I know, I know. I'm waaaay far behind in updating. But, I'm trying at least! *chuckle* This will mostly be the post for C6 itself; I'll probably do another one about the trip in general since there was a lot of fun stuff during that.
I have to admit, I did find it kind of amusing that the first time I'd been back in my birth state in probably about 21ish years (we left when I was 2 or 3. . I'm not sure which) happened to be on my birthday. I'll also say, I honestly do not want to go back. :/ I mean, I will because I still need to visit Disneyworld and Universal and pretty much every other tourist destination there that I haven't been to. And Celebration 7 in all likelihood. But omg the humidity is terrible (and the driver's aren't much better). I'm not just complaining because my glasses would fog up stepping outside, or because it was like stepping into a shower, but also because it most likely killed my camera. After day 2 or so it was starting to focus weird and since we've gotten back it's developed bad lines across photos.
That first day we mostly spent getting our stuff organized in the
room and geeking out with our roommates. Second day was the start of the
convention, and I did my usual recon in civilian clothes to see how
things were laid out. (Plus I had Merc's booth duty.) It was kind of like a really weird scavenger hunt
since I kept stopping random mandos to ask where our booth was, each one
pointing in a direction where I'd end up stopping another and so on
until I finally figured out where the booth was. lol Even though it was
the first day and I was out of kit, I did bring my sexy new Night Owl
helmet from Skirata Arms since I wanted to show it off before Saturday
when I'd wear the entire kit. Ceric was awesome enough to have snagged
me some birthday hats on his way to the convention, so my helmet spent
the day on the Merc's table with it's swag on.
And I got to be all "pewpewpew!" in the speeder bike:
Spent the rest of the day wandering around looking at the legos and cars and Make a Wish Foundation helmets, and that night it was the Merc's Birthday Bash (5 years!). Love the swag we got (mugs, stickers, patches, bookmarks) and the food wasn't half bad. Though I'm pretty sure most of us ended up going out to the hotel convenience store to buy drinks 'cause $3 for a glass of soda that was almost all ice was not cool (neither was the $8 for a tiny martini glass of whatever they were mixing). Speeches were given, prizes and awards were handed out, and Jeremy Bulloch told Tom he was fired. lol Uloadus of Terentatek Clan (my guys ^_^) got the party started after all the presentation stuff by dragging people out on the dance floor. After the party ended quite a few of us invaded the pool and the hot tub; I can honestly say that's the first time I've been in a bathing suit since 8th grade. I felt awkward and have totally forgotten how to swim, but Miss Tori convinced me to go with her. I have to admit, I am very glad for friends who drag me to things sometimes.
Friday (ie, second day of con, third day in Orlando)
Started off the day by working at The Dark Empire's table even though I'd left my sith and sith recruitment scout at home. (Sadly with the weight I've gained I didn't want to wear either of them.) I did pull on my SRS sash at least, so I had that.
Even though my Early Crusader Beast Master mando wasn't approved (I had a moment of really stupid and forgot to make knee armor), I still pulled it on for a test troop on Friday. I have to say, it actually held up pretty well (I can't say the same about during the trip back. . .it's on my table with stuff to be repaired). I did some wandering up to the Droid Builder's room where I ran into a guy with a really awesome Endor Trooper costume. The only picture I got with him does not do his costume justice; the detail was fantastic. After that room Pere and I wandered back down to the main floor so I could get my picture with Roxy the Rancor, something that had pretty much been my goal since I saw the first posts about a life sized rancor being made for the con. (And really the biggest reason I did the test troop at all, otherwise I would have just left the costume at home.) I haven't got much more in the way of pictures that I took that day since Pere went off to some panels he wanted to see while I spent time wandering some more and posing for pictures for random con goers.
Saturday
For the record, I was up until probably about 5-6 am working on stuff to try to finish my purple kit. My purple stomach wraps weren't working so I ultimately just pulled on my beast master's red ones (they sort of work. . .well, at least enough that I don't know people would realize they were the wrong ones unless they knew I was making purple ones). The boot armor took the longest since I hadn't realized just how long it was going to take me to get the laces through the set up for the armor plus the lacing area itself. Long story short, I ended up missing the Merc's official member photo, but I got there in time to step in when they got everybody (official or not) into the shot, plus the females only photo. Most of this day was spent wandering around posing for pictures while I killed time until my 4 pm Honor Guard Duty at Jeremy Bulloch's table (of course I'm pretty sure I'm in a fair amount of people's photos of him and his table. . .lol). Pere was off at more panels so I've only got a couple of pics of my kit since I had to hand the camera off to others. I did find out I can kneel in this kit, it just popped one of the straps on my shin armor (which is honestly ok. . I was going to redo all the straps on the boot/shin armor anyway). All I needed was for my kit to last until after my guard duty, and it did. Now it's kind of tucked away where I can fix it up.
Sunday (last day of con)
Pere had planned on having his Royal Guard to wear at C6. He'd ordered a new helmet off ebay (his old one is a Don Post that he's fixing), but it got here too late for him to do all the correction work and painting on it before we left. So he tried to get the painting done while we were stopped in TN on our way down at my parent's house. That probably would have worked except the paint was still too tacky to put it in the car, so he left it for my mom to overnight down to us at the hotel with the thought that the paint would be fine. Unfortunately (either due to the thickness of the paint or to the humidity in TN), the paint wasn't cured enough, and when he opened it at the hotel the paint was too badly damaged to be usable. Thankfully Rubies had their new Royal Guard helmet for sale at their booth, and thankfully it's actually a pretty damn good helmet. I'm not so happy about the price. . . .but he really wanted his costume for his photo op with Ian McDiarmid. So he got that, and I ended up buying one of the crappy Anakin gloves and cutting the straps off so he'd have at least a glove to use. His actual glove didn't get sewn in time because the hotel carpet ate my sewing needle. -_- He got his photo and autograph though, plus he kept getting stopped for pictures as we were walking around.
While he was waiting in line to get his photo taken with McDiarmid, I wandered off and got Jeremy's autograph since I figured given this is the third time I've met him I should probably actually get it for once. Got both a picture autographed and one of the old convention exclusive Boba toys that Pere gave me autographed. After Pere got his stuff we just wandered among the booths (with mostly Pere buying stuff and me unsuccessfully looking for a nexxu toy) until convention close (which was waay too early in the day if you ask me).
No idea who the guy in the chair is; he just wanted Pere to pose with him for his picture. lol
SWAG
'Cause I like showing off.
Not so much swag as thing I had to buy because omg cute (AT-AT bag from Thinkgeek):
Lightsaber poster tube. Because why not?
Merc's C6 exclusive patches (Left - Volunteer patch, Right - Birthday bash patch):
Merc's exclusive C6 print by Brian (dude, I can never remember how to spell your last name):
And the R2-KT patches I picked up (one is the C6 one, the other is one of the St. Patrick's Day ones):
