Ready To Nerd Out

So, Andrea and I will be on our way to San Diego in a little over a month for our third annual nerdy adventure! 36 days from now we will be headed to Comic-Con once again, and I'm getting pretty excited about it!

We've done SDCC twice now, and you might think the novelty would've worn off by now, but I can't wait to get there again. Pretty soon the panel schedule will be released and we can start planning exactly who and what we wanna see, and figure out how many insane line-ups we'll be waiting in. I love all the exclusive clips and special announcements and the excitement of the crowds.

I've taken a step to improve communication while I'm there. I found a great company operating out of Vancouver called Roam Mobility. As the name of their company implies, they are a company that specializes in all of your cell phone roaming needs. Check them out! They have great plans for use while traveling in the USA. For about $28, I will have unlimited calling and texting in the US and back to Canada, plus 700 MB of data, for a week. It was a huge pain not having use of my phone last year, so I'm hoping this will be the solution I'm looking for!

Otherwise, I think we are pretty prepared for the trip. We just booked our flights. Hotel has been booked for a long time. We both managed to get our 4-day plus preview night badges. AND we bought our tickets to see the Nerdist Podcast again. I've got my USD savings account just sitting there full of money to spend. I just need to actually go!

In other news, today marks the beginning of WWDC AND E3, and I wish I was an Apple developer and/or in the gaming industry so I could be at one of them. I'm a very excited nerd right now. Anyway, this thing is already late enough and I should probably get to work, so have a wonderful week!

King of the Nerds

Day 5 of the trip, day 3 of Comic Con. Saturday? What day is it today? Right, Sunday. So yeah, yesterday, Saturday. Can you tell I'm having trouble keeping up with my blogging?

Saturday had a pretty great start. We were able to sleep in a little bit, and made it to the convention centre about 9:30ish? I don't remember precisely. But we made it in time for what we were going for.

At 10am at the Legendary booth, the king of the nerds himself, Chris Hardwick, was signing autographs and meeting the fans. And we made it! He was dressed as the tenth Doctor, and he seemed pretty excited when I handed him my ticket from the previous night's podcast to get signed. I was pretty excited to get my picture taken with him.

Andrea of course was very happy to meet him, she's been a fan forever. And he was great! He even took a picture with Anne! I don't think I mentioned previously, but our friend Anne couldn't make it to Comic Con with us, so Andrea crocheted a doll of her to bring along so she was with us in spirit. So yeah, Chris Hardwick now thinks we are crazy.

After that, we went to the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton beside the convention centre to catch the Geek & Sundry panel. I had no idea what it was, but Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton? I'm there! So we listened to them talk about all the cool stuff happening with their Geek & Sundry YouTube channel. I think I'm going to have to subscribe to that! The cast of the Guild was also there, with a couple other special guests. It was pretty fun!

After that, it was the Nerdist panel! We were totally getting our Nerdist on. Chris Hardwick and a bunch of other people talked about all the exciting stuff coming up. Most exciting to me: Celebrity Bowling with... wait for it... the Doctor Who cast! So awesome. Looks like I'll be watching a lot more YouTube in the future!

Outside between the Hilton and the Convention Centre there was a thing selling burgers and hotdogs, and a cool Batman setup. Burgers and Batmobiles! We grabbed burgers and then went to look at the different ones. There were 5 of them. Two versions of the Bat-tank (or Tumbler as its ACTUALLY called) plus three older batmobiles. It was kinda cool.

Once we got back to the convention centre, we walked right past Felicia Day, just walking along in the front lobby area of the building. I was all, " Is that Felicia Day? Did we just walk RIGHT PAST Felicia Day?!" You probably don't realize this, but I love Felicia Day.

Anyway, next: coffee! And then the Avengers vs. X-Men panel! I love Marvel panels. Again, there wasn't all that much info that I hadn't already heard about, but it definitely got Andrea excited for comics again. Sadly, I was foiled in asking my question in the panel due to the question line being cut off directly in front of me. And the guy was an idiot. He asked a question that EVERYONE already knew the answer to. And I had a much more interesting question. But oh well.

After that, we decided to check out the line for Hall H. There was a panel for Iron Man 3 that looked interesting, and the line didn't seem so bad, so Andrea and Neil got into line, and I took off. We had 2 hours to wait, so I went to explore the floor again.

Went and said hi to Steve and Shane in the Artist Alley again, but they were both pretty busy so I took off to hunt down some elusive swag. No luck though. Sorry Paul. Everything is getting sold out so fast too! I guess it's not that surprising. I wasted a good half hour or longer playing Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance at the Square Enix booth. On my way back across the room I walked by a Doctor cosplayer that I thought was actually Matt Smith for a minute, and then I saw the guy that played Gunn on Angel at a booth. Someone told me to tweet it, but I had no wifi, so I couldn't do it. Oh darn.

After that, it was about 5:30, so I headed back to the Hall H line, and by a stroke of luck, Andrea and Neil spotted me and I jumped back into line with them. However, we didn't make it into Hall H, so about 6:15, we took off back to our hotel and had dinner.

At that point, it should have been the end of the night, but with so much sitting in panels, I didn't reach my fitness goal for the day, so I went and walked laps around the hotel grounds for half an hour. Thanks Nike+ FuelBand. Thanks a lot.

Separation Anxiety

Day 4 of the trip, Day 2 of Comic Con! The fun continues!

This day started way too early. I was out a little late the night before with my awesome San Diego friends Shawn and Scott, so I really didn't enjoy the fact that we had to get up early to make it into a panel. To be fair, it was supposed to be an awesome panel. A Firefly reunion? Who wouldn't love that??

So, we headed off for the day, grabbed some breakfast and waited for the bus. Aaaand just as it was coming, I remembered I hadn't taken my allergy medication. Way to go Craig. So I ran back to the room while Andrea and Neil got on the bus, and I caught the next one. Who knew this separation would be such foreshadowing...

There were actually three panels in a row that we wanted to get in on. Community was at 10, Legend of Korra was at 11:15, and the Firefly Reunion was at 12:30, so we figured getting there at 8 would be plenty of time. Turns out, not so much. Luckily, Andrea, Neil and I managed to reunite almost as soon as I got there, so it was just a matter of getting to the end of the line. That was a challenge in and of itself.

The longer we walked to find the end end of the line, the further and more hopeless things seemed to become! We walked pretty far before we found it. It wasn't nearly as bad as our walk last year to pick up our badges, but it was pretty bad. As the comic con workers came by and tried to make us lose hope and leave the line, we made friends with a few of the people in line with us, and we became a group. But I have no idea what their names are now. I'm terrible.

Anyway, this line was monstrous. And when we finally got moving, we made it all the way back up to the building! And Before Korra started even! But then it turned out to be an illusion, 'cause the line actually stretched way down the back of the building as well, something we hadn't seen before. But we still had hope. The line had to move somewhat, right?

Wrong. After four hours in line, I got fed up, lost hope that we'd ever make it in, and abandoned the line. Andrea, Neil and I made arrangements to meet up after our hopeful panels ended, and I took off for the other side of the convention centre to catch the Marvel: Ultimate Comics Universe panel. It was pretty fun, no new info really, but the Marvel panels are always pretty enjoyable.

At this point, I headed out to where we had arranged to meet, and waited for a while. Aaaand send several iMessages, tweets, and Facebook messages to find out where my companions might be. Nothing. Soooo I went and got coffee, came back, hung around for a bit longer, aaaand got into another one of the panel rooms to wait for the Marvel Cup o' Joe panel.

Finally, partway through the panel, I heard back from Andrea. It seems wifi was really not working well, so they had only gotten a couple of my attempts to communicate with them, very very late. And even then things weren't working well 'cause they didn't get my responses. So after the Cup o' Joe panel ended, I went off to search for them again, but about ten seconds out the door, Neil attacked me from behind, and we were finally reunited!

As it turned out, they didn't make it into the panel, but they did make it into the one after, Bones! Which was apparently pretty great. I wish I could have seen David Boreanes, but oh well. They had their own adventures though. Andrea lost her badge, and had to get a replacement. And they went all over the place looking for me, even tried asking my favourite artist in artist alley, Steve. It's funny 'cause I even thought about going down there too.

Anyway, after that, we decided to grab dinner at the Yard House restaurant. Andrea and I went there last year, and it was really good, so we had to take Neil. Plus we had plans right down the street. We ended up in the exact same table as we had had last year too, which was odd and kinda funny. We even had a show with dinner, the zombie walk went by the other side of the restaurant so we got to watch as they went by and traffic got completely stopped.

So after dinner, we headed down the street to the Balboa Theatre for the Nerdist podcast taping. I guess every year they do a special podcast with a crowd full of people. I dunno. I had no idea what to expect. We got in, but they didn't open the doors to the actual theatre, and the lobby was tiny, so it got all sardine can up in there for a bit. Dislike. But soon, we made it in, and waited for the show to begin.

And what a show it was! I seriously think you should go look it up right now. Nerdist Podcast from SDCC 2012. It was out of control. They had the extremely funny and very very sexy John Barrowman on the show, and he is just... I don't even know. He's just fantastic. There were discussions of pooping and thigh kisses. John grabbed several ladies' boobs. And made out with a straight guy. It was just nuts. I am going to have to go back and listen to that again. I laughed SO HARD.

And after that, there's really nothing else that could top that. We were tired from so much laughing, so we headed back to the hotel, relaxed for a bit, and headed to bed. The end.