"Oh, nuts," Said Maddie. "I wanna go to Comic-Con, too!"

"No you don't, Maddie. Trust me on this."

Quite a day. Met up with JQ and Kev in PB, then drove downtown for Comic-Con. Helped move boxes of Snake Agent, by hand, from one end of the convention center to the other, so that Mysterious Galaxy could give them away. For some reason, hand trucks and carts aren't allowed on the dealers' room floor (though plenty were in evidence). I affectionately named the process of moving books in this manner after the Bataan Death March. Ugh. But somehow, for all the massive crowd and incessant walking, we seem to have had a good time...


Hulk smash! For Hulk smashed, come back after hours (but before last call).

( More behind the cut. )

So we made it down to Comic-Con preview night last night, after dropping by my parents' house and leaving Maddie with them for safekeeping. We found cheap (five bucks) parking reasonably near the convention center, and had a pretty good time once we made it in (the line for pro and press badge pickup was pretty short), in spite of the massive crowd and general hugeness of the exhibit hall (easily three to four times as big as it was last time we attended, eight years ago).

We ended up buying an I.W.G. flying saucer (black) and Astro Krieg crew (silver) from Rocket World Toys, and I picked up a giant squid attacking the Golden Gate Bridge T-Shirt from Gama-Go (they had a San Diego Convention Center version, but since I have to cross that dreaded bridge three times a week, and know that one day I will have to evade a giant squid attack, I went with the home team).

And I took a few pictures...


"Ex-ter-min-ate!"


The Big Millennium Falcon at Hasbro's booth. ~$150 at retail. The guy that designed it is in the background, at least his chin is.


The nearly-as-Big AT-TE at Hasbro's booth. ~$100 at retail. Clone troopers not included. I've been boxing stuff up in the toy room lately, making more room for books (shifting priorities), but I think I may actually want one of these...


...I'd have tried to swipe it, but these guys were on guard. Sure, they're lousy shots, but they had me outnumbered.


The crowd. We're talking attendance comparable to a good-sized city (larger than the population of Petaluma, for instance). Maybe the Comic-Con has outgrown San Diego.

Just a few hours of wandering around nearly exhausted Jennifer and I, and since we're staying all the way up in Escondido, we're skipping today. Next year, maybe we'll get a hotel room downtown, and board Maddie at Citizen Canine or something... but we've got a whole year to figure that out.

We'll be back down at the Con on Friday, meeting up with JQ and Kev, so more pictures will be coming soon...

Not only did we manage to make it to San Diego, but we did so reasonably unscathed, and in near-record time. The sun's still up! I guess leaving the house at six in the morning has its benefits.


Maddie during a pit stop in Santa Nella.

For now, we're hanging out at Jennifer's mom's house (Jennifer's mom, however, is in Saint Louis at the moment). I'm working on corrections to The Living Dead, my "homework" this trip, while Jennifer and Maddie relax from the long drive. Soon, dinner, and perhaps a trip to the dreaded mall (speaking of zombies). Tomorrow, it's down to my parents' house and Comic-Con preview night. The rest, we figure out by ear.

And special thanks are due to the Nguyen family of Escondido, who are unwittingly letting me use their unsecured wireless network ("nguyenresidence") to post this message. You guys rock, whether you know it or not!