i’ve just ended the busy month of July. can’t believe how quickly it came and went. along with most of the summer. stepping into August, all i can think about is how cold i’m gonna be come November.

pushing that thought away, ryan and i went to our first San Diego Comic-Con. it was a little over whelming at first but i got used to the massive grouping of people that surrounded us constantly. and ryan showed no signs of anxiety. so off we were!

our friend steve-o was generous to let us stay at his place, and let us sleep in his big comfy bed. what a good guy! a huge plus was that he lives pretty close to the San Deigo Convention Center. although parking near it, so we’re told, is the biggest pain in the ass ever known to a person attempting to park there so we did what gina and matt told us to do. [i may not have introduced matt and gina before but i know they'll come up in the future so all you need to know is: they are friends of me and ryan and gina has been to Comic Con 14 times, and Matt 8] we parked at the trolley station and rode it to the SDCC.

we arrived just before the doors opened. just enough time to grab my badge and an unusually HUGE souvenir bag. i’m not sure why it’s so big. ryan had to tie the strap in knot because it was longer than me! i collected quite a few flyers and goodies and purchases and still only filled it up about 25%. we spent most of our time in the exhibition hall. that’s were all the booths are consisting of art, books, comic, movie stages, life size statues of movie figures (iron man, avatar, etc), and much much more. my novice knowledge of comic-con led me to believe that we could catch a few panels (like big bang theory, human target, true blood) but reality set in when i saw the long long line. people had been in line for hours and hours to see a panel and i couldn’t waste precious time doing the same. broken hearted, i went back down to the exhibition hall to see what else i could enjoy.

i found felicia day at a booth promoting her cute lil web series called The Guild. i didn’t care to watch it initially and one night i thought i’d give the first episode a chance. i watched all 3 seasons in two nights. i don’t care for the game of WoW but it didn’t matter. hooked. additionally, she is the nicest, cutest little actor ever. although, there was a joke made in my presence that her hair color isn’t her true hair color and little piece of my infatuation with her died right then. but i still love her and still patiently awaiting for season 4 of the The Guild.

i also had the opportunity to meet a couple artists i’ve been stalking on the internet. the first was the author of the Owly books, Andy Runton. he was very nice and signed all four of the books i bought. and as a bonus, his mom was there and gave me a free pin with a blue bird from one of his stories. raynar was really humble and cool and signed his book as well. another really neat artist i met was Mike Mitchell (no relation). he creates these really cool Skully characters. i have one as the background to my phone called Little Pilot Skullington. it never gets old, i love it. he happened to be passing out signed copies of King Skully and i got one (3/20)! and the last artist we saw before leaving town, more like a literature type of artist, author Patrick Rothfuss. he wrote a really cool fantasy book called The Name of the Wind. i was super skeptical to read it but ryan claimed it had greatness and so i gave in and read it. by far the best thing ryan has been right about.

besides getting lost, being found and meeting a few cool artists, nothing REALLY exciting happened but it was exciting enough to want to go next year. SDCC 2011, here i come!

(click on any of the images to embiggen)