Well..okay, it's January, a time for new beginnings and it's just two weekends ago that I went to another convention (Oyahocon '05). What does this mean? Time for me to blog again! (And spout [possibly] false promises that I'll do it more regularly.) So the new year has flown by for me so far. I can't believe that January is so close to being over. Like so many others, every year I make a resolution. Some work out better than others. My last years resolution to blog more didn't really work out... my resolution to get out of debt did though it didn't actually finally happen till this month. This year I've resolved to 1) exercise more (so far...not happening I need to set up my ddr pad again) and 2) plan ahead more. The second is actually working out. I've already scheduled all my days off for the next year and made myself a little dayplanner with extra paper. Every day I make a to-do list and I've actually been pretty good at actually doing most of the things on it. Though "Blog about Con" has been on my list since the 20th, but at least it stayed on the list. Okay, so I guyes you guys actually want to hear about the con? or at least thats what I tell myself because I know people look at this and since my day-to-day life is pretty boring I have to figure that it's for the con reports. So, my trip to Ohayocon 2005 started off pretty rocky. I find it rather amusing that the trip to each convention seems to be an adventure all it's own. I've come to expect it. I left my house friday morning around 5:00 am for my flight out at 6:30. I had a pretty simple itinerary. Leave Syracuse at 6:30, fly into Pittsburgh for a short layover and get to Columbus Ohio by about 10. When I got to the airport I checked through pretty quickly (a minor hitch with the carryon luggage I had full of metal buttons. When the security people look at the buttons they always ask..."Do you sell these are are they all yours?" what would I do with 40 each of each button??) When I got to the gate I was supposed to leave from I was called to the podium and asked if I could switch to an earlier flight that was supposed to go to Philadelphia and then to Columbus at 9:30. My checked bag would be removed and follow me. Sounded good to me. Too bad it didn't work out that way. The weather was bad, it was snowing and cold so they had to de-ice the plane before we could leave. But the hose on the truck deicing the plane broke and the only other truck was servicing another plane so we had to wait for it to finish and refill. At this point I fell asleep (before we even took off), and when I woke up we were arriving in Philly... at 10. =/ I'm kind of glad I was out of it. Apparently it was a rough flight and there was a girl who obviously had flight anxiety crying about how we were all going to die. I felt bad for her, but if I'd had to be aware of her crying the whole flight I probably would have hated her. So of course I missed my connection and had to get on the next one at 10:30, that flight was slightly delayed because the flight crew was on another plane... that was late arriving. -_- Anyway, I finally get to Columbus around 1 pm. My checked bag did not arrive with me. It went to Pittsburgh. >_< I gave my hotel's address to the baggage man and mentioned that my name wasn't on the hotel's room and gave them my cellphone number as a contact number when my bag arrived. It was supposed to be there by 3. So then I set about actually getting to the convention. Lynn (the friend who convinced me to go to Ohayocon) had given me a number to call about getting picked up, which I thought was really nice. Of course, thats when I was supposed to be getting in 10 so I figured that things might be different now. So I talked to a guy (after getting his cellphone voice mail several times which was a long clip from Bebop...Spike talking about the white cat)and he had no idea, so I called the hotel to find out if they had a shuttle. They didn't but there was a hotel shuttle that serviced several of the hotels that only cost me $9, so that was a minor issue. Of course, before getting that far I had to figure out which hotel I was staying at and it's phone number, unfortunately that information I'd put into my checked baggage. I made a few quick phonecalls and finally got ahold of Sandy at work who got the hotel information despite the fact that the con website had exceeded it's bandwith. (!) So I got to the convention and found my table pretty easily. There didn't seem to be much organization to artist alley (no place to check in, ect) but there didn't seem to be much need for it either. Everything was clearly marked, so I just set my stuff up. Unfortunately, not having my bag meant not having over half of my merchandise and all of my displays, but I did have my buttons. So I set them up and my little painted figurines. Happily my little figurines brought people over to my boring table, which was especially good since early friday the tables on either side of me back in my corner were completely empty. I finally met up with Lynn a little later (after talking to the phone number guy one more time and asking him to pass on a message). Lynn and I didn't get to talk much the whole convention as she was super busy. This caused a little problem later on when I wanted to go up to the room and couldn't find her, but finally I just decided to camp my butt outside the hotel room and one of the like 8 people in the room came up around 1am and let me in. Once I'd gotten a little sleep I was in a much better mood. I honestly don't remember much about friday because I sat zoning out at my table most of the day. The only thing I remember was making an Alice from Alice 19th cosplayer's day by actually recognizing where she was from. I think more people would have realized if she'd done one of the fancier costumes, but she just did Alice's jumper with a mirror (and she had the hair down.) The second day was pretty fun, I finally got my bag first thing that morning and the three other tables in my row were filled with nice and friendly people. The day really flew by, it seemed it was night-time before I realized it. I did get to make another cosplayer's day, a girl dressed as Suppie from Card Captor Sakura. She was so happy I knew who she was and knew the name right off the bat. She said a couple of people had recognized her as the other 'cat thing' from CCS, but no one else had guessed she was Suppie. I also got to meet Scott Mcniel. Because apparently the guy sitting at the table next to me, Morgan, has been going to Cons forever and knows everyone. It was nice sitting next to him for that reason. Scott came by to talk to him and Morgan gave him some hot wings, blazing hot wings. At first Scott was like, wow, those have a little bite to them... then he was tearing and losing his voice. It was pretty funny. He was pretty friendly and very approcable. I said hello and thats about it. Unfortunately I blanked and I couldn't remember a single one of his roles, other than that I knew he was in something I liked. =/ What a miss opportunity. If I'd known he was Kouga from Inuyasha I totally would have begged an autograph off of him. I think he really got Kouga's attitude down. Usually I don't like the English voices of characters I really liked in the Japanese, but while the portrayal is very different I think it got the character dead on. Also going on at this con, starting on Saturday was what came to be dubbed by the other con-goers as "God Con." It was actually a religious youth group conference called "Dare to Share." What it meant was christian youth groups and their chaperone's from all over Ohio were converging at the convention center and mixing with the general insanity of the anime convention. The cosplayers got really interesting reactions, and so did some of the artists. There was one girl dressed as a manga only character from Hellsing. I'm not familiar with the character, but it's a werewolf who wears a Nazi Uniform. She had doggie ears and tail and of course, a nazi armband with the swastika on it. I hadn't thought much of the costume when I saw it, it was very revealing and the ears and tail was actually kind of cute, the nazi costume honestly didn't make much of an impact. The Japanese dress their villians in variations of it so often it didn't really register. But she said she could hear the God Con-goers going "OMG a NAZI!" every time she went everywhere and a couple people told her she was endangering her soul. And I saw some of the eyes pop at the Felicia from Darkstalker's cosplayer. She was dressed pretty much like this cosplayer, except without the fleshtone bodysuit and she looked like...12. She was a tiny little girl (I think she was actually older then she seemed and was just very short.) Jen, a member of the rosettastone list, was visiting my table with her young daughter when she walked by and they both did a little eye-popping of their own. Jen extracted a promise from her daughter that she would NEVER dress that way. Anyway... The God Con people apparently harrassed some of the cosplayers and some other congoers got preached to, but I kept getting the curious. Artist Alley was very accessible and had a lot of random traffic from the curious who weren't actually registered. I spent very little time at actual con activities, but I didn't see much badge checking going on at all, it was very laid back. The God Con'ers I had we mostly very enthusiastic about this whole 'anime thing.' I spent a lot of time explaining what anime was, why we were having a convention about it and why people were dressing up. Apparently I was the one with the "Ask Me, I'm friendly!" sign on me... or perhaps it was, "Ask me, I'm not scary!" I also got a lot of people who wanted to share that they did know what anime was. I got one girl who was really just plain cute, she was so eager to share that she'd watched an anime and really liked it. It was called "Cowboy Bebop" and she wanted to know if I'd ever heard of it. ^^; I said, "Oh, yeah... I'm familiar with that one..." I didn't have any bad experiences with them, but I know the girl next to me, who drew pretty boy angels and demons, got asked why her art was all influenced by evil. -_- It was an interesting little addendum to the convention. I closed up my table around 11 and found Lynn in the Otaku Choice video room, I got the room key and dumped my stuff and then came back down. The Otaku Choice event was really neat, they had like 200 video choices for the fans to choose from and everybody got to pick at the end of each show what would be watched next. I came in to it when they were playing Panda, Go Panda, and there was a whole mystery science theater 3000 thing going on with the audience. I'll never see it the same way again. We then watched the first ep of Technolyzer (soooo wwwweeeiiird) and then some Invader Zim. It was a good time. ^_^ There was some talk about making the Otaku Choice and all day thing instead of a night block event and I think that's a Good Idea. It was Lynn's baby and she pulled it off really well. I stayed as long as I could stay up... It's here that I should mention that the crew I was staying with were very much party people. I got one of the guys to escort me up to the room, at around 3 am. I was the first one back. I took the opportunity to take a shower and another of the guys came in. We grabbed beds and slept. Sometime later the rest of the crew managed to get in, and I had a very sleepy conversation with Lynn that I don't really remember. (other then agreeing that yes, I was glad I came.) The next morning I got up around nine, as did the guy that had come in right after me. He shook his head at the people passed out like corpses around the room and shook his head as we were leaving around 10, "We sleep at night." He said. I agreed, but it was more like, we sleep before dawn... In the elevator down I once again got to meet Scott Mcniel, he seemed fascinated with my buttons that I was wearing on my black cape, or perhaps it was my chest that they were pinned on. (J/K) "That's a lot of pins." He commented and I agreed. A lot of people say that when they see me with all my button designs on. I have over 50 designs now, so it does look quite impressive when they're all on. A Naruto Cosplayer (not Naruto, but another character from it) asked if I knew when the dealer's room was open because she was looking for something to do. I said, "No but you can come see the fine artists in Artist Alley and buy stuff from us." [Big Smile] Everyone in the elevator (always crowded at a con) liked that and laughed. Scott said that it was very slick and he was impressed. ^_^ Sunday in artist alley was pretty slow. Morgan, the very nice guy at the next table, watched my table while I ducked into the dealer's room for the first time. I did a quick circle and spent a lot of money. (Well not too much really.) I bought a hentai fruits basket doujin (A Kyoru, the only fb doujin I found). I also bought a chococat purse and cellphone case for my sister. I bought some Fruits Basket picture frames too. I'm pretty sure they were a bootleg item, but they were clever and not a knock-off so I bought them anyway. They were these rubber animal bobble heads that had Fruits Basket portraits inside. The portraits were from the postcard calender, but the animals bobbles were cute and the idea was clever so I didn't mind paying the money I paid for them. (they were quite cheap.) I got a Yuki Mouse, a Haru Cow, a Rin Horse, a Kagura Pig, a Hatori Dragon (my favorite, the dragon was super cute) a Momiji rabbit, and Ritsu Monkey. They were sold out of the Kyou Cat and the Shigure Dog (darnit!). I don't know if they had a Kisa Tiger, Ayame Snake (how would you make a snake bobble head?) or any of the other characters. I also bought something I thought of was just hilarious. It was a small stationary set bought from Kawaii Gift's booth, something called Parasite Pals. Click the link to see pictures of the cute pink case with Holly Hostess and her Parasite Pals Dig Dug the head Louse (lice), Blinky the Eyelash Mite, Zzeezz the Bed Bug and Tickles the Tapeworm. The best part was the tag let me quote: Here is the girl with small friends of life present for always. Some irritation she finds with them, but much fun and love is to be shared! Hope for you to enjoy the friends as like Holly. The good fun of Parasite Pals are bring us together. First time I've ever heard of Parasites bringing people together. But then I've never seen parasites as cute as these either. Tickles the Tapeworm is my favorite. I closed up around 4 or so, most of the other artists were already gone. Before then the Suppie from Saturday came back and was very disappointed to find out that I hadn't seen her masquerade skit. So instead she performed one of the songs for me, a very cute song about Takoyaki. ^_^ She danced with a fan and everything, so cute! I love enthusiastic fans! She also sang two other songs for me "What do to with a problem like Kikyo" (sung to What do you do with a problem like Maria from Sound of music) and "My anime things" (sung to my favorite things, also from sound of music) Both had really clever lyrics that I wish I could remember. Suppie girl, if you're out there, please email me! The flight home was very uneventful, thought I had a pleasant conversation with a guy I know I've seen at other conventions. I think I've remembered everything that was interesting at the con, but if I think of anything else I'll be sure to mention it. Oh, I also met several Fruitygroup and LemonGroup Members, it was all very nice to meet you. Feel free to email me anytime!