AZ Diary Thingie (SUPER PHOTO HEAVY)
Hollie didn't arrive in Winston-Salem until ~4am Friday morning, so we decided to leave around 9am to give her a chance to get a little rest. We packed the car, but had her try on Aya's wig before we left. I'd put in 12'' extensions so we could trim them to length when Hollie arrived. We showed her how to put on a wig (she's proud of the fact that she got better over the weekend) and her initial response to the long dangling eartails was "EEEEK, I'm not used to hair touching me down there!" Yes, it went all the way to her clavical. So we trimmed her up and hopped in the car. It's about a 2 hour drive to Raleigh from my place so we took Hollie's special road trip CD - a bunch of cover songs. Some were bad, some were really bad, and some were just funny. My favorite was "Hey Ya." Hollie and I have a whole history with that song, so we <3 it.
We had to stop by a Target on our way because we forgot one of our stage props (omg, sad tiny topiary!)
We arrived at the hotel around noon, and our room mates had just arrived as well. Fortunate timing! The first thing we did was look out the window to see what our view was like. All we could see was construction. . . and construction workers. Hollie debated whether we had license to catcall them. To which Prodigy responded with:
This was the first photo of the weekend, and quite possibly the best. XD I have to say that Seivka and Prodigy were the most awesome room mates ever. We had 5 people in our room but it never felt like more than 2 or 3 (until we piled all the towels in the bathroom before leaving. . . Yikes!) Sievka and her sister, Baru, will probably be staying with us at Nekocon, which rocks. Not only are they awesome people, they're really corteous roomies, too! What a great find!
We dressed in Weiss and painted Medusa (seriously, we were all filling in the dots!) and headed over to the convention center to get our badges - hooray for not having to wait in a line!
Our Weiss line-up was:
Youji - Tassie
Aya - Turbi (she has yet to make a cos.com ID under this name)
Omi - Elke
We seriously have no pictures of these costumes. . . we really failed hard. This photo was taken by Jayce. We attended Ryusei Nakao's panel and were alternatively amused by his answers and endeared by his humility. We're so glad he was still able to attend the convention!
Tassie and I changed into Isane and Ichimaru respectively for the the Bleach shoot. It was the shortest Bleach shoot in the history of cosplay. Seriously, it was done in less than 15 minutes. There was one huge group shot and then it just kinda dissolved from there. So, I grabbed a couple of cool people and got some smaller group shots.
I got to hang out with Regena (clearly we are up to no good)
Tassie found her taicho
We wandered Artist's Alley for a bit and then Turbi went exploring while Tassie and I went to the SE photoshoot.
There were lots of awesome peeps
and Epic butt grabs (Black*Star x Hoang, anyone?)
After the shoot we went back to the hotel room to shower and eat before the Soul Eater panel (which we were late to because we couldn't find the room . . . go us). I didn't get any pics during the panel because I was wearing 1x Mizune which doesn't really lend itself to moving the arms. Zippy called me up on stage at one point and I said "Chi." A lot. I mean, she can't talk in 1x form, amIrite?
The only photo I have is of our epic cross-dressing shenanigans. I am Soul here - you can tell because of the *manly* headband. While it's kinda fun to have a body double I'm not sure how I feel about that person being male. OH WELL!
I did go to the pajama party afterwards, but didn't take any photos. Z (as Free) and I had a little striped people party over in our corner. When we were asked to relocate to the convention center I went back to the hotel because it was already ~2am and I knew my roommies would be asleep. Tassie was, Turbi was not. Apparently Tassie fell asleep to the "dulcet tones of my sister chewing on peanut M&M's." Turbi and I giggled and ate M&M's for a little while, as sisters are wont to do, before crashing.
More pics can be found under the various AZ09 galleries here. These are all shoddy photobucket resizes because I was to lazy to do this properly. Fail, Elke! Fail!
Umm, Saturday's recap will have to come another day because . . . Whoa!