It felt like we were getting ready for this con for about two months… and you know how when you’re really looking forward to something it has the habit of being a huge letdown?  Yeah, that wasn’t the case at all with this Katsucon.  It somehow magically exceeded all expectations – and I’m pretty sure that most of the reason is because Kelly and I roomed with Sam and Stephanie who turned out to be two of the coolest roommates ever.

Kelly and I ended up leaving for the convention sometime around 10pm on Thursday night due to the usual ‘Let’s Finish This Costume Stuff At The Last Minute’  (though to be fair, we’d pretty much been working our butts off and getting very little sleep for the two weeks leading up to the con too) and we arrived at the Gaylord (it’s still funny) sometime around 4:30 in the morning on Friday.

The convention center turned out to be kind of awesome for photos, though I’m convinced that the staff were not fans of all the crazily dressed people running around their fancy space.

Sometime around noon Steph and Sam arrived and we all figured it would be a fantastic idea to dress up in Bob Moon costumes and try and find people downstairs.

I ingeniously never fixed my wig, so it looked like something that had been used in a game of volleyball but let’s just pretend that it was supposed to be like that.  Cool.  We cool?  Good.

YAY for meeting up with a ton of new people on Friday too!  I don’t think we moved more than ten feet in however many hours we were all downstairs, but somehow everyone I’d wanted to run into just sort of happened to be in the same area – so that worked out surprisingly well.  It wasn’t like Otakon where you need a GPS and four cellphones to find the people you’re looking for…

Ordering pizza was a major undertaking (though I was so hungry that pizza was delicious), and I spent basically the rest of the night finishing up the Berserker stuff with Kelly.  UGH, yes we were those girls.  Though since we had entertainment while we worked and didn’t really feel like we were missing out on anything downstairs it wasn’t so bad.

On Saturday we spent a little under five hundred years getting into costume.  I’m sorry Stephanie-!  Oh god, really I think maybe I owe Stephanie something really shiny for being the most patient human being ever.

I wish there were photos of us getting into costume, because it really took everyone in the room to dress us in our silly hats, armor, paint, etc.

Photos from Adam/Dr.Teng

The entire time we wore these costumes we kept smacking our helmets and shoulder horns into each other.  It was pretty loud and kind of hilarious.  Walls/corners/doorways also beat us up pretty badly too – and yet the armor isn’t dented up, so I’m going to consider that a small miracle.

After wandering around in these for what felt like maybe two years but turned out to only be around four hours (we were in some awesome amounts of pain and discomfort) we changed into our Steph, Sam, Kelly, and Katie costumes.  I’m a big fan of those costumes, they’re really comfortable.  We had a close call with food poisoning, took pictures with delightful facial hair, wore Sam’s Rikku bra as a hat, and then continued with all sorts of debauchery until wee hours of the morning.  IT WAS REALLY FUN.

Picture credits:  Adam, Lionel, Ollie, NeonPixie, Steph, Al, Quadrain, and….?  I didn’t take any pictures once we left the hotel room on Saturday, but they’re out there somewhere and they’re pretty special.  Anyway, lots of fun.