuos gotz teh ban?!!!1" "Yup". Since I had lost my crew of Alcohol Pirates and was marked for the night I went back to my room and slept. [sidenote: left my black Vans in the room by accident]

Not sure how but Anna got up at 7am that morning and actually went swimming. I had no plans until 2, when Ko said he’d be showing up. I did want to go eat though and Asia said she was hungry too. She planned to just shower and go buuuuut…. After shower comes makeup, and after makeup you want to get more friends, and after that you gotta meet them. I just wanna eat! So we paid for todays parking (our parking lot required us to show up everyday to pay, which isn’t too bad. I mean its $5 chums!) and I split off and went to the dealers room. Oh sweet, sweet bootleg merchandise! There were actually three Anime booths this year: Anime Pavilion, Anime Depot, and House Of. The best deal was that their CDs were only $10 each. So I bought Final (FIANAL) Fantasy Singles Collection and the mmm mmm good Silent Hill 3 soundtrack. The cover alone to that cd was worth it. Anime room was playing Azumanga Daioh and Jungle wa Itsumo Hare nochi Guu as well as some really funny AWA Winner music videos in-between shows. The room was decent size but hard to read subtitles with people in front of you heads blocking the way. Went back to the room after and listened to my new music.

Ko, Skip, and Lank all showed up to the room later on and we walked around. Ko had just recently been to Japan and was sporting a badass Battle Royale 2 shirt. We went back to the dealers room and bought some cheap ($1- 5) VHS anime and the kung fu legendary hero movie Riki-Oh. We also found a spainish episode of Pokemon for a dollar which we couldn’t resist getting. There was some other kid they met up with who was going to help staff the Bemani game room at AWA so we discussed plans about that for awhile. I still had to eat though! So all of us went to the connecting mall and got some Quesadillas (which haunted me later on) from some Mexican place. Saw Roo here too and we caught up on things. The DDR kids here are also big CCG fans ("5 Stat Points, man!") so they all stayed in the tabletop gaming room while I went off to find more people.

Caught Nikki in her cool Pirate costume and dragged her off to meet Ko and see his kickass BR2 shirt but couldn’t find him in the game room. So we wandered around meeting people until we did find him but he was just leaving. We saw two of Nikkis friends in the Marriott so we sat with them while waiting for Soni. David came by and man does he make an awesome Conan. The guy is huge! Not in a fat way, a big strong guy way! We caught up with Soni, got changed and headed to Ling’s. He had just finished a shower and made us both Margaritas. Soni had some crazy drinks. Batman Gary came in with some Raspberry Captain Morgan stuff that was really good but he only had enough for a few people. Nikki and I wanted an Oatmeal Cookie drink so we went back to the Hyatt. Cramer was there to make it but unfortunately one of his main ingredients Goldschlagger was "off limits". Nikki and I sat around watching the Travel channel and laughing about furry comics then went down to meet up with more people. The lobby was way packed now, with security yelling at everyone on blow horns. Sitting wasn’t allowed, walking wasn’t allowed, escalators required badges, standing required badges! Ahhh! We gave up on this hotel for the night and all went over to Marriott. Since most parties at that hotel were checking IDs we couldn’t bring Nikki along so it was just Hex, Val, Lisa, Derek, and me.

We hit the top floor party first and got Rum cokes. The room was very small and the second room was only a doorway used to get drinks. They had trippy light effects projected to the walls. The room worked up a sweat fast but not even 5 minutes after we got there security came through saying we were entirely too loud and would all have to leave. So end party #1. Next party was in a much larger room, more breathing space, and an actual bar set up to get drinks. Mr. Duncan’s Dad was here and this time it wasn’t security who busted us. I had just got my drink from this party when we heard a huge CRASH that sounded like Godzilla just sat down. Then again we heard it and the main guy telling everyone the party was over. Apparently someone smashed a cabinet or table and they were taking donations to help repair it afterward. Derek as Captain America became… Captain Angst! We then realized that security was following our every move. They insisted that we take the employee elevators but we knew it would just mean them trailing us again. So we took the express elevator down and then went back to the Hyatt to Dan the Stormtrooper’s room. On the way we met up with Shannon, who does the voice of Kenshin. He knew Soni and was cool with hanging out with us. The funniest part of the night had to be after we went to Dan’s one-person room (located in the mini-tower Hyatt Ivy). We asked Shannon if he would say perverted lines in Kenshin’s voice. He did this thing where before saying the line he swept his hand over his face saying…and scene. His line; "I want to touch my penis". Everyone laughed, it was so funny! We played with parts of the stormtrooper outfit too like the helmet and arms. I must comment on Dan’s awesome laptop too. Its like…the monitor was totally portable and you could click on things with a pen, like a sketchpad. Way cool. Still not sure where the keyboard for it is, but it looked really handy. We called it a night around 5am.

Woke up "Early" Sunday. Anna’s boi called at 10am to find her which woke me up big time. Hotel phones have that nagging silvery ring that won’t let you go back to sleep, and I was right underneath it when it rang. She did fairly well at Saturday’s slave auction; enough that she wanted to stay through Monday which was just fine with me. Today I got a great breakfast start too with Cramer and Carolyn. We went to the Hooters next door to the hotel and I had the Maui Sandwich. A lady at the table next to us had her birthday and had to do some stupid stuff, so Cramer gets the idea that its MY birthday and tells the waitress that im just turning 30 years old. So I had to put two giant orange balloons around my chest, stand on a chair, and flap two menus while they sing a birthday song. Luckily the two balloons flew up into the fan before I got on the chair but I still had to do the rest. Damn you Cramer! Ha ha!

Since I had some money now I figure another trip to the dealers room to get CDs would be fun. Searching through game soundtracks I came across a Pop’N Music CD. I asked if they had any more of these and sure enough they had about six! So I bought as many as I could (5/6 aint bad, heh) then left. Met up with Lisa on my way out and we went to see just how bad of damages D’s party had gotten. Ken and Mike were here and we talked about the parties and the con while I looked through my new soundtracks. Lampshades had been broken, carpet torn, and mirror scribbled on but strangely enough their party was NOT broken up by security!