First things first, the girls took me up to the room I’d be sharing with Steph and Patti, helped me set up my bed, hang up my costumes, and find a spot for my makeup.  Patti had brought accoutrements to keep us all fed throughout the weekend, so while she was making us all some onigiri to munch on, Fitz helped me put my hair up in Tohru’s pigtails, Steph wrestled with my tie (we finally ended up having to cut it to make it work!) and Lexi pinned the waistband of my skirt which ended up, as usual, being too big.  After a nosh and touching up makeup, we were ready to take a tour of the con.

While I don’t think I ever really worked out where the panels and other events were being held, as far as I could tell everything was taking place on the first floor of the hotel.  At one far end was the Dealer’s Room, which we decided to put off for another time as there was a fairly long wrap-around line of people waiting to get in, so we made the trek back the other way, ending in The Atrium, which was this absolutely gorgeous indoor courtyard area, with hedges, trees, and a lovely indoor café.

The Atrium was also home to the Artist’s Alley, so we took a tour of that, and I was introduced to Kat, a really sweet friend of Patti and Steph’s that was cosplaying as part of a hilarious “advertising mavens” group.  Surrounding The Atrium were balconies of the rooms that were overlooking the courtyard, and apparently NDK was having a balcony-decorating contest.  So many of the entries were so incredibly creative and had obviously taken hours to set up, I wish I had been able to take pictures of all of them!

From there we went outside so I could enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather, and so we could take a few pictures in our Fruits Basket costumes.  We had so much fun: being BFFs with Fitz and Lexi as Uo-chan and Hana-chan, watching Steph and Patti fight as Yuki and Kyo, and exploring all of the inter-character relationships.  The only snag we hit was when we decided to try to take a group photo, but no one was around.  Luckily, Steph’s camera has a timer, so we were able to set it up on the railing to take a picture of us.

Lexi and Fitz as Hana-chan and Uo-chan.

Saki Hanajima

The psychic girl

What is she sensing?

Arisa Uotani

With Hana-chan in the background

Patti and Steph as Kyo and Yuki

Kyo is the cat, and Yuki is the rat

...because the rat tricked the cat into missing the induction feast.

Fight!

But still, Kyo never lands a decent hit on Yuki.

Yuki is known as "The Prince" at school.

Though admired, he often feels isolated.

Despite this, he still becomes student council president

And after meeting Tohru, starts to learn how to open up to others.

Patti as Kyo.

...but he has a sweet side.

Uo-chan and Kyo don't get along.

Unluckily, some jerks in cardboard box suits of armor decided it would hilarious to pick up the camera and walk off with it as if they were stealing it.  Patti and Steph chased them down and we got the camera back, but dudes: seriously.  Not cool.  We understand you were probably joking, but here’s the thing: we don’t know.  We don’t KNOW you were joking.  For all we knew, you were seriously making off with a pretty expensive camera.  Don’t do that.  Ugh.  That put an end to self-portraits for a while, so we hunted up Eurobeat King for a few more group shots, and headed back inside.

There were these comfy couches directly off of the side entrance leading to The Atrium that fortuitously happened to be free at the moment, so we commandeered two of them and spent a long time just curling up and catching up.  The big stuff we all share on LiveJournal, and the minor stuff we all share on Facebook, but there was a lot of in-between stuff we still had to talk about.  None of us have kids, but plenty of us have nieces and nephews that we are inordinately proud of, complete with stories to tell and pictures to show, as well as other family members all with their own health and emotional and sometimes legal struggles going on that are just so much easier to go into in person than they are online, no matter how much time you spend talking on the internet.

While we were talking, a hotel guest who clearly had no idea what an anime convention was approached us with the usual, “What are all of these costumes for?”, and then we spent about another fifteen minutes explaining Japanese animation, and conventions, and cosplay.  I think we did a good job.  :)

We were about ready to change costumes after that, so we headed back to our hotel room.  Patti made us more miso soup and onigiri for lunch, and we all stripped out of one costumes, got into various stages of comfortable undress, and started the costume and makeup preparations for the thing.  Most of my costume was ready due to my having mailed it to Steph and Patti months ago to have the trim on the skirts reattached, but there was still plenty for the rest of us to do.  Patti restyled Fitz’s Mars wig into a Pluto wig, Lexi and I sang “Light My Candle” from RENT (complete with our own interpretation of the blocking!), and during all of this, Beverly Faerie stopped by to drop off the Princess Mars gown I had commissioned from her.  She couldn’t stay long as she had her own costume to get into, but it was the first time we had ever met in person so of course we spent some time being giddy together and enjoying the moment.  After Bev left, we all got into our costumes, and Steph helped me with my “stage” makeup, which she dubbed “Sailor Moon a la Mimi Bobeck.”  It was VERY bright in person, but it looks wonderful in photos!

Once we were all in full Myu regalia, we headed down to the lobby to take another walk around the first floor.  I have to say, I was very much gratified to see a LOT of Sailor Moon cosplayers, and all of them with wonderful costumes.  Considering the show ended close to 15 years ago, it’s wonderful to see the old school love still going strong!  Quite a few people stopped us for our photos as well, for which we were very grateful.  Mainly, though, we were just killing time while waiting for Lada and Koi, two more friends of Patti and Steph’s (well, Koi I had “met” online years ago when I asked her to submit her photos to Sailor Moon Avatars, but we really hadn’t talked much outside of that, and Lada I had only spoken to a few times briefly on Facebok) to come down, as they had borrowed Myu Venus and Myu Mercury costumes in order to cosplay with us.  We took a few photos with Eurobeat King when we saw him again, but once he heard we were going to have a bigger group, agreed that we should wait for the two girls.

Soon afterwards a beautiful Venus and beautiful Mercury joined us, and flashbulbs popped as we threaded through the crowds in an effort to find a good spot to take pictures.  We weren’t having much luck, as it was always either too crowded, with people walking in front of the camera at the worst possible moment, or the background was too busy or distracting (or ugly), or the lighting was bad.  In desperation, we ended up on the second floor overlooking the area where the line for the Dealer’s Room had been, when one of us noticed a little door off to the side.  Peeking in, we found it was a deserted kitchen, with some shiny cooking paraphernalia in the back, but with white walls, light linoleum, and plenty of lighting.  Instantly, the Sailor Pantry Photoshoot was born!  We had some hard work trying to fit our “chubby ballerinas of doom” costumes all into one small space, but we ended up with a lot of wonderful photos thanks to Eurobeat King.  I’m not entirely sure what we did was kosher, but I can solemnly swear we meant no harm!

By this point we were feeling a little hungry despite having eaten Patti’s handmade snacks all day, so we decided to check out the café in The Atrium.  We probably would’ve bought something anyway, but we were absolutely sold when we saw that the café had made up a special NDK menu, complete with drinks named after anime titles and characters!  We saw Beverley Faerie and a few friends having dinner so we stopped by to say hi, and I got to meet my friend Mara in person for the first time!  I have to say, I had so many friends waiting for me in Colorado that it definitely did not feel like my first trip out.

After dinner, we found another little side hallway “outside” of the Starbucks and hotel store, and gave ourselves a chance to rest our feet, gossip some more, and generally just take more pictures of the many wonderful costumes on the people who were passing us by.  It’s amazing how creative people can be!

We were all starting to get a little tired (as evidenced by the fact that we had to rest our feet after dinner, ha!) so we decided to take one last tour around the main floor to take a few more photos, and then we decided to return to our hotel room for a surprise: Steph had known we were planning a little get together, but what she didn’t know was that it was secretly her birthday celebration!  Patti had asked friends from around the country to fill out postcards from their home town (or region, or state, or whatever) with birthday wishes for Steph, and then mail them to me so that I could smuggle them along in my luggage to present to her at the party.  Thank you all to everyone who participated!

Some highlights of the night include: a very yellow Venus bursting in with a box full of some very yellow Mike’s Hard Lemonade, people swapping outrageous stories, passing my camera around to take all sorts of pictures (only the appropriate ones will be shared here, sorry!), and just generally telling jokes and laughing our asses off until 2 o’clock in the morning, when we were all finally tired enough to crawl off to our own beds.

I must have been more tired than I thought, because as Steph was in the bathroom taking off her makeup and generally getting ready for bed, I started having a conversation with Patti about just about anything and everything, while she was laying in their bed and I was laying in mine, and I was honestly really enjoying it, but when Steph had finished and came out of the bathroom, Patti turned away from me for a second to say something to her, and when she turned back, I was out like a light!  In my defense, I HAD been awake for close to 24 hours at this point!  Plus, we had a full schedule set for Saturday that we were all looking forward to.

Sailor Venus provides the liquor!

Hanging out

Cosplayers do it with Family Guy on in the background

Love these two <3

Fitz and Lexi

Lada and Merlyn

I often look REALLY INTENT and I have no idea on what.

A little blurry

Lights out, girls!