So, there I was, sitting in the passenger seat of my car, with a traffic cop telling me to breath slower. Easy for her to say, she didn't have a bowling ball on her chest. Technically, I didn't either, but it sure felt like it. The paramedics were taking a while to get through the traffic, and I couldn't feel my feet or hands. Stupidly enough, the only thing on my mind was, "I'm gonna miss my plane!"

There was another problem with being broke: Otakon. I had already paid for the booth a couple of months in advance, but the booth decor, prints, and postcards still needed to be taken care of. (AKA: "paid for") All I could do was wait for the check.

Otakon 2002
I'm not going to give you a full report of the convention here. (As it is, I had to write the article at Ryuhana Press because the person who was going to write it became very ill the last day of the con.) One of my friends also wrote a day-by-day report on his site, so go take a look if you'd like to know more about it.

However, I will tell you about what happened before the con. Everything that could go wrong, did. In retrospect, I'm surprised that I even made it at all. Firstly, if you've taken a look at the new cosplay section, you'll notice that I had quite a costume to assemble this year. Of course, I actually worked on five costumes this year, as if the Shiva one wasn't time intensive enough. This was probably the most stressful topic for all of July, as the con crept closer, and my "helpers" couldn't seem to figure out how to tie a bow. I'm not being harsh here, I'm just dumbfounded as to how so many simple tasks turned into 7 hour projects. Everyone was stressed, nobody could think clearly, and there were many long nights. It didn't help that two of my friends started dating during this time, and kept trying to use me as some sort of lame communication system. (Do you see "AT&T" written on my forehead?!)

The check didn't clear until the actual morning of the convention, so I had to do a lot of financial juggling in order to pay for the various printwork we needed for the booth ahead of time. The postcards had to be rushed (That's 150% more expensive than normal...), the Kinko's printing was last minute, and the whole time, I was bursting into tears at the drop of a hat because of the stress.

The booth itself, while disorganized for various reasons, was actually a big success. All of the Ryuhana gang sold some of their prints, we got to meet tons of people, and everyone loved our costumes. (Although Lindsey and I got to the point where we needed to have Ed sneak us around the less populated corridors so we could get anywhere without having our pictures taken 6,000 times per minute...) The wig from my costume was so heavy, that I actually started to get a headache accompanied by nausea.

Post-Otakon, Pre-ComicCon
While we were successful with the booth as far as networking and making some cash, not everyone had been equally pulling their weight as far as the schedule was concerned. Of course, I was called in to act as a mediator between the one slacker and the rest of the group, even though Ed is the Editor. (He was among the "pissed off beyond care" group by that point.) So, on Monday the 29th I gave the errant artist a call, and told them that we needed to talk before I left for California. (Wednesday, the 31st.) They were busy that day, so it'd be a Tuesday meeting. In the meantime, I had a day to myself.

And what better to do on your vacation day than get your 18 inches of hair cut off? So that's what I did, and my neck thanked me. I donated the hair to a foundation that makes wigs for cancer patients. (Although I wasn't sure if they'd be able to use my blue ponytail...)

Tuesday morning I had a little chat with the artist, then used the rest of my day to run errands and prepare for my trip to California. I was up until about 1am triple-checking that I wasn't forgetting anything.

California bound... kinda.
Due to the new airline security procedures, I had to get up at 5am to go to the airport for my 7am flight. Now, I've got this weird little quirk, that if I get up really early, I get motion-sickness just by walking around. Because of this, I couldn't eat anything before leaving the house. I took a Dramamine on an empty stomach, loaded my stuff into the car, and started off towards Baltimore Washington International Airport.

I felt carsick within the first five minutes of my journey, and by the time we got to the airport, I was dizzy and hyper-ventilating. What was worse, was that I felt like I was going to black out at any second, and I couldn't feel or move my arms or legs. I told the driver to pull over next to one of the many traffic cops, and I asked her if she could get me a paramedic or a skycap or both. I figured, if I just got out of the car and sat for a while, I'd be fine, and with so much having gone wrong the last month, I really didn't want to miss my flight.

The paramedics put me on the gurney, and lifted me into the ambulance to check me out. I threw up almost immediately, and they said,"Well, you're not going to be flying anywhere like this", and drove me to the nearest emergency room. The lady checked my glucose (blood sugar) level, and found that it was very low. (27... she said it's s'posed to be between 85 and 150.) They made me eat a tube of "lemon dishsoap flavored" sugar gel, then later jammed an IV in my hand with a similar concoction.

When the nurse came in the room, the first thing out of his mouth was, "You don't get out much, do you?" Mind you, the light blue make-up hadn't really washed all the way off by this point, so I looked a little zombie like. Of course, he looked like he probably did things like climb mountains during his "down time."

The doctor said I had suffered a "Hypoglycemic Episode", and that I don't eat enough. Anyone who knows me personally might see the irony in this. I am the Queen of the 24oz Steak, and have consumed several times my own weight in chocolate over my lifetime. Now this dude was tellin' me to eat more?!

The parking situation is pretty silly downtown, so my friend and I got plenty of exercise from walking to and from the convention center, and around the con itself. We also found an all-you-can-eat sushi and seafood place that we stayed at for about 2 hours. (Did I mention I'm a pig?)

On Saturday, I stopped by the Antarctic Press booth to talk to the fellow I will be working with on NHS (Ninja High School). He's going to be doing the major plot-work, while I'll be illustrating, and since we've never worked together before, we thought it might be a good idea to figure out how we're going to do this long-distance. He had me sit down and showed me the current issues of the book that he's been working on with the current artist, and we discussed how much framework I'd need to start with. We decided that "very little" was probably best.

Then he said the weirdest thing:

"If you've got a little time, how about you sit and sketch for a while?"

I was puzzled. I tried to protest that I didn't really belong there since my story wasn't out yet, but he said there was another artist sketching earlier whose story was also still waiting to print. So I sat down and looked a little clueless for a while.

Mind you, I'm no stranger to comic convention booths. I've been going to these things for about ten years now, and most of the time, I was with established artists, sitting at an established publisher's booth. But, with the exception of the Ryuhana Press booth a week before, I'd always been "the artist's friend", one of the nameless groupies attached to a particular studio. (Even though I'd known these people before they were "famous".)

There was a pad of bristol board and a bunch of pens in front of me. I looked around to see if their owner was going to protest to me using them, but all the other artists seemed to have similar tools. I picked up a pen, not my medium of choice, and started a doodle of Kiana from Oasis Destiny. My hands were shaking like mad, mostly due to the pressure to having to use only ink, and I didn't really know where I was going with it.

I'd only been there about 10 minutes, when I got approached by a dude looking for a sketch in his sketchbook. He had a book chock full of years of sketches from Antarctic Press artists, and wanted to add one of mine to the collection. Rod Espinoza let me borrow a pencil, and I did a doodle of B-Ko from Project A-ko. It was only in pencil, but he seemed pretty happy with it.

After he left, I set the first doodle aside and started on a second. This time I drew Hitomi from NHS. Now that I was armed with a pencil, I wasn't nearly as nervous, and it actually turned out quite nicely. And weirdly enough, while I was doodling it, a lady came along and asked how much the one I just did of Kiana would cost. "Um, five bucks? Or maybe two?" The concept of selling something that I was just doodling seemed odd to me.

My friend came back to pick me up as I was finishing up the Hitomi picture, and we left to go watch "Signs" at Horton Plaza.

I spent the whole time at the booth on Sunday, even though I had to leave early to start the drive back to central California (where my parents live). While I was there though, the guy with the B-Ko picture from the previous day had me do another sketch. This time of my favorite character, Nuku Nuku. (Anyone who has seen the paintjob and license plates on my car, "Superchamp", can attest to this.) I got to meet lots of folks, including a little girl named Ryanne, who was transfixed with the Lokki picture I was drawing that day, much to the amuzement of her dad.

Just kidding. ~_^