Thursday
Due to bad weather in Atlanta, my flight was delayed arriving here, delayed leaving here, then, about 100 miles from Atlanta, forced to circle until a storm cleared. I'd complain, but giving some of the horror stories as of late regarding the airlines it wasn't that bad. The one thing that did suck was I had to miss dinner with
I Soon learned that
I got settled in the room and DWW arrived a short time later. Food was our immediate concern followed by registration. Greycoupon had called me and tipped me off that registration was taking at least an hour. This was the first sign of a) how over-sold DC was this year and b) that lines would be a running theme for the weekend. On our way to the food court, while riding the escalator, I heard the words, "There's Kevin Sorbo." I turned around to look and, sure enough, the first celebrity I see is Sorbo. For those not in the know I have Kevin Sorbo issues. So I immediately shout out, "It had to be Kevin Sorbo!" and then proceeded to rant about him. He may or may not have heard me. Do I care?
After a quick bite to eat, we headed to registration and the line was outside the building. The DC staff tried to separate everyone in to two groups - preregistered and those purchasing on site. Those purchasing on site were directed to go in the building and more than a few of these people were quite cocky in that they got to go ahead of us. Well, we got the last laugh. The DC staff pointed out to us that our wait would be about an hour, their wait would be three to four hours. The hour turned out to be fairly accurate...for
By this time it was around 11:00 and we headed back to the hotel to veg a bit in front of the TV, talk TV (she got to here about Oz and how the writers blew the last season), and, finally, sleep.
Friday
Jamie Bamber took up a lot of Friday for me. ;) I did manage to meet up with
They registered while I interviewed and then it was about time to head out for
It's a bit of a blur now, but along the way to the restaurant we met up with
After dinner the plan was to meet up with
Saturday
After the Claudia Black panel of awesomeness (which I will recap along with the SG1 panels), we decided to head to the Walk of Fame to see about getting her autograph. This is where we discovered DC had changed in another way (though the photo ops being pushed everywhere you turned should have been an earlier warning sign). Julie Caitlin Brown, who I like to affectionately refer to as the Queen Bitch of the Universe, decided that her people (Claudia along with the rest of the SG1 headliners) you couldn't just walk up to/wait in line to get an autograph. No, you had to get in line to buy a ticket in order to get in another line to get an autograph. By some miracle or perhaps by our pushiness we were able to buy tickets just before they stopped selling them for some undetermined period of time. See, Julie decided that the autograph line was too long so she wouldn't allow tickets to be sold again until it was short. Whatever. Given the length of the auto line, needing to eat, and desiring a decent spot for the SG1 panel at 4, we ended up heading out and deciding to try our luck with Claudia Sunday morning. (Yeah, another great thing about buying a ticket for an autograph? You aren't guaranteed an autograph. :/)
Following the SG1 panel, the plan was to get dinner, then head to the Colonial Day party. Our dinner plans were thwarted at the mediocre Mexican place, so we headed to an Italian place down the street with
Dante's Cove was *still* playing upon my return to the room. I don't recall much after that and I was the one who was sober. DWW, Bryn, SDW and I briefly hung out at the Hyatt and the Shindig, but nothing really interested/excited us. The Marriott bar inexplicably shut down at 1am and so we ended up going back to the room and going to bed.
Sunday
We ended up getting up reasonably early and heading down to get in line for Claudia's autograph. I could go on and on about how ill conceived this was. I mean, hell, Julie was pissing off Klingons! But it makes no sense that everyone has to get in the same line and wait when you are only there to get the autograph of one person. *And* the line had to wait for Chris Judge to roll out of bed and show up. When we finally got into the Walk of Fame, after waiting over an hour, the line began moving relatively quickly.
As we got to the first bend in the line, we got to see Claudia. Even though Julie was running the line as if we were prisoners in a cafeteria, Claudia noticed a young girl in a wheelchair with a cast on her leg just kind of looking at her. Claudia made some funny faces at her (I was afraid to take picture lest Julie confiscate my camera and memory card) and, finally, she waved the girl over. She talked to the girl for a couple minutes and volunteered to sign her cast. Awwwwww. After the girl left and Claudia was all by her lonesome, the woman in front of me told one of the handlers that she was just there for Claudia's autograph, at which point, the handler told her she could go right on up. I barely had my head turned around when
No offense to Claudia, but the way the Stargate autographs were being run, I didn't feel you had time to really chat. She asked how I was, I said good, and asked her the same. I then managed to say how thrilled I was she could attend and she thanked me. And that was that. We all had are thirty seconds with Claudia (which was amazing for
I almost ran into Elisabeth Rohm, this time in a fabulous black suit, and we all stared at the Star Trek actors a bit.
Following a lot more lines and a jam packed afternoon of paneling (have I mentioned how much I love
We were pretty much starving after SDW's panel and, as luck would have it,
I think we got as close as we could to a room party. In addition to everyone listed above,

As people began to disband and I worked to convince Thomasina's friend that she *had* to watch The Duchess and the Devil,
A few random thoughts:
*
* Sadly, I couldn't whip out my camera fast enough to snap a picture of Pac Man chasing after two, whatever it was he chased after, as they stopped traffic and ran across the street. I can still picture the guy in the truck who couldn't stop laughing.
* Here's as close as I got to James Marsters.
* The lines! You can see here how the line for the Star Trek panel (which we were in) ran into the line for the James Marsters panel.
* A picture of a great Kaylee because Bryn wanted to make sure her hubby could see her. :)
* I'm impressed enough by replicas (sadly, I didn't get a shot of R2 D2), but watching this little guy being controlled by his builder, a teenager, with the controls behind his back?
* Don't know if you can spot him, but here's Aaron Douglas hanging with the masses.
* And the very deserving winners of the Masquerade.