aves took some amazing photos, but unfortunately, the camera it seems, did not want to accommodate... after taking a few photos, aves hands it to me and asks 'whats wrong with it?' good question, aves!
in case you've ever wondered, this is what a picture looks like from a broken camera...
fortunately, it was not broken for long! i turned it off and on a couple times, and it finally snapped back and has been working great ever since! (thankfully...)
there's that pesky finger over the lens again!
everyone hanging out at mom and papa's place at sandy pines waiting for the food.
tweets wandering around saying hi to everyone!
after dinner- time for a bike ride!
at one point during the fire jeffry lee threw a box on it to get it blazing. the side of the box looked like a cute little face, which was quite sad to see as it was slowly engulfed in flames... with brains sitting by nodding in approval...
burn, baby, burn!
jeffry lee was quite pleased, since he was the best man at the wedding, he is claiming that he gets grandfathered in to be the child's uncle. i guess we can allow that, but i dont think i'm going to trust him alone with the baby for a very long time...
rex seems to be having an adverse reaction to the steak he's eating...
aaron made sure that we noted his amazing footwear. why yes, those are in fact generic cheetah print ugg boots, i'm glad you noticed! he told us there was some story behind them, but i figure the less we know about them the better.
we waited in line outside the theater for a little while before the show started. this is what the place looks like. pretty unassuming other than the creepy kid staring back at you from the sign...
they only have a set number of seats, so they give up little place holders for those they let in. this night we all got little plastic doves or plastic snakes. once we enter the theater we had to give them back. diana was quite disappointed, she wanted to keep her little dove!
the show was a really strange experience, but a ton of fun! its always cool to see those performing give it their all!
jill, diana's boss, and her husband larry. larry seems to be quite confused by the whole 'picture taking' thing...
kat and the happy birthday boy having a blast remembering all the fun they had last time they went to new orleans!
i've been holding on to this for far too long! this was originally intended to be a christmas gift, but i never did quite send it off to him... (man, i'm a terrible brother!) one of my brother's favorite musicians is morrissey and i found this crazy book that is an encyclopedia of all things morrissey! fortunately he loved it, so it might have been worth the wait... maybe.
we had a blast, but by 6:00pm all the fun and festivities were drawing to a close. i guess 8 hours of stargate related nerdity was probably enough for one day, huh? please note: the girl on the right does in fact have a giant stargate tattoo on her back. not only is it huge, but it was really poorly done- the gate wasnt even a circle- it was more of an oval. and yes, this is the same girl with the furry purple boots...
brains and i both had an amazing time! i attended the gate con last year, but this year was so much better because i could share it all with brains- and there was someone to share the funny ridiculousness with! i am totally up for it again next year, and brains said he was in for next year too- sweet! i cant wait!
remember how i said that no one asked the super specific nerdy questions of the guests? well, thats because they saved them all up to ask during the trivia competition! i can honestly admit that i had no idea what the answers were to any of the questions asked! i did try to create the illusion of knowledge by pretending to think about it and pretending to talk it over with the other two people on stage with me. this made the other guy up on stage laugh because he was equally clueless about the questions, but my faking it made the uber-nerd girl super pissed! oh well, it was fun to be up there even if we didnt win the big prize. 
we didnt win the big prize, but we did get a couple parting gifts! they had a table up there filled with random stargate stuff and we were allowed to take two of the items for participating! i went for two stargate sg-1 hats. i guess i am going to start wearing hats now...?
at one point brains got a hankering for some beef jerky and actually found a bag of it in the hotel gift shop! he was so excited!
excited, that is, until he realized how much it costed! ten bucks! undeterred, he went through with it and plunked down that ridiculously overpriced amount so that he could have some dehydrated meat. he said that for some reason it actually tasted better because of the grossly overpriced cost. well, it better have...
during the stargate auction they hauled out this segment of the actual stargate from stargate atlantis! unfortunately we didn't hear how much it went for because we were in the vendor room when the auction started and missed it! i was hoping to bid on it, but i'm pretty sure diana would not have been too pleased with me if i had won...
after the auction we could go up and check it out!
there's not a whole lot of merchandise for stargate, which is a bit surprising considering it was on the air all together for 17 seasons! but because of the lack of stargate related stuff, the vendors room is pretty small. there was one booth of signed pictures, one with books and cds, one with random unrelated sci fi stuff, and one with stargate clothing. looking at everything only took about 15 minutes! last year i had saved up a bunch of money and bought about 11 stargate sg-1 novels, this year i used my stash to get six audio book plays of stargate as read by the actors themselves- pretty cool!
after their time up on stage, kavan smith and alex zahara both came to the vendor's room and signed stuff for the fans- pretty cool of them!
the main draw this year as far as guests goes was definitely christopher judge. he played teal'c for 10 seasons on stargate sg-1 and did a great job. unfortunately he was pretty annoying in person and as he would share stories about life on set he. would. pause. after. almost. every. single. word. as. if. what. he. just. said. was. incredibly. profound. 
after about twenty minutes i couldnt stand it anymore and kind of tuned him out. what else didnt help the situation was that it seemed like almost every question asked of him was somehow related to practical jokes and farts. ugh.
after his time on stage he headed outside and chatted with a few of the fans! at least here he talked like a normal person and was quite nice. please note the furry purple boots on the girl he is talking to in this picture...
i'm still mad at this guy so i wanted to put the picture up again.
brains and i just soaking in all the nerdy coolness. maybe not 'coolness', but definitely nerdy!
brains had no idea what to expect, but when we got there and found some seats in the main hall, he was pretty excited! we didnt get tickets in advance, so our seats were pretty far away from the stage. oh well, we were pumped for the good stuff anyway!
this is what a room full of stargate nerds looks like, in case you were wondering...
this was the typical view from our seats. it was not as close as we would have liked, but we still got to hear all the great stories and funny stuff!
heres the wrist band we had to wear that proved just how awesome we were!
