So, last week I went up to visit Holly in Washington state. (More on that later, as the visit certainly deserves its own post.) In case you have forgotten, I hate air travel with a passion that rivals on-screen pundits- or, rather, I hate all the crap that goes with air travel since the actual jets and airspeed thing is awesome. But I wanted to try Virgin America since they and Southwest are about the only carriers not actively seeking to alienate their passengers these days. On that, the flight was awesome. I'd certainly fly with them again- particularly since I scheduled $49 each way tickets. Their regular class chairs are actually comfortable and their in flight safety information is provided with pleasant sarcasm by a Tom Bodett styled voice actor. They recently enacted a checked-bag charge, which irks me because they were one of the last holdouts on that. But since the main carriers are halfway toward charging for cabin pressurization, what can you do? Besides, it makes the price of upgrading to first that much cheaper than the already inexpensive price of any unsold seats at check in. ($50 on my flight, but it's based on time in the air.)
Anyway, because I was going to go through Seattle anyway, I timed it to hit half of SteamCon up in Seattle. I didn't know if it was going to be worth the effort, but I'd rather go and be mildly disappointed than not go and build it up as another could-have like I did with the one around here last year. Besides, I love modding stuff and this was the perfect excuse. I decided I would put together something a little beyond just a few accessories and look like a complete fool. It was a good thing I did. The Steampunk community is based mostly as an artistic movement since there are a lot of things central to it that you just can't do. So the costuming was crazy- these guys made SCA look like rank amateurs and anyone who just threw together something cheesy looked like they did. I spent most of my time wandering and attending forums on Friday. sadly, the dealer room was quite small and more of my money went to tea than anything else, but I got some awesome blends from a company called B Fuller's. Anyway, the main point of this post was to show a few pictures, since as I was eeking out time 'til my flight on Saturday, I made mention to Tony over AIM that I hadn't taken a single picture this trip. None. Not of Holly and the kids, not of the visual overload of SteamCon. So I snapped a few right then just to show how inundated with costumes the place was. Literally. I stuck out more on Saturday in a t-shirt and jeans than I did Friday in full gear. The poor Marriott staff looked bemused and shell-shocked.
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