Or one of them, at any rate.

First, the "tl;dr" version, for those of you whose attention spans have been ruined by the Internet:

(Photos by ChocoFrogs)

Now for the processed lunch meat of the entry, in excruciatingly pedantic detail:

The journey over went pretty well. I left my house Thursday morning, drove to my aunt and uncle's house where I parked the car, then got dropped off at the Sea-Tac airport and hopped on a flight down to Long Beach, where I met Jason. We managed to fill most of the next few hours with conversation and in fact continued well into the night flight. Some people sitting around us got rather peeved that we were having such lively conversations and not doing normal sorts of things such as, oh, sleeping, so I tried that for a while, and got a grand total of one hour of sleep to show for it while xccj mostly played Chip's Challenge. Then I was awakened by the thunderstorms.

I had never seen lightning strikes from above and at night before, and it was really quite awesome. I mean that in the old sense of actually instilling awe. The scattered flashes lit up the darkened clouds with a light that was at some points pure white and at others a reddish color reminiscent of fire and brimstone. So that kept me entertained for a little while, then I think I reread most of Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (cosplaying as Richard and Door strikes me as a splendid idea, and I would do it for Halloween this year, but I think we are doing Firefly, so it will have to wait) and just watched the little map on the TV screen in front of me that gave our speed, altitude, and general location. It was the only thing worth watching on those TVs, I swear to Bob.

We arrived at IAD in short order, and as I stood around the baggage claim waiting for Jason's stuff, I contrived an ingenious ambush plan for Ben when he arrived to pick us up. Basically, it involved standing here (right around the corner from the walkway to outside) and sneaking up on him when he came in and noticed Jason (strategically placed in plain sight). Unfortunately, he called me on my phone and made us come outside, so our fiendish plan was for naught.

So then we went to Ben's house and I sang along horribly to some songs in the car and tried not to cringe upon removing some of my MOCs from their suitcase. We got some of the mosaic pieces together and they looked pretty good, and then we went outside and Ben cut off my big toe with a power saw.

No, just kidding, but we did chop up some pieces of plywood to use as backing for the mosaics. It was absurdly humid out there, and despite the fact that I only noticed two mosquitos trying to bite me, this session of about thirty minutes was, I believe, solely responsible for the twenty-some bug bites I had to deal with for the rest of the weekend. West Coast weather is much more better.

After wood shop, it was time to pick Joehaku and James up from the Greyhound bus terminal in DC. Now, Ben is a great guy, don't get me wrong. But you'd think that someone who's spent much or most or all of his life in the general vicinity of that area would know his way around the place, right? Wrong. So he, Jason, and I tried to find our way to the bus station with perhaps six hours of sleep between us, some directions given to us by the internet, which lost all relevance as soon as we made a wrong turn, and a map of DC, which was slightly more useful. We got trapped in a government compound, made several u-turns, and had a heck of a time getting on what we thought were the right roads (I swear DC has two Third Streets), but we did eventually find them.

Then we had to get out of DC and back to Ben's place, during which time we not only found a street with a friend's last name on it, but also an old lady walking in the middle of a residential road. Thinking myself safe behind the windshield of Ben's minivan, I said "old ladies are worth fifty points!" and then I kid you not, she turned and looked right at us.

Finally, after time spent printing out other peoples' MOC cards, driving through a seriously frightening thunderstorm, and waiting for ages while Joe and James checked into their hotel (their revenge for us taking so long to pick them up, no doubt), we arrived at Brickfair!

At first glance, the Dulles Expo center resembled a run-down Costco with all the shelves and stuff taken out. Same cement floor, same lights and metal bits in the ceiling, just a bit more disheveled. Anyway, we brought our stuff in and I busied myself unpacking my MOCs, which I set up on one end of the table, and I have to say that Primus and I made pretty good bookends to DV and ToM's stuff in the middle. I also busied myself getting acquainted with people, and I was by this point quite ridiculously deprived of sleep, so I was actually pretty subdued for a lot of the time. Sisen gave me a stuffed moose, which was very nice of him.

It amuses me that we did not play Duck Duck Goose for fear of being disruptive, and yet nobody raised a fuss when we were running around, swordfighting, and nearly collapsing the moon bounce during "Adult" Swim...

During a futile quest which I should quite like to forget about, we came across the weirdest thing at one of our many, many U-turns: A street sign with my surname on it.

The next day we got to the expo center bright and early, or at least before most of the other BZPeoples showed up. You could tell when the Brickarms table opened because it was immediately surrounded by a cluster of pre/teen boys that did not diminish until the fair was over.

Despite some hitches with the mosaics, we did get them together eventually. It's quite impressive that we actually managed it, and I'm glad to have been a part (2/9, to be precise) of it. Here are our lovely coordinators with Onua.

As I recall, most of Friday was spent just hanging out with people and having a good time. I went to Chik-Fil-A for the very first time ever and enjoyed it greatly, sat in on an impromptu seminar by Rob on What Went Wrong With Bionicle and Why It Now Sucks (apparently Kiina was named after Greg's wife?), and played Bingo but did not win anything. I think the opening ceremony might have happened sometime that day, but the mike was really screwy so I couldn't hear most of it.

Running of the Bulls was really well-organized. Props to those people. I think I already mentioned the sets I got.

Saturday we drove to the fair and decided to order some engraved bricks. Unfortunately, the machine broke after some people got their BZP bricks done, so I'm going to have to wait for my Not Geek Orthodox brick. Speaking of purchasing things, somebody apparently had the bright idea to let the public in early to check out the vendors, and so some of us were shanghaied into holding chains up to stop the public from sneaking by, which worked really well. So well, in fact, that I don't think they even bothered with it the next day.

It was more or less around this time that I remembered that we were kind of supposed to be running a BBC contest and voiced this possibility to Andrew. I got promoted to Acting Forum Leader in order to handle the Brickfair-side voting, which was all very nice and splendid.

During the public hours, many BZPeople hung out behind the table. There was much in the way of awesome headgear, but Rob in particular looked absolutely dashing in his princess crown. One person annotated her program, others swapped glasses (Maddison, I think yours are maybe a bit crooked), and there were also camera wars to be had. Also, some guy wandered over to our table dressed as a garden gnome.

After the public hours came a truly epic event: The Combo Build. This in and of itself was not particularly epic, but Rob (still with the pink crown) built a ROFLcopter that was destroyed by Ray to save Waffles and all the children of the world from a fate worse than death. At least I think that's how it went. It probably lost something in the telling, anyhow.

A key component of community bonding at Brickfair was the trust exercises, which basically consisted of me closing my eyes while Pat stamped my forehead (Hi Disky). I think I am maybe a bit too trusting. :/

Other fun things Saturday night included going for pizza with mostly the younger crowd, just chilling in Ray and Pat's hotel room, reminiscing about the good old days, having a nonexistent pool party, and being in the expo center during the "Adult Swim" time doing things I mentioned here previously and yet not getting kicked out.

Sunday morning I went around snapping pics of whatever caught my fancy. As I was eying a gingerbread house, this guy was all like "no pictures!" He may have been joking, but I took a picture of him and his beard instead. Then the public came again, this time including Randall Munroe, which was totally awesome even if nobody met him. Also, Disky let me wear her awesome chick hat, which was rather nice of her.

Sunday night was, as anyone who was there can tell you, the crowning crown-thing of Brickfair. The great and magnanimous Steve Witt (here pictured to the right) treated us to most of dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. It was actually all of dinner for the people who subsisted on appetizers and dessert, which was how it seemed to go down at my end of the table. Almost everyone was in fancy clothes, as evidenced by this photo of Yannick in Disky's shades. I can't speak for Joe or Steve, but I was literally unable to pack anything besides a tie with all the MOCs and sets and coconut shells I was transporting unless I wanted to *shudder* check my baggage, which I was not going to do, even for one enchanted evening. Next time, however, I will likely be bringing fewer MOCs and buying fewer sets, so I will absolutely bring my Slytherin-green suit. And may I say that Josh the Elder and I looked absolutely dashing in Felicia's earrings? At least, I assume this is the case. I haven't any seen pictures of that yet.

Outside, where the lighting was better, we took shots of the various staff groups. Here are the Library Staff (except Takuta-Nui (I am in that pose because both Andrew and Yannick were using my shoulders for support (just look at Andrew's elbow))), every single one of the incredibly awesome and schway Voting Booth people. Other people have pictures of other staff groups, including this great one of me and Andrew representing the BBC.

It turned out that Steve Witt, being a classy guy and all, knows how to dance. So he took most of the FFOLS out for a spin or two (literally (incidentally, all the female staff who were there have glasses, which is totally cool)). Here are Becca and Maddison, who are the only two of whom I was able to get remotely decent photos, and here is Rob being a total ladies' man. It is also worth mentioning that Yannick and Mari (Deb's sister) were fabulously and unintentionally coordinated, but alas, I did not get any pictures of them.

Irrelevant tangent: I remember noticing, in my blissed-out, sleep-deprived haze, that the streetlights were, like, really bright. So I took a photo for some reason.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and we said and hugged our goodbyes, some of us through a car window. After people started to leave, things became rather less wonderful and more mundane and are really not worth mentioning, so I shall end my reminiscences here.

So now I'm sitting on my bed, looking at pictures from the event (these ones here aren't even the best, just mostly the ones I took), suffering from PBSD, and yet also enjoying a post-Brickfair high, because hey, it was a most excellent event.

Part of the sadness is because it's just over (), and part of it is because I didn't hang with half of you half as much as I should have liked, and I hung with less than half of you twice as much as you deserved (kidding, but I had to run with the LotR paraphrasing because my book-nerd honor demands it). Staying at Ben's house meant that I did not get to participate in many of the shenanigans that went on, but I'm just grateful for the ones I was around for. If we can make this fit-more-people-at-Andrew's-guest-apartment thing a reality, the good times will be multiplied by a very large number indeed. And if you are wondering if you should come to Brickfair, the answer is yes. Photos and words can only convey so much, and you really have to try it to truly understand.

Before going to Brickfair, I had only been to BrickCon a couple of times and I thought it was a pretty great con, so I was kind of ticked at the Brickfair people who were all like "our con is better than yours." But you know what? They were right. I maintain that the venue and organization (and MOC quality, in some areas) at BrickCon are still better, but so many of the people here were just completely lovely and awesome in so many ways, and that is a huge part of what these gatherings are about. I had a great time, even if it wasn't the great time I was expecting, and so did lots of other vibrant youthful sorts.

To Steak!