"And when they see us holding hands, they wish that they were geeks in love!"

Protesting, I dragged my body out of bed on Sunday morning. Protesting, I walked up the avenue to get my three feet of hair (well, all right, maybe it's not THAT long, but it sure takes a long time to style) straightened. Protesting, I went home and shoved my body into shape-shifting tights and bodysuits and fishnets and a tuxedo jacket. As I was getting ready to leave, my father took one look at me and said:

"You can't go out of the house like that. Your wand isn't big enough!"

I told him I was running late as it was and I wasn't going to spend another half an hour so that he could make my wand look bigger. Sheesh.

The panel went wonderfully! Jess had a wonderful PowerPoint presentation ready to go with our panelists at their geekiest moments--I don't even want to tell you what Louis was doing to that Pyramid Head. Dante told wonderful stories about areas of fandom the rest of us don't usually cross over into. Dennis was like their "token normal person" with geek tendencies, and he and Jess were living evidence that geeks can have a relationship. Ethan was like a one-man radio DJ, he had a clever punchline for almost every situation that came up.

People SO enjoyed it. They actively participated in the panel, asking questions and telling stories of their own Geek Relationships in return. They swarmed the panelists after the panel ended at four, I'm assuming asking questions or telling them how much they liked it. (I don't know myself, because I went outside with Terry to grab a few shots of my Zatanna costume--I swear to God ten thousand people took a picture of me as Zatanna, and I don't have any of them.) When we went into the dealer's room later, people kept recognizing Jess or Lou or Dennis and complimenting them. And they received a wonderful write-up as well!

The panel over, we decided to take one last tour of the dealer's room. Seeing nothing else I particularly liked (I'm still searching for the Avengers and Jay Leno crossover), Louis treated me to the three-issue comic adaptation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (I like very odd things.) I wanted to get Jess and Dennis souvenirs of the con as well, so I got Dennis a "Cthullu For President!" (and he says he's not a geek!) T-shirt, and Jess a...carp...some sort of Firefly (or Serenity) (or Battlestar Galactica, I told you I get them confused) T-shirt, possibly having something to do with browncoats? If it's not Star Wars or Star Trek, I'm completely lost.

We had started out with Skye, Doc, Jess, Dennis, Louis, and I. Skye ducked out of the panel to start her shopping early, as she had a list of things she needed to bring home for her boyfriend. (Most people write grocery lists. Only geeks have action figure lists.) We managed to lose Doc in the dealer's room within the first twenty seconds of being there--a new world record. Thanks to the magic of cell phones, we found him again quickly. I got stopped for another ten thousand photographs every time we tried to take more than five steps, and I think Louis seriously considered stabbing me and leaving me for dead. (People would've been photographing my corpse before calling 9-1-1.) We found Linwood again and absorbed him into our party.

Finally, at 5 PM, they announced they were closing the dealer's room. It seemed really early, and I'm sure they could've made more money if they had stayed open later, but considering as we were leaving I passed a woman setting up a trellised archway with chiffon and fake roses woven around it, I can only assume it's because they had to break down the comic book stuff to get ready for the next convention.

As we were leaving, I turned to Skye and said, "So, what do you think, do you think we could get you to come to AnimeNEXT all three days this year?" And she, dressed as a Darth Skye, turned to back to me and said, "I already preregged for all three days this year, remember?" And then I grinned, because I've been trying to drag her into cosplay since...2004, I think? So I grinned and chanted, "One of us! One of us! Hee hee hee!" à la either Freaks, or Clerks: The Animated Series (where we got it from), and a passing fanboy muttered, "Dude, that is creepy." You know you're hardcore when you're freaking out the geeks. W0rd.

At some point, we got separated from Skye--I think she had left for the ladies's room to take off her many layers of black robes--and we did our best to reenact the Keystone Kops in trying to meet up with her again--I think we seriously passed each other at least twice on escalators going in opposite directions. I got to see Hal again on the way out, and we had a drive-by s0ni sighting that lasted for all of five minutes, but as I told her, a little s0ni is better than no s0ni at all.

People kind of wanted to go out for dinner after the con, but for some reason I just couldn't fathom, I discovered I was absolutely dead. D-E-D dead. I wanted nothing better than to just crawl into bed for a couple of hours and die. So Louis and I said our goodbyes and headed home. It had been a busy weekend.