Hello, 2012.

Well, we're only 3 days into 2012, but the year has already been good to me.

To recap, 2011 ended in the best way possible - with countless parties. I had my 24th birthday party on Tuesday, which included a trip to Sky High, the warehouse full of trampolines and foam here in Seattle, plus an evening of dancing and drinking in footy pajamas back at my place.

Friday, Forest had another one of his famous "secret parties", which ended up being a complex version of Mafia involving camera feeds and robots and being trapped in the Matrix.

Saturday was the official New Year's Eve party at Tara and Alexander's apartment, with confetti, fondue, a hilarious drink menu and a wall with our tweets from the night being projected onto it. My favorite part of the evening was when six of us decided to go on an adventure to the sauna on the second floor, making ourselves stay there until someone from the party saw our rescue tweets on the wall -- at the same moment Freddie was apparently showing everyone something on YouTube so NOBODY was paying attention to the tweet wall. Our "HELP WE'RE TRAPPED IN THE SAUNA" tweets went unnoticed for who knows how long - we came back to the party later sweaty and feeling like we'd just gotten ourselves into some sort of horrible Jumanji type game, haha.

Ringing in 2012 was a sort of cleansing experience for me. Not only did I get to leave a lot of old baggage back in 2011, but it felt incredibly right to be celebrating the new year with these amazing people who've showed me over the past six months that Seattle really is my home. I am not going to deny that texting with some of my LA friends over the course of the night didn't feel good, though. I'm glad I can have the best of both worlds, still. I'm so fortunate to have friends all over the world. :)

2012 has been as such: Sunday Justin and I played WoW and watched the Twilight Zone marathon all day. I know I should have jumped right into my new list of responsibilities for 2012, but I really just felt like I deserved one more day of "holiday vacation", and what better way to spend it, really? Then on Monday, the day was completely Job Hunters. I met with Liz, Forest and Tara to work out some business stuff and set some dates for final casting, set building, etc. Then we went to this awesome meetup for people involved in the Seattle web series community, which was even better than we could have expected. Everyone is so welcoming and nice and fun - we really couldn't ask to be joining into a better group of people.

I have more work to do today (as with every day for the rest of my life, probably) so I am going to leave you with an incredibly nerdy conversation I had with Justin yesterday that made me laugh.

Justin: I cleaned up a lot of junk in my WoW character's bank. You know dreadnettle, light leather, horcruxes, the usual.

Me: How many horcruxes?

Justin: Well, my character has killed over 5000 people. But it's not my horcrux, I was just holding it for a friend.

Me: I was only checking to see how many more are still out there. Sounds like we have a lot of work to do.

Justin: I wish that were the case. If we had to destroy horcruxes, I would have my wand and be out the door in a heartbeat.

Justin: My issue is, I don't embody the archetypal literary hero because they must first refuse the call to adventure, but be thrust into it. I would jump into adventure at the drop of a hat.

Me: That just means something would go terribly, terribly wrong before you succeed... to aid plot conflict.

Justin: You mean like that part of the movie where everything is at its worst? Those parts make me sad.

Me: Yeah, that has to be your life though. Good story-telling requires it.

Justin: Thanks. :(

Then in deciding what to track this year at the bottom of my blog, I made the mistake of... asking for help.

Me: What should I track on my blog this year? Last year was flights.. the year before was Chipotle burritos.

Justin: hmm. burrito flights???

Me: Sigh. Why do I even ask you things.

Any suggestions for things to track this year? I was thinking of listing the book I'm currently reading, but it's not a particularly creative or exciting idea, plus it might be embarrassing if I get really busy and am reading the same book for months.. haha. Let me know your ideas in the comments, and also, tell me how you spent your first day of 2012!

Mushy Christmas thoughts.

I'm currently sitting at my parents' house, in my old-bedroom-now-converted-into-a-spare-room. I can hear Christmas music wafting in from the kitchen, as well as the clanging of metal and glass as my parents put away the last of the fancy Christmas dishes. We just finished a delicious brunch of blueberry waffles and mini quiches. I made the quiches. I love quiche.

Somehow I got out of dishes by saying "I think I'm going to write a Christmas blog." I have no idea how that worked. Apparently if I say things like that with enough authority, they actually sound legit. So with my mother's approval ("blog away, Tina"), I am going to try to wrap up the feelings stirring in me from the holidays going on and the end of the year so closely on the horizon.

This year has been a shaky one. I know that in the grand scheme of things, I have a wonderful life and I am very fortunate in pretty much every aspect of my existence. I am thankful every single day that I have a caring, fun family, amazing friends in all parts of the world, and I get to do the things I love for a living. But that doesn't mean I can't have difficult stuff going on sometimes. At the start of this year, I wasn't in a very good place. I don't need to dwell on the specifics - instead, today, as I look back on everything that's happened since this time last year - I want to climb up on my roof and scream as loud as I can about how much better things are.

I really am truly happy right now. I've made a lot of life changes.. from deciding to stay in Seattle and getting involved in things here, to making a bunch of new friends in my town, to letting go of some people who were holding me back. From all the little changes I've had to make to take care of my vocal nodes, to trying to jump back into writing, to starting to learn to cook a bit so I can eat more healthily, I'm feeling so great about the direction I'm going. Everything bad that happens to us in life will get better with time and healing, and I feel so relieved to be able to revel in really feeling whole right now.

I'm excited for what the new year will bring - ever since I got involved in the amazing Internet communities I'm a part of, I have been blown away year after year that each one seems even more incredible than the last. I have a good feeling that 2012 is going to follow that trend.

Christmas at home had been nice. I know many families go to their grandparent's house or share the day with a whole slew of aunts and uncles and cousins, but my extended family all lives quite far away. While we do make it a point to see them in the summer, Christmas has always been a time just for my Mom, Dad, brother and myself. Each year is fairly similar to the one before it, but that's why it's special. We only have each other out here when it comes to family, so I cherish the moments we have together, opening gifts, making/eating food, going to church (despite my own beliefs) and playing cards.

I got a lovely pile of gifts including a Kindle Touch, the game Catch Phrase, a bunch of candles, an Urban Decay eyeshadow palette, Kermit footy pajamas and a gorgeous jade necklace my Mom bought me in China (among other things). It's kind of nice to be a bit older and more mature around Christmastime.. it was always so stressful when I was younger, always getting hung up on the gifts. I remember fretting over my wish list, worrying my friends would get better presents or things I didn't think of - that all seems so silly now. I almost prefer giving gifts to receiving them now; seeing the looks on people's faces when I manage to get them exactly what they wanted is seriously the best.

My favorite gift I gave this year was a Jayne hat (from Firefly) to my dad. We really bonded over that show a few years back, and he loved the episode when Jayne's mom sent him the dorky orange hat. I've been waiting to see my dad crack up when he opened that gift for months. My favorite gift I received was from my brother Nick - he installed a stereo in my car all by himself. He's been working on it out in the garage all weekend. It means a lot that he'd put that much labor into a gift for me. :)

The necklace from my mom, as well, is very special. She picked it out for me at the Jade factory in China, and it's supposed to bring happiness and love into my life. I'm a little worried this means she's wishing for some grandkids, haha, but unfortunately for her it's going to be a good long while before that's on the table. Like, after I meet a boy, specifically. #foreveralone

I know a lot of my blog posts recently have been sort of mushy I-love-my-life type ramblings, but I'm just so, so happy with how things have changed for me. It wasn't that long ago when I felt like it was going to be impossible to turn things around, and I'm just amazed with how easy it ended up being. I think the obstacles and choices in our life really do happen for a reason, and I'm glad to be right here, exactly where I am.

This might be my last blog post of the year (maybe not though, I might need to do one of those stereotypical go-through-the-months posts) but at the very least, I'm positive I'm not flying anywhere else in 2011.

So for the last time...

Flights taken: 26 (not bad for one year!)

December funtimes and parties.

Life is so exciting right now. December in general is always a total blast, but this year seems even more excitingly off the wall, probably because I am more involved in my own city than I ever have been before.

Thursday I went to the Child's Play Charity Auction -- this was a big fancy event for local nerds to come together and try to raise money for Penny Arcade's awesome charity that gets games and toys for bed-ridden and sick kids in hospitals nation-wide. I wont say a ton, because this is actually going to be the topic of my Project4Awesome video this year, but I am so glad I went to the event. Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade ran the live auction, which was hilarious, and I met a lot of really great people. Plus, seeing that many nerds dressed in their fanciest clothes is always a neat experience.

Yesterday Liz and I watched the special holiday episode of Community, and it was so good that once it ended, we literally just went back and watched it a second time. This is a big deal for me to say, as a huge fan of music episodes of non-musical shows... but it might have stolen first place for best musical episode of a show ever. At the very least it's tied for first with Buffy.

It could just be that I'm emotional about it being the last episode they're airing for awhile, as we've now entered the much despised Community hiatus. NBC wouldn't know a good thing if it aired weekly on Thursdays on their own channel. ...wait.

Last night I went to the Cheezburger Network Holiday party with the rest of the Know Your Meme team. There were free drinks and free food and I discovered this amazing beer that was red and fruity and called Lindemans Framboise. It didn't even taste like beer at all, which instantly makes it my favorite kind of beer.

The party was at the Tap House down in Seattle, which is this incredible bar with something like 160 beers on tap. The funny thing is, the after-party for the Child's Play Auction was also at the Tap House (though the Bellevue branch) so it's been a beer-filled week for me. Good thing I know my tricks, like the Framboise and various ciders, since I'm not really a beer person at all.

Then we had a little game's night at my house after the Cheezburger party, where we played a lot of games that actually only ended up being fun once we revised the rules ourselves. There will be a video about this, but using the cards from Dixit, we created an epic tale about a powerful sorcerer, a bearded child, the search for a key, an illegitimate baby, the betrayal of a divisive mistress and the death of a poor heroic slum kid. I don't even know.

I'm actually very, very glad I don't have any plans today, because it's the first time in a long time that I get to just catch up on my TV shows and play some WoW. I can't wait. :D

Flights taken: 26

Post NaNoWriMo wrap-up.

It's funny to me that the day after I finish NaNoWriMo, the first thing I think is, "Ooh! I should write a blog post!"

But here I am. I guess if there's one thing to be said about my life, it's that I never really tired of writing. Oh sure, I get sick of writing certain THINGS, but never of writing itself.

So, the last three days were spent in a sort of NaNo-psychosis. I hit 50,000 words on Monday. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, I proceeded to write 16,000 more words on top of that, because I am a crazy person, and I knew I would hate myself if I didn't finish my story and get to write the neat little "the end" before calling it a month and saying goodbye to NaNoWriMo for another year. Ended with 66,360, which is my longest novel yet, in 6 years.

So Liz and I stocked up on energy drinks and fast food (I'm not proud) and we converted our living room into a sort of crazy-person's den. And we wrote. So much.

Last night when we finished around 9:30PM, our friends caught wind and they barely even gave us a choice - they tweeted immediately, "we're coming over". It was partially so they could take us out to celebrate, but partially because Liz and I have both been so anti-social lately and they were just as thrilled as we were that it was over.

Anyway, we were both so unshowered and crazy and cave-person-like that we BOLTED to our rooms to make ourselves presentable to the outside world. Once our friends got here we walked down to a local bar and had a lovely, lovely carefree evening celebrating our novelly accomplishments. My friend Molly took this picture of Liz and I to commemorate the occasion.

It's nice, being done. NaNoWriMo is an event I would never skip out on, because the experience is so character building and you learn so much about yourself and your limits, but man is it hard. It's nice to know I have 11 more months until I need to think about it again, though I do plan on going back and doing a little editing on this one, unlike most previous years.

It's also nice having such awesome friends to celebrate these kinds of accomplishments with. I'm really looking forward to December; there's always so many great parties and events and get-togethers, and I really need that this month. I spent a LOT of time alone writing during the last 30 days, guys. A lot.

I got a new laptop on Black Friday and I am currently playing around with it and setting everything up, so I think this will be the end of this blog post. Happy December, everyone!

Flights taken: 26

Things I am thankful for.

I really should be hopping in the shower, packing my bag, and heading down to my parents house right now, but before I set the gears in motion for my day, I wanted to stop, take a moment, and think about what I am actually thankful for this year.

Thanksgiving is kind of a silly holiday if you actually think about it. You have to eat the exact same foods every single year, there's the whole madness with Christmas shopping starting the next morning, and really - we should be thankful for the things we have YEAR ROUND. But there's something special and beautiful about tradition. It's because we eat the same food each year that makes it that much more delicious. It's getting caught up in ridiculous Black Friday shopping and parades put on by corporations that reminds us that we're human. It's taking a day or a weekend to slow down and spend time with the people we love that really reminds us that we have things to be thankful for.

So I love Thanksgiving, I love my family, and I love the friends I have in my life that have become my second family since I moved out of my parents' house.

Here are the things I am thankful for this year:

• Candles that smell like pumpkin and cinnamon rolls and cupcakes.
• Our web series Kickstarter doing so well and getting such great reception.
• Deciding not to move to LA so things like this web series can happen.
• Being glad every single day I decided not to move to LA.
• Knowing some of my best friends live down there but that they'll always be there for me, regardless of how often we see each other.
• NaNoWriMo being a constant driving motivator in my life.
• NaNoWriMo almost being over.
• Colin coming home for Thanksgiving and getting to spend time with him.
• Liz and I getting to live together after 4 years in different cities.
• My mom getting to travel and swapping stories with her about foreign countries.
• My brother getting an awesome job and starting his post high-school education.
• My dad and I always having the exact same taste in TV and always having a new show to talk about.
• No matter how busy our lives get, Eia always being the best best friend a girl could ask for.
• All the stuffing leftovers I'm going to get to eat this weekend.

I hope you guys all have a great Thanksgiving, or if you're not from America, then a great.. you know, whatever. Have a great week. Haha. I'm heading home now to see my lovely family. :)


Flights taken: 26

Two new very exciting projects!

Bet you didn't think you'd get TWO blog posts from me this month, did you?

While I have been fraught with a month-long condition of constant non-negotiable guilt with NaNoWriMo on my shoulders (literally every moment I spend not writing is spent at least partially in guilt), I have also been bursting at the seams with the preparation of exciting projects I couldn't talk about publicly yet. And if you know anything abut me, you know how much I love talking about exciting projects.

Anyway, this blog post is in honor of the fact that I can now openly speak about not one but TWO of the secrets I've been stealthily keeping from you guys. One being the new channel "Answerly" I'm a part of with Hayley Hoover and Joseph Birdsong (we'll be answering your questions and giving our tips and advice weekly about various topics; mine is nerd and gaming). This is awesome and exciting and not in the slightest any sort of replacement for previous collab channels we may have been part of. This is an entirely new project, one I am incredibly pumped about. I'll be posting every Friday. :)

The second exciting secret, however, is a bit more relevant to you guys, as you're a part of what inspired it in the first place. It's no secret that Hayley and I are both absolutely in love with our blog readers and favor you above all other people on the Internet, haha. I am happy to announce that my second secret project also involves her, and that we are launching a website today that hosts information about the NEW BOOK WE WERE GOING TO WRITE THAT ALSO INCLUDES YOU.

The book is going to be called Less Than Three: Stories about Love, Like, and the Internet. You can find out more of the details on our website, but the main exciting part is that it's going to be a compilation of short stories and we're hoping at least a few of you out there (if not lots of you) consider yourself writers enough to want to submit a short story of your own to the collection. We haven't announced this on YouTube or twitter or anything yet, so know that as our faithful and loyal blog readers, we made sure YOU were the first to know about this project. Because we like you and stuff. We'll be taking submissions until the end of January and releasing the book during the summer of 2012. I'm so nervous and excited to be announcing this. :D

Anyway, I have another 2,000 or so words to write today for NaNoWriMo, so that's all for now. But please, if you're interested, check out Answerly and check out the Less Than Three website; we're very excited about both these new projects and we hope you guys like them too!


Flights taken: 26

Playing "Dread".

I've been avoiding this blog like the plague so I have enough energy to hit my word count goals each day for NaNoWriMo, and I am happy to announce that I am currently exactly on track, hovering around 15,000 words on day 9. Today I am feeling a little bit burnt out on my novel though, so even though I've only written about a thousand words today, I am taking some time off to work on.... other writing projects, all evening. I hate myself.

I wanted to write up a little review of the game I played last night with my friends Tara, Alexander, Forest, Justin and Liz. The game was called "Dread", and was run by our other friend Michael. It was essentially a tabletop role-playing game, but instead of using dice to determine our actions, we used a Jenga set. Depending on what your character wanted to do, you had to pull Jenga pieces. If the tower collapsed while you were up, your character died. It definitely made for a much more intense, pressure-filled game.

Before we played, Michael sent out a series of different questions to each of us to help us build our characters. He made sure to add that instead of creating characters designed to win, we should just create really interesting, dynamic characters. This is how I ended up on a survival based camping trip as a spoiled, rich sorority girl who hates mud. I went into the game thinking my character was going to be the absolute least likely to survive, regardless of where the campaign led us.

The funny thing about role-playing games, though, is that you really never can predict where it's going to go. Despite my character's lack of survival skills, the fact that she slept with their guide (which pissed off a lot of the other campers), and her main concern being that she get home in time for a big frat party, somehow she managed to be the one who pulled off a majority of the most badass things that happened.

She was the one who doused the woods in moonshine to start a forest fire to make a signal to try and contact nearby planes. She was the one who thought to get the crazy werewolf conspiracy theorist to fashion one of her gaudy silver rings into a makeshift knuckle-knife. She was the one who noticed the oncoming wolf in the first place, having to flash everyone (in game) to get their attention (because they were all fighting over some stupid drama). She was the one who ended up mostly defenseless, on the opposite side of the wolf as everyone else, deciding to run forward and stab the wolf in the eye to try and catch it off guard. And in the end, she was one of the only three characters who survived, having killed the wolf and proven better in Jenga than the three losing players.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if you live or die, because everyone got to experience the whole game and it was fun either way. There's something extremely satisfying, though, being a relatively "stupid" character and proving to be the most useful, despite what people assumed by stereotyping at the beginning of the game.

Some highlights from the game include:
-Alexander playing a character that spent most of the game drinking the moonshine that had been smuggled along by Justin's character, and after awhile starting to hallucinate. At one point, he thought he was killing the wolf in a valiant act to save everyone, but in fact was repeatedly stabbing a tree.

-Liz playing a socially awkward character who had met our camping guide online and had lied about her appearance, saying she was tall and blonde. When we got on the trip, the guide mistook his online lover for MY character, since her fake description fit what my character looked like, which is why she in turn ended up sleeping with the guide.

-The body of the guide mysteriously disappearing in the night, and Tara and Liz's characters being upset that the boy's characters weren't keeping good enough watch. Finding out later the boys were the ones who actually dumped the body in the river, for fear of him turning into a werewolf.


We had such a blast playing Dread; I am super lucky that my friends are all such creative and fun people as well, or else a game like this wouldn't be nearly as exciting. Not to mention we went all out, eating hot dogs and making microwave s'mores to really get in the camping mindset. I can't wait to play again. :)


Flights taken: 26

HALLOWEEN!! The best.

I am the happiest girl. :D

And that's saying something, because I have a headache on top of being sick. But last night was our infamous Halloween party and it didn't disappoint. A bunch of people came over earlier to help set up, but as usual (and as it should be) the boys ended up setting up while the girls got into our My Little Pony costumes. I know we already did this at BlizzCon, but it was really fun to have another group of ponies together, this time including Twilight Sparkle, Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom (as well as our Pinkie Pie, Spike and Apple Jack).


Oh, speaking of Apple Jack - Ariana SURPRISED US AND SHOWED UP AT OUR PARTY. So, a few weeks ago we made the Facebook invite for the party and added Ariana on principle since she was a large part of last year's epic Mammoth Caves party. She obviously lives in LA now but we gave her a lot of crap about making a trip up for it; we spent a good week or two collectively trying to peer pressure her into doing it. She brushed us off and eventually we gave up trying (it is a long way to travel for a party I guess).

But then last night (man the timing was perfect) Liz and Eia and I headed out to the store to buy some more party snacks and drink mixers and in the mean time, Ariana showed up at our house (sufficiently surprising Justin). Then when we got back, I had a nose blowing emergency and ran upstairs, leaving Eia and Liz to have their own discovering-of-Ariana experience. The funniest part is, before coming back downstairs, I had tweeted "Mammoth Caves Halloween Party COMMENCE!"

I walked in the living room and took in all the awesome lights and decorations (the boys did a great job), then wandered into the dining room where everyone else was standing. I saw the boys finishing up with the table cloths and then I saw all the girls huddled in the corner and then I did this sort of double take because even though after BlizzCon I am pretty used to seeing Ariana in her Apple Jack costume, I suddenly realized she was IN MY DINING ROOM and not in LA where I thought she was and I definitely let out an expletive or two when I put it all together. Her mom's birthday was also this week, so it made the trip easy for her to justify taking. I was so happy. I can't believe she kept that a secret from all of us. Incredible.

There was lots of hugging and jumping around and incredulous-ness and then it was a REAL Mammoth Caves Party. The whole night was so fun and perfect. Our old roommate Tyler who moved to San Francisco whom we all adored happened to be in town as well so he came to the party too, which was just the icing on the cake. We had so many great people there, and good music to dance to and jello in the shape of a brain to eat and spoons to balance on our noses... every ache and pain in my head and sinus region is totally worth it because last night was so great.


Halloween is already my favorite holiday, but when you're surrounded by that many amazing friends (and my little brother came too!) it just makes you realized what a great place you're at in life. I'm really glad I have managed to find the best of both worlds -- good friends and amazing times here at home, and indescribable and life-changing experiences and people all over the world.

I'm kind of partied out though, even though it's only the 29th. The rest of my Halloween weekend might consist of watching movies like Halloweentown and Hocus Pocus on my couch.

Flights taken: 26

BLIZZCON and Disneyland.

I feel like this is way too much to try to cram into one blog post about BlizzCon, but here I go attempting to do so anyway.

Thursday: I flew down to LA with Justin, Ariana picked us up at the airport, and then we headed to EchoBase briefly to pick up Erinn and Aaron. The plan was to go immediately down to Anaheim to check into our hotel, pick up our BlizzCon registration, and hit up the WoWHead pre-party.

The line for registration was out-the-door long, but chatting in line and feeling the building anticipation made the time go quickly. This was where the joke "Black Shirt Con" started, I believe, on account of 80% of the people in attendance wearing black shirts. I think that gives a pretty good picture of what this convention was like. We met a guy in line who was wearing a My Little Pony shirt; he definitely approved of the costumes we told him we were wearing the next day.

The swag bags were awesome. The main gift was a model Tyrael from Diablo, a WoW authenticator, and an assortment of other little fun things I can't be bothered to go rifle through my bag to remember. After we go our bags we stuffed them in a friends' car and headed out to the party. Almost immediately Jason and I recognized TradeChat and said hi to her; I was surprised she recognized me as well and would not stop telling me how much she wished she could have my voice. Guess she hasn't heard about the nodes, har har (that was a terrible joke, I'm crying inwardly). We wandered around a bit more, saw Felicia Day sitting at a table surrounded by weird creepo lurking fans (I really did want to try to say hi to her, but not under those circumstances) and then chose to leave the party early in favor of hanging out with Hank Green (who also happened to be in Anaheim at the same time as us).

We kind of made it an early night (well, if you can consider 1-2am "early"; this was a convention) because we wanted to get up early to put on our costumes and see the opening ceremony.

Friday: The morning was a hurricane of tights, makeup, wigs, costume pieces and fighting over the bathroom mirror. We have a guild on the WoW servers called "Friendship is Magic" and all of our characters have My Little Pony related names, so we decided to dress accordingly for the first day of BlizzCon. In the order pictured down below, Aaron was Soarin' from the Wonderbolts, Justin was Spike, I was Pinkie Pie, Ariana was Applejack and Erinn was Rainbow Dash.


For the most part, everyone really loved our costumes. We even met a little girl dressed as Twilight Sparkle, which was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. We had one or two hardcore BlizzCon attendees give us a little attitude about dressing in non Blizzard attire, but I didn't really care at all. It's called imagination, Black-Shirt. Get some.

Anyway, the first day of BlizzCon was totally awesome. We got to watch a bunch of panels on the new WoW expansion "Mists of Pandaria" (which, as cheesy as martial arts pandas is, sounds really cool). We played the demo (super fun even though we only got 20 minutes - I tried out the new race/class combo Pandaren Monk), we tried to open the prize chests at this one booth with the "epic loot keys" that came in our swag bags, and we attempted to play this bean bag throwing game at the Jinx booth but failed miserably (aside from Justin and Austin who won TEN TIME IN A ROW and won 50% off coupons at Jinx!). We got our pictures taken at the green screen photo booth (ponies in Azeroth!) and Erinn and I got a picture with Tink and Clara from the guild and we found this big mountain thing that looked like the Aggro Crag and we took pictures there too.


Having been to PAX Prime and Emerald City Comic Con, I was a little more prepared for a convention of this magnitude, but the whole thing was still just so incredible to take in. There were rows and rows of computers out on the floor for demo-playing, people milling about everywhere, and booths bigger than anything I've ever seen at previous conventions. Not to mention the attendance level was somewhere in the twenty thousands. WoW feels like such a solitary game when you're alone in your bedroom -- it was amazing to me to be walking around this convention hall seeing the THOUSANDS of people I probably pass in-game as well that only appear to be computers there.

That night we partied in our hotel room a bit but found ourselves pretty exhausted after our first day at the con. I can't even tell you how awesome it felt to take our costumes off as well... eight hours of wearing a long curly wig while walking up and down a gigantic room all day is enough to make anyone crazy.

Saturday: I will admit, we slept in really late the second day of the con. We made our way back to convention center at our leisure, knowing we had plenty of time to hit up all the things we'd missed the day before. We waited in line a while to spin the NVIDIA wheel to try to win prizes (we didn't get anything good) and played the demo again (this time I switched it up and went Pandaren Mage) but spent most of the day just wandering around trying to make sure we didn't miss anything. We finally ran into other friends we knew there and saw their amazing cosplay (Joey and Meghan looked awesome in their tabards and armor, Katers17 had a seriously mind-blowing Priest costume, Jimmy was rocking a murloc suit) and managed to snag pictures with both Bladezz (from the Guild) and Felicia Day. Pretty pumped about that.

The con ended with a Foo Fighters concert, which was great, despite not being able to get in the main room and having to watch it from an overflow stage on the big monitors. I didn't really mind though, because it meant we got to sit down and relax for the concert rather than being jostled around in the crowded see of black-shirts.

Also, some crazy WoW-themed death metal band opened for the Foo Fighters, so we had a grand old time head banging and making fun of their lyrics (example: "it's time to raise some hell" followed by some head banging). Their closing song was called "I AM MURLOC" and consisted of basically all screaming. Pretty great. And by great I mean.. well, you know. Something different.

That night we went and hung in Hank's "Governor's Suite" again, which was a nice way to end the event. He was there scoping things out for VidCon (which is being held in the same space as BlizzCon was) and was given a room much too big for just him, so we were happy to come take up space in it for awhile. When your friends live all over the country, you get to see each other so little -- it's really nice when these freak coincidences happen where you randomly end up in the same city with free time and get to hang out. :)

Later on, we spent our last night in our crappy hotel with our crappy pillows. This group of people has spent so much of the last few years together in hotels though, it's hard to complain. Hotels just feel a little like home, crappy or not.

Sunday: We went to Disneyland. There isn't a ton to report, as it was a pretty standard Disneyland day. Haunted Mansion was The Nightmare Before Christmas themed, which is my favorite, and Justin, Aaron and Erinn got to see World of Color for the first time. They added a little section to World of Color to promote the fourth Pirates movie, and it includes that bit with the mermaid who apparently looks like me. I have to admit, with the image being projected on water like that, it DID kind of look like me. So. That was kind of fun.

I also got to ride the new Little Mermaid ride in DCA as well as the new Star Tours which was incredible. The day was a success, in short.

After Disney we said our goodbyes and only Justin and I continued on to Ariana's apartment. Tyler came to hang out with us, which was nice as it's always a pleasure to see him. The next morning literally all we did was watch the My Little Pony Halloween special, eat breakfast and watch Ariana play WoW (we didn't bring our laptops). It was really nice to have a day to just... relax. Three days of a convention, flying, and a day at Disneyland is taxing on the body, haha.

Since coming home from BlizzCon I've played a lot of WoW, but that's to be expected I suppose. Blizzard knows how to get people excited about their games. I'm so glad we were all able to go, not only because it was a total blast because it really did break up the terrifyingly large span of time we may have to go between seeing each other again. I actually don't know when my next trip is to see my friends, and that always makes me a little uneasy. At least we can run dugeons together. :)

Flights taken: 26

Emma Stone and Dungeoning.

It's been a fun couple of days.

First of all, yesterday we discovered a bar within walking distance to my house house called "Booze and Burritos". I don't think it get better than that, really. Then last night I ran a dungeon (on WoW) with Justin, Liz, Ariana and Erinn, which was so much fun and really took me back to early last year when the Echo Base boys and I would run dungeons together nearly every night. That's definitely one of my favorite aspects of the game, and it was so nice to have a group of friends together (over skype and in person) working together to accomplish an end.

It got me even more pumped for BLIZZCON, which is this weekend. I've been making plans with Ariana, Justin, Erinn, Aaron, Jason; all my WoW friends will be together this weekend and it's going to be such a blast and I just can't wait. On top of all that, it'll be the first time I've been to LA since JULY, which is kind of strange for me. I was in LA almost every month for awhile there, so it is going to feel really nice to be back with all of my friends for the weekend.

After our dungeoning last night I ended up chatting with Ariana one skype for a good hour or so, and it really made me realize how much I miss a lot of the people down there. I still know I made the right decision to stay in Seattle, but man will it be nice to visit again.


Yesterday I went to this Seattle Blogger Luncheon with Tara and met a lot of really nice local bloggers as well as some great people from New York City who'd flown in for the event. I got there extremely early so I just went inside and decided to make friends with whoever had also arrived early. I ended up chatting with the three ladies hosting the lunch, and one of them said to me, "You know who you remind me of, even though I only met you thirty seconds ago?"
I shook my head no; she continued, "Emma Stone. You have her same energy and kind of a similar face."
At this, I cracked up and told them, "You know, I got that a little after Superbad and Zombieland just based on our looks, but I got it a TON more after Easy A because I'm actually a video blogger too."

The didn't know that I made videos (as it was a blogger lunch and most people were there representing written blogs); so the whole thing was pretty funny. But being compared to Emma Stone is a huge compliment, so I have to say it was a good first impression. Especially since I went to this semi-professional event with pink hair.

Anyway, today I need to film a video and finish packing and try desperately to get my main WoW character at least to level 70 so I don't feel like a TOTAL n00b at BlizzCon, so I should go.

Flights taken: 24