Geek Weekend

As has been an annual tradition for long enough that I don't actually remember exactly how many years it's been, we went down to San Diego for Comic-Con this past weekend.

San Diego Convention Center

Upon looking at the programming schedule before the convention, I realized that I'd lost touch with pop culture this year.  I typically go for the TV panels, and end up seeing panels along the way for things I'm not familiar with, just because they happen to be in the same room I want to be in for a later panel.  (A favorite "accidentally-attended" panel was Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen a few years back.)

This year, a few shows whose panels I usually attend have ended, a few weren't coming to Comic-Con, and several I haven't caught up with the last season (or two) of.  My must-see list was looking pretty slim.

But you know what?  That turned out to be awesome.

Jim Parsons via Satellite

What happened was we ended up attending a lot of smaller panels.  Sure, we set up camp in Hall H (the biggest, baddest room at Comic-Con) for much of Friday.  We were there to see "The Big Bang Theory", which ended up with Jim Parsons attending via direct satellite link from New York and included a raffled trip to space by a real astronaut, and "Game of Thrones", which I haven't actually seen any of, but my friends are obsessed with.

In the meantime, we accidentally-attended ParaNorman, which looks surprisingly charming and had very enjoyable panelists, and "Walking Dead", which had surprisingly passionate and well-spoken panelists.

This is what we do at Comic-Con.  Wait in line...

... luckily with friends!

 And we were back in Hall H--after getting up at the dawn-cracking hour of 4:00 just to get in line--Sunday for "Supernatural", and ended up seeing "Fringe" along the way, with more passionate panelists.  In fact, the panelists on "Fringe" and "Walking Dead" may have convinced me to watch their shows.

Fringe swag

(You're probably asking at this point, what smaller panels?  Everything you're talking about was in the biggest room there ever was, ever!)

 Over the course of the weekend, Steve and I went to five panels in the how-to room: Digital Color for Comics, Perspective for Illustration, Figure Drawing for Popular Media, Old Masters' Art Lessons for Comic Artists, and Drawing Made Easy from Science.  My favorites were probably Figure Drawing and the last panel, which based learning to draw in math (right up Steve's alley).

Supernatural Panel

We spent some time in the Indigo Ballroom Saturday morning for Geek and Sundry (Will Wheaton, Felicia Day, the gang from "The Guild") and the TV Guide Favorites panel (Nathan Fillion and a bunch of people I wasn't as familiar with, who all ended up being charming and fun), and in the meantime saw "Attack of the Show" which was a very entertaining panel, and the Nerdist Channel, which was pretty awesome (Neil deGrasse Tyson!) and coined some pretty fabulous phrases, like "Pluto had it coming!" and "That's no way for a planet to behave!" 

Awesome 3D puzzle for sale

We also parked in one of the upstairs ballrooms for "Revolution" (I very much enjoyed the pilot and will probably tune in come fall) and ended up seeing "The Following"--Kevin Bacon's new show, which was very well done but a bit too stressful for me--and "Person of Interest", which is a show I hear a lot of good things about.  We rounded out our Comic-Con with a panel on Epic Mickey 2.

The SD Convention Center is huuuuuuuuuge

I didn't get to see nearly as much of the Exhibition Hall as I wanted (see: amazing puzzle above), probably because I thought I wouldn't be spending much time in panels (wrong!) and therefore would have all the time in the world to browse the artists and booths.  But I did collect business cards from some pretty neat artists so I can at least browse their etsy stores.


Comic-Con 2012: A Success.

Waffles and Waffles

One of my favorite ways to celebrate a holiday: with Steve's awesome banana pancakes for breakfast.  Yesterday, we switched it up a little and turned the pancake mix into waffles.  Yum!


While we were out running our one errand and going to an afternoon movie (Brave, two thumbs up), I came up with a genius dessert idea to use the two leftover waffles, which had been sitting in a dish on the counter looking sad and unwanted all day.

We got home, and Steve said, "Do you think the waffles are still there, or you think Chloe ate them?"

Chloe looked up from her spot on the couch at the mention of her name.

"Nope, they're still here," I said.

We walked and ran around with the dog for a bit, and then ran over to the grocery store behind our house for about three key dinner and waffle-dessert ingredients.

"Hey, did you put the waffles away before we went to the store?" I asked Steve.

"No, did you?"

We both looked in the refrigerator to see if somehow they'd gotten put away.

And there was Chloe, in her spot on the couch, at least having the decency to look ashamed under Steve's and my stern glares.

"She was alone with those waffles all afternoon and didn't touch them, but we run to the grocery store for ten minutes and suddenly a snack sounds like a good idea?"

"Guess she worked up an appetite after all that exercise..."

Once I had that dessert idea in my head, though we had to do it.

Patriotic Dessert!

And that's how we ended up making waffles twice on the 4th of July.