BotCon 2006: Bleeriness, Blu Mankuma and Buttwarmers

[dunmurderin]

I have a thing about traveling. I like to go different places and see new and different things, but I also have a fear of actually leaving the house because Something could happen while I'm gone. I also have a fear that Something could happen while we're on the road traveling or once we arrive so Plans must be made.

All of which is to explain why I went to BotCon 2006 with enough pharmaceuticals to cover every possible sickness contingency even though we were only going to be gone less than a day.

I took my diabetes medications for me, migraine pills for Amy and me, sinus pills for me, Amy and possibly our friend Rob and Benadryl because of Rob's allergies. I also bought some glucose pills just in case my sugar levels dropped dramatically (which has never really happened but You Never Know!) and did end up taking one so I at least feel halfway justified. (The orange ones taste like big ol' children's aspirin!)

Plans for BotCon 2006 started approximately the moment we found out it was going to be in Kentucky and therefore close to where we were. They really started to ramp up after we had to miss Iacon One (well, ok, we could have gone but we'd have lost the double time and a half we earned for working the Fourth of July this year and there's no way my inner Swindle would allow that to happen). Starting around the first part of September, I was asking around for people who might possibly be able to cover either me or Amy or both's hours on Saturday so we could go. Which, apparently, said zeal led to folks believing the trip was going to be longer than it actually was.

Long story short: my hours got covered thanks to a wonderful co-worker (yay Tasha!) and Amy had enough PTO saved to cover taking Saturday night off. That left Friday night. We were hoping to leave early at our lunch so we could get something resembling sleep before the trip (thankfully Rob was driving) but ended up not being able to get out until 5 am because we didn’t' want to leave Tasha alone covering the Speech to Speech area -- particularly since she was likely to be alone the next night.

Brief aside: Amy and I work as relay operators for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Speech Impaired. Mondays and Tuesdays we’re on ‘regular line’ which is the center term for the regular TTY relay service. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we work in Speech to Speech (or S2S) where we relay calls for the speech impaired (essentially people who can speak and hear but who may have a hard time making themselves understood because of Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson’s Disease, or other similar conditions). Regular line has the lion’s share of employees since it gets the lion’s share of the calls. S2S is a smaller group so finding people to cover your time can be harder, particularly when you work 3rd shift like me and Amy. And when a co-worker’s wedding is scheduled for the same weekend.

Suffice to say, things worked out and we got the time off.

So we left at 5 and got to Rob's house and slept on his couch until about 6:45/7am when his dad woke us all up and made breakfast for us (scrambled eggs and toast). Then we bleered around for a bit until we headed over to Avis to pick up the car we were renting for the trip.

The car was a Chrysler Pacifica, black, and it will be my future husband. We walked around the car, loading up our stuff for the trip and just checking out a vehicle which is nicer than any of the cars we own. Then we climbed inside and just marveled at the controls -- not just in the front but also the back passenger area as well. And then Rob's phone rang -- it was his dad, still waiting behind us in the parking lot wondering what was wrong -- which, luckily was nothing except a deep and abiding worship of the buttwarmers.

Note to any Hasbro reps reading this: the Chrysler Pacifica would make a good design for a new Ironhide...and please don't sue me for the TF slash in this journal.

After a brief drive around the Meijer parking lot for Rob to get used to the car's handling (which was apparently wonderful), we headed out. Luckily for us, Lexington, KY is a more or less straight shot from Dayton. We left Dayton at approximately 8:15am and arrived at the Hyatt/Rupp Arena in Lexington at approximately 10:15 am.

The drive was good, other than the fact that I'd only gotten an hour, hour and a half of sleep and so kept fighting the urge to freak out whenever a big truck came near us. Luckily, shutting my eyes helped.

I’ve been to Kentucky before, on a college trip to Louisville, but I don’t remember the countryside being as pretty as it was on this trip. It probably helped that we were driving down during the first part of the day as the sun was coming up and everything was blue skies and green grass and rolling hills. I was worried about Amy having problems with her migraines since she’s very sensitive to changes in pressure but Rob said that Kentucky -- or at least the area we were in -- was flatter than where we live in Dayton so she should be ok.

It’s worth noting that Rob’s idea of ‘flat’ and my idea of ‘flat’ are very different. Rob’s idea of flat is clearly shaped by living in the Miami Valley here in Ohio where you have all kinds of hills and bumps and stuff whereas mine is shaped by having lived in Northern and East Central Indiana where flat means you might have an occasional rise in the road but otherwise it’s corn, corn, corn as far as the eye can see.

We made it to the Hyatt/Rupp Arena, as I said, at about 10:15 am without getting turned around once, which means highly successful road trip in my book. We managed to find the parking lot thanks to Fred from Joebattlelines.com giving us a call and telling us where to park. Then came the problem of getting out of the car and walking into the center -- luckily, the buttwarmers in the car seats kept my back from getting too stiff on the way down so I didn’t look too much like Igor on the way in.

We knew we were in the right place because Amy saw 3 Autobot symbols in the parking lot and I spotted a guy wearing one of those Megatron shirts that were on sale at Hot Topic a few years ago.

Once we got inside the center, we found the line to get in stretching back almost into the Hyatt. We also saw Raisedbymoogles and Poptartofdoom dressed as Jazz and Prowl and said hello to them. They ended up behind us in line and if they’d been charging for pictures they could probably have easily raised their entrance fees for the convention in the 45 minutes we were in line.

We made it to the front door, paid our entrance fee (9 bucks general admission = not bad!) and headed for the Dealer’s Room. I actually think I broke my record from 2003 by spending money within the first 5 minutes of being inside. Master Collector, the folks running the convention, had toys and various geegaws for sale and Amy noticed they had Alternator Swindle for fifteen bucks. This turned out to be the best price we saw for him the whole sale and I’m glad I picked him up.

Other dealer’s room hauls for me and Amy: the End of the Road graphic novel, Armada More than Meets the Eye #2, Spotlight: Nightbeat with convention exclusive sketch cover, Transformers Universe #4, the first and third Transformers novels, the BotCon 2006 exclusive comic that has a Beast Wars prequel story in it, a Transformers Universe Wrecker’s comic, Wayward’s Insecticomics CD and four or five prints, a Transformers: The Movie poster (circa 2001) and a poster tube to haul it around in. We also got 2 2007 TF movie posters for free, as these were giveaways at the door.

We also met up with Fred from JBL and his wife Tanya. They’re a mixed marriage of sorts, Fred’s a Joe fan and Tanya’s a Transfan but they make it work. Fred also managed to find a GI Joe Terrordrome for sale at the con for only $25 (apparently Tanya was the angel on his shoulder going BUY IT! -- since that is a good price for one).

Rob made a few nice hauls too, including a trailer for Masterpiece Prime (which looks sweet with the figure, apparently the wheels even match MP Prime as well) and an Alternator Mirage. He wasn’t able to find a Camshaft.

Around 1 o clock we headed over to a Voice Actor panel. Scott McNeil, Blu Mankuma, Richard Newman and Pauline Newstone were there to talk about being voices on Beast Wars. This was, I think, the first VA panel I’ve ever been to at a BotCon and I could kick myself for not going to ones sooner because it was a lot of fun. They pretty much just answered fan questions the whole time and luckily nobody was too obnoxious with their questioning. Pauline mentioned that this was her first ever BotCon and she was very surprised and pleased by just how friendly and nice everybody was. Scott McNeil was hilarious and damn sexy-looking but I could happily listen to any of these people talk all day.

After the panel, Amy and I went up to where the voice actors were sitting. I went over to Blu Mankuma and Pauline Newstone because I felt a little bad for them since most of the questions were directed to Scott and Richard during the panel. I also wanted to tell Mr. Mankuma that I liked his work on the DIC GI Joe series (Freighter, REPRESENT!) and on Spy Troops and Valor vs. Venom. He didn’t fully recall those shows but he was very kind to listen to me babble at him and he shook my hand! He’s got very large, warm hands. I also babbled something at Pauline Newstone, thanking her for her work on Beast Wars and telling her she did a great job and she told me to call her Pauline.

After the fansqueeage at the panel, we went downstairs for lunch. The Hyatt/Rupp Center is probably the best convention venue I’ve ever been at. The hotel and arena are attached and there’s a mall area in the middle with a food court so you don’t ever actually have to leave the convention center once you’re inside. There are even some other shops inside the mall so if you were looking for non-Transformers souvenirs, you could find them. And there was a Tobacconists that, I’m willing to bet, sold things like batteries and such if you needed them.

Lunch was good, though the food court area was packed. There was an A&W, an Arby’s, a Chinese place and some other offering I don’t remember. I had Chinese, Amy had Arby’s and Rob had A&W. The Chinese place was good and reasonably priced (2 entries for $5.75), Amy’s Arby’s appeared to be a good Arby’s experience but A&W pretty much sucked. Rob ordered cheese fries which turned into chili cheese fries twice -- which was a big deal since Rob’s allergic to legumes -- and they dropped his hamburger on the floor twice before they managed to get it right. Also, he overheard one of the girls at the counter saying she didn’t know how to make a root beer float.

After lunch, we hit the dealer’s room again for some more shopping and I managed to luck into getting Simon Furman’s autograph on the Nightbeat comic I bought and the Transformers: Legends anthology I’d brought along on the off-chance I ran into him (haha, I’d thought, yeah right, that’ll happen). He also let me take his picture and he seems a very nice, very smily kind of guy.

I’d taken a disposable camera along and had only taken a couple pictures at this point, primarily of Amy with Buckeye Bear, a teddy bear we have at work that people can check out and take on vacation with them places. We now have photographic evidence at work that we are the geekiest people there. Or at least the geekiest ones who’ll admit to it in public! We took the picture of Amy standing with the bear in front of a big robotic hand holding a countdown timer for the movie release next year. In an amazing amount of organization, I took the camera in and got the pictures developed yesterday so I’ll hopefully be getting these scanned and posted soon.

Around 4pm, we headed back to Dayton. On the drive back, the lack of sleep finally caught up with me and I dozed off some. We stopped in Mason, on the north side of Cincinnati, for dinner at Friday’s and then went and saw Rob’s sister for a bit. Then headed home around 8 or 9 o clock. Thankfully, the rain waited until we were nearly home to hit in earnest. Rob took us back to his house to pick up our house keys since we decided to leave our car at his place since neither one of us was in much shape to drive home -- though Amy probably could have gotten us home.

After filling up the Pacifica to return it to Avis the next day, Rob dropped us at our house. I hit the couch and around 11pm Amy nudged me and got me to come into our actual bed. I woke up again around 8 am, thought “HELL NO!” and went back to sleep only to wake up at 1:30pm Sunday afternoon. We ran around with Rob a bit, picked up our car and got our pictures back and headed into work. BotCon 2006 was officially over.

We’re already looking into possible plans for next year in Providence.

Dun.

PS: During the convention, I saw a few folks from the Padded Cell including Marisa and Wayward but didn’t really introduce myself since I came down with a case of Terminal Shyness. A belated hello to y’all.

Comments

[raisedbymoogles.livejournal.com]

*squeeglomp!* ^_^

The VAs are super nice. Apparently we cracked Blu Mankuma up going up the escalator.

[newsy891.livejournal.com]

...You were there?! I wonder if I saw you! =) I know I saw Prowl and Jazz. OMG CUTE.

What an awesome con. This was my first and I can't wait to go back... I so want to find a way to go next year, but I may have... Other Plans that are far more important. =)

BotCon

[kinzokutaka.livejournal.com]

Yay BotCon!