Your Day

I'm sorry for your loss Foffy, and I'm also glad you've found a sense of peace. Dealing with death is... complicated.

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Remember when I said I planned on taking a trip to San Antonio with some friends? That happened on Sunday.

Short version: Only one of my friends could make it, we went to the San-Japan anime con just for the Sentai Filmworks open auditions, and the trip back was actually kinda scary.

I also met a woman there, we hit it off, we've been texting each other ever since, and we're planning a date together! We are both excited about it! Hooray! Time to switch out #WillGoobEverFindTrueLove? with #HasGoobFoundTrueLove? in the shoutbox!

Long version:

My friend and I caught up with eachother and talked about the dumb things we did as teenagers as we drove down to San Antonio. I put on the NPR audio drama for Star Wars as background noise since we're both big Star Wars fans, and he was into the (old/pre-Disney) Legends expanded universe. He really enjoyed what he heard of it. We parked at a good parking spot I used during PAX South, but it got more expensive since then and I was not amused by that.

As for the one day saw of San-Japan, well... after not watching that much anime in the past 5 years, noticing there was barely any cosplay from the shows I liked when I was super into anime, not recognizing any of the guests, and being embarrassed by a lot of panels I saw on the schedule, I felt like I reached Grandpa Simpson "It'll happen to you!" territory, at age 27.



I found this especially true after trying to find a bathroom in a quiet hallway, only to hear a high-pitched voice scream "THIS WAY, HOMESTUCKS!" a nanosecond before getting Zerg rushed by a tidal wave of people who looked like they were between 5-14 years younger than me and covered in grey paint as they chanted, screamed, and waved a flag indoors. I completely understand why people despise Homestuck fans now.

Attendance felt half-full and at times, kinda barren. I thought there'd be more people attending on Sunday since it was Labor Day weekend.

I did not think the con utilized the center they were in well. The only way to get to the dealer's room was by going through both the registration area and artist's alley, kinda like how stores and casinos put their bathrooms at the back with the hopes that someone will buy something on the way there. Various routes/hallways that would've made traffic flow easily were locked off. Some escalators that were a really useful shortcut between the expo hall/dealer's room and ballrooms/panel areas during PAX South weren't active, and I had no idea why anyone would do that after seeing how well they worked then. It felt like I had to walk around half the building to get from the registration/artist's alley/dealer's room to the area with the ballrooms and panels.

In spite of that, I thought it was cool looking at all the merch in the dealer's room and booths in the artist's alley. My new ladyfriend and I met eachother at the Funimation booth as we were looking at blu-rays/DVDs for FLCL, Sgt Frog, and Panty and Stocking, didn't end up buying anything when we both realized all the anime for sale at the con was probably available on Amazon at a cheaper price, and things just kept rolling from there until I realized I auditions were about to begin.

As for the Sentai Filmworks voice acting auditions, everything about the experience went 100% like I thought it would.
-People hovered around the ballroom for auditions before the official lineup time, and during that period my friend and I met a small group of pretty cool people with actual theater/acting experience and loved performing for the sake of it.
-When auditions officially began, everyone lined up single file in a "snaking" formation instead of using stanchions or even placing duct tape on the ground, and as a result, a few people ended up getting bunched up together in groups or tried to cut in line.
-Most of our time in line was spent talking with everyone else nearby in order to relax and doing vocal warmups. I noticed a lot of people were practicing by trying to do funny, exaggerated, or unique voices instead of using their actual speaking voice, which is one of the things I was told you're not supposed to do in professional voice acting. While I wept for the future of professionalism in voice acting, I also thought "hey, maybe our chances for getting picked are actually pretty good!"
-By the time we reached near the end of the line, we were given two sheets of paper with two different lines to learn, "for fighters" and "for lovers" and we were expected to choose the one that suited our personality more.
-When it was time for us to perform, we stated our name, which line we were performing, and delivered it two different ways. It was almost exactly like the type of things I did routinely in middle school and high school theater.

After that, I went back to the artist's alley and dealer's room and ended up visiting with some other friends I met at a concert and some other events I attended earlier this year (PAX South, SXSW, RTX), one friend which I found out was there when I met Yuji Naka at SXSW during March and completely missed seeing. It's all cool now.

Then the thing with the Homestuck fans I mentioned earlier happened.

Then 4pm rolled around, my friend and I felt like leaving, but decided to stay a bit longer when we encountered the woman I'm planning a date with and some of her friends. We talked for about 30 minutes and started making plans for our date before heading home.

Getting back was hectic.

As we left San Antonio, my friend and I saw two cars speeding past us at 80-90mph when were about to get on the highway. About 15 minutes later, we saw the bumper to one of those cars just lying in the middle of the road. 30 minutes after that, there were three wrecked cars on the left, right, and middle sides of the road, all in about the same area, but there was still enough space between them for cars to slow down and move. We stopped for gas and my car wouldn't start because of an issue with the battery, but someone was willing to help jump it, the rest of the drive back turned out fine, and I bought a new battery.

I wish every day could be an eventful adventure like that. But without the the car trouble, wrecks, and rowdy or awkward encounters with people.

Then the next day I caught up with the rest of the world and binge-watched Stranger Things. That was pretty cool.

My day was a mixed bag. I had the day off and decided listened to some podcasts as I waited for tickets to a local comedy show to go on sale. I was also not as productive as I wanted to be since my car unexpectedly had to go to a mechanic to get its brakes fixed. It was supposed to be done today, but it's taking longer than expected. Good thing I had the foresight to get a new pop filter for my mic a couple of days ago, because I'm going to be using it for something pretty soon. There's also the new season of South Park starting tonight, and I'm looking forward to that.

For those who wanted to know about the date I talked about in my last post: we went to a bunch of places in San Antonio that were free, got ramen for dinner at the same restaurant I went to during PAX (and I didn't get sick this time!), and talked about our hopes and dreams and insecurities and stuff like that. We both had a great time and want to see each other again!

Wow, stuff like the last two posts make feel guilty for posting about the cool fun stuff I do. I hope everything gets worked out.

After work today, I went to the library to check out some Star Wars books and started reading them. I am getting re-familiar with the Heir to the Empire trilogy, which introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn, and also got my hands on the two books that are widely regarded to be the best of the new Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe, Lost Stars and Bloodline.

Libraries can be really cool, everyone. Take advantage of them. They may even have video games, anime, and manga, three things almost everyone on the forums enjoys!

That sucks! I hope your bank can help.

Oh no! Identity theft is never good! One time a couple years ago, someone in California somehow got my credit card info (even though I live in Michigan and went to college in  Iowa) and tried to make a purchase from a 7-11. Luckily the credit card company informed me of the attempted purchase right away via email, and I had a new card in no time.

The stupid was strong tonight at work. For a reason I cannot fathom, a customer parked directly in front of a cart corral. Then later, a customer no longer wanted a package of cupcakes because they were upside down. After they left, the cashier told me that the customer's husband put the cupcakes upside down on the conveyor belt. 

Eventful day.

My sister's boyfriend proposed to her and she said yes!

Him, our families, and their friends threw a surprise party for her that was planned for two weeks!

My asshole uncle who only gets invited to family events because he's family showed up, started acting like a dick, I asked him to stop, he got mad at me because I asked him to stop, then my dad told him to fuck off and it felt like watching a non-Zack Snyder version of Superman punch Donald Trump in the dick, and then he left immediately!

It was great!

...And so was everything other than that on my sister's big day.

After MONTHS of applications I finally have an interview at an engineering firm! It's set for October 28. I'm a ball of nerves already, especially since one of the people interviewing me is the vice president of the company! But I also have a lot of time to prepare, and I plan to make full use of it. This could finally be my big break!