Warrica’s CV report
A tired Ila christened us Warrica over at text message on the way to CV so we shall forevermore only respond to that name.
Here is my CV report. I am sure I am forgetting stuff but I will do my best to recap what I remember.
Tuesday August 10:
I arrive home from working at 12 hour shift at 8 a.m. The night before a tractor trailer kicked up a rock and broke my windshield. Luckily the auto glass repair shop had a cancellation that morning and we were able to get it fixed and be on the road by 10:30 a.m. headed to New Orleans, LA spend the night at Warren’s friend Kevin’s house. I try to sleep on the 6 hour drive to NOLA, but am too excited and only sleep for about 15 minutes right before we get to the city. Get to Kevin’s house—he is not home, so we sit on his porch and he shows up in a few minutes. We pick up some of the loose change Kevin dropped on his porch and quickly have enough money for the Florida tolls. I estimate Kevin to have $5-6 in coin on his porch. Go out to dinner with Kevin, his brother and a few of Warren’s friends from when he lived in NOLA. Go to Creole Creamery and have blueberry pie ice cream! Yum Yum! I asked Warren’s friend Jesse what kind he had and it was Butterscotch Toffee. I said “Ew.” And Jesse said, “Why don’t you like Butterscotch?” And I said it was because I wasn’t an elderly man who wore a cardigan sweater. Jesse almost had ice cream come out of his nose at that point We head back to Kevin’s, I go to sleep and Warren and Kevin stay up all night watching Robot Chicken- the one with the Ponda Baba skit and Aqua Teen Hunger Force with a Hairless Wookiee. And some Youtube videos of Chad Vader.
Wednesday August 11:
Woke up about 4 a.m. and hit the road…I drove while Kevin and Warren slept. Through Mississippi, Alabama and finally, Florida! Nothing eventful on the car ride the GPS guided me and I listened to the Glee soundtracks while the boys were in sleepy dreamland. Stopped at a Wendy’s, woke up Kevin and had a quick lunch. Only made one wrong turn thanks to the GPS—but it was a doozy. It told me to take a certain exit off the toll road, but it was a prepay speedpass exit only. I kept wondering why the signs said “No cash” So the security camera has a nice picture of us looking confused and holding up money as we pass by the sign that says “Violators will be prosecuted.” Hopefully between the Texas license plate and our confused looks they won’t send me a $100 ticket for non-payment of the $2.50 toll. If I do get one I am going to forward it to the GPS manufacturer.
About 4 p.m. we pull into the Rosen Centre. We are right across the street from the convention center and see the Boba Fett CV banners as we drive by. Warren and Kevin jump out to check in and I go to look for parking. I see a Mustang in front of me unloading…and lo and behold it is Chuck and Ila! I roll down the window and yell, “Chuck, Chuck.” But he doesn’t hear me, or pretends he can’t. So I go and park the car in the parking garage and then walk into the hotel. He hotel is huge. It feels like I have to walk a mile once I get inside the door by the parking garage to get to the front desk. I find Warren and he said he saw Chuck and Ila and they requested a room near us. We are 1809 and they get 1812.
After we unload the car, we head down to the hotel bar to meet up with Chuck and Ila. Matt and Mike are there by the time we show up. They are at a hotel within waking distance of ours. We sit for awhile and I get out the Clone Tuber Potato Head for everyone to sign. I bring out my big 3 ring Hello Kitty binder and clipboard with the con schedules, maps and lists of what I want to see and buy…I am prepared with my plan of attack! Then Jace walks up and introduces himself. His friend that he carpooled with from PA is staying at the Rosen and they are dropping him off. We make plans to meet up at the Hard Rock Café on the Universal Citywalk a little later.
While we are at the bar, we notice some OT SW celebs sitting nearby. We recognize Jeremy Bullock, Mike Edmonds and a few others we know to be in SW, but can’t quite place. I point out that Chris Muncke is over there. Warren and I met Chris at Star Wars Fan Days III in Dallas in October 2009, and soon after he became a forum member on The Bothan Spy. He even posted before the con that he was excited to see us and to come by and say hi to him- no need to purchase an autograph. So before we head up to the room to get ready to go to the Hard Rock, we stop and say Hi to him. He remembers us and gives us hugs and even kissed me on the cheek! He introduces us to his friend John Morton , who played Dak, who comments that his niece would love my Hello Kitty bag. J
Met up with Jose, who spent the day at Universal Studios, at the Hard Rock and soon after Chuck Ila, Matt, Mike Jace and his friend Chris show up. Apparently all 6 of them somehow fit in the Mustang to get to the Hard Rock. We got a table pretty quick and sat down and ate and talked and had a good time. Chuck bought 2 sampler appetizers with spring rolls, chicken wings, potato skins and mozzerella sticks for the table. YUM!! Thanks Chuck! He did that when we ate lunch at the Hard Rock at CIII as well. What a super swell guy. I had a steak with garlic smashed potatoes and they were delicious! I passed out Wookiee Cookies and had Jose, Jace and Chris sign the Potato Head. I think Chris was surprised I wanted him to sign it because I had only known him for 10 minutes at that point.
After that we headed back to our hotels. Jace and Chris got a ride with Jose, so 6 people didn’t have to ride in the Mustang again.
I don’t really remember anything else that happened that night, I think I passed out pretty quick.
Thursday August 12.
CONVENTION DAY!!
I am not sure what time we walked over to the convention center…maybe 9 a.m. or so. The con started at 10, but you could get into the convention center, (and the air conditioning) at 6 a.m. That was nice. No waiting outside in the rain/sleet like in Indy, or the baking sun like in Los Angeles. We are herded into a big empty room with a concrete floor. There are already hundreds of people in line. Matt, Mike, Chuck, Ila, Jose, Kevin, Warren and I are all standing together. Jace and Chris are a row over from us. Warren’s friend George and his girlfriend, Hang, are a few rows behind us. We call George on his cell phone, but he won’t get out of the line and come stand with us because he doesn’t want to make people mad. But Hang comes and stands with us. LOL.
One of the things Warren was looking for at the con was the 5 patches from the collecting clubs…you get all 5 you put them together to form a Boba Fett patch. Two of the clubs did not have tables at the con, you had to look for people in their club t-shirts and ask them for a patch. One of these was the Kentucky Star Wars Collectors Club. While we are in line I see a guy with a KSWCC shirt on. I point him out to Warren and Warren tells me to go ask him for a patch. So I did, and he gave me one! Score! And the con hasn’t officially started yet. Kevin goes over and gets a patch too. 1 down, 4 to go.
Soon, it is 10 and we file in. Warren and I head to Artist’s Alley first. I go to Katie Cook’s booth and order her super-cute ANH print and give her a tub of wookiee cookies. I also bought her 2010 sketch book and her “F*** you, box” book. She is also doing 3” x 4” mini-painitngs for $5 each and I ask her to paint Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Then I head over to Jerry Vanderstelt, JAKe and Russell Walks. Warren gets Cat Staggs, Brian Rood, and Dave Dorman. After we get tickets for all the exclusive prints we want we get in line to pay. After you pay you go back to the artist with the receipt and pick up the print. We get in line…and wait…and wait… and wait… They have 1 cashier and 200 or more people in line. Warren and I take turns standing in line for the next 2 hours. It is ridiculous. I am worried that we will still be in this line when The Bounty Hunt starts at 2! Jose comes by with the plush Wampa I gave him money for, because I was worried they would sell all 1980 of them before I got to the CV store. (I was very mistaken on this) Warren heads over to the Official Pix booth and gets a Gentle Giant Lt. Renz mini-bust for $10. Luckily, Chuck and Ila also wanted to buy a print, so they offer to stand in the line for us with our tickets and money at 1:30 p.m. while we go play the scavenger hunt. So we run back to the hotel and dump off our stuff, so we don’t have to carry it while we are hunting our bounty.
The Bounty Hunt started at 2 pm and lasted until 4 p.m. Our team is called The Bothan Spies and consists of me, Warren, Kevin and our friend Jeff from the TBS forums. We were given 2 sets of clues about the Prequels, each worth a different credit amount. We solved all of our clues using the Visual Guide we brought with us, and the mobile web application on my cell phone. (This is allowed.) Every answer is a Star Wars character and you are given a key that matches up that character with a location in the convention center. For one answer we solved it to be OOM-9, but then decided that was wrong and changed it. But I forgot to cross it off the list of locations, so when we go to get our passport stamped at this location, we can’t even find the room! Because it doesn’t exist. L I felt horrible at this point, we spent 10 minutes looking around for a room that didn’t exist and I was sure that we had already lost. Luckily, all of our other answers were correct and we literally just ran everywhere in the convention center getting our passport stamped. At some of the locations we had to answer trivia questions, or shoot darts at a cardboard Stormtrooper. After we had 6 stamps, we could head back to the Bounty Hunt room and get 2 more sets of Prequel-based clues. We went back after 7 stamps and got the next clues. These were rough! We had the hardest time solving them. One was all about Prequel video games! I think we only solved 1 clue out of these sets…but it was worth 20,000 points. We ran to the food court where a Clone Wars Snowtrooper guy was waiting. We had 10 minutes before time was up. He stamped our passport and we asked if anyone else had been there. He said we were the first ones!! We ran back and checked in with our tally. Then with 4 minutes left we decide to go back and get a stamp from the first set of clues that was worth 2,500 points. We hadn’t bothered to get it before because it was worth a small amount. It was in the dealer room, or so we thought. We get there and can’t find it—it wasn’t the LucasArts booth, it was in the LucasArts video game room! We get there and find the guy to stamp the passport. He is talking to someone. We ask if he can give us a stamp, and he says, “Give me a minute.” WE DON’T HAVE A MINUTE!!!! LOL He finally stamps it and we rush back into the room with 40 seconds left. But we are in line, so it will be counted. Our total is 55,000 out of a possible 100,000.
Then we sit and catch our breath for 30 minutes while they tally the results. The top 5 teams get prizes. They start with 5th place. That team had 37,000 pts. Cool, at least we’ll win a little something, I thought. They name the 4th place, and the 3rd place. They get to 2nd place. It is a team with 50,000 points. WE WON!, I thought. I can’t believe it! Even after I took us to the wrong room at the start. It is a miracle. They announce us as the winners and I am so happy I think the smile on my face is permanent. We each won an 18” Ultimate Quarter Scale talking figure from Diamond Select. I took ROTS Anakin, Kevin took Emperor Palpatine, Warren picked Jedi Luke and Jeff got Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi. That was one of my favorite moments from the con.
After that, we went to find Chuck and Ila, luckily they were not still in the line at Artist’s Alley. They gave us our receipts to pick up prints and we showed them our prizes. Then we picked up our art from the artists. I had JAKe draw a Wampa on his ESB print, because he had a sign that said remarques were free on Thursday! He wasn’t sure if he could do it, but he practiced on scrap paper, and it came out really cute. I was all about the Wampas at CV.
We headed over to the store since it was getting close to 7 p.m., when the dealer room closed. The store was open until 10 p.m. I picked up the 2 Katie Cook Clone Wars shirts I wanted, a reusable CV shopping bag and a “I’d just as soon kiss a wookiee” bumper sticker. I made it out of the store under $50. That was a Celebration first.
For dinner a bunch of us went to a Chinese buffet by Jace’s hotel. Matt was at the SWAN party that night. The buffet was really good—I thought the pizza they had was great.
Warren also stopped by the Doubletree hotel that night- they were having a patch trade event. He was able to get one of the 501st CV patches. They are really neat, mainly red and black with an AT-AT surrounded by Palm trees and TIE fighters.
I don’t remember anything after that…I think I just fell asleep.
NEXT UP….FRIDAY!!
A tired Ila christened us Warrica over at text message on the way to CV so we shall forevermore only respond to that name.
Here is my CV report. I am sure I am forgetting stuff but I will do my best to recap what I remember.
Tuesday August 10:
I arrive home from working at 12 hour shift at 8 a.m. The night before a tractor trailer kicked up a rock and broke my windshield. Luckily the auto glass repair shop had a cancellation that morning and we were able to get it fixed and be on the road by 10:30 a.m. headed to New Orleans, LA spend the night at Warren’s friend Kevin’s house. I try to sleep on the 6 hour drive to NOLA, but am too excited and only sleep for about 15 minutes right before we get to the city. Get to Kevin’s house—he is not home, so we sit on his porch and he shows up in a few minutes. We pick up some of the loose change Kevin dropped on his porch and quickly have enough money for the Florida tolls.
I estimate Kevin to have $5-6 in coin on his porch. Go out to dinner with Kevin, his brother and a few of Warren’s friends from when he lived in NOLA. Go to Creole Creamery and have blueberry pie ice cream! Yum Yum! I asked Warren’s friend Jesse what kind he had and it was Butterscotch Toffee. I said “Ew.” And Jesse said, “Why don’t you like Butterscotch?” And I said it was because I wasn’t an elderly man who wore a cardigan sweater. Jesse almost had ice cream come out of his nose at that point We head back to Kevin’s, I go to sleep and Warren and Kevin stay up all night watching Robot Chicken- the one with the Ponda Baba skit and Aqua Teen Hunger Force with a Hairless Wookiee. And some Youtube videos of Chad Vader. Wednesday August 11:
Woke up about 4 a.m. and hit the road…I drove while Kevin and Warren slept. Through Mississippi, Alabama and finally, Florida! Nothing eventful on the car ride the GPS guided me and I listened to the Glee soundtracks while the boys were in sleepy dreamland. Stopped at a Wendy’s, woke up Kevin and had a quick lunch. Only made one wrong turn thanks to the GPS—but it was a doozy. It told me to take a certain exit off the toll road, but it was a prepay speedpass exit only. I kept wondering why the signs said “No cash” So the security camera has a nice picture of us looking confused and holding up money as we pass by the sign that says “Violators will be prosecuted.” Hopefully between the Texas license plate and our confused looks they won’t send me a $100 ticket for non-payment of the $2.50 toll. If I do get one I am going to forward it to the GPS manufacturer.
About 4 p.m. we pull into the Rosen Centre. We are right across the street from the convention center and see the Boba Fett CV banners as we drive by. Warren and Kevin jump out to check in and I go to look for parking. I see a Mustang in front of me unloading…and lo and behold it is Chuck and Ila! I roll down the window and yell, “Chuck, Chuck.” But he doesn’t hear me, or pretends he can’t.
So I go and park the car in the parking garage and then walk into the hotel. He hotel is huge. It feels like I have to walk a mile once I get inside the door by the parking garage to get to the front desk. I find Warren and he said he saw Chuck and Ila and they requested a room near us. We are 1809 and they get 1812. After we unload the car, we head down to the hotel bar to meet up with Chuck and Ila. Matt and Mike are there by the time we show up. They are at a hotel within waking distance of ours. We sit for awhile and I get out the Clone Tuber Potato Head for everyone to sign. I bring out my big 3 ring Hello Kitty binder and clipboard with the con schedules, maps and lists of what I want to see and buy…I am prepared with my plan of attack! Then Jace walks up and introduces himself. His friend that he carpooled with from PA is staying at the Rosen and they are dropping him off. We make plans to meet up at the Hard Rock Café on the Universal Citywalk a little later.
While we are at the bar, we notice some OT SW celebs sitting nearby. We recognize Jeremy Bullock, Mike Edmonds and a few others we know to be in SW, but can’t quite place. I point out that Chris Muncke is over there. Warren and I met Chris at Star Wars Fan Days III in Dallas in October 2009, and soon after he became a forum member on The Bothan Spy. He even posted before the con that he was excited to see us and to come by and say hi to him- no need to purchase an autograph. So before we head up to the room to get ready to go to the Hard Rock, we stop and say Hi to him. He remembers us and gives us hugs and even kissed me on the cheek! He introduces us to his friend John Morton , who played Dak, who comments that his niece would love my Hello Kitty bag. J
Met up with Jose, who spent the day at Universal Studios, at the Hard Rock and soon after Chuck Ila, Matt, Mike Jace and his friend Chris show up. Apparently all 6 of them somehow fit in the Mustang to get to the Hard Rock. We got a table pretty quick and sat down and ate and talked and had a good time. Chuck bought 2 sampler appetizers with spring rolls, chicken wings, potato skins and mozzerella sticks for the table. YUM!! Thanks Chuck! He did that when we ate lunch at the Hard Rock at CIII as well. What a super swell guy. I had a steak with garlic smashed potatoes and they were delicious! I passed out Wookiee Cookies and had Jose, Jace and Chris sign the Potato Head. I think Chris was surprised I wanted him to sign it because I had only known him for 10 minutes at that point.
After that we headed back to our hotels. Jace and Chris got a ride with Jose, so 6 people didn’t have to ride in the Mustang again.
I don’t really remember anything else that happened that night, I think I passed out pretty quick.
Thursday August 12.
CONVENTION DAY!!
I am not sure what time we walked over to the convention center…maybe 9 a.m. or so. The con started at 10, but you could get into the convention center, (and the air conditioning) at 6 a.m. That was nice. No waiting outside in the rain/sleet like in Indy, or the baking sun like in Los Angeles. We are herded into a big empty room with a concrete floor. There are already hundreds of people in line. Matt, Mike, Chuck, Ila, Jose, Kevin, Warren and I are all standing together. Jace and Chris are a row over from us. Warren’s friend George and his girlfriend, Hang, are a few rows behind us. We call George on his cell phone, but he won’t get out of the line and come stand with us because he doesn’t want to make people mad. But Hang comes and stands with us. LOL.
One of the things Warren was looking for at the con was the 5 patches from the collecting clubs…you get all 5 you put them together to form a Boba Fett patch. Two of the clubs did not have tables at the con, you had to look for people in their club t-shirts and ask them for a patch. One of these was the Kentucky Star Wars Collectors Club. While we are in line I see a guy with a KSWCC shirt on. I point him out to Warren and Warren tells me to go ask him for a patch. So I did, and he gave me one! Score! And the con hasn’t officially started yet. Kevin goes over and gets a patch too. 1 down, 4 to go.
Soon, it is 10 and we file in. Warren and I head to Artist’s Alley first. I go to Katie Cook’s booth and order her super-cute ANH print and give her a tub of wookiee cookies. I also bought her 2010 sketch book and her “F*** you, box” book. She is also doing 3” x 4” mini-painitngs for $5 each and I ask her to paint Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Then I head over to Jerry Vanderstelt, JAKe and Russell Walks. Warren gets Cat Staggs, Brian Rood, and Dave Dorman. After we get tickets for all the exclusive prints we want we get in line to pay. After you pay you go back to the artist with the receipt and pick up the print. We get in line…and wait…and wait… and wait… They have 1 cashier and 200 or more people in line. Warren and I take turns standing in line for the next 2 hours. It is ridiculous. I am worried that we will still be in this line when The Bounty Hunt starts at 2! Jose comes by with the plush Wampa I gave him money for, because I was worried they would sell all 1980 of them before I got to the CV store. (I was very mistaken on this) Warren heads over to the Official Pix booth and gets a Gentle Giant Lt. Renz mini-bust for $10. Luckily, Chuck and Ila also wanted to buy a print, so they offer to stand in the line for us with our tickets and money at 1:30 p.m. while we go play the scavenger hunt. So we run back to the hotel and dump off our stuff, so we don’t have to carry it while we are hunting our bounty.
The Bounty Hunt started at 2 pm and lasted until 4 p.m. Our team is called The Bothan Spies and consists of me, Warren, Kevin and our friend Jeff from the TBS forums. We were given 2 sets of clues about the Prequels, each worth a different credit amount. We solved all of our clues using the Visual Guide we brought with us, and the mobile web application on my cell phone. (This is allowed.) Every answer is a Star Wars character and you are given a key that matches up that character with a location in the convention center. For one answer we solved it to be OOM-9, but then decided that was wrong and changed it. But I forgot to cross it off the list of locations, so when we go to get our passport stamped at this location, we can’t even find the room! Because it doesn’t exist. L I felt horrible at this point, we spent 10 minutes looking around for a room that didn’t exist and I was sure that we had already lost. Luckily, all of our other answers were correct and we literally just ran everywhere in the convention center getting our passport stamped. At some of the locations we had to answer trivia questions, or shoot darts at a cardboard Stormtrooper. After we had 6 stamps, we could head back to the Bounty Hunt room and get 2 more sets of Prequel-based clues. We went back after 7 stamps and got the next clues. These were rough! We had the hardest time solving them. One was all about Prequel video games! I think we only solved 1 clue out of these sets…but it was worth 20,000 points. We ran to the food court where a Clone Wars Snowtrooper guy was waiting. We had 10 minutes before time was up. He stamped our passport and we asked if anyone else had been there. He said we were the first ones!! We ran back and checked in with our tally. Then with 4 minutes left we decide to go back and get a stamp from the first set of clues that was worth 2,500 points. We hadn’t bothered to get it before because it was worth a small amount. It was in the dealer room, or so we thought. We get there and can’t find it—it wasn’t the LucasArts booth, it was in the LucasArts video game room! We get there and find the guy to stamp the passport. He is talking to someone. We ask if he can give us a stamp, and he says, “Give me a minute.” WE DON’T HAVE A MINUTE!!!! LOL He finally stamps it and we rush back into the room with 40 seconds left. But we are in line, so it will be counted. Our total is 55,000 out of a possible 100,000.
Then we sit and catch our breath for 30 minutes while they tally the results. The top 5 teams get prizes. They start with 5th place. That team had 37,000 pts. Cool, at least we’ll win a little something, I thought. They name the 4th place, and the 3rd place. They get to 2nd place. It is a team with 50,000 points. WE WON!, I thought. I can’t believe it! Even after I took us to the wrong room at the start. It is a miracle. They announce us as the winners and I am so happy I think the smile on my face is permanent. We each won an 18” Ultimate Quarter Scale talking figure from Diamond Select. I took ROTS Anakin, Kevin took Emperor Palpatine, Warren picked Jedi Luke and Jeff got Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi. That was one of my favorite moments from the con.
After that, we went to find Chuck and Ila, luckily they were not still in the line at Artist’s Alley. They gave us our receipts to pick up prints and we showed them our prizes. Then we picked up our art from the artists. I had JAKe draw a Wampa on his ESB print, because he had a sign that said remarques were free on Thursday! He wasn’t sure if he could do it, but he practiced on scrap paper, and it came out really cute. I was all about the Wampas at CV.
We headed over to the store since it was getting close to 7 p.m., when the dealer room closed. The store was open until 10 p.m. I picked up the 2 Katie Cook Clone Wars shirts I wanted, a reusable CV shopping bag and a “I’d just as soon kiss a wookiee” bumper sticker. I made it out of the store under $50. That was a Celebration first.
For dinner a bunch of us went to a Chinese buffet by Jace’s hotel. Matt was at the SWAN party that night. The buffet was really good—I thought the pizza they had was great.
Warren also stopped by the Doubletree hotel that night- they were having a patch trade event. He was able to get one of the 501st CV patches. They are really neat, mainly red and black with an AT-AT surrounded by Palm trees and TIE fighters.
I don’t remember anything after that…I think I just fell asleep.
NEXT UP….FRIDAY!!