"...Have you met my good friend Maria, the craziest girl on the block..."

[hazelchaz]

Didn't see much of Maria at Costume College. (Saw colleency a lot more than I saw M.) The gold dress Maria wore to the post-Gala dance was stunning -- I'd never seen her in it before, although I understand she finished it a few months before.

I arrived at the convention Thursday night, a littler than I'd promised to work at the check-in desk, but they had the thing under control with almost half a dozen people and sent me over to the Costume Exhibit. I did a little general assisting and trouble-shooting. Vida Jones needed help getting a box open. I pulled a piece of tape and it was as open as it needed to be. The box was falling apart, so I volunteered a smaller box from my truck and another box to be brought from the house in the morning. There wasn't much going on Thursday night -- I heard that there was an LJ meetup, but poking around on my friends' LJs didn't unearth the secret of its location or time, so I headed off to Coral Cafe and then home.

I looked in the garage for a medium-sized box, and found something better: a suitcase I'd been meaning to throw out. The zipper was busted on one side. So I brought that, and a roll of duct tape, and told Vida she could use as much tape as she liked and to throw the suitcase away after she got home. She was thrilled out of all proportion, considering I was giving her a piece of my trash... but I accepted her thanks, and she promised to figure out a way to get the duct tape back to me. I told her to pass it onto any L.A. fan who was still in the hotel when she finished with it, and it would eventually make its way back to me.

I'd bumped into Kevinandandy at Trader Joes on the way in, because I needed some iced tea to get through the weekend. I worked my shifts at the Costume Exhibit -- I had 2:00-4:00 off, and checked in then. During my 4:00-5:00 shift, I saw someone checking into the room across the hall from the exhibit. I managed to talk them into swapping rooms with me, because they'd put me in 252, upstairs by the far elevator. Room 185 had two beds, not one, so library_lynn and I ended up in a double after all. (I usually reserve a double at most conventions because more often than not I end up giving away crash space to someone. Didn't happen this time.)

Friday night was the GBACG meetup in the bar, which was an open thing. It was also fairegoddess's 21st birthday, but she didn't show up until hours later. At the bar, this young man named Brian was friendly with the ladies dressed up in their costumes, and they adopted/shanghaied him up to Kevinandandy's party suite (380, not the usual 280) for more partying and sampling of flavored vodkas and other strange spirits. (I'm not convinced the world needs a basil liqueur, really...) The party was still going by almost midnight, when the hospitality suite was due to close, so we trooped over there to try to round up any late night stragglers to bring them back to 380.

On the way back I picked up some chocolate chip cookies and baklava from my TJ's stash. Amie Luther was thrilled to find baklava at the party. Someone had brought tiaras, but they ran out -- not before Brian got his, though. Amie missed getting a tiara, so she started pulling tissues out of her purse and making origami flowers for the girls to wear in their hair.

Christian was on the property Friday night, but arrived after we'd vacated the bar, and the dealers room was closed; he didn't call me on my cell, nor did he wander around outside 180 or we would have called to him from the balcony. So he missed a good party...

Brian apparently is in the National Guard. He turned up at the Saturday night dance in his work clothes (that is, his camo BDUs). All the girls danced with him. I was sitting out front, taking pictures and printing them out, when one of them (sorry for not remembering which) came out and urged me to take a picture of him with the fifteen girls because otherwise his unit would never believe his story of the weekend.

Comments

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Aha! All of those lines from "I Feel Pretty" were a set-up so that you could theme a post on Maria. Very clever, sir!

I hope the technical difficulties are fixed soon. It will be nice to see the full-sized versions of these costume photos.

Full-sized pictures

[hazelchaz]

Oh, the "high-resolution" links work just fine. You'll have to hit the "Back" button on your browser after each one to get back to the index page.

It's just the links that go through the database that don't work.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Next time we're in your neck of the woods I'll have all of the fixings for Basil Mojitos. That should change your mind.

Basil Mojitos

[hazelchaz]

Basil Mojitos -- wasn't he the lead singer for that Perez Prado sound-alike mambo band?