(This is a repost from my LiveJournal)
As has been the Autumnal Equinox (well, almost) tradition the past five years, I attended Anime Weekend Atlanta yet again this year. One single word describes this year: wet.
As per my normal pre-pre-con activities, I checked the weather on Monday and Tuesday of last week to discover that the greatest fear I had when I reserved a room in a hotel other than the Renaissance Waverly had come true: rain was forecast. This caused a slight issue with packing my car on Thursday, mostly because the bottom ended up falling out about 10 minutes before I started, but I was able to get the majority of stuff in without getting too wet.
At any rate, here comes the play-by-play.
Thursday:
I departed home a bit later than I wanted to pick my friend Mike up at the airport, but luckily he hadn’t disembarked when I arrived, so after finding a parking spot under the deck, I grabbed an overpriced 8″ pizza and munched on that while waiting on him, having to finish it up in the car. Luckily for us, the rain had mostly subsided upon arriving in Cobb, so I phoned up my other friend Jon to see where he was (as the room was in his name, since he staffed this year) so we could get checked in. He was still a ways away, so we hit the mall to wander around, and I came very close to going ahead and picking up the aircard I’ve been threatening to for a while. After that we hit a convenience store to get soda then drove up 41 to Books Japan to wander for a few minutes. I received a call from Jon at that point, so Mike and I headed back to the Embassy Suites to get checked in.
Fortunately for us, after we got all our stuff in the room, the hotel has a nightly “Manager’s Reception” that includes free snacks and drinks. Refreshments were welcome, and we headed over to the Waverly to get our badges and assist in the checking in of radio equipment. Around 23:00 we finished up and grabbed a late dinner at Steak & Shake before Mike and I returned to the hotel to finish setting things up then crashing at a moderately reasonable hour in preparation for the next day’s activities.
Friday:
I woke up far too early on Friday, so I had a larger amount of time to kill than I wanted to, which wasn’t terrible. Mike and I grabbed an al fresco lunch at the nearby Chick-fil-A then proceeded to wander the con. I don’t remember too much of the day, but I do remember him doing a lot of subtitling during downtime. As I recall, we caught Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space and something else, I think. Around 18:00 we headed back to the hotel to grab drinks and search out food of some sort. Seem to think we grabbed Chinese in the Galleria, but I honestly don’t recall. The evening rounded out with our group hitting Wal-Mart for supplies so we didn’t have to keep feeding vendors :10bux: at the time for food. We all goofed off in the room and slept soon afterwards.
Saturday:
Ugh, I was feeling the night before when the alarm went off, so I just kept sleeping for a little bit more. Lunch was a sandwich and chips in the room, then we proceeded back to conspace for something… don’t really remember what, but it was something. Mike continued to seek out wifi and translate as we went, was really amazing to watch. I also at this point cursed my not bringing my netbook, but honestly, I hadn’t had the time to massage Windows into cooperating on a 4GB SSD and the recent Atheros drivers for Linux are flaky, so I just browsed on my BlackBerry. We all wandered over to Cumberland Mall for dinner then headed back to conspace for a bit and finally back to the room for more fun then sleep.
Sunday:
Really didn’t feel like rolling out of bed early, so I didn’t. Once again, sandwich and chips for lunch, then back to conspace for a final onceover of the dealer’s room, where I picked up the Final Fantasy III piano book. After that we wandered back to the room to just relax for the rest of the afternoon/evening. AWA really dies on Sundays, sadly. Hit IHOP for dinner then began slowly prepacking for the departure the next morning.
Monday:
Checked out of the hotel around 11:15, then returned a couple of things to Jon then began navigating the flood-stymied roads. Grabbed lunch at the Wendy’s near my house, then had to backtrack a bit to get to the airport in time for Mike to catch his flight, which ended up going a lot later than expected due to the airport getting shut down for a bit. I finally arrived home around 16:00.
As usual, post-con depression began sitting in immediately after returning to my car at the airport. I’m mostly over it, and have pretty much managed to keep conflu away, which is great. In the end, I didn’t spend a ton of money, had a great time, and got hooked on a new show (Bakemonogatari).
Once room prices are posted, reservations will be made.
Conclusions for this year:
1) Embassy > Waverly.
2) Walk isn’t too bad, even in light rain most of the weekend.
3) Buy less food at Wal-Mart.
4) Need aircard ASAP.
Also of note: Bake has a couple of really headsticky songs, heh.