Well, it’s that time of the year again, though with a little bit of difference to it.
You see, AWA is moving from the venue it has been for the last 20 years to the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta as well as moving for the first two years at this new venue to dates in December. This is not ideal for many reasons, foremost that many jobs have PTO blackouts in the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Many con attendees work jobs with those blackouts and others where one can take time off during that period every other year at minimum.
Needless to say, even if I weren’t looking to relocate outside of Georgia, I would most definitely consider not going back to the con for a couple of years. I am doing exactly that: this year, the 20th year I have attended AWA, is the final year I have attended that con.
This year’s planning started before last year’s even took place: I had booked a hotel with just points last year, and I reached out to a very dear friend of mine to see if he could get free to fly down, and when he was unable to said “next year for sure,” so after last year’s con I grabbed my badge online once I got home from it as I wanted to see if they had been able to improve on the last year.
I was planning to just commute to it unless I got a confirmation from at least one person that they would fly or drive in: well, I got confirmation from the friend I just mentioned a couple of hours after the overflow hotels had opened up, so I ended up booking us in the Marriott on Interstate North Parkway that I stayed at for 2018’s con. I ended up going to Animazement in Raleigh over Memorial Day weekend, and one person from that group wanted to go to AWA and bring her partner: that made 4 for the room.
The summer went by, I continued making plans, then I got some pretty bad news that I discussed in this post. This put a damper on stuff, but I decided the con weekend must still happen, so I soldiered on after deracking my gear at Coloblox a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, the con report begins now.
Day 0 (1?) – Thursday, October 26:
I’d checked into my hotel on Wednesday, so after I woke up and finished packing, then taking care of everything I needed to at home, I finally headed to the airport at 10:30a, arriving around 11:20a. Once I got there, I located the friend I was picking up there, then I had to pee, which presented a problem: I was wearing a skirt and long socks and had a mask on to boot. Heck with it, to the ladies’ room I went… and made it in and out without anyone giving me any grief. This set a precedent for the rest of the weekend: more on that in a bit.
After I successfully peed in the ladies’ room as a trans woman without issue, we headed back to the car, rearranged things a little, loaded his luggage in, and headed towards our hotel. I had gotten a notification en route to the airport that the room was ready and to stop by the front desk for keycards, so we did just that upon arrival at the hotel.
The next steps were to get settled into the room then head to Cumberland Mall for lunch and to hit Costco to get water and Coke Zero for the weekend. With those completed, we headed back to the hotel and just hung out and talked about life and watched random stuff until the others arrived.
Upon the arrival of the others, we headed over to the con for the other 3 to pick their badges up, then we headed back to the hotel and got dinner at the hotel bar. It was as good as I remember it being from 2018, and we headed to bed a little while after we were done.
Day 1 (2?) – Friday, October 27:
We woke up at a decentish time and eventually I wandered over to go through the dealers’ room and artists’ alley before heading to the mall for lunch. After lunch, we headed back to the con, hit up the video game room, then meandered around for a bit until the others from our group arrived. We met up with another person in my Animazement group who was at AWA along with their local friend they were staying with. I made a new friend, yay! I ended up wordvomiting about my trans experience to her, but whatever, her wife is transfemme too, and it was a super fun time!
Eventually we broke for dinner and took a break until the friend who flew in and I headed back in time for the very end of Totally Lame Anime followed by Anime Hell. We were going to stay for Midnight Madness, but we’re both over 40 now, so we decided to return to the hotel like smart people.
Soon after returning from the con, we headed to bed.
Day 2 (3?) – Saturday, October 28:
We hadn’t planned anything until mid afternoon, so we took our time getting going for the day, finally heading over to the con a little bit after lunch but catching the Asaka concert at 3 then a panel about Doujin Culture in a Post-COVID World at 5:30. After that we met up with two local friends of mine and eventually found our way to Mellow Mushroom for dinner. This was a dinner I’d been planning for a while, and my local friends were very glad to see the friend from out of town. We had a very very good evening and discussion of goings-on in our lives over the last few years, and there’s a shopping outing planned sometime in the future. Yay cute clothes!
After we finished dinner, we headed back to the room and got ready for bed, which came a couple hours later.
Day 3 (4?) – Sunday, October 29:
The biggest advantage to staying through Monday when it comes to anime cons is it allows one to sleep off a hangover or similar on Sunday morning after the big Saturday night party. We kinda lazed around today a little bit, which was needed. Before lunch I headed over to the con with the friend who flew in, we hit the dealers’ room/artists’ alley up again, each of us purchased a thing or two, and afterwards we walked up the hill to Akers Mill Square one last time. We got lunch at Chipotle which was next to the Chick-fil-A we had an al fresco lunch at on Friday of the con many years ago.
After lunch, we headed back to see if any of the good games were still active: sadly none were, so we poked our heads in the concert that was going on, stayed a few minutes, then decided just to head back and call the con done.
Upon arriving back at the hotel room, each of us made separate but equalish dinner plans, and after dinner we all prepacked as best we could for checkout the following morning.
Day +1 – Monday, October 30:
I set my alarm pretty early so we would all end up conscious with enough time for all of us to shower if we so chose as well as gather our things for departure. It went quite smoothly, I collected the remaining keycards, checked out on the app, and headed away from the hotel and the area.
The first post-con destination was Books Kinokuniya in Johns Creek. We had seen their booth at the con, and I’d honestly been meaning to drop by here after work one day. Leaving the hotel far earlier than expected was a good enough excuse for me. After a little bit of wandering, we left here for our next stop: lunch somewhere in Duluth.
I settled on the Jimmy John’s I drive by going to and from my job, and afterwards we headed to Micro Center to kill more time. They had a pretty amusing Evangelion-themed case from Asus ROG. Once we’d had our fill of Micro Center, I headed for the airport. It was a much different me that dropped a dear friend off at the airport after the con than the me of 2019.
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It’s been somewhat bittersweet: I pulled my equipment out of the datacenter across 285 from the Galleria before the con, I really have no reason to head to that side of town any more, unless it’d be for work, and there is a very good chance the next time I’m at the airport I know so well will be via an arriving flight.
Of course, all good things must one day come to an end…