Well, we survived NDK. I say survived cause we did have lots of issues. Like we didn't start everything early enough this year, so we were still making stuff on the Wednesday before the con, so we were up till 3 in the morning working. Didn't help we kept losing stuff. Then we finally decided to look at the stuff we had from last year and found out that water got into the tubs from all the snow earlier this year, so two of our Link shields got moldy. :tearshairout: So we spent all day the Thursday of the con repainting them.. It was just a mess :sigh:.

We especially needed the Links since not only were we using them for our cosplay skit, but we've entered them into the workmanship part of the costume contest where the judges actually really look at each of our props and costume pieces and judge us on them. (That was actually kind of fun )

Also found out the velcro that has a sticky back doesn't keep very well, so the sticky stuff got all over our shieves. We tried fixing those at 2 am Friday night on the balcony of our hotel room..but I actually kind of enjoyed that part. I decided balconies and front porches are the best places to spray paint and unstick stuff. Especially if I get to do it with Ran and KC.

Really loved our hotel room this year. We decided to go a day early and leave a day later. It was so much less stressful! Also we ended up with a great room. We got a balcony looking outtside.. the ones looking inside of the atrium would have been cool, but the outside ones gave us a great place to do work that would otherwise mess up the room. Plus it made a great background to take pictures of everyone.

Our costumes turned out pretty good. We didn't draw the crowd we did last year, but that's okay there were soo many people in costume running around, so competition for attention was pretty thick. I just happy that everything came out all right, plus I was extra proud cause I helped K with the bulk of the sewing this year. I now consider myself an expert at the kimono pattern.

I liked everybody elses costumes, too. There was this Genma panda that looked great. He looked like he stepped right out of the Ranma 1/2 anime. Also took a picture of this hotel worker lady that looked just like Sanji from One Piece. That was the first picture we took this weekend, and in the pool area no less. KC, Ran and I were stalking her in our bathing suits, and Ran took a picture of her with my camera phone. She seemed very flattered we wanted her picture.

The cosplay was fun, too. Even when my wig fell off in front of everybody. (Talk about feeling naked ) We didn't win, but we got lots of compliments, especially for my recovery from what could have been a disaster. We're already planning next year's cosplay. It's gonna involve a collapsing demon and a duck tape fairy. That's all I'm gonna say.

The dealer's room was okay. I didn't have much spending money this year, so I was careful with what I bought, focusing mostly on One Piece this year, since that's a new series for me, and I don't have much stuff yet. I found out I'm actually an Usopp fan, because I was very happy when I got an Usopp figure. Trust me, the guy is way better in the Japanese version, than the American. His voice is fantastic... probably cause it's the same guy that plays the Japanese Ranma and Inuyasha.

I'm also a Sanji and Zoro/Zolo fan. Sadly enough, now I kind of like putting them together in a yaoi manner. I blame the yaoi dojinshi I found for giving me the idea. I spent the whole weekend after finding it, wondering what it's about, so I finally talked Ran into buying me a copy, going for the cheap yaoi, which was about 17 dollars..I was so happy, telling everyone I just bought gay porn. (There's a Penny Arcade joke about that, which is one of my favorites, and why I'd happily tell everyone I posses gay porn, though I didn't find it to give to the guy so he'd make me a dress... Wonder If I making any sense )

Anyway, back to the gay porn story:
After happily declaring I had gay porn to everyone, I sat down in one of the halls, and started looking through it...and all they ended up doing was KISSING.. and you could barely see it!! Here I was worrying about seeing Sanji and Zolo's naughty bits, but neither even took their clothes off.

I guess I should have gone for the more expensive gay porn.. guess 17 bucks is only worth a kiss, maybe if I paid 45 bucks they'd actually be in bed playing bondage fairies..

Ah, well, the cover's still nice to look at.

And I got some great pictures of me dressed as Michiru (Sailor Neptune from Sailor Moon) looking horrified as I look at gay porn, with Ran dressed as Haruka (sailor Uranus) looking over my shoulder and looking somewhat disgusted.

Next year we're dressing as One Piece characters, so I wonder if I can get KC (Sanji) and Ran (Zolo) pictures looking at their gay porn. That should be interesting. I'm going to be Nami (hope I can actually get into that, she's not really one of my favorites) and we're dressing K up as Usopp, which will be very very fun. I hope Bee can still be our Luffy, she was having issues with KC this year, but I won't get into that here...

The only other thing that was kind of sad, was I never really got to spend time with K without Law around. That was my only regret, though I'm glad Law was there all the same, cause I know sometimes I end up spending more time with Ran than K, and trying to balance them both gets kind of hard... so Law kind of helped balance us out a bit more, but I still would have liked more one on one K time...

(Course that's something I usually want outside NDK, too, and have to fight for, so I guess I should have expected to fight more for K time at NDK, instead of giving them as much space as I could.. Oye, I don't really want to get into all that here... )

Changing the subject.. despite all that, NDK was pretty good this year. We're still going to come early and leave later again next year, and bring Ran's microwave again, cause that was nifty. Gonna start earlier, too, hopefully we won't meet as many distractions this year. And definitely look over everything we want to reuse early cause it sucked having to redo some things so last minute.

Also want to do the Melting Pot before the con next year. It was fun doing it on Sunday night (even though I almost choked to death trying to take headache medicine), but next year I'd rather spend Sunday night lounging by the pool.

So I'm already looking forward to next year, but in the meantime, I've been busy doing stuff to get ready to go back to school..

Oh, and Law dragged us to his rolplaying game, so now I'm learning how to play Exalted.

I'll go more into that on my next update.