Where the hell have I been?

Well, you may have noticed that not only have we been short releases (due mainly to my classes and the unexplained mass staff exodus), but my blog has been pretty damn sparse as well.  This is due to a bunch of random stuff, so I'll break it into pieces, since some may be interesting to you all.

First of all, there was the staff meetup at Fanime that we've all been looking forward to for quite a while.  Me and Holic got on the train in Washington on Thursday morning and rode for like a million years, finally arriving in San Jose on Friday morning.  The seats seemed comfortable at first, but by the ten hour mark, they may as well have been made out of concrete.  We actually were the first of the group to hit San Jose, and Yomi from our IRC met us at the station and walked us to the hotel so we didn't get lost.  Herp, who's QC'd for us under various names, flew in from Florida on Wednesday, and he, Koiz, Gief, and another friend from our ventrilo server all met us in the lobby.  The convention itself was kind of awful.  The cosplay, dealer's hall, and artist alley were all pretty good, but the organization of the convention was the worst I've seen yet.  In terms of content, things were pretty light from the get-go.  There were two good guests (well, FLOW was there, but the line outweighed my interest), and both got kinda screwy.  The Gainax founder who was supposed to be there cancelled.  Yoshiki's plane was late, but his Q&A was really awesome - but the dipshit staff wouldn't let him sign all the autographs, so only 40 (none of us) people got autographs.  The panels were really light on content and heavy on stupid stuff for 14 year olds like anime-themed games.  We almost got fucked on the one panel I wanted to go to (the Touhou panel) since they didn't have schedules printed for the first day, and when they finally got (not enough) copies made, they were inaccurate.  So, enough bitching and on to the highlights.  I mentioned that the dealer's hall was good; pretty sure everyone of us that has a waifu found goods to buy of our respective 2D spouses.  There was actually a small booth that was selling exclusively Touhou goods (we found out later that the guy running it went to Reitaisai earlier this month), so I was able to get a keychain figure of my frog waifu (Suwako) that I didn't know existed (amazingly well sculpted for such a small figure, too).  Then at the Touhou panel (which was really good, but ran out of time before the live mixset that someone was going to do :/) someone who apparently had been at the swap-meet on Friday was selling the rest of their Touhou doujins really cheaply, and I managed to get one of my waifu and 5 more for 7 dollars (all non-H).  Holic started out the trip with the statement "I'm not buying any figures, because I'm not a faggot," and ended the trip with 5-6 figures, a messenger bag, some art books, a poster book, and a few prints.  I was really happy to see him get over that hump and let himself really enjoy his hobby like that.  Other than the dealer's hall and the Touhou panel, the real highlight of the con was hanging out with everyone.  We all got along right off the bat and meshed really well, since we all act basically the same in real life as we have been for the year and a half we've known each other online.  All our inside jokes from vent worked just as well in person, and we had a shitload of fun even just during downtime in the hotel room.

So, I'm not writing this post from my house.  I'm still in California, staying at Gief's mom's house with him for the next month.  This was the part that actually threw a wrench into WOW!scans stuff getting done in a timely fashion...  Basically, we had talked about me staying down here until Anime Expo a while back, but decided it wasn't really worth the hassle.  Then they announced the Miku concert...  So Tuesday of last week I hammered out the details to make it a month and a half trip instead of a week long trip.  This meant that not only did I need to manage to pack for that long of a trip, but all that little shit that gets put off till "later" needed to be wrapped up before I left.  So now I'm sitting down here in Orange County, wondering whether I'll be able to get some shitty temp job through a temp staffing agency so I have reasonable spending money for AX...  I'll also see my grandmother that lives down here for the first time in a few years, so this trip should be pretty neato all around.  I'll figure out more that needs saying later, I'm sure I missed something.

Also, here's a bunch of pictures, sort by tags since I didn't bother to make volumes: flickr.com/photos/yamadaadtrapm6