May 30

After getting off work semi-late and hanging out with the peeps as the sew and DDR in the living room, I decided to retire to the bedroom for some shut eye, especially since last year I got 2 hours of sleep prior to the drive and didn't sleep but about 10 hours during the whole con.

May 31

Morning creeped into my eyes...or actually my ears. The lovely sound of my alarm clock going BING BING BING just eases me out of bed, with shock. I creeped to the bathroom, did my business, got dressed, grabbed the camera and checked out the bodies strung across the living room. I love watching friends scurry like cockroaches for the smallest patches of shadows hoping to hide from the light. Soon enough, a simple reminder of what awaited us in Dallas got everyone up, except Sean. I had to knock him around a bit as usual. I called Eric to make sure he was getting ready, alas...he was. We all got around and I went on my way to pick up Jermane, who had stayed at his house that night. Picked him up, joked around in the truck and came back and headed over to Eric's with Sean. We talked to Eric for a second and told Sean to load his shit up into Eric's car...Sean came back with a question. "The white one over there or the one with the flat?" he said. My immediate response was "NO F*CKING WAY!". Sure enough, Eric had a flat, and he was pretty disheartened. We eventually got him some fix-a-flat and followed him up to Discount Tire. While inexpensive, they took their time. Our schedule had been pushed back by about 4 hours. We didn't get out of Wichita Falls until I'd say, 11 or so. We made our usual stop at the gas station and went on our way. The ride down there was more relaxing and fun and kinda made us forget about the morning delema...but for some reason, I had a feeling that 13 was an unlucky number and would prove that this A-kon would have some problems. We arrived at the con at 12:45 and the 4 room peeps (Eric, Jermane, Ryan and myself) went to get our rooms and the others got in line for our badges. We were in line for about 10 minutes, not bad. We finally got to the check in and were informed we would have to step to the side. 15 minutes later, someone noticed us and checked us in. This guy would prove to be the biggest pain in my ass the rest of the con. He informed me in only had 2 rooms reserved when the previous night I had confirmed I still had 3. We tacked another room on there for 1 night, that wasn't the bad part though. I reserved our room 7-8 months prior to the con for a reason...perhaps to get the rooms I needed and not on the top floor. What happens...I get the top floor rooms with 1 bed in each room. We got 2 of the rooms and were told to come back in an hour (2:30) to get the room...which funny....it was attached to my room. Pissed off, but not torn down by it, we went looking for our friends and found them...broke the news to them, then headed up to the room. After we made sure the keys worked we went to our cars, via playing Frogger across the street, to and fro. well everyone except Marcus, he ran off somewhere so I had to carry his luggage. We put out stuff up in the rooms, and everyone else went to do there thing in the dealers rooms while I went with Jermane to see if his room was ready. Still not ready. Yay. I feel like this is only going to get worse. In the mean time, we did some shopping and went and ate. Spats between friends, but nothing big. We ate at a really crappy sit down place and hurried back to the hotel for the concert. We got there early enough to see the opening ceremony and that was ok. A marriage proposal and stuff...the voice actor for Goldenboy was there...but he dissappointed us and didn't say anything like "LIFE IS STUDY!". Blah blah blah, concert! While we did get seperated, we gathered up front. After much waiting it began, and I must say, it's one of the best concerts I've been to. Duel Jewel was great! They are such a good live band. I prefer them live to the studio album. If they released a live CD, I'd buy it sure nuff. I got most of it on tape and would have gotten more except these girls kept hitting my camera with their heads and knocked the battery out that the camera started to freak....I ended up missing my favorite song Pray to Gray. Dammit! Those damn girls were annoying as hell too, they kept shaking their Hide plushes and yelling Hide and Gackt. Now...I dunno what kinda respect that is, but I think that was rude as hell to yell another group or musician's name like that to another group playing for you. They weren't fans of J-Rock in general, just a particular band or two and have no love for the music, or else they wouldn't have made the comments they did about "This is as close as I'll get to Gackt, so I might as well enjoy it!" WTF?! I bet they walked out thinking "Damn, I feel like an ass now cause they rocked and I didn't even consider it, I didn't go to enjoy them or J-Rock, I went so I could say I saw a J-Rock band. (Note: We ran into the same girls and they never said Thank You once for us letting them in front of us cause they were shorter...short blonde hair dyke!) The concert rocked and Jen was supposed to get a drumstick, but fate cheated her! We got back to the rooms and commensed in oooh-ing and aw-ing about the concert and soon started to play a drinking game. We drank responsibly and it was fun. Funny stuff happened. Jermane played some cups like they were drums, very dramatically througout the whole ordeal...it was pretty funny. Soon after most of everyone decided to go to bed, while a few of us went down to play some games and Clint and I tried to watch DNA^2 but we realized we were pretty tired, so we headed back up for some slumber time.

June 1

Waking up that morning, I remember having the first feeling of a hang over I've ever had. Actually...it wasn't even a hang over, I just woke up kinda groggy with a weak stomache. I felt better like 10 minutes later. We all got around and Jen decided not to cosplay as a chobit...which kinda made me sad cause she looked great! I myself didn't get to finish my costume and was unable to cosplay as Aoshi Shinomori or Gai Daogoji. Next year though...next year. Anyhow, we got around and decided on lunch and Clint went down to get the number for pizza and couldn't find it, but he said he could find the number in the book and call it in. I had gotten word that Craig had found a stand with alot of pins for sale...and that's what I was lookin for...pins...damnation! I decided I had to run down there and see what they had. Clint got mad and some things happened and were said but everyone got over it later on. Shit just hit the fan and it was kinda weird cause they could have been handled better earlier. Anywho, we all had fun having a pillow fight and wrestling around later on and everyone had fun. It was hilarious and Jermane got it all on tape. Come to think about it, I never did get to see it...hmmm. Sean then got pissed off and stormed off cause something of his almost got messed up but that was resolved at like 3 in the morning. We decided to check the hospitality room cause we were killing time before we decided to kidnap Sean with wet bathtowels, which never happened. 13 just wasn't a good number this year. We then went to the Gamestop room, and it blew. The guys in there were pricks, and I work for the company and they acted like I didn't know shit but I fixed their X-Box's up cause they were freaking out. CHUMPS! Anywho, we did that for a bit...I killed everyone on Halo and then we tried some video rooms, changed our minds, went back to the rooms where a few of went down to watch some videos but stopped into the pajama party to see what was goin on. We vacated and tried to watch Riding Bean but Marcus and I fell asleep and Clint was the trooper who made it through. NOTE: The video rooms weren't all that great this year....but the con was better than last years! Kim left right before Riding Bean started and was gonna go to bed. After Riding Bean we headed back up to the room and everything was cool as hell until then. Something happened and again, some things were said and before I knew it, something bad had happened. Clint decided to leave the con that morning at like 4 and later came back to talk to Ryan. That didn't go well and Clint left again. So what am I to do. Eric had to leave to go to work Saturday morning and Craig was at his parents. On top of that, I got my bill and it was wrong.

June 2 (morning)

I went down to fix my bill, and I won't go off on too much of a tangent like I already have with things, but that was the worst service I've gotten for asking why I'm getting screwed over on my bill and my rooms. I was very very very polite and yet, the guy talked down to me and was an jerk. I find that it will be difficult to be at that hotel next year if he is the one at the counter, I will ask for someone else. We had one car. I tried to get in touch with Craig cause we had 4 people without a ride cause Clint was the other car. I got ahold of Eric, and before I confirmed it with him, he was already in Decature on his way to pick him up. We truly appreciated him and we stayed a little while longer and eventually left for home. The ride back was kinda akward but things got better. I'd say that the con itself was great, but it was people that made it sour...and the main part was to have fun with the people I cherish and call my friends ^_^ Next year, I'm not gonna set my heart on certain things. I'm not gonna work to hang out with people cause that's not how it should be.