Toronto

Vacation Day 5: AnimeNorth Day 1

Today was a true blast at the convention!

Prep was a crazy mess. My hair came out pretty mutilated, but that was just a detail issue, and did prove the concept. In the end, though, I ended up laying on the countertop with my head hanging off the end of it. There are photos that I will acquire copies of as soon as possible.

Then it was pack into the car and get badges for Dani, Nicci, and Alex. It worked well and from there we went and met Rai at the airport. Then he needed to get his badge, and Paul needed to assemble his cross. So, the party split, but later successfully reconvened in time to get in line for the skit contest.

We mostly just goofed around in this line, with about half of us playing in the Nintendo DS Pictochat. It can be an incredible challenge to figure out who on earth your chatting with, apparently. I shall have to remember my DS next time, and join in on this crazy. I’m too used to no one else being anywhere near the Pictochat.

The contest was decent, but some of the acts, even from masters division, wee really subpar. Sure, I got to see the cast of kingdom hearts sing song parodies, but I also had to sit though an interpretive dance. And no. I did not just make that up. Someone did an interpretive dance.

Following the skit competition Paul and I darted off for food and then rejoined the others in time for the AMV top 20. Whited turned into the AMV top 10 when they realized how many people really wanted to attend, so they just did the same show twice and planned to do the other half of the top 20 at another time and just drop something else. We also caught AMVs that made me buy the anime, which has Paul and I looking for two animus that I dint think would have otherwise caught our eyes.

Paul and I were photographed quite a bit, as was Brian, who was dressed as the Tenth Doctor. This did make moving about a very fun challenge. As was getting home. We have more people than car space. It ended up needing two trips, but we didn’t need to break the cross down, which will save a lot of time tomorrow, making it all good. Tough with the second trip were not actually saving any time, being honest.

I can’t wait for tomorrow to start. I have money down on how much better my hair will be. And I’m getting donuts.Yay Donuts!

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Vacation Day 4: Toronto Day 2 – Cakes and Lattes

It was another day in which Paul and I cracked out a few details and then went to bop about Toronto with Dani (and this time Nicci came, too!). Aaron and Lindsey worked (it’s so hard for teachers to get random time off, especially this close to end of term, so we completely understand) so after a bit of costuming we gathered up the eight tons of crap we carry around and migrated to Dani and Nicci’s to move in for the duration of the con. Well be joined by a full army soon enough.

From there we went out to enjoy Toronto some more. This time it was downtown to enjoy board games at this really neat little wifi free cafe called Snakes and Lattes. They’ve got thousands of board games and you pay a cover and can play all you want to. It was alot of fun, and they make a really good mocha, so bonus for me! We were joined by an army of people Dani and Nicci know, and it was tons of fun.

From Snakes and Lattes we went to a bakery called futures that sells cake by the slice. Dani has been talking this place up and I had feared the cake would be at least a disappointment, if not a lie (that’s a joke about the game Portal, if you’re reading this, Mom – not me worrying about the honesty of the person I drove so far to see). The cake was, in fact, not a lie and extremely delicious, as was the stew Nicci made for dinner. It was very nice of her to make sure everyone got one good meal before our diets turn into the monstrosities of fast food eating that will happen at the convention.

We attempted to watch Scott Pilgrim vs the World, but Paul and I failed completely and sleep won.

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Vacation Day 3: Toronto, Day 1 – Soaking up the city

Today we’ve mostly tooled around Toronto with Dani. Which was a blast!

We got to play around the campus of her university. Her campus is amazingly pretty, and it was a great place for photo hunting. We also got to see parts of the city and acquired excellent poutine from a place called Smokies Poutinerie. They took the poutine base (cheese curds, gravy and fries) and added other things. Mine came with nacho fixings.

From there we made our way to the subway and back to Aaron and Lindsey’s. We went out to dinner. There was an attempt made to pay, but we ended up loosing the fight for the check (thank you Aaron and Lindsey!). Maybe next time we’ll win.

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