"...Keep away from her, send for Chino! This is not the Maria we know! Modest and pure..."

Wrapping up my Costume College coverage... I ran into Maria for about the third time the whole weekend Sunday morning, in this lovely outfit. Didn't see her the rest of the day.

After the Fantasy Tea, which took me a while to pack up from, I loaded the car and prepared to head out. I got a call from ala_mokita, explaining that he wouldn't be back on-site. We'd talked about trying to sneak fairegoddess into the Burb so she could see the room where the animelosangeles masquerade would be held, and he wasn't going to be able to do it. So I found Lindsay, then realized I'd left some bottles of water in the costume exhibit. Left her talking to a friend, headed over, got the water, came back and she was still catching up with Lisa Root in front of the Marketplace. She didn't drive her own car, so she'd be riding with me over to the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel and Convention Center.

I told her I needed to clean out the front of my truck, left her standing there talking. I'd originally not planned to have any passengers leaving the hotel, so I had packed the front seat quite full. It took me a while, eventually I came back and got here. The CGW meeting was going on -- they have a business meeting instead of closing ceremonies, which is a little odd, but there you go. Lindsay said she thought she could miss it, and we headed out to Burbank.

At the Burb, we got lucky. The Convention Center building (shown here) was completely open and unlocked. Academy 1-2-3-4-5-6 was set up as one huge room, and I couldn't figure out where to find light switch. "See those two emergency exits? Your room is from this doorway all the way back, from the left exit light to the right exit. The green room is that portion on the far left, including that door that doesn't have a lit emergency exit sign over it. Imagine an airwall on the left with the last section missing, so you can get from the Masquerade Green Room directly backstage."

Not really as effective a tour in the dark as I'd hoped. Really need to find out where those light switches are. Or bring in my flashlight so I can look at the wall... hmmm, that might have helped. But it would have felt conspicuous to carry a Maglite ML4 around the hotel with me.

I showed her the Artists' Alley area, the Registration Desk, the Masquerade Check-In Desk. The Sunset room, where we'd likely have the indoor photo gathering room. The restrooms. We learned that the mens has five sinks and the ladies has seven. And it has more stalls. No place to sit, though. We might want to consider dragging one of our benches in there. Especially if people are going to be changing costumes in it!

We looked at the courtyard between the buildings. Likely the two or three really big gatherings will go there. But because of how it's set up, it won't get a lot of light -- it'll either have morning shade or evening shade -- and it'll funnel the wind, too. We snuck into Director, so she could see the Con Suite. Tried to look at a Junior Suite upstairs, but they're in the middle of their refurnishing. Explained that on each floor, the rooms north of the elevator are all suites, and the rooms south of the elevator are all regular rooms (many of which have doors connecting adjoining pairs of rooms). Headed to the lobby, showed her the hotel's public lobby. Well, basically, gave her the two-dollar tour of the hotel. (That's what the parking cost to get us out of there again.)

Had dinner -- or in my case, lunch -- at Sharky's. The Burbank Empire Center isn't as close as we'd like. (Fortunately they're building four or so restaurants across the street from the hotel.) But Burbank Empire Center does have an assortment of eateries, from a foodcourt with a Subway and Sbarros to sit-down places like Outback Steakhouse and Hometown Buffet. And, ta-da! the shopping center has a Michaels. I apologized for the lack of a Jo-Anns Fabric but she assured me that for fixing a broken costume, Michaels was better.