Con Report... the last one! (well, until the next con!)
Wow... I didn't know that my icon would change according to my mood listed!!! How amazing is that?! Anyway, the next part of my con report...
... Sunday!!!
Had a bit of a nice, easy start this morning, as none of us had anything until 10.30ish. Had breakfast with Cazz and Laura as San, Dany etc. had already gone in. We discussed where they would put Atlantis and how they'd get it out of San Fran bay... which lead to Laura's lovely story she posted... 'Life is but a dream' which is on here somewhere.
Anyway, I'd bought a Colin photo shoot on Saturay, but now I was contemplating a Jason one. I already have one with him from Vancouver (in which I am extremely pink!), but I quite fancied a group shoot photo with Cazz and Laura. So we bought that and proceeded to spend a lot of time thinking about what sort of pose we'd pull!
Well, I had that first, although I had to wait quite a while, because I was in lowly group 14. Laura and Cazz went first because they were in group 12 for their individual ones. Laura came out bouncing because Jason had checked her out... again! lol Then they went round again for a photo with me. There was this really little girl a few people in front of us who was playing on her ds and wandered up to Jason whilst still playing it. It was so cute! He crouched right down next to her and she still just carried on. She was about a fifth of the size of him! So sweet! Anyway, Mummy came and took the game away so she could have her photo and as soon as that was done off she went to pick it up and carry on! Jason said "She's got the right idea."
When it was our turn he just looked at Laura and said, "you again?!" I think he's been seeing quite a lot of Laura these past 2 days! Well, Cazz and Laura were on either side of him whilst I was next to Cazz and Jason said "You wanna come in the middle?" I'm not quite sure what he meant me to do, but I sort of stood in front of him and crouched down a little. Very bizarre, now that I think about it! The photographer said we were like some kind of weird Brady Bunch. Ah, never mind! Photo looks great (and I didn't really need to crouch, the guy's so tall!).
Well, all 3 of us had autographs with Joe (squee!) and Peter to collect, so we went upstairs to check the queues. But Joe wasn't even there yet - he'd been delayed coming out of London (*cough* lie in *cough*) - and Peter was talking so much to all his guests, apparently, that he was about 1/2 an hour behind! Ah well. We went downstairs to get our Colin photos. He was so lovely - "Come 'ere, darlin'!" - and he really thanked you afterwards, it's very sincere. I think a lot of people were really impressed with Colin. Whenever I was at the registration desk, often people were buying photo shoots for Colin!
Anyway, back upstairs and Joe had finally arrived, but they'd closed off his autograph queue before they reached our numbers because he had to go off and do a guest encounter (which FiFi got to go to! Wish I had enough money to bid on things like that.. and win! Because we did bid on Jason's next guest encounter, because he'd obviously made such an impression on Laura and she just wanted to see him again! lol! But we were outbid in the end, which I suppose is good because I do NOT have that kind of money currently ='( ) and they'd closed of Peter Williams, too, because he had to go do photos. They'd rearranged times, though, so Joe's was during this random slot (I think Colin was showing people something on his new film) but Peter's was during the Joe-Jason talk! Gasp! We all decided that we'd have to meet PW autograph in that case!
Anyway, then it was just a case of waiting around for the talks to start. There was going to be a photo of the Shep Whumpers together at one point, so I gave my camera to Laura because I, being the sensible (*cough* food orientated *cough*) person that I am had ordered lunch from the bar. I was quite tempted by their burgers, but they said it would take about 20minutes so I decided to just have chips, reasoning that they would be a lot quicker. Oh, how wrong I was. They're just bloody chips! They must have about a million on the go at once, why couldn't they just get it out to me in five minutes?! But no, I had to hold down about 5 chairs on my own for 20 bloody minutes whilst they bought me just a bowl of chips! Man, I felt a bit stupid (slightly more stupid when it arrived, because being the piggy dessert loving person I am I also ordered the lemon torte because it sounded nice (and tasted even nicer, although I didn't get a spoon for all the cream))), but never mind. When I finished I wandered over to the whumpers who still hadn't had their photo done and volunteered to be bag lady for everyone. Yep, that's me - crazy bag lady.
Well, better bag lady than camera lady (Laura). She had about a gizzilion cameras to work through and I felt really bad for giving her mine, but never mind! Apparently Joe was outside watching them for some time, but I couldn't see that. I did see Jason walk past staring at them all strangely.
Right, talk times! First one was SG-1, then Joe-Jason. Before the start of Joe-Jason there was an announcement saying it was running a bit late (possibly because Joe was running a bit late all day!) so we decided we would go downstairs and snag our Peter autogrpahs. Man, that crew person was annoying. "Keep together, stick to walls, closer, closer, move along..." >=( Even when we got to the room we saw that Jason was in there, with his guitar, about to leave, so Cazz stepped to one side for him and the woman was on her in an instant. When Cazz explained, she didn't even believe her and had to look in the room to check and as soon as Jason was gone she was badgering her to get back in line. Eugh.
But Joe and Jason were leaving for their talk, so Laura and Cazz left to get back in the main room. I stayed in line. As the (different) lady said, how many times do you get to meet Apoph? And he was really cool, wrote in his Apuf-y gold pen =D When I got back upstairs I hadn't missed much of the talk and you could so tell Joe was feeling much better. Jason - who Laura thinks spent most of Saturday high - seemed a bit more bummed, but never mind.
After the talk we had our autograph's with Joe - squee!!! There was a massive queue, because instead of calling people in groups, they just said everyone so we were trailing all over the reception and bar! lol I got the shakes SO badly before I went in. I never get that nervous, but obviously Joe is special =D Quite strange, really, because Laura had the shakes, I touched her hand to see and then she was fine and I had really bad shakes! It's contagious! I tried to give mine away to Cazz but it didn't work =(
Well, anyway, I had Ruby's Get Well card for him to sign as well as my cartoons and for the card I was just going to tell him the situation and let him write what he will... as if the crew members would let me do that! I can see now that they were just trying to push all the autographs through, but I was annoyed that one of them just wrote down something for him to write. And it wasn't even get well, it was just "Sorry you couldn't be here". If I'd been given a bit of time to think, then I would have written something soo much better. One of my bigger regrets from the weekend (and, as you can tell, I obviously didn't have very many of those!)
Joe was just sort of signing, whizz on, etc. so I did talk to him about Ruby - don't you worry, Helen, I'm pretty sure I told him that it was 'breaking your heart not to be there' - although I'm not quite sure how much of that he took in... or how much I can remember. I think it's possible I was waffling... blame it on the nerves.
And then he got my cartoons. It was fantastic. I am actually (no kidding) tearing up as I read this. It's stupid in a way, but never mind. He looked at them for so long, trying to guess who everyone was. He just laughed and looked at them, checking with me who was who - thought Jewel was Amanda, woman passing him things gave him Zelenka etc. - and said they were fantastic and that his kids would love them. He loved Rachel and Jason was cool, and when he saw Chuck's he laughed and said "Even Chucky technician got one!" Apparently the woman passing him things was trying to get him to move onto San's photo, but he didn't: he just kept on looking. And then when he eventually signed it, I said thanks and he looked right up at me and smiled!
Oh dear Lord what a soppy sod I am (because I am actually crying now).
But that's what it was like when I got out. I felt myself tearing up and I had to hide my face in my elbow because I didn't want to cry! It probably doesn't mean that much to him - forgot it a few minutes later - but it meant so much to me and, no kidding, I will probably remember that for the rest of my life. I actually couldn't talk about it to anyone without tearing. Laura was feeling a bit faint (and no bloody surprise, because she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast) so we were queing up to get her a coke, but I kept getting teary again and people kept asking me what was wrong, lol! And everytime my face emerged from my elbow Cazz was just smiling at me, bless her. She just knew. (I'd like to say that I was probably quite tired as a reason for my tears... just as now I am ill and recovering from doing a lot of coursework! =P)
Anyway, the last part of the day was a panel with all 5 guests. This was a bit of a weird one. I suppose it's quite hard to find a question that applies to the show but crosses both Atlantis and SG-1, so they were along the lines of 'If you were a gay lead in a movie, who would you want your partner to be (Jason turns immediately to Joe and puts his hand on his thigh... Joe edges away), If you were stranded on a desrt island and could only bring one drink, one food and one luxury item with you, what would it be(Jason: "alcohol, alcohol and alcohol", Peter: "all you need is a coconut tree" - until someone points out that he will have nothing to open said coconut with), what piece of alien technology would you like to own (Peter: "The ring things", Joe: "orgasmatron"), etc.
I don't think they were very impressed with the questions ("Where are you getting these from, Journalism 101?") but they generally all answered. Joe tended to just watch everyone else and didn't answer many - I think he was finding the answers just as funny as us and was "just watching the show".
Man, this is a bloomin' long post... I'm going to have to narrow it down again, me thinks... and just did!!! And you may be thinking why, what more is there honestly left to write... the con has just ended! But you shall see!
So, basically, that was the end of the convention. It was amazing! I wasn't ill or stuck in a lift and I cried with happiness. That's got to be good, hasn't it? We all congregated at the bottom of the stairs, chatting and saying goodbye to people. It was at this point that Laura and San started crying because it seemed to have hit them that Atlantis was now really over. (Strange, because I don't think it's hit me as of yet. Hate me if you will, but I am getting slightly excited for Universe, but now I have slight hatred for Brad Wright... I will cry for days if they don't make at least one Atlantis movie. They way Brad just went in there and cancelled it just because he wanted to do something else when he hadn't had anything to do with it for years... well, that makes me really mad.) Whilst we were there, Joe and Jason left, Joe saying "Bye guys" as he went. I honestly can't remember if I managed to say 'bye' in reply or just gawked at them. I hope it's the former though, sadly, it's probably the latter! It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone, especially Laura, Cazz and San who I got on really well with. I went back to the hotel, because I'd left my stuff in Cazz and Laura's room and they just literally spread out all their photos and autographs on the bed and just stared at them, occasionally squeeing. I am not joking. Really.
But anyway, the taxi driver who picked me up was the same one who'd dropped us off about half an hour before. I had quite a nice chat with him. He was asking me about the convention, and we were talking about how nice it must be to talk to people about things you love where you can't talk to your everyday friends about it. He was really nice. I usually hate talking to people, but he was lovely!
Well, by the time I got to Waterloo (after several diversions and backtracking on the Underground because of line closures and my refusal to go to Vauxhall to catch a train beccause I didn't think they'd have a burger king and i was, you guessed it, hungry again (hey, it was about half past 9!). By the time I'd finished my BK double angus meal on the train, I was feeling a bit deflated. I was tired, it was late, i was collapsed on a train and I'd just come down off an enormous high. I'm not sure why, when the guy in the seats next to me asked to do a card trick, I said yes.
But oh, what a good thing I did!
He was, in short, amazing. A proper magician, just doing all these random card tricks. I honestly had no idea how he did them. I guess it is all sleight of hand but if so then he's got super speed. And he asked me to check all the cards before hand and I could find nothing wrong. Pretty soon the people in the seats in front of us had turned around and were watching - so I offered them things to check too... and, before long, the whole coach was standing up in their seats, or had moved forward to sit around him, watching him do all this magic. There were a group of chinese teenagers who made it so much funnier, just the way that gasped and cried out whenever something was done. Even the gaurd, on his rounds, stopped and just watched him for about 10 minutes. You know when you see on tv people go up to other people on the street and do all these things - it felt like that. It was, in short, the best train journey I have EVER been on! And whilst I was so down before, when I was walking back to my Uni room from the train station I literally could NOT stop grinning. You know when you're a bit tipsy and you can't stop smiling because your muscles just do that? It was a bit like that. So cool!
I had such a great weekend and I met so many wonderful people that I hope I will see again soon (Collectormania 15, people!). Meeting Joe was the total highlight of my weekend and I'll remember it for ever (cheese!). The only thing that would have made it perfect would have been Helen =( But we'll all just have to drag Joe back to the UK at some point just so we can all go again.. this time with Helen!!!