September 2005 Archives

Well the hurricane was less than expected. At least here in Dallas, we didn't even get any rain. It did get very windy for a while. I think eveyone has thier answer for why people could have possibly stayed in New Orleans eventhough they new the Hurricane was coming. (The first one.) Some people choose to take the risk, wait it out at home and hope the Hurricane goes another way,rather than sit in traffic for 32 hours! Which is exactly what happened with Rita and Houston, but of course, not Katrina and New Orleans.

I ended up seeing a lot of movies this weekend. Flight Plan, which was ludicruisly bad, and 40 year old virgin which was really funny, like old School Funny. Avoid Flight Plan at all costs. It was like someone said,
"Hey let's make a movie about someone's kid who gets kinapped on an airplane!"
"Okay what about the rest of the movie?"
"That's all we need it'll be great! We'll get Jodi Foster!"

It's getting a little crazy around here. People are coming in from south Texas to get out of the way of the hurricane. Last night, when I came home from work, there were lines at some of the gas stations. I'm not sure why, maybe people are worried that they'll run out. I passed by some today that had more than a few people at them but no lines. I heard one woman on the radio saying that she had just arrived here from Houston. She had left 32 HOURS AGO! That's just nuts. I don't even know what to make of this.

Well I am in the midst of all my travel plans now. I was in Tulsa last weekend, then I was home for one night, drove to Oklahoma City for work on Monday, drove back last night, and now I'm heding to Austin for the weekend tomorrow. I think my dog is getting ready to disown me. Luckily, I get to be home all next week. Mostly cause I insited on no work travel that week so I don't miss my next Oncology appointment.

I watched the season premier for Lost last night. I wasn't sure how they were going to pull off a seocnd season, but they did a pretty good job. One thing they did that I liked was that there was no illogical "passage of time" between the end of the season Fianle and the new season. It picks up the second that the finale left off. I won't say anything more cause Ninsi hasn't seen it yet. I DVR'd it and the premeire of Invasion. I saw a good review for invasion but I haven't watched it yet.

At least it seems that way. I saw Interpol last Friday. I'd never been a huge fan of their music but the live show was great. Bands are often much better live than recorded IMO. Last night I went to the Foo Fighters/Weezer concert. You have to hand it to these two. Eventhough I don't own any albums by either band, I knew almost every song they played. There were even a few songs that Weezer played that I didn't realize were theirs.

Next weekend I'm goign to ACLfest. There are so many bands there I have no idea who I'll see. Apparenlty, I'm also going rock climbing. I've never tried it before but I have lots of friends that are very into it. I forsee tragedy.

Saturday morning, most of us got up to see the Parade, those of us that didn't regretably left thier radio on and were awoken by this conversation:

*crakle**crakle*
Me: MONKETO!
Monekto:Konichiwa Bitches!
*crakle*

The Parade was cool, seeing the 80+ stormtroopers march down the streets of Atlanta is always fun.

Afterwards, at breakfast/lunch, Monketo serenaded everyone with his own personal rendition of "Every Sperm is Sacred."

That Afternoon I went the the Farscape Panel and heard the ladies of Farscape talk about thier experiences on the show.

That evening it was time for the Stonecutters!

The reactions ranged from "What the fuck are you guys?" to one guy who actually had the Stonecutter's Theme on his IPOD.

And then of course, to top of the evening, Ninsi won Miss SpatCave 2005!

That's a story in itself. Some of us did not wish to wait in line for the competition so were were sitting outside. The security gaurd decided that I could go in since I was dressed as I Stonecutter. Well theere was no place to sit, so I just told Phlome we were waiting outside and left. The the gaurd decides that if one us (meaning Bren) would give him a hug we could all go in. Well Demi obligled him and we all got to go in and see Ninsi win. I started taking pictures when we went in. Unfortunatley, this was not allowed. Some guy dressed as a gay pirate threated to have me de-conventioned if I didn't stop. I did, and it suddenly dawned on me why Donut and Phlome had been frantically waving thier arms at me up to that point.

Sunday, a large portion of us left the convention to other things for a bit, most of the guys headed to play golf and the girls went to little five points to check out some stores.

We wrapped up the convention with the now traditional Sunday night Cruxshadows show. They'll be here in Dallas on Sept 30th as well!

Getting out of the hotel was a nightmare the next day. We spent 3 hours and walked down 17 flights of stairs in order to stow our bags for 2 hours. Next year, I'm staying till Tuesday. I need the recovery day anyway.

Okay here are some selected DragonCon Pictures.

I arrived in Atlanta on Thursday night with Ninsi and Phlome at what seemed very late for leaving Dallas at 5:30. Didn't do much except sleep because we got dropped off at the Hyatt at 7:30 am the next morning. Despite the fact they we were here early AND I reserved the rooms back in January AND I had requested in advance that they all be on the same floor and close to the lobby, we got 2 rooms on the 17th floor and one on the 9th floor. So the Hyatt sucks but so does the Marriot and you can't expect too much when you have 3 20 story hotels that are completly full for all 3 days of the Con.

Other memebers of the crew began arriving around noon and trickled in the rest of the day. Three brave souls drove from DFW despite the gas shortages. I caught Anne McAffery's talk on Pern. She mentioned that there will be a Pern Movie soon, and she couldn't tell us who was directing it but mentioned that he was an academy award winnning director who likes to shoot films in New Zealand (wink wink nudge nudge) I then stood in line with 3000 other people (only for about 15 minutes though) to see the cast of Firefly. Nothing new really from that, but they did show a cool clip. I also picked up the Firefly RPG in the Dealers room. Looks like it has some promise but it needs some serious sourcebook support IMO.

Friday night nearly the entire crew went to dinner at a very mediorce mexican place then changed into Friday's costumes. I wore my Neo costume for about an hour then gave up as it involved a coat that was really hot. Reptile called around midnight. The phone conversation went something like this:

Reptile: "We're out front, come help us carry stuff in."
Me: "Okay, but we're lit."
Reptile: "That's fine just get out here."

We managed to get thier stuff up to the room. Reptile had to berate his way past security. They would not let you in the hotel if you didn't have a room key or a con badge. After presenting security with the argument of "I don't have a badge or a key BECAUSE I JUST GOT HERE." Security decided to let him in. Crazy. For some reason, we also weren't supposed to bring outside food or drinks into the hotel. Also crazy. I assure you we did no such thing. I personally did not walk right past security with two shopping bags.

Things kinda would down at that point....continued tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll have some pics up soon.

I'm back! It was great as always! BIggest group we've ever had at Dragoncon so far. The Stonecutters were a huge hit and Ninsi is Miss Spatcave 2005! I'm beat so an expanded report will be coming soon.

Well today is the Day. I fly out for Atlanta at 5pm and then hit the hotel first thing in the morning. I'm taking the laptop with me but I doubt I'll blog too much while I'm there.