Vacation
So, it's been about 4 years since my last vacation. Amusingly, in all the places I stayed, I could not get wireless internet. So I've been pretty disconnected for the last week.
Wednesday: Arrived in Texas. The weather was beautiful and warm. It has been wet and cold in Virginia, so it was a nice change of pace. Lapis came to pick me up from the airport. She has a really nice house, and a nice inground pool. I'm a little bit jealous, I want one :P We went out to a sushi buffet for lunch, hit up a costume store to try to get parts for my Sai costume. That was pretty unproductive, but fun none the less. We ended up going to walmart for costume parts. We went out to dinner with her roommate/boyfriend, Chris, and she got a copy of Borat, because she decided that I simply have to see it. And we went to Sonic. For those of you who don't know my fascination with it, in the DC area, there are tons of commercials for Sonic, but no restaurants within 50 miles. And their food is good too :P
Thursday: Slept in a little bit, and went to a lunch buffet at a nice Brazilian restaurant with all you can eat meat :D Man, I was a glutton on those days. We were both a little tired after that, so we took a nice afternoon nap. Since Lapis had Friday off from work, she made an arrangement with one of her friends who works at the convention that if she (read: we) helped set up on Thursday and ran her booth for a few hours on Friday, she could get a Friday pass for the con. So we went to help set up. We got back around midnight
Friday: Lapis and I ended up getting to the con around 10 AM (we had a little trouble with parking at the Dart, the Dalls train system). I got through the registration line pretty quickly. Andrea joined me in line, and while we were waiting, I was hemming up my pants for my Sai costume. Right after we finished in registration, we headed to the dealer room to get my hitai-ate (forehead protector) and finished my Sai costume. Andrea introduced me to the group I'd be staying with, and they turned out to be a pretty awesome bunch. After that Andrea went to meet with her boy, so I was more or less on my own. :D I changed into my Sai and met with a bunch of Naruto cosplayers for a photo shoot. This was my first time in a large photo shoot, and my first time cosplaying a Naruto Character. It was a ton of fun, and I got a fair few good photos. I spent a little while hanging out with an Ino cosplayer, while I was with her we actually got a lot of people asking us for photos. I guess SaiIno is a fairly popular pairing? When I met her was actually pretty amusing, I said to her "You're very beautiful." Her response was "Aaw, thank you.... wait... was that an insult?" At that point, I didn't have a good in-character response, so I just kept quite and made a "fake" Sai smile. After I managed to get myself separated from my friends, I ended up just hanging out in the lobby while waiting for the dance to start. A huge group was playing "Little Sally Walker," it was a lot of fun watching/playing. Inside of the main events hall, a bunch of people were playing "Duck Duck Goose" while waiting for the dance to start. Of course, being older, they played a lot rougher, so there were people doing full dives to catch the person they were chasing, and there was a massive crowd watching, it was hilarious. At the dance I met up with a lady named Amanda, I'm not exactly sure how/why that happened, but I spent the majority of my time with her and her friends that night.
Saturday: Was woken up unwillingly early by the roommates, as most of them were showering and putting on costumes around 9 o'clock. Saturday had another Naruto photo shoot, and I ended up spending most of the day with a couple of cosplayers dressed as Hinata and Shino. Since there was an ice skating rink in the food court, a bunch of us went skating in the evening. I got a couple fun video clips, and ended up meeting up with Andrea while skating (thankfully, her boy was being lame and decided to sit on the side, so I didn't have to deal with him). Got lots of fun video clips, including Shino's hilarious attempted to stay balanced on the ice (though she didn't end up falling at all), and a couple of hilarious clips of Andrea falling on the ice >D
The masquerade was terribly lame. Shino and I attempted to waltz/rumba, but the beat was too akward, and she kept mixing up her feet. So we left and hung out in the lobby. Ran into Amanda again. Shino didn't want to come, so Amanda and I ended up killing time with her friends in her hotel until the dance started. Unfortunately, saturday's dance was lame sauce (no anime/video game music, it was all rave music, and the place was so hot and crowded you could barely move.) She started feeling unwell, so we left, I walked her to her room, hung out there with her and her friends and watched a little TV before heading out. On my way back to my room, a group playing "Apples to apples" pulled me in, and decided that I HAVE to play. I was so sad. I had in my hand Hillary Clinton, Atomic Bombs, and Hand Grenades when the owner said we were on the last round ;.;
Sunday: Last day of the con. Got all my stuff packed reasonably early, and got my stuff in the car. Got to go play some Makoto, got a few more pictures. Hung out with Shino again, but I really didn't get a chance to see Ino, Hinata, or Amanda again before we had to leave. Good thing I got all of their email addresses earlier. Car ride back to Austin took a little while, but it wasn't too bad, we had 2 or 3 games of pokemon running in the back seat. We stopped on the way back to Andrea's house to get our tickets for Schlitterbahn. Back at her place, we watched Naussica, which was her belated birthday gift from me.
Monday: Schlitterbahn. It was tons of fun. We got there pretty early, so we had almost no lines. We started on the biggest waterslide there with almost no wait. By noon we had hit every major ride. So in the afternoon, we just relaxed, had some lunch, chilled in the hot tub, and hit all the creeks and rivers of the park. And I brought a water proof camera with us, so we got tons of photos of us in the water and on the rides. The park is really awesome. The whole place was run with spring water from the river, so the whole park had really clean water without chlorine. After we finished up at the park, we watched Origin. And played some pokemon together. It was the first time I got to make poffins with a friend, so it was fun :D We ended up getting sunburned pretty badly at the park, though she was a lot worse than me (but that's what she gets for not putting on enough sun screen).
Tuesday: Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Probably would have been marginally more fun if not for the sunburns, but that wasn't too much of a hindrance. We got to check out all of the major rides at the park, and played a little DDR. We didn't get to do *everything* but it was still fun. We did ninja hand seals on the rides as we passed by the camera, but none of them came out right (superman missed the shot, and the other rides just didn't look as good). After we finished up at the park, we watched some Card Captor Sakura back at her house. And since I hadn't seen it, Andrea decided that I needed to see Poltergeist since we went on the ride.
Wednesday: Sight seeing. Andrea, her sister and I went out to see some of the local sights. First we went down to a damn, where she showed me a flood plain that was all messed up from a flood a couple years ago, and we walked down the dam about a half a mile. Afterwards, we went down to the Comal River, where we went on a train ride around the park and along the side of the river. We rode a paddle boat together, and got lots of nice pictures of the river, islands, turtles, birds, a some fish (though those were not very clear pictures). We went up to the Comal Spring, which was really cool to see. On the way back, we stopped by a pet store to see a shark, and video store to grab Poltergeist. When we got back to the house, we played some DDR (for the record, I HATE soft pads), and after it got dark, we watched Poltergeist.
Thursday was a sad day, I had to return home. All in all, it was a good trip. There was a little akwardness that stemmed from the fact that Andrea left me alone at the convention (fortunately, I made new friends at the con), and the fact that she agreed to stay single for me until the trip and broke that really rubbed me the wrong way. But considering that that is the extent of my complaint under this mountain of good things to say should tell you how I felt about the trip. This really was a much needed good time. I'm kind of sad to be back in the wet and cold, and back to working. But I am looking forward to some new things to come, but that is for another post. I've already balanced my budget, and I actually ended up spending a couple hundred less than I planned.
Wednesday: Arrived in Texas. The weather was beautiful and warm. It has been wet and cold in Virginia, so it was a nice change of pace. Lapis came to pick me up from the airport. She has a really nice house, and a nice inground pool. I'm a little bit jealous, I want one :P We went out to a sushi buffet for lunch, hit up a costume store to try to get parts for my Sai costume. That was pretty unproductive, but fun none the less. We ended up going to walmart for costume parts. We went out to dinner with her roommate/boyfriend, Chris, and she got a copy of Borat, because she decided that I simply have to see it. And we went to Sonic. For those of you who don't know my fascination with it, in the DC area, there are tons of commercials for Sonic, but no restaurants within 50 miles. And their food is good too :P
Thursday: Slept in a little bit, and went to a lunch buffet at a nice Brazilian restaurant with all you can eat meat :D Man, I was a glutton on those days. We were both a little tired after that, so we took a nice afternoon nap. Since Lapis had Friday off from work, she made an arrangement with one of her friends who works at the convention that if she (read: we) helped set up on Thursday and ran her booth for a few hours on Friday, she could get a Friday pass for the con. So we went to help set up. We got back around midnight
Friday: Lapis and I ended up getting to the con around 10 AM (we had a little trouble with parking at the Dart, the Dalls train system). I got through the registration line pretty quickly. Andrea joined me in line, and while we were waiting, I was hemming up my pants for my Sai costume. Right after we finished in registration, we headed to the dealer room to get my hitai-ate (forehead protector) and finished my Sai costume. Andrea introduced me to the group I'd be staying with, and they turned out to be a pretty awesome bunch. After that Andrea went to meet with her boy, so I was more or less on my own. :D I changed into my Sai and met with a bunch of Naruto cosplayers for a photo shoot. This was my first time in a large photo shoot, and my first time cosplaying a Naruto Character. It was a ton of fun, and I got a fair few good photos. I spent a little while hanging out with an Ino cosplayer, while I was with her we actually got a lot of people asking us for photos. I guess SaiIno is a fairly popular pairing? When I met her was actually pretty amusing, I said to her "You're very beautiful." Her response was "Aaw, thank you.... wait... was that an insult?" At that point, I didn't have a good in-character response, so I just kept quite and made a "fake" Sai smile. After I managed to get myself separated from my friends, I ended up just hanging out in the lobby while waiting for the dance to start. A huge group was playing "Little Sally Walker," it was a lot of fun watching/playing. Inside of the main events hall, a bunch of people were playing "Duck Duck Goose" while waiting for the dance to start. Of course, being older, they played a lot rougher, so there were people doing full dives to catch the person they were chasing, and there was a massive crowd watching, it was hilarious. At the dance I met up with a lady named Amanda, I'm not exactly sure how/why that happened, but I spent the majority of my time with her and her friends that night.
Saturday: Was woken up unwillingly early by the roommates, as most of them were showering and putting on costumes around 9 o'clock. Saturday had another Naruto photo shoot, and I ended up spending most of the day with a couple of cosplayers dressed as Hinata and Shino. Since there was an ice skating rink in the food court, a bunch of us went skating in the evening. I got a couple fun video clips, and ended up meeting up with Andrea while skating (thankfully, her boy was being lame and decided to sit on the side, so I didn't have to deal with him). Got lots of fun video clips, including Shino's hilarious attempted to stay balanced on the ice (though she didn't end up falling at all), and a couple of hilarious clips of Andrea falling on the ice >D
The masquerade was terribly lame. Shino and I attempted to waltz/rumba, but the beat was too akward, and she kept mixing up her feet. So we left and hung out in the lobby. Ran into Amanda again. Shino didn't want to come, so Amanda and I ended up killing time with her friends in her hotel until the dance started. Unfortunately, saturday's dance was lame sauce (no anime/video game music, it was all rave music, and the place was so hot and crowded you could barely move.) She started feeling unwell, so we left, I walked her to her room, hung out there with her and her friends and watched a little TV before heading out. On my way back to my room, a group playing "Apples to apples" pulled me in, and decided that I HAVE to play. I was so sad. I had in my hand Hillary Clinton, Atomic Bombs, and Hand Grenades when the owner said we were on the last round ;.;
Sunday: Last day of the con. Got all my stuff packed reasonably early, and got my stuff in the car. Got to go play some Makoto, got a few more pictures. Hung out with Shino again, but I really didn't get a chance to see Ino, Hinata, or Amanda again before we had to leave. Good thing I got all of their email addresses earlier. Car ride back to Austin took a little while, but it wasn't too bad, we had 2 or 3 games of pokemon running in the back seat. We stopped on the way back to Andrea's house to get our tickets for Schlitterbahn. Back at her place, we watched Naussica, which was her belated birthday gift from me.
Monday: Schlitterbahn. It was tons of fun. We got there pretty early, so we had almost no lines. We started on the biggest waterslide there with almost no wait. By noon we had hit every major ride. So in the afternoon, we just relaxed, had some lunch, chilled in the hot tub, and hit all the creeks and rivers of the park. And I brought a water proof camera with us, so we got tons of photos of us in the water and on the rides. The park is really awesome. The whole place was run with spring water from the river, so the whole park had really clean water without chlorine. After we finished up at the park, we watched Origin. And played some pokemon together. It was the first time I got to make poffins with a friend, so it was fun :D We ended up getting sunburned pretty badly at the park, though she was a lot worse than me (but that's what she gets for not putting on enough sun screen).
Tuesday: Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Probably would have been marginally more fun if not for the sunburns, but that wasn't too much of a hindrance. We got to check out all of the major rides at the park, and played a little DDR. We didn't get to do *everything* but it was still fun. We did ninja hand seals on the rides as we passed by the camera, but none of them came out right (superman missed the shot, and the other rides just didn't look as good). After we finished up at the park, we watched some Card Captor Sakura back at her house. And since I hadn't seen it, Andrea decided that I needed to see Poltergeist since we went on the ride.
Wednesday: Sight seeing. Andrea, her sister and I went out to see some of the local sights. First we went down to a damn, where she showed me a flood plain that was all messed up from a flood a couple years ago, and we walked down the dam about a half a mile. Afterwards, we went down to the Comal River, where we went on a train ride around the park and along the side of the river. We rode a paddle boat together, and got lots of nice pictures of the river, islands, turtles, birds, a some fish (though those were not very clear pictures). We went up to the Comal Spring, which was really cool to see. On the way back, we stopped by a pet store to see a shark, and video store to grab Poltergeist. When we got back to the house, we played some DDR (for the record, I HATE soft pads), and after it got dark, we watched Poltergeist.
Thursday was a sad day, I had to return home. All in all, it was a good trip. There was a little akwardness that stemmed from the fact that Andrea left me alone at the convention (fortunately, I made new friends at the con), and the fact that she agreed to stay single for me until the trip and broke that really rubbed me the wrong way. But considering that that is the extent of my complaint under this mountain of good things to say should tell you how I felt about the trip. This really was a much needed good time. I'm kind of sad to be back in the wet and cold, and back to working. But I am looking forward to some new things to come, but that is for another post. I've already balanced my budget, and I actually ended up spending a couple hundred less than I planned.