Eeyup, the cat is back! I made it back home safe and sound, and pretty smoothly as well this time!
So how was it? Well, it was Confuzzled, so it was awesome of course! But there were a few little niggles here and there. Left on Thursday and had my dad drive me to the airport, we left well in advance which was a good thing too because it was quite busy on the highways since last Thursday was a national holiday in my country. And there's still a lot of construction going on at the highway around the airport, too. We still made it well in time though, and I had already checked in online so all I had to do was drop off my suitcase.
Of course, once I got to the gate, the flight was delayed a bit. First the airplane didn't get in in time, then they needed more time to clean it and restock the catering, at one point they didn't know where the bus with the new flight crew was, and there was another extra wait for a second bus for all of us passengers to be brought over to the plane... so yeah, we left about half an hour late and arrived at Bristol Airport about fifteen minutes late.
was there at Bristol Airport to pick me up, he was parked close by enough we could walk to the car instead of needing the shuttle service, and we got to the Bristol Premier Inn without getting lost! >~_^< We had a great meal there and a decent night's sleep, and the next day we were on our way to Birmingham. Got there well ahead of time as well, and also without getting lost! Although at one point we thought we had taken a wrong way, but it turned out we didn't, so that all went quite smoothly as well. We could even check into the hotel way earlier than we thought, got our stuff up to the room, and then we got to register for the convention itself.
Which was a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit trickier, because there were no signs pointing the way to where the registration actually was. We still found it though, and even though the queue was already kind of ridiculous by the time we got back to where registration was, we still got through quickly enough. We were sponsors, as every year, because it's just so much better that way and Confuzzled totally deserves the extra monies to keep them going for year after year after year for as long as possible! >~_^<
Food was good, breakfast was good, sleep was a little less. Across the road from the hotel is the NEC convention center, and apparently there were concerts there that weekend, so until quite late into the night from Friday to Saturday, and from Saturday to Sunday, there was a looot of noise *chuckles* And old fogeys like Rorschfox and me need our sleepies, so yeah, that was not very handy. and sometime around 1 or so AM from Saturday to Sunday, something or someONE caused the fire alarm to go off, too!
Either way, we got our Dealer's Den registration done, had a double table this year for all the books, we got that all set up, and we were ready! The books were doing really well, too. Like, Rorschfox wrote this furry-ish RPG rule book, and all the copies of those were sold out in only a couple of hours. And the rest of the books did great, too!
We got a TON of writing done, too! Rorschfox was working on notes for his Red/Silver stuff, and I started work on a scene for the second story of my spin-off story series (while I don't even have the first story finished yet, ha!), and over the course of the three days we were in the Dealer's Den, plus during some time after the last Dealer's Den day when we were waiting for the money pick-up from the art show to open, I wrote 19 A4 pages of story. So yeah, I will be finishing the first story of that spin-off series and post it, then type out alllllllll of that writing I did for the second story, too. And I may even do a digital version of the basic layout maps I drew up, too.
Rorschfox had six pictures and a sketchbook in the Artshow as well, and all of those sold, too! That's only been the second time in ten Confuzzleds that has happened. We had record sales figures in the Dealer's Den as well, so all in all, it was an absolutely awesome convention! Even despite all those crazy furries taking the hotel's ATM out of commission on the second day, hee!
We met up with some people, too, I had a new badge made because of course, I have like a dozen or more badges I've gotten over the past five or six years I have been doing conventions now, and of course the little case I keep all of those in, I couldn't find when I was packing, hee. So now I have another lovely new badge!
The Street Vendor food was wonderful, the breakfasts were great, the weather was rather nice even though we had rain two days, all in all it was another awesomely wonderful convention!
Even the trip back was pretty okay. A bit different from previous times, instead of driving to Bristol and staying in the Premier Inn there overnight and then going to the airport the next day, this time we went right to the airport out of the convention on Tuesday and got there way in time, too. Despite getting totally lost this time because both sat-navs we had in the car were contradicting each other and we got directed all through Bristol and through some tiny little towns around it. Well, let's just say we took the scenic route to the airport, hee. And for a change, my plane home was not delayed, we even left, and arrived at Schiphol Airport, ahead of schedule a little bit! Wow! And I had good connections with the train to Utrecht Central Station and from there with the bus home as well, so I actually got home at a not too idiotic late time. Still pretty darn tired of course, but way more smoothly than previous times.
So yeah! The trip there and the trip back were okay, the convention was awesome, and we had tons of fun! The only thing not fun is that I now have to wait a whole year before I can do it again! >~_^<
