LeakyCon – Day 1

There it is. I was going to write about my second training session at my future job, but there isn’t much to say that I haven’t already said on Twitter. And it did fit in 140 characters, after all.

So I’m going to stop procrastinating and blog about LeakyCon. Yay! I’ll write chronogically because it’s just more simple and I started making the video recaps for the DKH channel chronogically too, so I’m into day 1 already.

Thursday, May 21st.

I woke up relatively early, because I had stuff to do before I left. I hadn’t completely finished packing, I still hadn’t got any US dollars (except like $30 that I had from last time) and my bus for Montreal was at 11:52. Everything went fine, despite having to face the wind on the way to get my US money, me who hadn’t ridden a bicycle in forever. The bus driver sort of looked at me funny with all my luggage. Ha. I met my cousin in the bus, and I didn’t stop talking because I was so excited, lol. So I met Annie and Marie-Eve in Montreal and we went down to Saint-Jean together to get the car (Marie-Eve’s parents’). The ride to Boston was cool. We’re starting to recognise some spots (it’s the 3rd time we go there) and I find that funny. Halfway there I’m tired of being in a car, but when we actually get there, I find myself thinking it didn’t take that long. We ate in the car so that we wouldn’t have to stop for anything else than gas and toilets… but ended up never stopping (a full tank is enough and nobody needed to pee, whoo!). The ride itself was sort of uneventful, except some Mmmbop dancing that led to “vehicle flirting” (that will be included in the video, so I won’t talk more about it here). We had a hard time finding the parking garage, but we managed (or Marie-Eve did, anyways), and then in the hotel we couldn’t find the place to register. The schedule said that registration would close at 6 and it was around 8, so we had a number to call so that someone would give us our stuff. Our biggest worry, I think, was that nobody would be there and that we couldn’t enter the wrock show because we didn’t register, but actually there was like 3-4 people at registration. They didn’t quite seem to know what they were doing, because they never asked for an ID when they gave us the bracelets that meant we were over 21 and could drink alcohol, and I even ended up having two sets of “over 21″ bracelets. Anyways, we finally managed to get to the show. I wish we hadn’t been in a hurry, because everyone said afterwards that walking into the castle for the first time was a wonderful feeling, but for us it was just worrying about what we had missed and running to the stage. The castle was beautiful though. You’ll see it in the videos so I won’t describe it, but it definitely looked perfect for a HP con.

The show was “Evil Night”. We arrived halfway through Swish and Flick, which was the first band to perform. I actually don’t remember a lot from it… maybe because I was recovering from the ride and all that. After their set, during the break, Annie and I were sitting on the floor and I can’t remember where Marie-Eve was, but Justin (Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills… JFF) walked by, so I greeted him and he gave us two a giant hug (at the same time, lol). I asked him if he’d played yet because we’d just arrived, and he said he was going now, and indeed, he jumped on the stage right after he talked to us. His sets are always so awesome. He did a few song from his new album and wow, it rocked. For me it’s always hard to feel ‘in it’ when I don’t know the songs, but with him I just don’t care, because his stage presence is just amazing. After JFF it was the Parselmouths. I do like them, but it doesn’t rock as much and since Marie-Eve doesn’t really like them (I don’t know about Annie), we went to sit a little further away. Most of the time I was just being a fangirl because I watch both Kristina’s and Alex Day’s channels on YouTube and to have them both on the stage at the same time was a huge YouTube fangirl moment.

Oh my, I almost forgot. Between the Parselmouths and Draco and the Malfoys (or was it between JFF and the Parselmouths?), we were standing there on the edge of the crowd. Some shoes were randomly there but a lot of people had removed their shoes, so it wasn’t that odd. Then next thing we know, Sue Upton arrives, takes her shoes and starts chatting with us! She’s so sweet! Everyone knows she’s a Hufflepuff, but I’d never seen until then just how much she actually is. I honestly hardly remember what we talked about… I remember something about Draco and the Malfoys… most of the time I just couldn’t hear because we were right beside the speakers and I didn’t want her to repeat everything she said, so I guess Marie-Eve could tell more on that.

And then it was Draco and the Malfoys. They played a folk set. What was that, seriously? I mean I might listen to iton a CD and enjoy it, but I was ready to rock and it didn’t let me. I love DatM live. They always did the same thing everytime I saw them, which became sort of annoying, but I have to admit that it was still entertaining. I was so disappointed, especially since I was reserving some energy for their set. We left the show before it ended. No idea if they rocked after that (I doubt it), but anyways I wasn’t in the mood anymore.

Back at the room (or was that before the show?), we found out that the couch was actually a pull-out, but there wasn’t enough space for it to be opened, which was totally stupid. We somehow found a way to move it in another direction and let it open. That was definitely better than the rollaway bed that the hotel gave us.

We were rooming with a girl from Indianapolis that we’d found randomly on Leaky. When we first arrived at the room before the show, her stuff was there but we didn’t actually see her, because she was already at the show. When we came back to the room, she wasn’t there yet, probably still at the show. She arrived around midnight (when the show ended), took some things from her luggage and left, saying she was “crashing into someone else’s room”. She left us puzzled as to know if she would come back at all during the night… is she didn’t we would have taken her bed, as we had left her one (Annie and I in a double bed and Marie-Eve on the pull-out couch). At 5 in the morning, we hear her come back, take a shower, and then leave. Wow. We weren’t too sure about her then, but we learned later that she’d fallen asleep in her friends’ room and they didn’t wake her up, so she was planning on coming back and sleep in our room. She ended up being cool :) (And she shared a cab with freaking John Green! Nerdfighters!) It was just a bad first impression that wasn’t entirely her fault ;)

In the next episode, I’ll explain how Harry Potter and I almost shared a brownie.

~ par Jacinthe le 31 mai 2009.