Dragon*Con 2008

I’d been a little wishy-washy about attending Dragon*Con this year. Last year was my first, and though I thought it was okay, I wasn’t sure I would give it another try. Well, I’m SO happy that I did! I had a complete blast and I’m so sad it’s over. It’s been a while since I felt genuine sadness that a con was over. In recent times, it’s mostly been a relief, and probably because I worked those cons. Dragon*Con went by too fast and I really miss all my friends. I certainly enjoyed the con more this year versus last year, mainly because I did much more this time.

I had, as usual, absolutely wonderful roomies: seapea, jaesha, oanimation, and mad_brilliant_. Thank you mad_brilliant_ for having the foresight to book in advance! Also, all their all-night efforts certainly paid off, and I’m so incredibly thankful to them for that.

It was awesome seeing angstchic, eyesthatslay, musing_mia, psubrat, zoonut, vampgaia, thefangirl, lightdependent, jameslovin1, ladyanne04, rock_room, soulmate815, and zeta0497. I hope I’m not forgetting anyone… Likewise, I really missed not seeing sandy_s.

Over the weekend I took TONS of photos of all the panels I attended. I’m not kidding when I say tons, either. I definitely went overboard and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get through all of the photos. Especially since I have to send my computer in for repair this week and oh yeah… that little thing called school (and let’s not even mention that I’m nowhere near settled into my new location). I’ll try my best, though, and hopefully I’ll be able to get out as many photos as possible.

Friday
I arrived early morning Friday to Atlanta, and since my roomies had arrived the day before, I had to go on a little hunt for them. After freshening up and getting my registration over with (the latter taking no more than 30 minutes), I went to join jameslovin1 at the queue for the An Hour in the Buffyverse panel with James Marsters. The con people overseeing the ballroom where James’ Q&A was to be held opened up the room really early, so we went in and got ourselves some nice seats. Since my roomies were in line to get tickets to James’ special party, I tried to get them some decent seats within the first 4 rows or so, and considering the whole front row was reserved exclusively for handicapped… not too bad.

While I did that, oanimation secured me a spot at James’ party. I have really awesome friends, don’t I? When oanimation returned, she told me she hadn’t gotten my party ticket, the meanie. But of course she’d gotten it and we were numbers 14 and 15. Yay! At that point, I really hoped this party was going to be worth it. I’d had extreme reservations about attending the party and I was firmly set on not going. But, it was the only concert James was scheduled to do, and I really like hearing him sing live. After many chats with oanimation, we’d decided that if it was possible to get a ticket, we’d go, but if not, we’d be okay and instead hold a PotC viewing party in our room. Since we got tickets, though… :o)

James’ first panel, a solo Q&A, was actually pretty good. I was expecting repeats of questions asked time and again, and while there were a couple that I’d heard, several questions were interesting. What were the questions and answers? Pfft. Beats me. All I remember is enjoying the panel. The other thing I do remember? The relief at choosing not to do a photo op with James that day. I didn’t mind that he wore a red and white soccer jersey to the con… I just wasn’t very keen on having a photo taken with it.

After James’ very entertaining Q&A, jaesha and mad_brilliant_ went in search of the line for Nathan Fillion’s and Alan Tudyk’s panel. Talkie (is that right?) told me that the panel had been moved to that same room being used for James’ panel, so I led the girls to the line, which surprisingly, was not very long. However, on the way to get in line, I saw angstchic, eyesthatslay, ladyanne04, and musing_mia, whom we ended up chatting with until the doors were open for the Firefly panel.

Nathan and Alan are a hoot. Seriously. LOVED them. What was said exactly totally escapes me, but I’m SO glad I got to see them on stage that first day. They just have such amazing chemistry and very obviously get along well on a personal level. It was great!

After the Q&A’s were over… I have absolutely no idea what we did. I remember we only did those 2 panels and then had a break until 7pm when we went to get our photo ops with Michael Rosenbaum (OMG, SO PRETTY!!!). Hmm. I do recall I went looking for zoonut and chatted for a bit… Oooh!!! We chatted and she walked me over to James’ autograph line! That’s what we did. I had my favorite photo from the San Diego Indie Music Festival printed out as an 11×14 and I wanted him to sign it. Right.

While James signed my photo, I asked him if he’d had a busy summer. He told me he did… that he’d been busy for the past year and a half, but had taken the last 4 weeks off to relax. I told him I envied all his time off, but that I was glad that he’d finally gotten some rest. He responded that yeah, it was good but now he was ready to get back to work. I asked if there was anything in the works, but he said he had nothing lined up. As I was getting my photo back from him, zoonut came up behind me and asked me if I’d told him. I looked at her blankly and asked her if I’d told him what. She then turned to James and she told him I’d taken the photo. He responded that it was a great picture, for which I thanked him and told him I’d taken it at the SDIMF. I told him that concert was my favorite and in my opinion, one of the best ever, not only because he sounded fantastic, but because of the nice wide audience he had. He completely agreed with me!

After the autographs, my roomies and I had to figure out the dinner situation (and holy crap! It wasn’t until then that I realized I hadn’t eaten all day, save for a couple of snacks. Oops!). We’d agreed that we’d get pizza, but weren’t sure where we could order it from. We weren’t even at our hotel at the time, but we went to the Hilton’s concierge and asked if they knew where we could order pizza. The guy was very nice and gave us a prepared list of pizzerias in the area as well as a Chinese food restaurant. Extremely convenient and useful information. I do have to say… I hate ordering over the phone. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I love that for most places, you can order online, but we didn’t have that option (what with no internet), so I had to order over the phone, which took much longer than necessary.

Once the little pizza debacle was over, it was pretty much time to do our photo ops with Michael (*swoons*). Have I mentioned yet that he’s SO PRETTY? Guh. Could just stare at that man for hours. And he looks so much better with hair, too. When I went up for my photo op, I didn’t really have all that much to say. Before taking the photo, Michael told me to smile. I told him I was. When I saw the printed copy the next day, Michael was smiling in the photo too. Yay!

Photos taken, oanimation, seapea, jaesha, and I proceeded to our room to await our yummy Papa John’s pizza. Nummy.

I uploaded a handful of photos for the panels I mentioned above. I’m really, really hoping I can get through at least some of my images before I have to send my computer away, but if not… they’ll eventually be up!

First Panel: An Hour in the Buffyverse with James Marsters

Second Panel: An Hour in the Firefly Verse with Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion

Next time: Saturday!!!