Animazement: Sunday

Sunday was great. It helped that Shaun was mostly over being sick--I'd say he was up to about 70%. I packed the room up. We took a load of stuff to the car, then Shaun took Luke and Logan back to the room to rest and watch cartoons while Ty and I went and wandered Artist's Alley. It was still early though and a lot of artists hadn't set up yet. Neither the Dealer's Room nor the Video Game Room had opened yet either. I think I can safely say the highlights for most any convention for Ty are 1-Video Game Room, 2-Artist Alley, and 3-Dealer's Room, in that order.

We went back to the room for a early lunch--since we had to have the room vacated before noon. After a quick lunch of instant macaroni and cheese and ramen (coffee maker meals--good stuff for conventions), we took our last load of stuff to the car. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea we did (taking stuff down to their cars). The elevators were a madhouse. We decided to try the stairs. Well the stairs closest to our room dead-ended at the bottom at a locked door; we had to go back up to the 3rd floor to find an entrance into the rest of the hotel. We wandered the 3rd floor until we found another staircase; this one dumped us outside at valet parking--not quite where we wanted to be, but closer. We hauled everything around to the hotel main entrance, then took an elevator down to the parking deck, loaded the car, and returned to enjoy the rest of the convention.

First stop on Sunday was the Dealer's Room. I usually don't buy stuff here--I just don't find stuff that I really want. Maybe "could afford" would be more accurate than "really want" since there are boxed sets of several anime I'd love to get my hands on. I did buy stuff this year. =D I found this great game shop booth--it turns out he's been there for the last several years at AZ + at AUSA. I go to both and usually take at least one tour of the dealer's room, but apparently I'm oblivious because I've missed him the last couple of years. Anyways, I picked up a card game there from the same guys who made the "We Didn't Playtest This" card game we spent Saturday night playing. I got "Whack a Catgirl." It looks like a fun convention game; it makes fun of the more annoying aspects of tweenage fangirls. I also picked up a spiffy set of new dice for D&D. They had so many pretty shinies (i.e. Dice sets) it was really tough to choose just one set. They'll be at Otakon and AUSA though, so I may just have to get some more then.
After the Dealer's Room, we wandered around for a bit and hung out with our friends before everyone started to leave and go their own way--we had to stay later because my Beholder Plushie got enough bids to go to the big auction event today (AZ has auction items for display in the Art Show room and people can put bids on a piece of paper near the items; if the item reaches 5 bids, it goes to the Sunday auction event where it goes up on display and people I guess shout bids in a more traditional style auction--I've never actually gone to that event though, so dunno). After most everyone (we knew) had gone, Shaun took Luke to an advanced origami panel while I took Ty and Logan around for another trip (or three) around the Artist Alley. I got some awesome stuff, and Ty spent all his money in AA (I'm so proud of him for supporting other artists <3). I'll probably put what I got in another blog post. I also want to see if I can find links to galleries for the artists I bought stuff from. =) So after blowing all our spending money plus some in the Artist Alley, I went to stand in line for about 30 minutes to pick up the cash from the auction sale of the Beholder--it did much better than I had expected. Shaun thinks a couple of game stores were trying to get it to display in their shop. I'm happy though because it was such a pain to make. I have one more that I'll put up for auction somewhere, but that's it. The yarn was horrible to work with, and I will never ever ever make a plushie from that yarn again. XD It was doubly good because I'd spent our parking money in Artist Alley (oops...).

So that was AZ. We left after I got my cash, picked up our kitten (finally settled on calling her Kisa yesterday), and made the long (not really, it just felt like it) hot (it was definitely this, no clouds and no AC....) car trip back home. Funny side thing: Monday morning I had an email from the staff lady in charge of the Art Show. On Sunday they'd held a drawing for 3 free badges to AZ 2012--I'd looked when I picked up the cash for my beholder, but they hadn't matched my tickets. Apparently though, the person who'd won the 3rd free badge never showed, so they'd held another drawing and pulled my ticket. =D I'm very excited about that--it also means that we're definitely going back for AZ 2012.