Tag: con

Ad Astra 2009

I like [Ad Astra](http://www.ad-astra.org/). It’s a cute little con.

Got in last night. I was giving Holly a ride so I decided to take off early. Unfortunately, I forgot that I promised I’d also give Eric and Alex a ride. Oops. I was just passing under the 427 when I got Eric’s call asking when I could pick them up. They were able to catch a ride into town later, though, so that worked out okay. Which is good, since I’m staying in their room.

Friday night was mostly just hanging out. I ran into some surprising people. Today I’ll probably sit in on some readings and things.

### Notes ###
* I’ve signed Eric and myself up for the D&D 4e game tonight, so I’ll finally get to try that out. I haven’t played D&D in ages. I’ll let you know how it goes.
* Tamora Pierce gives a shout-out to Sventlana Chmakova. Wishes she’d write more Dramacon. :D
* Good creative writing panel about overcoming creative blocks and distractions. I’m finding that stuff relevant to coding stuff as well.
* Was hoping to sit down for a game of D&D 4e (was going to play a cat girl avenger). A medical emergency prevented that from happening. Looks like everyone’s probably okay, but we were a bit shaken by it all.

Polaris Wrap-up

Sunday was quite a bit less action-packed than Saturday. Everybody was pretty tired, me included. You’ll notice the Saturday post went up after 3am. I tried to get to sleep earlier but failed utterly. One of the things they tell you to do to fight insomnia is to get up and do something and then try again, so I got up and wrote a blog post. :P

I got up in time to see Gareth David-Lloyd’s encoure, though. I actually asked a few questions this time. He didn’t offer any amazingly revealing insights, but he was lots of fun as a guest and was good with the crowd. When the other Darcy (the dog, who made her debut at Ad Astra) got up to the microphone with her handler, he was all “OMG, is that a tiny dog?!” and of course, Darcy [ended up in his lap](http://picasaweb.google.ca/dscassel/Polaris2008/photo#5223083914446927330).

Not a whole lot happened otherwise. I floated around between hanging out with people and going to a couple panels, none of which were particularly notable. I saw a bit of a talk with a guy (from one of the Stargates) named Rainbow. He was pretty fun too. And I spend way, way too much money in the dealer’s room on Doctor Who toys. The prices were okay and there was no shipping so I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to start a collection.

When Sunday ended, I wasn’t terribly excited about going to Kelsey’s again, even if it meant hanging out with fun con people. Instead, I went over to Rin’s place because she was sick and unable to attend Sunday. So I ended up going out to dinner with Rin and Kyle and Xio and Eric and Alex and P-chan, which was very nice, like old times. We went back, played with toys for a bit and then I drove home, very tired but satisfied.

I really like Polaris. Toronto Trek was my first con–I went to Toronto Trek III when I was 14. I think–for con stuff–anyway, it’s the best con I go to in the year. (This might be because it’s the only con with a Doctor Who track, who knows?) The major downside being not that many people end up going. It’s a bit expensive. This year was different, though–I knew tonnes of people, so that was fantastic. I had a great time.

Before I go, [I will leave you with pictures](http://picasaweb.google.ca/dscassel/Polaris2008).

Polaris, Day 1

I’m here in Toronto for Polaris, the convention formerly known as Toronto Trek. This is actually the first time I’ve been here for the whole weekend. Usually I’ve only ever driven down for the Saturday.

The highlight of the day for me was stumbling across Rick Green in the dealer’s room and hearing about Hoverboy, possibly the 137th greatest superhero ever! I went to his panel, and it really stirred up old memories. I remember when I was a kid, getting up at 5am Sunday mornings in my footie pyjamas and watching that old Hoverboy cartoon with Kasey Kasem and Vincent Price. You know, the one with Hoverboy before they brought in Hoverdog and it started to suck.

Anyway, apparently, they’re bringing Hoverboy back! Ty Templton won the rights in a poker game and is working with Marcus Moore to put out a new comic series! Not only that, a Hoverboy documentary is in the works. (I might be in it, since I attended the panel. It’s all very exciting!)

Anyway, there’s some Doctor Who stuff tomorrow that I really ought to be awake for. Hopefully I’ll find out about more exciting Hoverboy news as well.

Anime North Wrap-up

So Sunday, as usual, was pretty laid back and low key. We got up, checked out and packed up the car. Jeremy and I had breakfast went to the dealer’s room. I bought a bunch of stuff, including the next five volumes of Nodame Cantabile and the Princess Tutu box. I usually get something reasonably macho to balance out the girliness when I get stuff like that, but I didn’t find anything that struck my fancy.

There were some decent deals to be had, but honestly, I have a whole tonne of crap at home that I haven’t read or watched yet. I have to start digging into that before I should do any serious buying.

I also got a couple random soundtrack CDs for Ellen. I just hope they don’t suck.

For lunch, Jeremy and I went up the street to Zet’s–a greek place slash greasy spoon diner. The pork souvlaki on a bun was really good, if incredibly huge.

We struggled to find something to fill the time Sunday afternoon. After another trip around the dealer’s room, we watched AMVs for a bit. Sadly, I can’t find any of the ones I liked on YouTube. C’mon people! I agree with Karl: combining Sailor Moon with Evil Dead: The Musical’s “All the Men In My Life Were Killed By Candarian Demons” was a masterstroke. I also liked using the Littlest Hobo theme with [Junkers Come Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y5N_iQJyZk), but only because I really like The Littlest Hobo theme.

A bunch of us went out for the traditional post-con meal. After the usual people-wrangling, we ended up at Kelsey’s and mostly watched Elliot play with her new Artist Alley Avatar toys. Which was cute.

We made it back home after I got a bit lost in Mississauga, marking the end of another Anime North. The End.

Anime North Continued

I’m back spending the end of the day hanging out in the hotel room, writing up a brief con report post.

Saturday is now traditionally Photo Scunt day, and that’s pretty much all we did. We weren’t quite on the ball this year, so we ended up without any listings in the convention program and without any real place to set up. The latter was sorted out pretty quickly, though. John and Morag showed up with a whole bunch of computer equipment and we spend the latter part of the morning and early afternoon just getting set up.

Despite not having advertised we still managed to get as many groups as we could handle. It was fun, even though John erased the two best categories (Creative and “Wrong”). The groups struggled a bit with our (mostly John’s) sense of humour. The fact that two entries were worth zero points–“Goggles” because they do nothing and “The cake”, on the basis that it *is* a lie–didn’t go over so well.

After the scunt wrapped up, we went out to one of the Hakka Chinese places up on Derry Road. Asian Wok ‘n’ Roll. I kinda like that place.

We didn’t have a whole lot to do after we got back. We mostly hung around the Moonlight Ball setup stuff and helped a little bit. After that I just wandered around for a little while and ended up running into Jeremy and coming back here to do this.

So now you’re caught up.