It's been a while since I last wrote but definitely haven't forgotten....just not much to say at the moment. Been working a lot (no overtime, sadly) and haven't done much else but watching netflix, playing games, cooking, and working. As much as I want to promote Netflix, I'm still angry with their recent plan/price upgrades. It seems from looking online that they've lost a lot of customers due to that. We even switched our plan and may eventually cancel if we find something like hulu or amazon that may work better or is cheaper. Not sure what the CEO Reed Hastings is thinking, but we saw a video on our xbox where he apologized for the price increase and called himself arrogant...yet the prices still went up. Anywho enough about that. Next subject please...
I've been thinking of making this blog about crazy funny things our cat Fred does and renaming the blog to The Cat Lady, haha. Seriously, he is a funny animal. He's like a mixture between a cat, a dog, and a bird. He looks like a cat and meows like a cat, but he plays like a dog (i.e. he loves when i throw the ball and he will go chase it... he hasn't quite learned to bring it back yet), and he makes noises like a bird when he's happy.
In our old apartment, not quite sure how this started, but I guess one day Ben came home and had change in his pocket. Well Fred liked the sound of the jingling change, so we threw one of the coins and Fred loved it! It got to the point where all you have to do is jingle some coins and he will get in his "super ready to play" stance, you throw one of the coins (making sure he can see it being thrown), and he will chase. At the old apartment, I used to sit on the bed, throw the coins off of the bed, and he would actually bring it back to me. But somehow that theory didn't stick anywhere else, so he hasn't remembered or learned to fetch at any other time.
Here is an old picture from the old apartment when Fred found an ENORMOUS grasshopper on the other side of the sliding door:
Fred may look very calm in this picture, but he was sooooo excited!!! He loves moving/living things like lizards, squirrels, birds, grasshoppers, so this was something he was stoked about! His tail was swishing so hard, he was moving the blinds back and forth, which is why I finally had to go see what the fuss was about. But it was the biggest grasshopper I had ever seen.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Dragon*Con 2011
DragonCon was tons of fun!!! It was my first year to go and Ben's second. And it was the 25th year anniversary of how long DragonCon has been around! We left around 8 am on Thursday, September 1st, stopped at Cracker Barrel about halfway through the trip, and made it to Atlanta around 5 pm.
this is a picture of a building from the 47th floor of the marriott in downtown atlanta
The owner of Artix Entertainment (Artix) had a pizza party in his suite around 7, so yay free pizza! He apparently posted on twitter his location and about the party, so there were lots of fans that stopped by to meet him and have free pizza. It was very interesting to see these people as famous icons in the gaming community.
Friday morning, we were the first ones on the list to watch over the fan table and give out buttons and goodies to people walking by. We did very well giving out little "Day 1" ribbons...we gave out almost 600 within the 2 hours we were scheduled there! The Day 1 ribbons were little things to go on people's DragonCon badges to signify that you went to the Artix fan table each day (there were Day 2 and Day 3 ribbons as well on the subsequent days). One of the mods, Dumoose, worked on challenges from loyal fans in playing the AQW card game. It's funny how the makers of the card game have such horrible winning numbers...of course I'm sure the fans enjoy winning against one of the creators, hehe.
After "manning" the fan table, we walked around, grabbed some lunch, walked around a little more, and then went to the Artix Panel, which was from 2:30 - 5 pm. Some of the Artix Entertainment team dressed up as their in-game characters, which of course the fans LOVED! Artix had on plate mail that clinked every time he moved around. It was hilarious. Their new game Pony vs. Pony was released that day...and after playing it today, it is a pretty addictive game! It's not really anything like their other games, seeing as how most of their other games are MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games). It's still fun though....just don't listen to the intro song too long or you may go insane.
Artix fan table Day 1
Dumoose playing the AQW card game with fans
On Saturday, we enjoyed our free time, met some famous people (i.e. the girls from the hit web series The Guild, and Christopher Lloyd), and then we got to hang out with Ben's uncles that live in Atlanta and his brother and his wife who came up for DragonCon. We people watched for a while (not to sound creepy but there are a lot of cool costumes and sometimes ya just gotta sit down and watch), then we went out to eat at a nice Italian restaurant, and then we people watched some more. Oh, and before we went out to eat, Ben and I went to a panel for Boris Vallejo and his wife Julie Bell. They are famous fantasy artists, and Boris was a big inspiration to Ben when he started drawing. The panel was about how they work together being husband and wife and was really cool to learn how they got started and how they are now. Ben was able to get one of his books about Boris signed, so that was really cool!
Here's a little photo collage of cool costumes. I tried to fix the pictures using picnik, but sorry for the bad quality, they're from my phone.
Here's another collage of some guys trying to kill us. I looked worried at first but I guess when they took the picture, I was already laughing. I can't hold a serious pose for nothin'!
On Sunday, we slept in, went to the art room to admire fine art and meet Boris Vallejo again (when we met him at the panel on Saturday, Ben didn't get to tell him what an inspiration he's been, so he was able to do that at Boris's art booth). We bought a couple pieces of artwork for a couple of people... hopefully the recipients will like them. We went to the game room and played some games with Barak and Stefan. I actually can't remember what else we did on Sunday, it was definitely a day where we kinda just went with the flow with nothing planned. Apparently at the pizza party on Thursday night we were gypped out of a large number of pizzas (not sure how since we seemed to have PLENTY of pizzas on Thursday)....anywho the pizza company replaced what we were gypped, so that meant another pizza party on Sunday night! It was a lot of fun. The artists of Artix hosted a "Drink and Draw" where they drew people dressed in costume within 3 minutes, and the costumed people were able to keep 5-10 hand-drawn pictures of themselves for free (free isn't a word commonly heard at dragoncon....dragoncon: where bottled drinks can cost anywhere from $3-6 and a moderately yucky meal can cost $10. it's a lot like disney).
Monday was the day we came back home, so nothing exciting there. Overall it was a great trip and we can't wait for next year! We will probably be attempting to make some cool costumes for next year. The scariest thing we encountered at DragonCon was when we were coming up one of the escalators, the line at the top of the escalator had stopped. However, the escalator did NOT stop, forcing us all to squish into the person in front of us. When will people realize you can't stop at the end of an escalator, you must keep moving at least a little distance so others can get off. In a place where there are 30,000+ people, I guess it is hard to remember to keep moving when there are so many cool costumes and things going on. Definitely fun times! :D
Oh and by the way for those who don't know, Atlanta has a subway (Marta). We didn't go on the subway, but there is an escalator (not the same in the above paragraph) that is the absolute longest escalator I have ever seen. Here is an attempted picture of the escalator (and yes that is a pirate behind us).
this is a picture of a building from the 47th floor of the marriott in downtown atlanta
The owner of Artix Entertainment (Artix) had a pizza party in his suite around 7, so yay free pizza! He apparently posted on twitter his location and about the party, so there were lots of fans that stopped by to meet him and have free pizza. It was very interesting to see these people as famous icons in the gaming community.
Friday morning, we were the first ones on the list to watch over the fan table and give out buttons and goodies to people walking by. We did very well giving out little "Day 1" ribbons...we gave out almost 600 within the 2 hours we were scheduled there! The Day 1 ribbons were little things to go on people's DragonCon badges to signify that you went to the Artix fan table each day (there were Day 2 and Day 3 ribbons as well on the subsequent days). One of the mods, Dumoose, worked on challenges from loyal fans in playing the AQW card game. It's funny how the makers of the card game have such horrible winning numbers...of course I'm sure the fans enjoy winning against one of the creators, hehe.
After "manning" the fan table, we walked around, grabbed some lunch, walked around a little more, and then went to the Artix Panel, which was from 2:30 - 5 pm. Some of the Artix Entertainment team dressed up as their in-game characters, which of course the fans LOVED! Artix had on plate mail that clinked every time he moved around. It was hilarious. Their new game Pony vs. Pony was released that day...and after playing it today, it is a pretty addictive game! It's not really anything like their other games, seeing as how most of their other games are MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games). It's still fun though....just don't listen to the intro song too long or you may go insane.
Artix fan table Day 1
Dumoose playing the AQW card game with fans
at the Artix Panel (Artix team in back)
musician Voltaire crashed the panel and sang us a few songs
On Saturday, we enjoyed our free time, met some famous people (i.e. the girls from the hit web series The Guild, and Christopher Lloyd), and then we got to hang out with Ben's uncles that live in Atlanta and his brother and his wife who came up for DragonCon. We people watched for a while (not to sound creepy but there are a lot of cool costumes and sometimes ya just gotta sit down and watch), then we went out to eat at a nice Italian restaurant, and then we people watched some more. Oh, and before we went out to eat, Ben and I went to a panel for Boris Vallejo and his wife Julie Bell. They are famous fantasy artists, and Boris was a big inspiration to Ben when he started drawing. The panel was about how they work together being husband and wife and was really cool to learn how they got started and how they are now. Ben was able to get one of his books about Boris signed, so that was really cool!
Here's a little photo collage of cool costumes. I tried to fix the pictures using picnik, but sorry for the bad quality, they're from my phone.
Here's another collage of some guys trying to kill us. I looked worried at first but I guess when they took the picture, I was already laughing. I can't hold a serious pose for nothin'!
On Sunday, we slept in, went to the art room to admire fine art and meet Boris Vallejo again (when we met him at the panel on Saturday, Ben didn't get to tell him what an inspiration he's been, so he was able to do that at Boris's art booth). We bought a couple pieces of artwork for a couple of people... hopefully the recipients will like them. We went to the game room and played some games with Barak and Stefan. I actually can't remember what else we did on Sunday, it was definitely a day where we kinda just went with the flow with nothing planned. Apparently at the pizza party on Thursday night we were gypped out of a large number of pizzas (not sure how since we seemed to have PLENTY of pizzas on Thursday)....anywho the pizza company replaced what we were gypped, so that meant another pizza party on Sunday night! It was a lot of fun. The artists of Artix hosted a "Drink and Draw" where they drew people dressed in costume within 3 minutes, and the costumed people were able to keep 5-10 hand-drawn pictures of themselves for free (free isn't a word commonly heard at dragoncon....dragoncon: where bottled drinks can cost anywhere from $3-6 and a moderately yucky meal can cost $10. it's a lot like disney).
Monday was the day we came back home, so nothing exciting there. Overall it was a great trip and we can't wait for next year! We will probably be attempting to make some cool costumes for next year. The scariest thing we encountered at DragonCon was when we were coming up one of the escalators, the line at the top of the escalator had stopped. However, the escalator did NOT stop, forcing us all to squish into the person in front of us. When will people realize you can't stop at the end of an escalator, you must keep moving at least a little distance so others can get off. In a place where there are 30,000+ people, I guess it is hard to remember to keep moving when there are so many cool costumes and things going on. Definitely fun times! :D
Oh and by the way for those who don't know, Atlanta has a subway (Marta). We didn't go on the subway, but there is an escalator (not the same in the above paragraph) that is the absolute longest escalator I have ever seen. Here is an attempted picture of the escalator (and yes that is a pirate behind us).
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