Here you go, here's proof. Proof that I am crazy, a nerd, dork... The list is too long to finish. Actually, I'm just too lazy. *Sigh.* These are some pictures from our California trip to go and cosplay at the Anime Expo last weekend.

The view of downtown LA from our hotel room:

Some shots of Cody and I, before we headed over to the convention...

We met my friend Juan, his best friend Neisha, and their buddy Otis (who isn't shown here, but he took a lot of pictures which he'll be sending to us, hooray!) for the first time at the convention. I made Juan's robes for him, and in exchange he's drawing me a portrait. ^_^ He's a very nice fellow. Cody and I both like him.

Juan's friend Adneisha, who could probably cause a nuclear explosion with her energy and cuteness. Neisha didn't have time to get a cosplay outfit together, but she helped us make friends and harassed us all into having fun and got us all to get along. She's just as dorky about anime as Juan is, and he's about 10x more dorky than Cody and I. They're both awesome people, I hope to be able to see them again someday!


Me, Cody, and Juan, with some people from the same anime we were cosplaying. We saw these people on the escalators, Neisha and I shouted in excitement at them, and they tracked us down so we could all have pictures together.

There was all kinds of fun merchandise and fan art, luckily Cody and I only escaped with a few plushies and a t-shirt. Here are some funny Pac-Man fighting plushies that I was tempted by, but unable to part with the $50 it would've cost to bring these babies home:
And here's the package of my first pocky. Japanese kids love pocky apparently, and when finding that out and discovering some pocky at this terrific little convenience store in downtown, I had to buy some and try it. It's really quite the addictive treat: biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate, sometimes with different flavors. The coconut is my favorite so far!

The day after the convention, Cody and I meandered around downtown LA. We caught a showing of Hancock (it was okay, not great), doorbell-ditched some cherry cheesecake at Juan's house because he was feeling too crappy to come hang out with us, and then we went to Venice Beach.


Cody found this statue below incredibly funny. Below the statue is the plaque that went with it.

In case you're wondering, the plaque reads:

They said
I had a head
for business.
They said
to get ahead
I had to lose
my head.
They said
be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.


On Sunday, we started home but didn't make it as quickly as we'd planned. Our transmission died just before Hesperia. No mechanics were working, which is probably for the best, but we had to hunker down in a little motel until Monday, when somebody would take a look at the car. Luckily, we were blessed and found good, honest people that were kind enough to help us through the situation. There was the guy at Firestone who didn't charge us a thing after he took 20 minutes to decide it was the transmission. The transmission shop owner, who called Avis (a rental car place) for us, got our car finished half a day earlier than he said he could, and seemed too kind to be real. The Avis staff, who were friendly and efficient...and everybody told us to ask for discounts at the next place we went to. I almost want to live in Hesperia after that!

Anyway, the car was fixed speedily and we got home Tuesday at 3 in the morning. It was a great trip!