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Saturday: Woke up at 7-ish for last-minute prep and such (decided on and packed my costumes the night before, simple and light because it's basically an overnight trip lol) and managed to get Albert up by 8... but then I had to drive to the Kansas City airport because he was so not used to waking up at that hour lol. And then he drove back, while I flew to Atlanta yay! OMG TREES. Josh and Caitlin picked me up at the airport and I dropped my stuff at their apartment, and then we went out for amazing sushi - even more amazing after being in the Midwest, lol. Nice reminder that there are people in the world who actually know what to do with fish.
And then they helped me put on my catgirl-Domokun lazyoutfit - it was suprisingly difficult to fiddle with the cat ears till they looked decent >_>;; And then I headed over to dulcimeoww/Impy's con hotel room! I didn't bother buying a badge because I would only be there for like a day and a half, and I was only there to hang out with people anyway. So I walked conwards from Josh and Caitlin's place ("go down this street a few blocks and then follow the trail of nerds") and blended in with a clump to slip into the Hyatt all camouflaged-like XD Went up the wrong elevator to start (the hotel has two towers, one full of people where the panels/events/whatnot are going on, and another that is somewhat less full of people with elevators that AREN'T crammed like sardines!) but found my way to Kyhmforums Central aka Impy's room. About half the people were there already, and the other half trickled in from panels and such shortly thereafter...
My first meeting with actor_au:
Me: "You do have an Australian accent!"
Him: "You do have cat ears!"
So then we just sort of hung out, chatted, Impy directed the cooking of foods, we heckled the DragonconTV channel, drank, played Cards Against Humanity, and generally had a grand old time XD I turned into a pumpkin around midnight - Lea and a friend had intended to stay at Josh and Caitlin's as well, but they each independently decided to stay with friends at the con hotels, so I got the entire upstairs/futon thingy to myself, muahaha.
Next morning, Josh and Caitlin and I got dressed up in sort of costume-y like outfits - Caitlin wore a Japanese schoolgirl outfit and Josh wore a Korean schoolboy outfit, and joked that they looked like they were from some sort of fetish anime. And so we were like "ok we should make up a fake anime and claim to be cosplaying from that, it's super obscure, I bet you've never heard of it"... and after batting around a few name ideas we settled on "Bukkake no Highschool" XD Lea came back sometime in the middle to collect her things and go home; she was just there for the one day on Saturday to model a cosplay costume in a large group. One member of the group handmade all the costumes for everybody, holy crap, and they were REALLY GOOD... so good they won first place in the cosplay contest lol.
And then we set out for the con, initially with the vague plan of looking for this legendary pizza truck that Caitlin sort of remembered from last year's Dragoncon which she'd unsuccessfully sought but eventually her friends found it at like 2 AM but she was already home and in bed by that time so she didn't get to visit it... spoilers, we never found the truck. Didn't even know what it was called, much less where it could possibly be amongst the multiple blocks of con XD;;; So instead we fudged our way into the dealer's room and spent a good 3 hours looking at nearly all the stalls - TBH it wasn't so much a "dealer's room" as it was a "dealer's floor and a half", holy crap. Caitlin bought some stuff, Josh bought a small wood-and-twine catapult to shoot things at his coworkers with, and I managed to resist buying anything at all though I came close a couple of times, and now I'm wondering if I should have for a few of them... in particular I got fitted for a corset and the place is apparently very high quality and relatively cheap according to Caitlin so I'm like, damn, maybe I *should've* plonked down ~$135 for a pretty like that T_T Oh well I have their website, in case I change my mind...
And then I got ahold of Heather from JHU lol, or rather Heather got ahold of me, and we managed to meet up for like 20 minutes while she was standing in line for a Battlestar Galactica panel - the line wrapped all the way around the outside of the Hyatt hotel o_o;;;;;;;;;; And there were two other parallel lines also wrapping around the outside, one for Dr. Who and another for something I forget. So Josh and Caitlin and Heather were introduced to each other, tah-dah. And then we tried to get into the Artist's Alley, but the people checking badges at the door there were MUCH more stringent so we didn't even try. And then we realized we were super hungry, so we grabbed some surprisingly cheap cheeseburgers from a stall just outside the hotel (well, $4 is cheap for con prices) and camped in a corner of the lobby to eat them. Caitlin came up with a game - "count the Elsas" - because holy crap there were a lot of Elsa cosplayers lol.
And then Impy called and was like "where are you??" and I was like oh yeah we're at the Hyatt conveniently enough lol, so I sort of dragged Josh and Caitlin up to meet my weird friends from the Internet too XD;;; (Well, they came along willingly!) So we hung out, I spilled an entire imp of Impy's BPAL perfume on myself (luckily it was one that didn't work on her anyway), Impy summoned everyone back to the room so we could take a group photo before I had to leave... apparently everyone was in the room earlier, and went to the dealer's room en masse, and so they started out with 8 people going into the room and pretty much lost everybody fairly rapidly XD;; So while we were waiting for the stragglers to return, we played "We Didn't Playtest This Game" which Spiketail had brought. It's a pretty hilarious and fast-moving game, in which the goal is to not lose (i.e. be the last one standing) and pretty much all the cards are trying to make people lose. Meanwhile, Impy and Omni were playing Go in the corner, with Actor providing sports-type commentary XD And I think he recorded the whole thing on camera, too o_o;; And Wolfie ran around shooting everyone with the crossbow-like mini-ballista he bought at the same stall as Josh's catapult XD
Eventually Josh and Caitlin had to return home because their contacts were bothering them, but I stayed for group photo-age and also wrendragon and skjie bought a Necomimi and were trying to figure out how to get it to work, so I stayed just long enough to see Skjie with the Necomimi on because eeeeeee kitty :D And then I went back to Josh and Caitlin's to change, and they drove me to the airport.
And then on the way back, I got an entire 3-seat row all to myself! :D So I just curled up and slept the whole way. I guess it's nice that nobody wants to go to Kansas City lol. There was a ferocious thunderstorm around the Kansas City/Manhattan area so I was rather surprised that we actually got to the airport at all, much less within 15 minutes of our original ETA lol. Albert drove through the storm to pick me up, and we enjoyed the lightning on the way home lol...
So yeah, effectively I was in Atlanta from 3 pm Saturday to 10 pm Sunday. Super-fast visit XD But it was sooooooo worth it because I missed the last KyhmForums meetup 10 years ago (in high school on the wrong side of the planet) so this time I finally got to meet all the people I've known since I was like 14 XD;; On Saturday I was trying to explain to Mom exactly who I was flying out to meet, and I was like, "you know how you were always yelling at me to get off the computer in middle school? Those people."
Also, it was good to remember that there's a world outside of Kansas. And it's relatively accessible! Plus, we'll be going back again in like 3 weeks for Josh and Caitlin's wedding... modern technology is awesome. I hope people figure out an alternative fuel source for planes soon or invents a functional teleporter, otherwise we're going to be super sad when petroleum inevitably runs out...