hellziggy

Oh crap. It's 1 am already? So much for my plans of doing a post about my weekend. :)

We had a lovely weekend with Becca visiting. We had dim sum at Jun Bo on Friday. I went shopping with her on Saturday. We played board games every night.

Her friend Albert was pretty weird & annoying though. He has zero social skills and no concept of how to converse w/o a computer screen. He also doesn't really shower. Strange boy. Not gonna be sad if I never see him again.

After the headed back to Fargo today, I picked up lablynne and hit the Birds & Beers gathering that Birdchick had organized. It was at Joe's Garage, so we could watch the 1000s of crows gather to roost for the night. Huge group. Biggest B&B ever. Beekeeper Virginia showed up! I hadn't seen her since I visited her bee hive this summer.

It was a nice weekend. I'm not ready to go back to work tomorrow.

I haven't checked out the prices to fly to Phoenix in May yet, but I did google map the drive. 28 or 29 hours, depending on which of the two routes you take. If I drive I prefer the route through Denver, just because it's a part of the country I've never seen. And Denver is almost exactly the 1/2 way point. It would be a long drive though. Twice as long as the Epic Road Trip To Toronto To Touch James Marsters. Flying will probably be cheaper.

And no, it's not decided yet that I'm going. But until it is definitively decided that I'm not, I'm going to just keep that hope alive! :)

We may not be the prettiest, or the smartest, or the most powerful. But we don't exist for the beautiful people of the world, Ted! We're there for the oddball, the rebel, the outcast, the geek!


I never did do any kind of CONvergence recap post, did I? Well, lets see what I remember...

Friday I had to work until 1:00, but then I drove the 5 minutes from there directly to the hotel. I got checked in to the hotel room. Short tower! Yay! Plus, the room number was easy to remember even after drunkeness. We were the Neighbors of the Beast, room 665. hee hee. I got my con badge too and started wandering about after dropping my stuff off in the room.

Throughout the weekend I think I saw everyone on my flist who was there with the exception of yaaren who I managed to miss entirely.

There was lots of wandering and chatting with people.

I saw opening ceremonies.

I decided on Hard Apple Cider as my drink for the night and this was acquired in a liquor store run.

I went to the Soylent Blue show. It was absolutely disturbing, wrong, twisted, and one of the funniest damn things I've ever seen. Fan fiction read aloud. Coochie Monster. The Aristocrats/CONvergence. I NEED a copy of that on DVD!

Then I wandered more parties, talked to more people.

I was up until about 4 am or so.

I learned that over the course of a convention evening that 1 six-pack of cider will get me happily drunk without getting me stupid and annoying and without making me hungover the next day.


Saturday hellbob & I ran home to feed the cats and pick up some lunch. Then it was back to the hotel for more geeky goodness.

The first panel I went to was the one on podcasts. I got a few recommendations of new stuff to listen to, and I got a chance to pimp Coverville. Afterward I introduced myself to joshuwain since we had just recently friended in LJ-land and had never met in real life.

Next up was a Raptor Center presentation. I had to run back up to the room before this one though because it was the only time during the whole con that I needed my telephoto lens so that I could get close-ups of the birds. I took a tone of pics of the birds, and after the presentation I went and introduced myself to Sharon Stiteler, the Birdchick. We had exchanged some emails so it was nice to meet her in person.

The next panel for me was called "A Digital Camera Doesn't Make You An Artist" It had gunthar on it and a bunch of other people. Unfortunately there was one guy who dominated the conversation and spent most of it talking about how film is superior to digital which is not what I thought it would be about at all.

After that it was dinner at TGIFriday's with hellbob, levertwok, Tyler, and camel0t (who I didn't even know had an LJ until that night) before heading back for another night of cruising the parties & chatting with people.

Then late that night there was a preview of Midnight, that movie that some friends are on the crew of and I was an extra for that one day. The digital effects look so freakin' cool!

On Saturday night I was wandering about until around 4 am again and drank a six-pack of cider again.


Sunday started with us packing up and clearing out of the room.

hellbob wandered off one direction and I ended up wandering into the Iron Artist panel. It was ok, but I think by missing the beginning I missed the funniest parts. I wandered to a few other places too, including realsarah's reptile presentation were I sat with geohard.

hellbob wasn't feeling very good so we arranged for levertwok to give him a ride home and I stayed for part of the Dead Dog party.

First up was the closing ceremonies.

Then a herd of us wandered on over to TGIFriday's for dinner. After jmanna ordered "a mudslide the size of my head" I decided that it looked very yummy so I then ordered "a mudslide the size of her head."

I believe that the walk back to the hotel was the official creation point of Fan-anon, aka the S.O. club.

We were going to play Salad Bowl when we got back to the hotel but vorrant had the very valid point that the hot tub had a closing time but Salad Bowl didn't, and also that the hot tub had been shocked that afternoon so most of the "geek soup" of it was gone. So, we hit that first and then did some salad bowl afterward. The hot tub was also about the only time I got to chat with wiredferret, but it was for way too brief a time.

Next up, a game of Salad Bowl. It was me, jmanna, scotia_girl and vanaabegra against vorrant, geohard, realsarah, and mle292. We lost by 3. One of my favorites was scotia_girl pulling a slip and looking very confused. Before she even said a word I got it: Lump! It was almost the end of the game and there were fewer than 20 slips. I had put Lump in and knew it hadn't been pulled yet. She was also the only person at the table who had never heard of my cats (except possibly vanaabegra) so I made the educated guess that it was what had confused her. mle292 was amused that vanaabegra and I were able to get Ron Jeremy at the exact same time with just the clue of "Porn star."

After Salad Bowl it was getting far too late for me, since I had to work the next day. So I started wandering my way to the car.

And thus ended another CONvergence.

Even though I've posted every day I don't feel like I've really said much. So I looked at my last few posts and realized that I haven't! But, y'all have gotten to see lots of pictures and a picture is worth 1000 words, so just pretend I've written a lot, k?

So, my life lately?

Last weekend was OmegaCon. It was relaxing and fun.

Didn't do much this last week. Class on Tuesday was pretty dull. I really miss having the wireless access at school. I don't like using their stupid machines that don't have any of my settings or shortcuts! At least I can still use Chiana for the Photoshop work.

Oh, speaking of Chiana, I just learned that she is going to be at MarsCon here in Minneapolis in March! Yay! Besides Gigi Edgley, they are also going to have Dean Haglund as a guest and I'm really hoping he does his standup act, cuz he is funny!

The biggest downer to the MarsCon thing is that it is March 3-5, and the Oscars are on March 5th. So I'll just have to have my house ready for viewing the Oscars before the weekend...

I went to Harry Potter on Friday afternoon with lucky13charm, and we both liked it although we could just tell that there was sooooo much that had to be left out of the book. Also, did the director tell Ron to act like he had a crush on Harry instead of Hermione? Or was it just our brains knowing that there is Harry/Ron slash out there even though neither of us read that? LJ has twisted the way my mind thinks...

Saturday night hellbob & I went to our friend Becky's birthday dinner. We also got to see Nissa & Kris & Darryl & Tyler. And there was Irish music. It was at Kip's Irish Pub, which is actually right near us, but it's in a Marriott hotel so we had no clue it was there. I had the lamb shepherd's pie and it was SOOOO yummy! Again proving my theory that the cuter the animal, the better it tastes. And they had hard cider on tap! Good friends, good food, good drink, good music. What more do ya need?

Today I finished my homework that's due on Tuesday. Yes, that's right. I finished it a whole TWO days early. And I got to use pictures of Moose for it! Then I succumbed to my crack addiction. When we were at Best Buy on Friday, hellbob and I bought Katamari Damacy, aka crack-ball, for the PS2. My thumbs hurt. But I made some stars!

While I did finish my smut disc, I do still need to do some tweaking. One of the songs is much quieter on the disc than the rest and hellbob says there's a way to fix that, but I don't know what it is yet. Also, I need to finish designing a label for it. And then 7thstranger suggested the idea of a box set of everyone's mixes and so my brain is now thinking that I need to do some kind of design for that, but I'm not sure I'll have time for that. I really want to get a Christmas letter out this year...

Anyway, that's what's been going on in my life the last week or so. How 'bout you? Big plans for the holiday? Vacations? hellbob has the week off, but I have to work on Mon-Wed. Bleah. And the clock just chimed 1:00, so I should probably go to bed.

Oh, and LJ is being a butthead and only sporadically sending email notification of comments. Grrrr. *kicks LJ in the head*