Flights, Friends, Freaks, and Football!

Dragon*Con: Where geek women are not afraid to show copious amounts of skin.

Holy mother of God, what a weekend! I decided to go balls to the wall and take a 5-day Labor Day weekend. Hells to the yes! I definitely did my best to make the most of every moment I had free, and still slept in.

It all started Thursday when I woke up at 3AM to catch a 6AM flight out of DCA. Dear Airtran, please never move my flight to 6AM again. Nonetheless, everything was on time and I made it to ATL by 8AM. There I met up with my very good friend Allison and we headed back to her place before swinging by Dreamland for some outstanding ribs and white bread. Mmmm… It wasn’t the original, but still damn good compared to DC-area BBQ.

Next up was some hanging out before we headed out to Taco Mac to open up the 2009 College Football Season with the viewing of South Carolina vs NC State. It wasn’t the most exciting game, but it was great to finally see football on TV again. Later on my good friend Daniel showed up and we made headway on both the beer list and football by watching Boise St. vs Oregon. I eventually made it back to the house and hit the sack hard.

Malleteers just hanging out on random street corners is not unsual behavior.

Friday I MARTA’d into the city to grab grub with Dave from Mallet, but I ended up late and met up with him after his Farscape session. That’s right. Farscape. Wondering WTF? Dave and 100,000 of our friends were at Dragon*Con. I ended up meeting up with Dave and several other Malleteers to hang out the rest of the day, but not after taking several photos of some excellent and not-so-excellent outfits, but that’s another blog entry. We ended up grabbing grub at some 24hr dive that served up rolly chairs and a penis-shaped sandwich. I called it a night and MARTA’d back home after that.

Alabama vs Virginia Tech 2009 Baby!

Ahhh, then Saturday rolled around. GAMEDAY. I headed into the city late and missed the Dragon*Con parade, but I was able to get a few more photos before David arrived to head toward the Dome.

I chatted with Laura Croft while awaiting David's arrival & charging my iPhone.

Once he arrived we made our way to Centennial Park and found all of nothing happening there since the concert had yet to start. We then decided to find a bar that had both beer and televisions. Somehow we ended up down a side-street at Sidebar. We started knocking back a few beers while watching football but then we realized something quite strange. 1.) We were outnumbered by castrated turkeys a good 5:1. 2.) This was a Florida Gators bar. Sonofabitch. There was no way in hell I could stay after both of those realizations, much less one.

Do not get int he face of and shove a rival fan or you will get hit. Twice. In the face.

From there we headed back out and made our way to the CNN Center for some huge, cold draft beer with Daniel and his friend. After a couple of those we made yet another trek on down to Matt’s tailgate across from the Dome. They grilled me up a tasty deerburger before David and I finally made out way into the Dome about and hour prior to kickoff. Our seats were five rows from the top of the upper deck on the 15yd line. No complaints here, we had an AWESOME time inside. Alabama’s band AND football team took care of business. That’s just how we roll. I was exhausted by the time I hit the couch around 1AM, and I had lost most of my voice as well.

We were SARDINES on the way home from the game.

Finally, Sunday rolled around. Not a moment too soon because this weekend was killin’ me. It was time for a vacation during my vacation. Allison and I decided to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. It was a fun experience since she has no bread machine for the dough, no rolling pin, no bread hook, and no experience baking. Nonetheless, we both prevailed and ended up with some extremely tasty rolls! It was find to also spend the day hanging out with her all day. I do miss my good friends being close by these days. Nonetheless, the evening rolled around and I was due back to the airport for my 10PM flight. I made it back into my cozy bed around midnight and was quite glad to be there. Of course, I could have made it faster if we didn’t have to park the plane in BFE at IAD and use those godforsaken shuttles back to to baggage claim. Since it was a late flight we had to wait for the entire crew to load up before leaving. Of course, things could have gone much quicker if these IDIOTS didn’t stop to sit in the first seat on the shuttle and park their baby carriages right in front of them so no one can get by. Not to mention the others that just HAD to roll their small suitcases behind them no matter how crowded the aisle was. I’ll be damned if they could pick the thing up and just carry it in order to navigate easily. What in God’s name is so difficult about that?

At any rate, I decided to take it easy today. Look forward to another post on Dragon*Con later on.