Under a cut!

Mostly just personal junk

Our friend Mike is a mean angry troll but sometimes funny. Here he has been pacified by a broken, foul smelling pinata Ben found lying around at the convention. It apparently houses the spirit of a mighty ruler from a far-off, tropical kingdom.

Mike distracted again from his never-ending rampages.

My girlfriend Margret and the animatronic World’s Tallest Man!

Cait being a creeper

Everybody after the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, which was charmingly mediocre!

Cait hugs the fish at Barnes & Noble because we didn’t get to go to the Aquarium this year.

Mike asked Margret to draw what Cait looks like when she’s not stupid

This particular Barnes & Noble is one of several stores and restaurants built inside what was once an industrial era power plant; it’s one of the most beautiful places to be in, with brick walls and huge metal components all the way up to its soaring ceilings.

This construction next door to our hotel was also pretty

Mike brought non-popping bubbles to torment congoers and this one survived on the hotel drapes the whole weekend. It was there when we left, but the maids probably murdered it.

Mike and Ben made paper airplanes out of UNO children’s menus and hurled them off the eighth floor of the hotel, into the late night traffic below. They, too, were still there when we went home.

I love the ceilings at the convention center’s huge, open floors, used by Otakon as the dealer’s room, artist alley and gaming room.

With all the buildup to this massive event, the unique atmosphere and that same group of silly (if sometimes tiring) internet friends I stay with every year, it’s always depressing how quickly it seems to end, but Margret is the first person I’veever known who I’ve been able to share absolutely everything with, all the time, who enjoys the same things in the same ways that I do and wnever ever makes me feel the least bit awkward, pressured, tense, exhausted or unappreciated.

The convention always used to have a socially frustrating side to it, passing by so many funny, interesting and sometimes really attractive people I’d never get to know, but this is the first time I don’t have to go home all alone.