hellziggy

What can I say? I've been busy. I got about 100 (ok, maybe 10 or so) new LJ friends after the convention, I was a week behind on my classes, and I'm STILL working on trying to get all the pictures ready!

( Underneath this cut you will find a sort of longish account of Friday night at the James Marsters & Friends convention on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.  )

and if you are looking for a few hundred pictures of the handsome Mr. Marsters, they can be found HERE

Well, hellbob & I have made it home safe and sound! The lovely camel0t picked us up and the airport and we caught a yummy dinner at El Loro with her.
Boy are the cats happy to see us! Near as we can tell there was only one puke incident which was probably Mr. Gabe eating too much and too fast.
Now I'm gonna relax and catch up on some of the Tivo stuff. I've got 2 Supernaturals, 1 House, and 2 Bones episodes to watch!
And I'll be working on vacation photos while I watch.

The boy is in the shower. When he gets out we're going to drive down the PCH and spend the day in Santa Monica/Venice Beach.
Do we really have to go home tomorrow????

OK. Under the cut are pictures of James from this weekend. This is just a sampling. None of them are final versions, I just wanted to get something up. After I'm home and can offload them to my external drive I'll get them ready for posting. So please, don't repost these anywhere although you can feel free to send people here via links.

( Warning! Extreme hotness under here!! )

James was soooo happy & healthy looking and full of energy this weekend. It was a fabulous time!

Crap.
I'm at skip=300 before I hit my "I'm here" post.
That's a lot of reading to catch up on.
I also have to edit my pictures to get them up.
Also have to write about the con before forgetting things.
And I have to explore California/LA for the next three days.
How many hours are there in a day again????

We're here!
Best flight ever! We had the exit row w/lots of leg room and just the two of us in the 3 seats. And it was a straight flight w/no stops.
We're at scubagrrl's house.
We've had In-N-Out for our late lunch.
We've got our car.
The neighbor has unsecured wireless.
There are puppies & kitties.
My dress did not wrinkle.
Life is good!!

Here it is, the dress for Friday night in LA and for Darek & Nissa's wedding when we get back.

I had sex with Bob Saget on the Paramont studios lot!

Audio proof to follow later tonight. 

It's official. hellbob and I are finally getting back to California to visit scubagrrl and Mr. Scubagrrl again!

Our last trip to LA was four years ago! And the trip to Washington State was two years ago. Now that we're at a point in our lives where vacations are not just pipe dreams I start to get antsy when it's been over a year since a trip.

We are going to fly out there on Thurs, September 7th and fly home on Thurs, September 14th. We don't have to pay for plane tickets because we are exchanging timeshare points for the tickets, and we don't have to pay for hotel because we are staying with scubagrrl.

hellbob may not believe it, but I was planning that we should go out there this fall anyway. So, when www.jamesmarsters.com announced that his only convention this year would be in LA in September I figured that was perfect timing.

Unfortunately they didn't announce any further info until the time the tickets went on sale. We didn't know date, place, price, anything until then. I was expecting about $150 for gold tickets and $500 for premium. That's about what the Toronto tickets were in US$.

So I logged on when the ticket info went up.

Sept. 8-10th? Perfect! I already had from the 7th through the 17th off work.

On the Queen Mary? Cool! What a neat venue.

One of the other guests? Jane Espenson. Cool! She's written for a ton of shows I love and I've heard she's a fabulous con speaker.

Ticket cost? $300 for gold. What? Wow. ok. I've decided I'm going. That's spendy but if it's like Toronto it'll be worth it. Besides, I haven't done any concerts lately besides INXS. So I peeked at the premium expecting to see $750 plus for the price. They were $500. And limited to only 100 tickets. They included a formal reception w/dinner, drinks, acoustic concert.

I waffled a bit, but I just couldn't pass it up. Not when the price between the two was so close. It seems silly because $500 is the same either way, but I wouldn't have been willing to upgrade to that if the regular tickets were in the $100-200 range. Apparently other people felt the same way because the premium tickets were sold out within an hour. If we had to pay for plane tickets to get there I would have considered not even doing the $300 ticket and skipping the convention altogether (but I would have been bummed.)

I was going to be a lazy bum on Friday and relax because it's a holiday here at work, but now I'm going to come in to work instead. I'll get my holiday pay, but I'll also get paid time and a half for any hours I work. So every hour I work will be like 2.5 on the paycheck. Depending on how my week goes I may come in Saturday morning too for a few hours. It sucks putting in extra hours, but I want to at least make up the difference in the two ticket prices as well as then cover as much of the rest of the ticket as I can.

So, in September, WE'RE GOING TO CALIFORNIA!!! YAY! I just loved it there last time we went, even though I don't think I could live there. And the weekend we're there, I GET TO SEE JAMES AGAIN! Two concerts, two dinners (one is formal) and lots of other stuff. Not gonna get too excited yet though because it's still five months away.