All about last weekend.

First, I was a bad money-spender. I went shopping on Thursday before I packed. I bought new shoes at Tradehome for $44 including cleaner and Scotch-guard-like spray. (These shoes have started falling apart [stiching coming out] after only one week, so we'll see how their exchange/refund stuff works.) I also spent about $70 on clothes and other stuff, about $30 of which was stuff like body wash, etc., that I needed to get anyway.

There was some sort of problem with my timecard getting to StL so I didn't get paid last week. It ended up not hitting my account until this Wednesday with this week's pay, so thank goodness I had the credit card for such emergencies.

So histrygrrl and I were going to meet at the Wal-Mart in Ames. I left straight from work on Friday at 4pm, expecting we'd hit Ames around 6:30 together. Well, there were traffic issues for both of us, but mine cleared after only about 15 minutes. So I got to Wal-Mart about 6:45, called and found I had about an hour to wait. I went into the store to get a few things that I'd forgotten. I figure if I put the receipt on the visor, they wouldn't have me towed. :) I ended up spending about $90 in there. Well, histrygrrl recently got sucked into Magic: the Gathering, so I figured I'd get a few cards in case she wanted to play. Ends up she didn't bring hers, so now I have about $30 worth of MtG cards that I didn't have before. ;P No biggy, maybe I'll start putting up lots of all my cards on eBay or something. So, around 8pm, she arrives, and we have the jumping-up-and-down reunion! Yay! We talked the entire way up, catching up like we hadn't seen each other in 10 years or something. ;D We stop at Perkins and it was just like those nights back in Cornell except we ordered more than just coffee and we didn't stay for 6 hours and there were just the 2 of us, and now we're in our 30's instead of our 20's, but other than that, exactly the same!

We got to the Sheraton and CONvergence around midnight. We met , went in and paid our $55 each to get our badges, dropped off our stuff in the room, then went around to some of the cabanas and the parties, ate a little, drank a little (Mt Dew for me, scotch and whatever else the doctor had for the others), played some DDR on an awesome system that someone had brought (this was used on the main floor in the DDR tournament on Saturday). I was made to feel like I had never even played it before. :O We saw Klingons and Agents and Van Helsing, and Vampires, and Fairies, and Comic-Book Guys, and Anime-freaks, and Wizards, and Xenaphiles, and X-Men, and so much more. It was awesome. I think davedujour put it best when he said "You're always going to be missing something you want to see or do." There was just so much stuff. It was great, and next year, I'm going there prepared and with money to blow. I bought a black wig (like the one Uma Thurman wore in Pulp Fiction, and wore that around all day on Saturday. It was quite hot! That's hot as in sexy and hot as in conducive to high temperatures. The masquerade was awesome. The rave was great, and glowsticks were included. I was not offered E. :( && :) We even did the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More with Feeling sing-a-long. So, now I've been told that I must view the entire DVD sets of Firefly, Buffy, and maybe even Angel. I will do what I can.

Anyway, total sleep for the weekend amounted to about 6-8 hours. All that caffeine and sugar in my system broke my circadian clock and I wasn't about to fix it until last night/this morning/early this afternoon. It was great to see histrygrrl, davedujour, and Tony again. I didn't get to see eowynmn or tiyanath who were both supposed to be there, but it was huge and finding even people you knew on sight was a hard thing (especially if they were in disguise or costume). anterastilis, I wish you could have come. It was so much fun!

BTW, did anyone find out what that secret 2am movie viewing was? They announced it at the Masquerade, but wouldn't give a title or any real details.

I will be signing up for next year as soon as I can online to save $25. I will be prepared with fangs, etc. ;)