I live!

Back from AX.

I can write a long entry now, while it’s fresh in my mind, I suppose.

Karaoke went mostly well. There were a few technical issues at the start, which elicited a primal scream from myself at one point. (I can stand broken things, I can stand making people wait while I struggle with the tech, but when I interrupt people’s singing not once, not twice, but three times, that’s just too much.) Open mic was… well, as it normally is. I didn’t get as much sleep as at Fanime (which I think is pretty much impossible, as I slept more at Fanime than I do normally, hooray for only having karaoke open in the evenings) but I got enough. Having it be light out when I closed the room on saturday evening / sunday morning was very odd, and scarily reminiscent of my high school days of riding my bike in the morning. I guess there’s just something about Orange County in the early morning that’s unique.

I also got to go to the Maaya Sakamoto concert, which is the first ticketed event I’ve ever gone to at AX, and probably one of a few, if not the only event I’ve actively gone to that involved a Guest of Honor. (Of course, if I’d known at the time, I’d have gone to the Yoko Kanno concert a few years back. But I didn’t know who she was at the time.) It was entertaining enough, and you could tell she was a bit overwhelmed by the crowd. I don’t know what she expected to see, but it probably wasn’t the giant sea of otaku that she had to face. It was funny whenever someone would yell out something and she’d answer them. I just wish it hadn’t gone on for so long, you could tell she was getting flustered.

Also, waiting in line for the concert, and again sitting waiting for it to start, I finally got my first real taste of wireless stuff on my Gameboy DS. The chatroom was almost full of people as we were waiting, and you could definitely tell some were more mature than others. I got to play a multiplayer Meteos game (been playing it single player quite a bit), and a bit of a Bomberman duel (I forgot how bad I was at it).

I got to see my mom’s puppy again, for the first time since she was just a ball of fur. She was very excitable, as puppies usually are, and she is a bit more well behaved than our old dog, but still very spoiled.

There was lots of cosplay at the con:

… and some other cosplayers, I forget exactly.

I got to meet some new people I hadn’t met, and of course, see the ones I only get to see once or twice a year. I’m sure there’s more I could say, but I can’t remember now. Overall, it was a good time, and now I’m going to vegetate for the entirety of tomorrow, most likely sleeping a good part of the day away. I also have quite a bit of online stuff to catch up on.

Also, a side note to the person who left me an anonymous comment, Game Castle did not close. They moved to a new location at Ball and State College. I know this 1) because I ran into someone I know who works there and 2) I saw it across the street when I went to dinner at Benihana with my family.