halloweenjack | What I did on my summer vacation

Went to see

d_p_rackham, and met many other LJers as well...

Traveling was fairly adventurous. My flight from O'Hare to NC was cancelled, and I had to rebook. It started in the United terminal, which is pretty cool:

Unfortunately, it was pretty warm, which was extra-unfortunate in gates that were packed like this one:

And to top it off, my flight was cancelled less than an hour after I checked in, and less than half an hour before I was to board. United's magic touchscreen reservation system was useless for rebooking my flight, but a very helpful customer rep put me on an American flight to NC, even though I ended up going to Raleigh rather than Greensboro; luckily, they're both about equidistant from

d_p_rackham.

I got to meet LJ people that I hadn't met in RL before. We had dinner with

gassho_all Friday night, and on Saturday, we went to Heroes Con, where I met

hawkward:

You can tell that she's sitting behind a studly-large Macbook, but what you cannot tell (because my photo-fu is pathetic), is that there's a big monitor off to the left, on which you can see her coloring an actual comical book that will be published. Was cool! I didn't stay too long at the con, because the longer I stayed, the more money I'd spend, but I did see and talk to a few folks, got a nice sketch in the inside of one of Jim Mahfood's collections, and many other neat treasures; possibly the neatest was a deck of cards featuring custom illustrations by Jennie Breeden; the back looks like a copy of the Bicycle deck, until you look closely and see that the bike riders are a couple of her characters. Also, the con had a life-sized Silver Surfer:

Speaking of which, we also went to see the FF sequel, and I agree with most of what I've read: Silver Surfer good, Dust-Bunny Galactus not so good. Also, Thing vs. Bear priceless.

Next day, I got to meet

ignescent,

justanyolname,

ladymoondance, possibly some other LJ folks that I've missed, apologies in advance, and many other LJ-less people. I can be a little nervous meeting people F2F for the first time that I've known online for a while, and my nervousness was supplemented by a certain amount of fever and gastrointestinal distress that may have been caused by something that I ate at the Weaver Street Market earlier in the day.

ladymoondance struck up a conversation about religion, and for some reason I started rambling about one of my characters on

city_of_heroes. Maybe I'm just a big nerd.

The return trip was also eventful, because Chicago was pretty stormy that day and my flight got pushed back, and I ended up getting home at 1:30 in the AM. But the trip was totally worth it, on account of getting to spend time with

d_p_rackham and others. My next big outta-town trip will probably be in August, for the family reunion; until then, I'm keepin' cool and savin' my pennies.