April 15, 2009
Sakuracon'09 in Brief

Because I am being a slacker about finishing off a real con report (it's started, I swear!), and I don't have all the photos yet (we're collecting a big batch from everyone in our party, so once that's done I'm going to a huge image dump from about five different cameras), so some quick notes here and there.

Wait at the border going down: 5 hours
Wait at the border coming up: 20 minutes

Despite having a full car, we managed not to drive each other insane (well, more insane anyway). I credit Freddie Mercury via my two Queen's Greatest Hits CDs. Stopped at a grocery store not too far past the border and me and the other American went a little crazy with the stuff we can't buy up here (my stash: two 12-packs of Mountain Dew, a bag of onion bagels, my favorite brand of cheap ramen, and five Paydays).

I managed to somehow not run into anyone I really knew that wasn't in the group that came down with me, although I saw a few cosplayers and dealers I've seen at other cons (the Twinbells Doujinshi lady is always so nice ♥). I also spotted Eurobeat King, although did not say hello as I strongly suspect he wouldn't recognize me despite one rather memorable night getting pulled over by the police in his car.

Cosplay was sort of a grab bag - KH, Bleach and Naruto were the big ones I saw, although there was a surprisingly large number of Sailor Moon cosplayers, which made me kind of sad that I didn't have time to do Sailor Uranus, but ah well, another con. Rufus turned out a lot better than I thought. The last week or so of detailing was misery, and I spent the whole time going 'Oh god this is so hideous and full of flaws ugh it sucks ugh ugh ugh QQ', because I am very good at seeing exactly what is wrong with my costumes, but it actually looked very put together once everything was on and ironed (for half an hour - stupid cotton twill). One of my black gloves went AWOL the night before we left, so I ended up having to borrow a tan pair from Jon, which looked okay. Turk presence was middling - there were a lot of Renos and a few Rudes, but not much else.

Dealer's room swag:
-Unwired (shut up it's cheaper in the US okay :<)
-Munchkin Cthulu 3
-Six shirts of epic win (see backs for additional win - to really pile the win on, the Cthulu one glows in the dark)
-Two DMC doujin, both Dante/Vergil fluff by Cardinal - one very short one, and another longer one
-One FF7 doujin - Turks, by Wasab'z - I may attempt to bribe a weeaboo at the club with Mountain Dew to translate it for me, as it's actually a fairly lengthy story.