DragonCon part 2!
Blog 090708
DRagonCon Part 2
On Saturday I met a bunch of people for lunch. These were people I had talked with on an internet forum. At lunch we were seated and had a fun time. Bert was getting the guys to show their tits and he also got pictures of a lot of women’s mostly exposed breasts at lunch. The lunch was cool and fun and I had a good time.
After lunch, Bert, Troy and Solaris were going to check out the dealer’s rooms. It was still 3 or so hours until my 6pm gaming slot and asked if I could tag along. Or they may have offered I can’t recall. So I agreed because I liked them all and knew I probably wouldn’t see them again since I had a lot of gaming coming up.
Walking around with the trio was fun. It was fun because it was like walking around with a celebrity. Solaris was quite striking in her PVC outfit and I was watching everyone – or at least A LOT of people – checking her out. This one guy wouldn’t stop looking at her. He was staring despite his full face mask. Then he came up to Bert and asked him his name. Whoops! Guess they all were looking at Solaris.
The dealer’s rooms were fairly crowded. Troy and Solaris bought some new clothes. It was funny watching Troy get some new dudes. He was just standing there like some noble waiting for his serfs to do everything. He raised his arms to allow shirts to be put on him but that was the limit of what he did. Like I mentioned, all I could think of was a noble being dressed by his servants.
I ended up buying the soundtracks to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Terminator. Later, I found the Massacre one to be disappointing. It was mostly just sound clips from the film including dialog and sound. I’m not sure if it was a true soundtrack or something a dealer just through together. The Terminator is decent despite it being all 1980’s synthesizer. The 80’s were a really big on all synthesizer music. A lot of it sucked too.
After an hour or two I had to leave to go get my stuff for gaming. I bid farewells and hustled back to my hotel.
I played two slots of D&D – about 8 hours and went to bed back at my hotel.
I skipped a gaming slot to draft my football team as best I could for my buddy’s league. If I draft my team I go to the Super Bowl. The one year I let the computer draft because I had to work I didn’t even make the play-off’s. So there was the Kinko’s place that I could rent a computer. 50 cents a minute though!!! The former WWF wrestler Virgil needed to use a computer to and was stomping around outside the door. For whatever reason there was only one clerk and she was on lunch or something and had to lock the joint up until 1pm when she returned. Not trying to be cruel, I really wasn’t impressed by Virgil. I expected him to be bigger even though I’ve seen him at several cons before. He also didn’t seem the smartest tool in the shed from what I witnessed. But I suppose I could be wrong in that limited time frame. In the end, I was about to draft a little over half my team before I stopped because it cost me around $20. We’ll see how I do this year.
Sunday was all about gaming. Or was supposed to be. There was a gaffe in that I played a game that I was originally suppose to be later because of lack of players. So I forgot I had played it and sat down at a table to play what I thought was a new game. In 3rd Living Greyhawk, you cannot play the same game twice. In Forgotten Realms you can but you have to play it with another character. I was playing 3rd LG and got booted from my table. This really sucked as it was late enough in the slot that I couldn’t join anything else. So for the next three hours I wandered the hotels. This actually didn’t turn out as bad as I thought. I found the art show and some other areas of the con tucked away in hidden corners. I sat in for a moment on what seemed like one of the most boring panels of all time. The guy talking almost put me to sleep instantly. I left after 10 minutes or less. At some point I also sat in on a sword play demonstration. The jokes of the presenters were weak but got laughs anyways. But I found the real sword fighting info really cool. They ripped up 300’s combat sequences pretty badly. 300 is an okay movie and highly stylized and in my opinion vastly overrated. So I was really into these guys tearing down the swordplay in it. Actually, I think I caught this demonstration just before lunch with the YABster crew. I’m forgetting what I did and when as I write this.
For the game I got booted out of I did do a lot of walking around. I sat in on a Lord of the Rings books vs the movies. That was at least somewhat interesting. When that ended I found the originally King Kong movie playing. Some guy was showing it on a vaguely big screen. Kong is one of my all-time favorite monster movies. Maybe even my favorite if I was forced to pick. So I sat in just as he was fighting the T-Rex on his home island. I stayed until the end and enjoyed it immensely. Only later was I really pissed. I found that I could have sat in on How to Make Your Webcomic Profitable in its entirety. That was a real bummed to discover but there is so much to do at DragonCon that I missed it in the pre-reg book despite me circling it! In fairness to myself I had about another 10 to 15 panels circles to and the print in the book is quite small with several ‘tracks’ which is why I missed it. Tracks guide people to certain types of presentations from autograph signings to panels to screenings. I can’t recall all the tracks but they were like: horror fantasy, anime, Star Trek, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and more like that.
I played some more D&D and had fun and got my character to reach third level at the end of my scheduled games. As I headed back to my hotel on Sunday night actually early Monday morning I ran into Solaris and Troy again. This was cool as I really didn’t expect to but had hoped to. They were dressed in costume again. Sorry Troy, I sort of forgot what you were dressed in. Solaris was dressed as a faire/pixie take your pick. She had done a ton load of swirling eye make-up that must’ve taken forever. We talked for about 30 minutes about various things. One of the girls that sat next to me at lunch came by. She looked terrific in her little black and white leather dress. Her skin is really pale and she had her zipper down showing lots of cleavage. She seemed a bit drunk and was staggering a bit in her strappy heels. I might steal her outfit for one of my super-heroines! She looked quite good though and I was sorry to see her leave so quickly.
Troy and Solaris intro’d me to a fetish photographer who gave me his card so I could check out his website. After some good-byes I finally headed off to my hotel. I think I crawled into bead around 3am Sunday night. With all that went on and my noisy ass AC unit that I thought was really pounding drums from a higher room I stayed awake until around 5 am! Gah! I forgot that my room card wouldn’t work and I couldn’t get into my room. My timing on this was horrible. I went back down to the front desk. This family was checking in at 2:30am. It took FOREVER because one guy was really chatty with the front desk woman. I think I stood there for like 10 minutes. The desk woman was very nice and ended up giving me two new room cards which I actually needed since one didn’t seem to work. But that took awhile only because someone driving around Atlanta called as she was helping me looking for directions to the hotel. Oy!
On Monday I eventually rolled out of bed around 10am. Room services asked to clean my room but I asked that they come back. I showered and packed as checkout is usually around 11am. I headed to the front desk and asked if I could store my luggage. While the hotel room kind of sucked, the staff was extremely friendly and gave me no shit. I was allowed to store my luggage and play tourist for the remainder of my time.
I headed in for a late breakfast an encountered Charles RB there. He was the English fellow that was part of the lunching crew from Saturday and ended up being roomed next to me. We chatted as we ate. He ate his Frosted Flakes dry! Ugh! He didn’t like them getting soggy though. I had my usual of an apple and a banana and a cup of milk and O.J. I snarfed down some Frosted Flakes too. Charles told me they called them Frosties in England. Charles looked pretty exhausted. I was hoping for a good story but he had been tired from a late night and had just gone to bed. Nothing spectacular. Darn it.
I blew off the con and bade farewell to Charles and walked down to the Georgia Aquarium. I could see CNN in the distance and it wasn’t a long walk. Unfortunately, because I had started so late I opted for the Aquarium and the World of Coca Cola since it was right next door.
The aquarium was pretty cool. My favorite part was this glass window that as about the height of their main tank. So this window was like two stories tall. I found it really creepy seeing fish, live, that could swallow me whole. It was a new experience. And fish are REALLY ugly. Sharks look cool but fish are otherwise exceptionally distasteful to look at.
The 3-D show was done well for a 20 minute cartoon and getting hit with droplets of water caught me off-guard. It’s aimed at kids but I found it enjoyable to watch.
They had a thing of Titanic there so I bought a ticket. It was a little boring as everything was just reading and looking at mundane artifacts. They had a couple of interesting things in it but I could’ve missed it and not worried about it now knowing what I know.
My three favorite things in the aquarium were the sea otters since they were active and fun to watch. I also liked the penguins but except for one active one they were pretty subdued resting in their environment. And I like the octopus the best. They had a plexiglass box in his tank that had waffle balls or something in it. He was climbing on the box and pulling them out through the small hole with his tentacles. Later on when I walked by he was in the plexiglass box having squeezed inside.
I spent about 2 or 3 hours at the aquarium including lunch. It was a small pizza coke and I knew it would hold me for a good long while because I could tell it would take a long time to digest. And it was decent.
A little anxious about the time I headed into The World of Coca Cola. It’s about a 90 minute self guided tour. It was okay. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more with out the time rush. It also felt a bit repetitive since I had just spent about 45 minutes reading and looking at stuff the same format wise in the Titanic presentation. I ended up skipping the 4-d movie because of time although I probably could’ve seen it without a problem. I barely watched the commercials through the years.
The neat thing about Coca Cola World is the tasting center. They have soda fountains set up so you can sample their products from around the world. So I was drinking stuff distributed from Germany, Japan, the Houndurus and around the world. Some were decent and some were god awful. Pretty much the non-sweet ones were fairly nasty to me. Italy ranked as my number one disliked beverage. It made me shiver. One of two others did also. The stuff from Japan wasn’t even carbonated!
After that was the gift shop. It was decently sized and I liked a lot of the stuff in there. I made sure I had a decent chunk of time for that so I wouldn’t have to rush through it. I ended up buying some over-priced stuff but oh well. I bought a simply red t-shirt with Coca Cola in white across it so I look like a big soda can. It’s a heavy shirt which is decent. I bought some sleep wear pants. I didn’t see a changing room and bought large. They hang about 6 inches past my foot upon later discovery! And I bought a soda can glass Christmas tree ornament to go along with my Coca Cola Christmas tree ball. I find the red of the ornaments very striking and eye pleasing.
After that I headed off back to my hotel regretting I didn’t have time for the CNN tour. I grabbed my bags and headed for the MARTA for my trip home. While rather hot and humid the walk & ride to the airport was simple enough. I had a little trouble checking in out of ignorance though. Still, I got through it without much trouble. I did find out my flight was leaving a bit earlier than expected so I was glad that I gave myself a comfortable margin to get to my plane.
The trip home was fine and I got the window seat again which was cool. I was smart and kept my glass ornament in my hand after I got on the plane. This guy showed up with this MASSIVE backpack. This thing was like something you would use for several days of hiking. He shoved and shoved and shoved it in the overhead compartment until it finally fit. I was so happy I didn’t keep my ornament in my backpack. Later I noticed both my music CD’s cases were damaged like they had taken a severe blow. I can’t recall if I had them in my suitcase of my backpack. At least the CDs themselves were fine.
My ended ended arriving home and heading out to my car. I started my car and it shrugged in half life before dying. Uh-oh. I tried again and it made a clicking noise. Dead battery. I called my parents house for my brother who knows about these things. I got some guy to try and give me a jump but it didn’t work. So under advice I wandered around looking for the service people of the garage. They gave me a ride back to my car and jumped it no problem with a big pick-up. I was on my way home with only about a 50 minute delay which was not so bad.
Since this is just over 5 pages long I’ll end this here. But I still have my battery to write about, my training on first shift that starts tomorrow which is Monday. I’m also a little down that I’m not at the local air show because it’s a gorgeous day in the upper 70’s and sunny and the sky is a radiant blue and I hear airplanes very close but just out of sight flying around. Doh! It’s also opening day for most football teams in the NFL and my two fantasy teams are ready to go! And my baseball team is clinging to an 8-6 lead in the wild card play-off race in my fantasy league and today will determine if I’m eliminated or move on.
Okay, done for now but the full tale has not been told!
DRagonCon Part 2
On Saturday I met a bunch of people for lunch. These were people I had talked with on an internet forum. At lunch we were seated and had a fun time. Bert was getting the guys to show their tits and he also got pictures of a lot of women’s mostly exposed breasts at lunch. The lunch was cool and fun and I had a good time.
After lunch, Bert, Troy and Solaris were going to check out the dealer’s rooms. It was still 3 or so hours until my 6pm gaming slot and asked if I could tag along. Or they may have offered I can’t recall. So I agreed because I liked them all and knew I probably wouldn’t see them again since I had a lot of gaming coming up.
Walking around with the trio was fun. It was fun because it was like walking around with a celebrity. Solaris was quite striking in her PVC outfit and I was watching everyone – or at least A LOT of people – checking her out. This one guy wouldn’t stop looking at her. He was staring despite his full face mask. Then he came up to Bert and asked him his name. Whoops! Guess they all were looking at Solaris.
The dealer’s rooms were fairly crowded. Troy and Solaris bought some new clothes. It was funny watching Troy get some new dudes. He was just standing there like some noble waiting for his serfs to do everything. He raised his arms to allow shirts to be put on him but that was the limit of what he did. Like I mentioned, all I could think of was a noble being dressed by his servants.
I ended up buying the soundtracks to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Terminator. Later, I found the Massacre one to be disappointing. It was mostly just sound clips from the film including dialog and sound. I’m not sure if it was a true soundtrack or something a dealer just through together. The Terminator is decent despite it being all 1980’s synthesizer. The 80’s were a really big on all synthesizer music. A lot of it sucked too.
After an hour or two I had to leave to go get my stuff for gaming. I bid farewells and hustled back to my hotel.
I played two slots of D&D – about 8 hours and went to bed back at my hotel.
I skipped a gaming slot to draft my football team as best I could for my buddy’s league. If I draft my team I go to the Super Bowl. The one year I let the computer draft because I had to work I didn’t even make the play-off’s. So there was the Kinko’s place that I could rent a computer. 50 cents a minute though!!! The former WWF wrestler Virgil needed to use a computer to and was stomping around outside the door. For whatever reason there was only one clerk and she was on lunch or something and had to lock the joint up until 1pm when she returned. Not trying to be cruel, I really wasn’t impressed by Virgil. I expected him to be bigger even though I’ve seen him at several cons before. He also didn’t seem the smartest tool in the shed from what I witnessed. But I suppose I could be wrong in that limited time frame. In the end, I was about to draft a little over half my team before I stopped because it cost me around $20. We’ll see how I do this year.
Sunday was all about gaming. Or was supposed to be. There was a gaffe in that I played a game that I was originally suppose to be later because of lack of players. So I forgot I had played it and sat down at a table to play what I thought was a new game. In 3rd Living Greyhawk, you cannot play the same game twice. In Forgotten Realms you can but you have to play it with another character. I was playing 3rd LG and got booted from my table. This really sucked as it was late enough in the slot that I couldn’t join anything else. So for the next three hours I wandered the hotels. This actually didn’t turn out as bad as I thought. I found the art show and some other areas of the con tucked away in hidden corners. I sat in for a moment on what seemed like one of the most boring panels of all time. The guy talking almost put me to sleep instantly. I left after 10 minutes or less. At some point I also sat in on a sword play demonstration. The jokes of the presenters were weak but got laughs anyways. But I found the real sword fighting info really cool. They ripped up 300’s combat sequences pretty badly. 300 is an okay movie and highly stylized and in my opinion vastly overrated. So I was really into these guys tearing down the swordplay in it. Actually, I think I caught this demonstration just before lunch with the YABster crew. I’m forgetting what I did and when as I write this.
For the game I got booted out of I did do a lot of walking around. I sat in on a Lord of the Rings books vs the movies. That was at least somewhat interesting. When that ended I found the originally King Kong movie playing. Some guy was showing it on a vaguely big screen. Kong is one of my all-time favorite monster movies. Maybe even my favorite if I was forced to pick. So I sat in just as he was fighting the T-Rex on his home island. I stayed until the end and enjoyed it immensely. Only later was I really pissed. I found that I could have sat in on How to Make Your Webcomic Profitable in its entirety. That was a real bummed to discover but there is so much to do at DragonCon that I missed it in the pre-reg book despite me circling it! In fairness to myself I had about another 10 to 15 panels circles to and the print in the book is quite small with several ‘tracks’ which is why I missed it. Tracks guide people to certain types of presentations from autograph signings to panels to screenings. I can’t recall all the tracks but they were like: horror fantasy, anime, Star Trek, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and more like that.
I played some more D&D and had fun and got my character to reach third level at the end of my scheduled games. As I headed back to my hotel on Sunday night actually early Monday morning I ran into Solaris and Troy again. This was cool as I really didn’t expect to but had hoped to. They were dressed in costume again. Sorry Troy, I sort of forgot what you were dressed in. Solaris was dressed as a faire/pixie take your pick. She had done a ton load of swirling eye make-up that must’ve taken forever. We talked for about 30 minutes about various things. One of the girls that sat next to me at lunch came by. She looked terrific in her little black and white leather dress. Her skin is really pale and she had her zipper down showing lots of cleavage. She seemed a bit drunk and was staggering a bit in her strappy heels. I might steal her outfit for one of my super-heroines! She looked quite good though and I was sorry to see her leave so quickly.
Troy and Solaris intro’d me to a fetish photographer who gave me his card so I could check out his website. After some good-byes I finally headed off to my hotel. I think I crawled into bead around 3am Sunday night. With all that went on and my noisy ass AC unit that I thought was really pounding drums from a higher room I stayed awake until around 5 am! Gah! I forgot that my room card wouldn’t work and I couldn’t get into my room. My timing on this was horrible. I went back down to the front desk. This family was checking in at 2:30am. It took FOREVER because one guy was really chatty with the front desk woman. I think I stood there for like 10 minutes. The desk woman was very nice and ended up giving me two new room cards which I actually needed since one didn’t seem to work. But that took awhile only because someone driving around Atlanta called as she was helping me looking for directions to the hotel. Oy!
On Monday I eventually rolled out of bed around 10am. Room services asked to clean my room but I asked that they come back. I showered and packed as checkout is usually around 11am. I headed to the front desk and asked if I could store my luggage. While the hotel room kind of sucked, the staff was extremely friendly and gave me no shit. I was allowed to store my luggage and play tourist for the remainder of my time.
I headed in for a late breakfast an encountered Charles RB there. He was the English fellow that was part of the lunching crew from Saturday and ended up being roomed next to me. We chatted as we ate. He ate his Frosted Flakes dry! Ugh! He didn’t like them getting soggy though. I had my usual of an apple and a banana and a cup of milk and O.J. I snarfed down some Frosted Flakes too. Charles told me they called them Frosties in England. Charles looked pretty exhausted. I was hoping for a good story but he had been tired from a late night and had just gone to bed. Nothing spectacular. Darn it.
I blew off the con and bade farewell to Charles and walked down to the Georgia Aquarium. I could see CNN in the distance and it wasn’t a long walk. Unfortunately, because I had started so late I opted for the Aquarium and the World of Coca Cola since it was right next door.
The aquarium was pretty cool. My favorite part was this glass window that as about the height of their main tank. So this window was like two stories tall. I found it really creepy seeing fish, live, that could swallow me whole. It was a new experience. And fish are REALLY ugly. Sharks look cool but fish are otherwise exceptionally distasteful to look at.
The 3-D show was done well for a 20 minute cartoon and getting hit with droplets of water caught me off-guard. It’s aimed at kids but I found it enjoyable to watch.
They had a thing of Titanic there so I bought a ticket. It was a little boring as everything was just reading and looking at mundane artifacts. They had a couple of interesting things in it but I could’ve missed it and not worried about it now knowing what I know.
My three favorite things in the aquarium were the sea otters since they were active and fun to watch. I also liked the penguins but except for one active one they were pretty subdued resting in their environment. And I like the octopus the best. They had a plexiglass box in his tank that had waffle balls or something in it. He was climbing on the box and pulling them out through the small hole with his tentacles. Later on when I walked by he was in the plexiglass box having squeezed inside.
I spent about 2 or 3 hours at the aquarium including lunch. It was a small pizza coke and I knew it would hold me for a good long while because I could tell it would take a long time to digest. And it was decent.
A little anxious about the time I headed into The World of Coca Cola. It’s about a 90 minute self guided tour. It was okay. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more with out the time rush. It also felt a bit repetitive since I had just spent about 45 minutes reading and looking at stuff the same format wise in the Titanic presentation. I ended up skipping the 4-d movie because of time although I probably could’ve seen it without a problem. I barely watched the commercials through the years.
The neat thing about Coca Cola World is the tasting center. They have soda fountains set up so you can sample their products from around the world. So I was drinking stuff distributed from Germany, Japan, the Houndurus and around the world. Some were decent and some were god awful. Pretty much the non-sweet ones were fairly nasty to me. Italy ranked as my number one disliked beverage. It made me shiver. One of two others did also. The stuff from Japan wasn’t even carbonated!
After that was the gift shop. It was decently sized and I liked a lot of the stuff in there. I made sure I had a decent chunk of time for that so I wouldn’t have to rush through it. I ended up buying some over-priced stuff but oh well. I bought a simply red t-shirt with Coca Cola in white across it so I look like a big soda can. It’s a heavy shirt which is decent. I bought some sleep wear pants. I didn’t see a changing room and bought large. They hang about 6 inches past my foot upon later discovery! And I bought a soda can glass Christmas tree ornament to go along with my Coca Cola Christmas tree ball. I find the red of the ornaments very striking and eye pleasing.
After that I headed off back to my hotel regretting I didn’t have time for the CNN tour. I grabbed my bags and headed for the MARTA for my trip home. While rather hot and humid the walk & ride to the airport was simple enough. I had a little trouble checking in out of ignorance though. Still, I got through it without much trouble. I did find out my flight was leaving a bit earlier than expected so I was glad that I gave myself a comfortable margin to get to my plane.
The trip home was fine and I got the window seat again which was cool. I was smart and kept my glass ornament in my hand after I got on the plane. This guy showed up with this MASSIVE backpack. This thing was like something you would use for several days of hiking. He shoved and shoved and shoved it in the overhead compartment until it finally fit. I was so happy I didn’t keep my ornament in my backpack. Later I noticed both my music CD’s cases were damaged like they had taken a severe blow. I can’t recall if I had them in my suitcase of my backpack. At least the CDs themselves were fine.
My ended ended arriving home and heading out to my car. I started my car and it shrugged in half life before dying. Uh-oh. I tried again and it made a clicking noise. Dead battery. I called my parents house for my brother who knows about these things. I got some guy to try and give me a jump but it didn’t work. So under advice I wandered around looking for the service people of the garage. They gave me a ride back to my car and jumped it no problem with a big pick-up. I was on my way home with only about a 50 minute delay which was not so bad.
Since this is just over 5 pages long I’ll end this here. But I still have my battery to write about, my training on first shift that starts tomorrow which is Monday. I’m also a little down that I’m not at the local air show because it’s a gorgeous day in the upper 70’s and sunny and the sky is a radiant blue and I hear airplanes very close but just out of sight flying around. Doh! It’s also opening day for most football teams in the NFL and my two fantasy teams are ready to go! And my baseball team is clinging to an 8-6 lead in the wild card play-off race in my fantasy league and today will determine if I’m eliminated or move on.
Okay, done for now but the full tale has not been told!
posted by DungeonMasterJim at 9:42 AM
1 Comments:
I'm just jealous, all around.
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