Was pretty awesome. And last weekend, actually. I'll just say it's taken me a few days to recover. Which is not so untrue actually - as is par for the course for me with cons (whygodwhy) I got sick. Again. I got sick at Wrockstocks previous years, I got that horrible awful sinus infection after Azkatraz (and was sitting in my hotel room sick for half of the actual con). This is turning into such a thing that I'm starting to get a little apprehensive about cons in general. Is my immune system really that bad? Somehow I've been able to deal with school-related sleep dep, but god, have similar sleep-dep from a con and I just die. Every time! Gah. At least this was just a cold and not the flu. Thank goodness. It DID however, mean I had to miss the last night of the con. I was not happy about that. Instead of going to the bonfire, hanging out with people, and possibly indulging in an illicit music sharing party, I was barely able to make it through the last set (which was the last show the Mudbloods are ever playing - so it was really important to me than I be there, even if I was not dancing, and just standing in a corner sniffling and hugging Moony the Wrock Dog for comfort), and then basically crashed for 11 hours. And yeah, then wake up and it's time to leave.

Other than that - I did really well this year I think. I was just really into being there, hanging out with people, doing activities, and actually making almost all the performances this year, which I can't really say entirely happened last year. Getting not much sleep was actually part of the plan - I paid a lot (okay granted, still less than what I'm earning tutoring this quarter - yay easy fun tutoring job) to be there, so I was determined to have fun.

Some highlights:
1. Actually doing NEWTs this year. My friends and I decided that we actually would, since we were there in a cool outdoorsy place and all (Trout Lodge, where Wrockstock is, is beautiful. It's in a forest in Missouri next to a lake, and yes, we sleep in cabins for four days and listen to harry potter music most of the time. I don't care how many totally incredulous looks I get from my roommate, it's totally the most awesome thing in the world.) We did ziplining and horse-back riding. Which in retrospect - only worth doing once really. I liked the extra time spent with my friends outdoors, but still, horses are big and make me nervous, and a couple of my friends had difficulty with the zipline, which just made it a bad experience for them, and thus worrisome for the rest of us too. And as for me, I feel like I've done zipline-type things many times before... I dunno. We sure did get a lot of exercise though (going the complete opposite direction of where we were supposed to and all.)
2. Hanging out with new friends I met at wrock concerts in LA. It's great b/c they're really cool people, but they are just far enough away that it's prohibitive for me to hang out with them really. Well, this goes for my old set of HP friends too, actually. Nobody lives in San Diego, it's true. But I had a good time - there are a lot of Joss Whedon fans among them, which makes me happy, and I was able to give someone the Buffy and Dr. Horrible soundtracks. We were going to do more music sharing, but yeah, I got sick.
3. Seeing All Caps, aka Kristina and Luke's muggle band. Well sort of. They only played two songs (in an impromptu acoustic set of the deck, so not an official set), which made me sad, but I was excited that they were getting some attention, since the Parselmouths did not play a set for some inexplicable reason. The album is really all kinds of amazing (they sing about zombies!), and it's cool to see some of my favorite wrockers branching out. As much as I love harry potter music, there are so many other geeky subjects to sing about. Seriously, just keep it geeky, sing about whatever no one sings about, and I'll listen.
4. Female bands! Wrockstock did great about this this year (well, except for inexplicable exclusion of Parselmouths). I was glad to see this, as there haven't been in previous years - for some reason, the bigger bands are male, despite the mostly female fanbase. This year we had the Myrtles, Swish and Flick, Tonks and the Aurors, and RiddleTM - cool too, other than the Myrtles I haven't seen these bands before. And they were awesome. And I sort of love how delightfully British RiddleTM sounds. So great. Here's their song about Bertie Bott's. Yes, awesome.
4.5 Swish and Flick. How have I not heard them before? Seriously, don't even know how this managed to be possible. So awesome. And dirty. Yeahhhh, this was the "late night" band for a reason (Wrockstock is a family event, so there are a few kids there. Not that the kids have any idea what the words are to most of the songs probably, but still.)
5. Speaking of "late night rock," the band Gred and Forge have a weasleycest song. I about died from laughter at that one. (Rachel: "I'm assuming by your face you haven't heard this song before?")
6. One of my friends played at the Wampum Willow (the free-for-all for anybody with a band, if they sign up early enough.) So that was cool. (And Moony the Wrock Dog got to be part of their performance. That always adds bonus points.)
7. I stole about 500 songs (actually, a lot of them were not wizard rock), from the aforementioned friend's ipod. So that was awesome. Someday I shall return the favor, but yeah, was sick Sunday night.


Lowlights:
1. I bought exactly four strawberry daquiris from the store before wrockstock. How many of these were consumed by others? TWO. What. Clearly that, in addition to the (not very much) alcohol I actually did drink one of the nights that gave me a horrible stomachache and did not make me tipsy, is conspiring to continue my curse which is my inability to get drunk (or even tipsy enough to have a hard time walking straight would be nice.) Grargh!
1.5 Giant uninvited party in our cabin. Which probably contributed to the disappearing alcohol (and snacks, and people falling asleep, and giant mess all over the cabin.) Okay, I didn't mind that much as I was off having a quiet party with my LA friends, but still. Disappearing alcohol!

Omg, guys. I have TV Tropes disease something so entirely awful I kind of don't know what to do with myself. I mean, I always managed to avoid it before - I would look up something, get the information I needed, and then usually be able to be off in a half hour. Sure, some of the conversations I would have with my sister re TV Tropes would last much longer, but at least there's a social element there.

But then today I spent 7 hours straight, I kid you not, sitting and doing this, without moving. My hand got cold from the incessant clicking. And the irony is, all I originally wanted to do was find the comic I just linked. This is why I will never play World of Warcraft. I know it would have just the same effect on me (and I was reading some gaming tropes, so I knooooow this is true.)

Most of the ones I ended up looking at were to do with gender - part of what I was doing on there was "researching" for my gender studies essay, so I ended up clicking on related topics. There are many possible things I could bring up to analyze my extensive time on the site today, but instead I want to disagree that Animorphs scores high on the Bechdel Test. Much as I love this series dearly, I don't really think that's true. It has some great female characters for sure, but when it comes down to it, there are 6 main characters, 2 of whom are female, which, 6 choose 2, there's going to be a low probability of Rachel and Cassie talking in a given moment in and of itself, and most recurring peripheral characters are indeed disturbingly male. In fact, if I were to make tropes internal to the series (and I would argue this is an awesome idea; I'm surprised I haven't seen it before), the first one I would make is All Andalites Are Male (this to a ridiculous extent), and to a lesser extent, All Yeerks Are Male, and All Villains are Male. Other internal tropes I could make up for Animorphs are Even Though We Spend All Our Time Fighting Yeerks We've Still Watched Every TV Show and If It's My Book I'm Going To Angst Over The Same Thing Every Time.

Yes, I admit to only having read half the series so far (shut up Lindsay, I know I'm a slow reader), but this does seem to hold up so far, and it's hilarious to think about in any case. Also, my favorite lulzy trope-ish thing that K.A. Applegate does is the interspecies relationship, where the Andalite member of the relationship morphs permanently to the other being's species in order to be with them (she revolves an entire book around this trope twice, then of course there's Rachel and Tobias, which sort of counts (in the sense of permanent morphing) and I think implies it at least once more, though I need to finish the series yet). And this is a author too, that like J.K. Rowling, is a brilliantly creative world-builder and character creator, and yet cannot write romance to save her life (unless she's playing for laughs). I know this is a kids' book, but omggggg, they spend 20 books I kid you not, with a few lines of "Jake and Cassie like each other but are do embarrassed/busy to do anything about it," and the scene doesn't really change from book to book.

I will still love these books always and forever (just as I love Harry Potter), but it can be interesting to note where they fail in certain ways (and I haven't even gotten to racefail here.)

It's taken me a damn hour to write this post. TV Tropes I hate you.

Omggggg, I have so much shit to do. Seriously, so much. I have to write an essay by tomorrow, which includes watching two movies (to analyze them), plus catch up on all my reading for said class, and oh yeah, grading programming assignments, which is a task I still can't get down to a reasonable amount of time. GAH. Which would explain why I'm sitting here on livejournal, clicking on things like somebody who didn't just spend her entire weekend at wizard rock concerts.

They were fun though! I like meeting new cool people, and I did that - it was also cool how like our entire table (like 15 of us went out to pizza after the concert) seemed to be Joss Whedon fans - we talked about how cool Buffy was and sang some of the songs (this turned into subsequent singing of wizard rock songs, then singing of Rent songs - right there in the restaurant.) Also, like everybody had watched and seemed to like Dollhouse, which is unusual in a random group of people. I guess this means I should give the show a second try then? I dunno, I mean I watched the first 12 episodes and they were okay, I guess, , and certainly I'm going to watch the second season if for no other reason than Felicia Day is in one episode and Summer Glau is a recurring character (I'm shallow that way), but meh. I feel like a bad whedonite b/c I liked TSCC better (and oh, how the table disagreed with me), but there are just some shows that, no matter how good, are not going to resonate with a person simply b/c of genre, what type of show it is. That's kind of how it is for me. I like shows based around science and technology, science fiction and fantasy, any sort of geekery I guess. This is why, no matter how good they are, I just can't stomach crime shows or medical shows. I hate these types of shows, even if they're good. My suspension of disbelief meter is just set too low - because these shows are set in the real world (whereas, Buffy may be set in the "real world," but there are unreal vampires in the world, so I can suspend disbelief on anything else. It's a thing.) Maybe that's my problem with Dollhouse, I dunno - technically it should fit into the shows I like based on my description, but I just never liked the premise, and I never liked how the main characters change personality every episode - it's hard to connect with that. And I guess my other problem with Dollhouse is that I start watching it, and thinking, but if they gave this a second season why couldn't they have given Firefly a second season? Which is silly of course.

But yeah. Other things I have been doing of late:
1. Habitat monitoring! This was actually really awesome, even if I did have to drag myself up at 7:30 in the morning two fridays in a row. We got to do a few transects (both square and pole ones) and write down the plants that were there. I worked with a botanist (who's in grad school studying invasive species!) and it was funny, she seemed more interested in teaching me the names of the plants and some of their characteristics than actually doing the field transects. I'm pretty sure we could have gone twice as fast if we were trying to. Also, we saw a scorpion under a pile of dried seaweed. And a few skeletons. And actually: the border fence between the US and Mexico. It's pretty crazy; it goes right out into the ocean, at which point it seems to disintegrate. I guess they have to rebuild it a lot. But it's cool b/c people talk about the fence a lot, and yet I've never seen it. Crazy; I can't imagine it keeps anyone out; what keeps people out are the border patrol driving around it constantly, (and occasionally driving over plants, grr). Waste of money, basically.
2. Switchblade kittens concert on friday. I was the only wrock fan to show up. I'm so pathetically fannish sometimes, I think I disgust myself, lol. But since they were playing at this "Femme Faire" thing they didn't really play any wizard rock songs. But I expected that, so it's okay. They played a bunch of songs from their new album, which is about the Princess Diaries books. I haven't read those books for years, omg, I guess I need to reread them now. And then I talked to Drama (the lead singer) afterward - did you know that Meg Cabot writes Star Wars fanfic? Yes, really (but under a different name of of course.) And her Princess Mia was named after Princess Leia. And she loves the Switchblade Kittens and has sent them drafts of her new book series, so they can write an album off of that. I think this is great.
3. Improv show in LA, with my friend Jim. It was cool, cause Felicia Day showed up this time, and was one of the ones doing improv, along with two guys who also act on the guild with her (speaking of which, if you're not watching the guild already, you like should be, but more on this later - I could write a long post about it)
4. sarahtales's book signing. Also in LA. (Between trips to LA and habitat restorations, this is why I never get my homework done.) It was pretty cool - she sounds exactly like she does on her journal, which is just really funny. I met some cool people, and actually had a conversation with a girl about wizard rock - and this was a girl who wasn't familiar with sarahtales from her fanfiction, like I was. And apparently even though this is a super tiny fandom, there are still R-rated slash fics in existence, which amuses me greatly. I suppose this has something to do with her fanbase before she started writing Real Books.

Omg, this is way too long. So in summary: I'm doing good, but I need to get my homework done. Er yeah!

It's annoying to me that as a fifth year basically almost done with a computer science major, I still can't code very well very fast. I do okay if I'm given time, and I also have the annoying problem of having a steep learning curve at the beginning of a project or problem, but then getting relatively faster once I learn the basics (this is compared to other people, and anecdotal, but I've found a lot that I need a lot of help getting started with something, but once I've got it, then I'll often be able to help people), which means that I am basically awful for a programming contest.

Because I am totally brilliant and didn't you know, actually read all the problems in the programming contest today before starting coding, I missed out on getting two problems instead of just one. It's ridiculous because the one I actually got was one of the harder ones (the top 7 people and... me at last place were the ones that got it), but the easy one I should have solved I didn't start until the last 25 minutes of the contest (and it was so easy, omg, I had it figured out a half hour after the contest ended). And the hardish one I did solve was mostly an algebra problem (it's actually a really nice math puzzle (once you figure out the math, the code is very simple), check it out here, changing xx to tt of course b/c I am paranoid), which means I can apparently be more algebraically thorough that other people at the contest, but can't actually code very well.

Also, I'm pretty sure this is one of those contests where if you practice a bit, and start looking up algorithms (especially sorting ones), you could get better. I really do wish I'd had time to do so, but, since we didn't get the link to the contest since oh yesterday that was maybe a bit hard. (Okay, granted I knew where some of these links/puzzles could be found b/c of doing this contest before, but I wasn't sure if the contest was still happening until yesterday).

But grar. Because of how few people showed up, if I'd gotten two problems, I would have gotten a monetary award ($100 maybe?), AND it was implied by the group giving out the prizes that they would give you an internship this summer (if you wanted) if you placed. WAH. That's what hurts most of all, man. I sooo need an internship this summer. In anything! Damn you triple major, now I know stuff but I'm not really good enough in anything to get an internship. Grar.

Real post later at some point, I swear (maybe). But now I have to grade programming assignments, and then have like, three weeks of inorganic chemistry to do before my midterm on thursday. How do I get so behind? I'm not even taking any cs classes this quarter! Oh right, it might help if I stopped taking trips to LA all the time and volunteering for habitat monitoring and stuff.

Oh, and I totally need to fix my keyboard. I was opening a package the other day, lost control of my scissors, and sheared the x and c keys right off my keyboard. Mad skillz, I know. It is now becoming apparent to me just how much I use them (well, mainly the c key).

Omgggggg, I am SO sick of being sick. I know, I know, could be a lot worse but this has past that point where I can just sort of ignore it or try to sleep tons to get over it, and now I sorta want to cry and whine a bit. Just a little. I mean I'll deal but wahhh. I just want to stop coughing. I got sick Monday night and have barely done a thing since. Slept 16 hours straight at least three of the days, would go to the couple of classes that have required attendance, and then barely be able to keep my eyes open walking or biking home. At least the fever and chills are basically over and I'm sort of getting my appetite back, and I'm not about to do any half fainting things like I did on tuesday. But I think I'm almost better. Maybe. I mean I better be-ish, I have like, a crapload of homework to catch up on now, and I would like to go to sarahtales's book-talk thing on wednesday. Bonus points for not infecting anyone! My theory is that I'm pretty well recovering and not infectious anymore, but my medical knowledge is somewhat not great, so yeah, I dunno.

If I sound like I have about three brain cells, I am blaming it on the sickness. This has been my excuse for the past week, usually just to myself, every time I did something stupid.

Like here's something stupid I could do, right now: complain about my geophysics teacher. Specifically, that he totally has something against geochemists, and as far as I can tell, anything that doesn't involve about 90% math. If the classes I am taking are any indication, geochemistry involves quite a bit of math! One of his lectures involved like, talking about the universe instead of mathing about it, and omggg, it was like it pained him to do it. Bonus points that he skims so fast through his lectures I can't follow them at all. Though that could have been the sickness talking. And that I haven't read through the book yet. Also because of sick. Although the first problem set (which I did do) was really quite easy, once I reminded myself how to do basic calculus. But I dunno. I am so behind already. I promised myself I wouldn't fall behind this quarter. But I guess I was too busy attempting to get well.

Sometimes I humor myself trying to think how I could have gotten sick. But I have been so many places recently it is really quite ridiculous. Hawaii, Bay Area, now San Diego, and even within san diego, besides the usual places like the grocery store and school, I went down to the border for a habitat restoration, and to the beach to test out my boogie board (which works OMG you don't even understand my astonishment. This thing cost me $12 in Hawaii and only really worked on these really strong sandy beach waves I only went into the whitewater with in Hawaii, then omg, it works here at Shores. And quite well. I was all ready to go back to the beach last tuesday, but then I got sick and there was a tsunami warning. Oh irony.) And I haven't even visited my crayfish yet!

And now I've been wide awake the last two nights and had a hard time sleeping, probably because I did nothing but sleep the previous week. Which is why I'm up now! I don't really feel like doing hw, so I guess it's fanfic time?

So guess what I just discovered? Sensical is totally a word! I totally thought all this time, that I just made it up. I mean granted, I use it in speech occasionally and I've heard others use it, but I thought it was something fairly well made-up, a modern way to play with language (and I love playing with language, tweaking it a bit, b/c sometimes it's just boring to use the same correct things all the time (which is not to say I'm going to start using direct objects as subjects, don't worry XD)) But today when I was typing out an email, I was shocked to discover that the spell check didn't underline it. In fact, sensical is a word according to mac mail, text edit, and livejournal, though it's not a word according to Microsoft Word and Appleworks (nobody except for me uses Appleworks, so that's okay, but Word, what's your excuse?) Wiktionary says it comes from a back formation of "nonsensical", and defines it as "showing internal logic" which is probably the best definition I can find on quick googling (much better than the urban dictionary versions, which, while correct, just aren't specific enough, and have bad example sentences, I would argue. Sensible I like better as something to describe a person or a way a person is acting, as "Characterized more by usefulness or practicality than by fashionableness,", but something that just purely makes sense with just logic, with no real emotion or opinion to it, that is sensical. This is how I see it and how I use it, anyway.

I should TOTALLY call A Way With Words about this next week, y/n?

---

Also, I am back in the old San Diego, and school has started. Lindsay came with me on the drive down, so she could visit Molly and also visit Riverside (where she hopes she'll get into). We stopped at a rest stop on the way that had the hands-down funniest/most ironic-ish signs I've ever seen on bathrooms. On the women's restroom there were no fewer than three signs that said variations of "please no men in women's bathroom" to "If a man enters the women's restroom, we will call the police" (yes, seriously.) The sign on the men's restroom? "Out of Order." I guess if you're a man you should just go pee against the wall outside, as it's not like there was a whole lot else around that particular gas station.

Me near a lava flow! Well, a silhouette of me, as it was rather dark, and this was no flash. I'm at the ocean entry near the East Rift Zone of Kilauea, I think, in Hawaii.


And here's you know, a daylight picture where you can actually see me (and the lava):


This was also the day, I should note, that said ocean entry was emitting lots of SO2, and we ended up breathing a bit of it in while walking over to the lava. Very odd, uncomfortable experience (apparently similar to tear gas, but not quite as bad) trying to breathe, but I'm sort of glad I know what it's like anyway, just for the experience (and I don't have asthma, so it's all good.)

Also, I am in the Bay Area today and tomorrow (sadly after that I must depart, for that school thing starts on Thursday) and thus we should hang out! Hanging out with Sylvia today (at least, supposedly Lindsay's picking her up right now) but then, tonight or tomorrow if you like.

So, Remus Lupins concert soon, which I should probably be leaving for now heh, but instead I'm sitting here updating LJ. I almost don't want to go, which I feel bad about, because it's such a drive for me and I kind of have this great desire to go to the beach right now (and exercise, omg, haven't in awhile b/c of events I shall impart), but since by some amazing token of luck I have no school and no work right now, and nothing scheduled for another three weeks, so really it would be silly to miss it. I'd be more excited if my HP friends were actually coming, bah. And I mean, I could have done something today, but instead I spent like all day (and yesterday, when I wasn't hanging out with people) reading this stupid novel-length fic which is like ridiculously well-written and addicting, but man, it does eat up time. Oh, well, what is free time for if not reading copious amounts of fanfic? But I do have some stuff to do down in san diego (going through all my stuff mainly, fixing the derailleur on my bike etc.), that I haven't been doing and really should do before I go back up.

Basically the craziness of my life after Azkatraz involved these chronic headaches which I ignored, then due to lack of sleep and rest because of comic con and trying to get my homework done, turned into this massive sinus infection (as I found out later) and epic headache, I guess something along the lines of a migraine, that I'd never felt before, on the monday after comic con. I woke up early, did some work that was due that day, managed to get to school, but then quickly realized that my headache was so awful I wasn't going to able to do a whole lot until it passed. I sure didn't know at that point that it was going to last pretty much 36 hours straight, no break. I went into this computer room in one of the buildings at school, b/c it had a couch, tried to lie down, didn't get very far b/c my head hurt so much, and I guess, without my realizing it, someone had freaking called 911 on me. Which was mostly unnecessary and embarrassing, but as I was sitting there with a massive headache, ended up just going with them, because if I refused I would still probably have ended up in a doctor's office of some kind, but it just would have taken longer. I mean, I do wish that whoever it was hadn't done that, but I did need medical help pretty soon at that point, so I don't know. So I ended up in the hospital, well urgent care I guess, and they did all these tests on me, and it was very frustrating b/c I was in such pain and really just wanted some painkillers, so delirious I couldn't really think and was having a hard time answering their millions of questions and decisions they wanted me to make, etc. Called my mom, who predictably freaked out, and insisted that my dad fly down to san diego to take care of me or whatever. Which was also probably not necessary, but it was nice anyway - I do miss my parents a lot. Finally after their millions of questions and tests (okay, so I'm probably exaggeratting) they gave me some antibiotics and vicodin, and I refused yet a further test (glad I did this in the end - the doctor I saw the next day said it was unnecessary, b/c if I really had had meningitis I would be dead by then). Then it just took about 24 hours for the antibiotics to work. Meanwhile I took the vicodin but it barely helped at all. If vicodin doesn't do a thing that's when you know you have a really bad headache. So even though I barely slept monday night, it finally did go away at some point on tuesday, and I spent all tuesday night and wednesday sleeping and recovering.

And then of course was supposed to be done with summer session one on saturday and yeah, that wasn't going to happen. Still barely got any reprieves on schoolwork, bombed the operating systems final, but finished eventually. It was just too much work and too much stress after recovering from that crazy thing - not fun, but I finished on tuesday night, and now I'm just really happy about all the rest time I've had. I was originally going to take a class this session, but I'm so glad I decided against it. Has given me a real chance to relax, do some things around san diego, really nice. And actually got an A in operating systems - I felt really bad about this, like I didn't deserve it and maybe the professor was being nice or something because I got sick, but then I talked to him when I went in to his office to pick up my final, and it turns out that even though I bombed the final, I did really well on everything else - my partner and I had one of the highest programming assignment grades, and I had one of the highest midterm grades as well - just trying to cover all the work I missed with being sick and comic con just didn't allow me to do well on the final. Which did make me feel a bit better.

Still have learned my lesson though - cannot push myself like that. Trying to do two cons in a row during school, it's just not going to work so well. I'm getting worried about Wrockstock in the fall now - what if I work too hard, get too little sleep, screw myself over again? I hope I won't, but I always say I'll improve on such and such, and I'm not sure I ever do.

So that's the craziness that's been going on with me. I'm okay now - more than okay. Very happy about the break plus going back to the Bay Area, and chilling. Well, okay, I still have stuff to do, like prepare for and study for my volcanology class in Hawaii in September (!!! yes I am totally excited no joke), but still, quite a bit of chilling.

As far as cons go, I just can't say this was in my top favorite. I think this has quite a bit to do with the fact that I spent half the con (all monday and tuesday pretty much) with a splitting headache/fever thing, which would just come back as I tried to ignore it. So instead of just hanging out in the hotel room, which maybe I should have done, I would go to various places and listen with half an ear, while lying down and trying to sleep my headache away. I half-slept through a couple podcasts (every con Spellcast does a podfic podplay thing; I just love listening to it) and a bunch of goings on in the common room; I think like two games of harry potter style mafia (which, incidentally, convinced me that I never want to play that game again b/c omg, I swear, it seriously sounded like some girls were going to lose friends over that game.) In retrospect it was probably annoying that I took up that much space for so long but uh, being delirious doesn't tend to help with the reason and logic part of life. I think I finally got rid of my fever (by like sleeping all monday and tuesday plus some tylenol) but the headache is still lingering - though I've basically got it down to only a searing pain every time I get up or sit down (changing elevations pretty much), and is pretty okay if I'm just consistently doing one activity or other (still can't run at all though). My only guess is that I pushed myself so hard on saturday and sunday, also with the jumping and dancing at the wrock concert sunday night, that I killed something in my brain that controls balance, so that every time I have to rebalance it has to access that part of my brain, and then, yay, searing pain. I did my essay thing literally on the bus home from the airport this morning because I was too tired to work on the plane, and was still an hour late for class because my stupid plane was delayed.

But enough about me, really. Azkatraz was no Terminus, that's for sure, but it did have its moments. I'm glad I got to make two-ish wrock concerts - I missed Wrock around the Rock b/c of midterm, and the second one in a nearby club because I got told the wrong directions and went walking completely out of my way around San Francisco, but luckily there were other options. The poor performers though, omg - they had to do so many shows in a short amount of time, I don't know how they weren't like, dead. It was cool though - I got to see Windgardium Leviosa, a smallish band from San Diego, play again. I think they have some really cool songs, though maybe you wouldn't know it from listening once. They were totally excited that I'd been to every one of their shows (yes, all of three) and wanted to interview me for something they were making, but as I couldn't find them the next day (which, okay, probably had something to do with spending most of it headachy and sleeping), that didn't end up happening. Next show I guess?

Silly as it is, the Merlin meetup was probably the funnest event I attended of the whole con. It was just cool - a crowd of fangirls all squeeing about the slashy subtext of Merlin/Arthur (and other pairings as well), and then watching the first episode together as a group, and oh man, every line that could possibly be construed as slashy caused lots of comments from the audience. It was so awesome in a kind of ridiculous way. I also got a button that says "All Hail the Slash Dragon" (of course, referring to the dragon who repeatedly talks about how Merlin and Arthur's fates are intertwined, and they need each other, etc.) which I think is the greatest thing ever. I sooo want to finish the series, but time is of the essence now of course.

Also doing some cosplay-ish with Terry and Rachel and Stacie and Bob the balloon was awesome. I'm now convinced that even though I am ultimately a Ravenclaw, it's damn fun to play at being a Slytherin for a few hours, lol. And meeting up with people from previous cons and stuff was fun as well, yay. Even if I just didn't talk to that many old or new people as I did at Terminus, at all. Oh well.

The like, one thing I did on Monday was go see the movies at a nearby theater - the tail end of We Are Wizards (kind of like the Wizrockumentary, but a little different message I think), and then a bunch of fanvids. I admit, as sad as it is, I really love watching fanvids on the big screen. Lindsay loves to tell me about how omg fanvids suck, and I do to some extent agree, but I love them anyway. I SO wouldn't have said this like two years ago. But yeah, there was a cool Remus/Sirius one, a Snarry one that included a Snarry song that is so ridiculous and awesome that I've just got to find it, and one that illustrated the Snape pensieve scenes at the end of Deathly Hallows (and the OotP ones too I think) with actors from other movies - that was just really awesome cause I'm sitting there trying to guess which scene is which, and which characters the actors are supposed to be.

Right well, I better get off to my operating systems assignment, whether I want to or not ugh. Supposedly I'm spending friday, saturday, and sunday at comic con, so I better get all that hw done before then. Cause if I miss the guild panel, dollhouse panel, and slasher dinner on friday I will be very sad panda. Two cons in a five week summer session? Don't do it guys, just don't.

So, I am far too tired to do a full HBP reaction post. I really want to, and I wrote a bunch of stuff down during the movie (because I do that, with like every thing), but oh man, this week. I have a midterm friday and I am trying to get at least a little ahead of homework for next week, seeing as I'm going to two cons and all. In addition to getting very little sleep the last two nights on account of epic wrock concerts and release party in LA all day yesterday.

But I shall say one thing. Like, I'm okay with plot rape, really. I no longer take the harry potter movies very seriously, and just go to them for pretty visuals, nothing more really. But ( okay fine, spoilers ) So basically my opinion is that someone seriously needs to make a movie about Luna Lovegood already. Damn it, JKR, your protagonist's the wrong character!


In conclusion, the wrock concert yesterday. Omg, I could have cried. It was so awesome. I haven't been to a wrock concert in so long (seriously, like 8 months, other than Condor Con which didn't really count), and I didn't realize how much I missed it till I was there. This makes me even more disappointed about missing Wrock around the Rock. But I am glad I got this.