SlyCat's Journal

The morning of the 31st Jan saw me having a nice long lie in, waking up around 10am. I showered and made sure all my stuff was packed. Hunter asked if I wanted to do lunch, and I suggested the In N Out as I hadn't been there yet and it was walking distance. I had the double double with cheese fries which was very tasty (and cheap) for a fast food restaurant. Walked back to the apartment where I then wasted some more time on the internet until 2pm when we had to leave. Even car pooling, it took us some time to get to LAX but as my flight wasn't until 7pm, still had plenty of time. Check in and security were pretty much pain free as the lines were short and had no problems. Beyond security, there wasn't a whole lot to do as there there was a small duty free shop, some restaurants, some Starbucks and a few souvenir shops. I continued the tradition of trying stuff you don't generally get in the UK and had a Chicken Quesadillas from Chillis which were rather tasty, and also spent my remaining dollars on sweets to bring back to the UK. After wasting as much time as I could with the facilities int he airport, I still had lots of time to waste. I couldn't get a decent service from the wifi hotspot which I had intended to pay for so just ended up playing DS, reading a magazine or doing nothing.

At around 6.30pm we were able to board. I ended up sitting next to a oldish English guy from Tunbridge Wells who had been visiting friends and playing golf. For the first half of the journey, it was OK, I got some episodes watched on the PMP and had a rather crappy meal. However about 4-5hours into the flight, while the lights were all off, everyone else was sleeping, I just started to feel rather unwell. It wasn't nausea, I just felt really dry, found it hard to breathe normally and had pains in my gut. I figure it must have been something to do with sleep deprivation and maybe stress of flying but the feeling just didn't go away. The flight attendant tried to help but as they can't give out medication (I had asked for paracetamol/Tylenol), the best they could do was give out water. I did eventually throw up into one of their sick bags, being the first time I've ever needed to use one of those things, but it didn't make me feel much better. Oddly, only after the attendant gave me some Coke did I seem to fall asleep, waking up 2 hours later feeling much better however, I still don't know what it was. The breakfast they served, about an hour before we landed, was also pretty crap, being just a croissant with some spreads.

The flight landed soon after and I made my way to passport control... only when I got here, I checked the wallet I keep all my travel documents in and didn't see my passport there. I panicked a little, but soon found it in the front pouch of my bag. Being a UK citizen, the passport control process is just a quick scan of the passport. In the time it took me to get a trolley and get to the relevant carousel, my bags were right there as I arrived which was a spot of luck. Then made my way through to the shopping area and got some UK cash and some breakfast from AMT Coffee. Then made my way to the bus station, not being in a hurry as it was over an hour until my coach. When I got there, I realised that there was an earlier coach leaving an hour before mine. I paid £3 alteration fee and was able to get the earlier journey home. Got a taxi from the coach station to my home as I really didn't want to lug my bags across town.

Got home around 3.45pm and started my laundry while playing my copy of Burnout Paradise which had arrived while I was away, as well as playing Rez HD and the new demo of Beautiful Katamari (which comes out this month finally!). I stayed up until around half 9pm after watching Sweeney Todd as I wanted to try to correct my body clock. Woke up around 1am but fell asleep again only to wake at 10am, so did a good job there. Not done a whole lot today other than upload my photos. Will be going to town shortly where I need to pick up some Woolite to clean my fursuit with and also get some food as I have none. Not looking forward to going back to work on Monday...

Soo, I'm back in hunterkitty's place in Pasadena which is looking significantly more bare due to the fact he is in the process of moving out and has shifted some tables and things since I last visited. Anyway this morning, Avon went off early to grab breakfast so I did the LJ thing before showering and packing and hanging with some furs near the fire in the lobby before arakinuk arrived to collect me. Was sad to see the back of the Doubletree but not overwhelmingly so; I think Monday helped me see off any post con depression. perlandria and Arakin took me to Flames where they got the gigantic birthday cake previously. Had a Fajita omlette which was very tasty. Also had a side order of French Toast which I couldn't finish from being full to bursting point.

After food, we drove literally next door to the Winchester Mystery House, something which I didn't really know anything about before visiting. It's basically a tour of a rather large house built by the wife of the owner of the Winchester rifle company which was built rooms at a time, and with rather unusual architecture which makes little sense including stairs which lead nowhere, windows and doors into nothing and unfinished or earthquake damaged rooms. To be honest, it wasn't as interesting as I hoped, but it was a pleasant distraction.

After the long walking tours of the house, we went to BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse where we indulged in a ham and pineapple calzone and gallons of house brewed root beer (num!). Tried to eat dessert (something called a Pizookie but is just a fresh baked cookie with ice cream) but couldn't finish it on account of being stuffed. Perlandria wasn't feeling too well so she was taken home by her friend so Arakin could take me to San Jose Airport.

Again, it was a fairly pleasant journey back to Burbank with Southwest Airlines. There were only about 40 of us on the Boeing 737 flight so everyone pretty much got a row to themselves. The seats also gave plenty of legroom, much moreso than the transatlantic flights in economy/coach class with Virgin/AA. Arrived at Burbank and made my way to the baggage claim to shortly be greeted by Hunter and kaysho. However, the carousel never seemed to display my flight, so Hunter went and asked at the desk, only to find that my bags were waiting on a cart nearby rather than on the carousel. I can only assume I was one of the few passengers who even had checked luggage.

Anyway, we drove back to Hunter's after that and I've been chilling out here since. Regrettably, I've been unable to secure anything to do tomorrow during the day so far so it could be a relatively dull day until we meet up with stego_s_aurus and Kat for dinner at an Olive Garden. Hunter may be able to get some time off work so we can do the other Disney park our tickets our still valid for but he says it's unlikely *fingers crossed*.

This was the last day of the con for many people, some because they were leaving that evening to go to work tomorrow, others because there really isn't much to do on the Monday anyway. It was the last day for my roomies stego_s_aurus, vircoo and Grant. It was great hanging out with those guys and it was sad to see them go.

Elsewhere, sadly the Critterlympics was a washout due to rain so I ended up just floating about and going between the room and the hotel lobby area. Hooked up with arakinuk once I had seen my roomies off at around 6pm with the plan of going to Denny's with Bushycat. Come 7.30pm we were still waiting and I wanted to see the variety show (I hadn't seen one show live yet at the con). So I ended up getting some pizza from the hot food counter before joining the show. Amazingly the show had started on time at 7:30pm with a performance by the San Jose Taiko drummers before the actual show started. After the performances had concluded and I had handed in my ballot form, I went for a quick toilet break only to find I couldn't get back in to the room because they were allegedly over capacity. I was told to move out of the way and just felt a bit taken back by this. I didn't have anything else to do and I wanted to see the conclusion of the show. I decided to go back to Arakin's room as I had expected he would be back from dining by then but only perlandria was there. She tried to cheer me up best she could as I was noticably upset (emotions kinda running riot due to end of con vibe) and made me some british tea while we waited for Arakin to return.

Eventually got Arakin to go fursuiting with me at around half 11 only to find that the music in the dance area was just plain awful. It was effectvely just a repeatative beat with no other sounds and the occaisonal break. Not very fursuit friendly, or good at all to be honest. We ducked back into the headless lounge and pretty much everyone else was feeling the same about the music. Was a nice oppertunity to socialise with some other fursuiters however. Found tilt_longtail chilling out behind the stage in his Jax made Greifer suit. I know he's been after a photo of us together since AC so we went out in search of a photographer. There was a semi-official photographer but they werepacking up so we found kinkyturtle who did the honours. As the music never got any better, Arakin and I made our way back to my room to de-suit and sleep.

Today, I need to check out of Stego's room and move into what was hunterkitty's room with avon_deer up on the fifth floor and then find something to do for the day. I've vague plans to go to the Great Mall like I did last time, and I think badgerguy is up for it too. So hopefully today won't be too depressing, I'm off to have a shower... bye!

Following on from my previous post, my roomies are great. I do the whole worrying thing but I really needn't have :).

Anyway, yesterday I didn't do a heck of a lot to be honest. After breakfast at the hotel restaurant, I wasted time on DS pictochat with my roomies while they were queuing for registration. After that I kinda floated around, looking at what was on offer in the dealers room and art show. I was quite pleased to find that my feet made by Whitewolf had arrived safely, and they are really cute and well made. I had planned to suit up but due to a combination of not having someone to help me suit up and also the lack of any undersuit (like an idiot, I left it at home), I didn't get to in the end. Also, I ended up getting very tired around 4pm which annoyed the heck out of me as I don't want to be getting tired. Energy drinks didn't really seem to help either.

Come 5pm, I went to arakinuk's 30th birthday party which was a great success. It started off slowly (I was the first there so I was obviously hungry and wanted pizza :P) but people started showing up such as khyle, trajan_lj, raelbny, emejn, rakhan, furyfox, yagfox, mr_wolf and many others including Micah Fennec/Moody Ferret and her other half Mike. Was nice to chat with everyone, enjoy some great pizza and celebrate Arakin's birthday. I can't mention Arakin's birthday and not mention the cake which was absolutely massive. Sadly it wasn't a type of cake I really like (black forest gateau) but even after everyone had a slice, there was still more than half left.

After the party I came back to the room to see Stego and co off who went fursuiting. I didn't join them, in fact I ended up watching Iron Artist and Furmily Feud (think Family Fortune with furs :) on the FCTV channel followed by the masquerade from the first FC which was Stego's first appearance in the suit he happened to be wearing at the time. I tried finding something to do, checking out the dance but in the end, I just felt like going to bed. Sometime during the evening it appears Beetlejuice came into our room as he needed to use our hair drier... most odd.

Today however, I will be suiting, there's the fursuit parade on and I also want to get me a fursuit badge. Off to breakfast now so until next time, good bye! :)

So, today started out with the over-indulgent breakfast supplied by IHOP. Many meats and endless pancakes covered in delicious syrup and white foamy butter were consumed. Having filled up on food, we ventured off to Disneyland.

Got there shortly after 12noon due to traffic, but once there, the park was pretty empty. However, when we did get there, we found that the Haunted Mansion was closed and also The Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain were all closed so we ended up going on Space Mountain (which was absolutely awesome) followed by Star Tours which was identical to the one in Florida. However, by this time the Indiana Jones ride had opened so we went on that. Was a very enjoyable ride save for the hysterically screaming girls. We then found that Splash Mountain was running and so decided to do that next. I was concerned about getting my electricals wet so we picked up a plastic bag from the candy store before going on the ride. I was very glad we did as we got absolutely soaked to the bone on Splash Mountain. It wasn't helped by the fact that I was only in a t-shirt and jeans and the weather was rapidly getting cooler (and the clouds were getting darker). The Pirates ride was still not open by this time so we figured we would get the monorail to Downtown Disney for some food, and I would get a hoodie as it was now starting to rain pretty heavily. Ended up hitting two birds with one stoe by going to the Rainforest Cafe. Had a tasty pasta dish and bought a green hoodie in the souvenir shop as they were on sale. Headed back though all the shops of Downtown Disney before getting back to the park where we found that Pirates was finally open. Following the ride, we had a wonder around the park, ended up going on Space Mountain again before going home.

On the whole, the park was fun, however mostly due to the weather, it didn't quite have the same atmosphere as the Florida parks did when I went in 2000. The passes we got allowed us two visits for the price of one as long as they are redeemed within 30 days of purchase so we may revisit on the Wednesday after FC if Hunter can get the time off work.

After Disney, not really done much other than watch TV and write this entry. I'm feeling rather tired (and also bothered by comments in a co-worker's Livejournal about work) and need to make sure I get up early (this shouldn't be a problem) as I need to ensure I'm packed and ready for FC. To be honest, it's not really sunk in that I'm going to FC yet. Hopefully the feeling will sink in when I'm actually there.

So to recap on the day's events so far, I got up at around 4am after a fairly uneasy sleep due to a mix of excitement and anxiety. I had everything prepared from the night before so it was just a matter of waiting for the taxi to arrive and get to the coach station. The coach journey got quite badly delayed due to congeston on the M3 meaning we got there about 40mins late. However I wasn't too bothered as my arrangements had made me due to be 4 hours in advance of my flight anyway. Lines for check in were non-existant, as were the queues for security, leaving me with far too much time in the duty free area beyond security. I was able to pick up a few essential purchases and grab breakfast but still had too much time. Ended up playing Peggle on the laptop out of boredom. The second the gate was announced, I upped and left for my departure gate and ended up being the first there, only to be greated by a full body padding down and my bags being swabbed. I've never had that done before, I don't know if it was just AA that do it but they seemed to be doing it for a number of the people arriving at the gate. Already I was thinking "Welcome to America, where we treat everyone as a potential terrorist".

Anyway, the flight itself was long and for the most part, dull. Fortunately, the South African I was sat next to didn't need to get up for the toilet or anything at all which was good. I couldn't get to sleep as always so I made the most of what I had by watching The Nines, The Bucket List, an episode of Family Guy and Sarah Connor Chornicles on my PMP before the batteries died (I had been using it as a MP3 player on the trip in, and the car charger thing didn't seem to work), also playing random games on the PSP and DS. However even that wasn't enough to make the 10 hour flight pass any quicker. The food was ok, being some sort of chicken and pasta dish, later followed by a mini pizza.

Arrived 40mins early at LA. The queues at immigration were short, and I didn't get interrogated much beyond the purpose of my visit. However even after collecting my baggage, I was much earlier than I had expected, meaning I had to wait around for Hunter to battle through Martin Luther King Day traffic to et to the airport. Once picked up, we called by a Subway on the way to his apartment befoe going out again to wander around a local mall (Got Sobes :)), supermarket and Best Buy. Now back at the apartment watching new Prison Break and Sarah Connor Chronicles before bed. Tomorrow, blizl will be picking me up and we're doing the LA tour, where I expect to take many photos :).