Kelsey's plane had had some delay so conveniently she was right there ready to hug when I got off my flight!!

We were like AAHH YAY. We were both staAaAAarving so I bought us a water bottle and some snaxx at a nearby airport thinger and we ate those and chatted for a sec and watched people deplane from Canada while we waited for Sera. At one point a kind older woman approached us and our exchange kind of went like this:

KOW: Hello are you two officially with Leaky? Us: Ummmm...??  KOW: With LeakyCon Staff? Us: Oh, oh, no. (Kelsey was wearing a LeakyCon shirt so.) KOW: Oh. I'm, ah, I'm Cheryl Klein - someone's supposed to be meeting me here and taking me where I'm supposed to go? Us: UM. UM. SORRY! Sorry! good luck hope you find them!!

So NBD just befriending Cheryl fuckin Klein in the airport. WHAT A SWEETHEART. Wowzerz

Then we finally found our Canadian! SHE WAS PRESH AS ALWAYS 

and so with everyone finally there, the three of us journeyed off on the MAX to meet Gabi at the hotel for excitement and funtimes. On our way there we were chatting excitedly in the AHH YOU'RE HERE I CAN TOUCH YOU fashion ~like ya do~ and of course Chicago came up a time or two and creepily, this dude sitting across the aisle from us was a Chicago native who felt the need to insert himself into our conversations?? He was kind of grungy and we were like, no. Please do not. We were happy to escape him when we got to the Pioneer Square stop and could touch GABI'S FACE AND ALSO SHORT CUTE HAIRCUT LIKE NO OMG!! All of my friends are fucking adorable, okay.

As we're walking the short lil jog to the hotel Gabi is entertaining us with a story of a girl almost faceplanting into the revolving door upon catching sight of Joey Richter in our hotel lobby. Apparently it was possible to pinpoint via her face the exact moment she noticed them. Hilarious. And yeah sure enough we're walkin in and Joey and Brosenthal and Clark and a couple of other friends are just chillin in the restaurant/bar part no big deal. Heeyyy hot boys aren't we so airport-greasiness chic.

Our first order of business upon entering the room all four of us at last as the EKGS unit was PRESENTS!!!! Aahhh so fun! I felt guilty for not having anything for Gabi but I did presents last time we were together because birthdays and Gabi was like lol it's okay I have presents for no one. We did Kelsey's first I think hers are/were SO CUTE they are MUGS that she made that have our EKGS letters and #theerickahngales on one side and then say "super friends super bros" on the other side and they are all COLOR-CODED!! So I am orange, Gabi is purple, Sera is teal and Kelsey is blue and they are sooo cuuuuute~~ Then I gave Sera her present but we discovered that in transit - between moving Lynchburg to Norfolk, hauling it with me to Morgan's wedding and Lily's place, and then taking it on the plane - the shower curtain card was completely smashed. BUT YEAH I made her this cute card that was a FUNCTIONING SHOWER CURTAIN and it said "you being born was, like, super important!" and a sappy message and some stuff and I got her the TFIOS "Okay" tee and some makeup brushes she wanted and a lil bucket full of cute things like nail polish and lollipops and a baby lemonade vodka and a HEATH BAR which they don't have in Canada??? Kelsey and I were like YOUR HEATH BAR-LESS LIFE IS SO SAD and it had melted and rehardened several times by this point but it was apparently still tasty haha. and for KELSEY I had a World's Worst Musical Party Pack that was only like 50% complete lmao but I got her the Where's Waldo? book they reference specifically in the construct of episode 9, a USB drive that is a PIRATE for episode 3, and a zipper bracelet for episode 5, as well as making her a Guess Whosical-themed birthday card and a Crane Game pig puppet (to match the one I made for Gabi like a year ago). HOORAY :3

Then we mostly just stayed up having late night chats and trying to plan our planz for the next day! Aahhhh friends :)

So THURSDAY! I of course woke up stupid-early because in addition to being incapable of regular-person sleep, I had also just jumped ahead three hours time-zone-wise. So my dumb body that likes to wake up at 8 decided waking up before 6 would be awesome!!! It was fun though because I woke up in time to see Team StarKid failing at getting on their airplane and going to O'Hare instead of Midway like a bunch of dumbs hehehehehe. Like a big dumb myself, I had failed to print my registration bar code for the con, so I went downstairs to see if there was a way to do the thing and yeah there was but I had to pay for it (booooo) but whateverrrr? So I went back up to get the moneys and while attempting to enter my elevator I first had to wait for Joe Moses, Tessa Netting and a bunch of their chums to come out of it and they almost ran bodily into me hahahaha. Too early in the morning for this crap. 

Gabi was at least ~stirring~ by the time I returned to the upstairs and I guess people were slowly but surely waking up and we decided that registering for the con was important but more important was FOOD. I was going to attempt to do the printing thing and Gabi offered to accompany me so we could ask a concierge about a good breakfast/brunch place or something so we did hotel lobby take 2 and who should be attempting to get into OUR elevator as WE were getting out but Maureen Johnson. CON HOTELS. This time I was greeted by another front desk girl who was much nicer and said she wouldn't mind printing my thing for me from her computer if I just wanted to email it to her so I was like, wow thank and took her email address on a post-it note and then we asked about brunches and located a good thing that we could walk to so yay we did it. We went back upstairs AGAIN to email the thing to this girl Taylor only to discover that her email address was ILLEGIBLE on this post-it and legit did not have an @ in it so we were like, what the actual fuck. GONNA HAVE TO PAY FOR IT ANYWAY. :/ I mean it was only $3 but still so so dumb. So we were all kind of gearin' up for our day out planning to leave once we got my thing and Corey tweets some dumb pic that's OBVIOUSLY from our hotel lobby so we went back downstairs to print the thing and he was there being attractive and siiiiiigh. The printing process was confusing and took too long and by the time we were done Warbler boys were there attempting to check in. They seemed to have lost Titus though haha and Dom was on his phone I think attempting to find him. We thought about loitering till they went upstairs and trying to ~casually~ share an elevator with them but they ended up leaving (in search of Titus?) rather than checking in so WHATEVER.

We went to brunch!!! Our waiter was a silly butt named Shane who did not seem to understand that we would like our service to be going a little faster. Gabi's veggie sausage took 5ever to come out and idk this was a silly meal. Everyone but Sera got creme brulee french toast that was p good I guess but mine was a little too brulee'd if ya know what I mean and it just tasted like burnt sugar in the bad way a lot of the time. Relatively unsatisfied, please step up your game, Portland. It DID give us a chance to tweet #BrunchAcrossAmerica to Corey and his response was literally just *grabby hands*. What a DOOF. 

Then we finally made it over to the convention!! Registration pickup was relatively painless. I got a greeeeen bag and some cool things and ended up with a Ravenclaw badge ribbon, but Gabi also got Ravenclaw so it took a little swapping to get back around to Slytherin - I ended up having to trade my Ravenclaw for a Slytherin to some girl who actually wanted Gryffindor, assuring her that Ravenclaws were waaayyyy easier to get rid of because everyone wanted them ahaha. Bargaining chip success. We all managed to get our correct badge ribbons pretty quickly tbh. They also gave us these cool Pottermore posters, which I kind of wanted but ended up not really having the patience or suitcase room for, and these lame Mortal Instruments shirts that were actually p nice t-shirt wise but MORTAL INSTRUMENTS CASSIE CLAIRE NO THX. 

Since we weren't really doing anything, because there wasn't really anything TO do until the vendor room opened, we just holed up in this corner and chillaxxxxed. Checked out our swag bags, tried to sort out our upcoming schedules a little bit more, etc. etc. Gabi and Kelsey I think went to investigate the RockStar lounge and it was then we saw the sad, pathetic sign that was designating the RockStar lounge as such. Literally, it was one of the Pottermore posters flipped backward and someone had written on it with a thick but obviously running out of ink permanent marker, "Rock Star Lounge." We were SO disappointed in this. And we were like, We really want to decorate this and make it nicer-looking and more stand-out-y. And Kelsey was like, Hey you know I do have like 80000 sharpies in my bag right now....

We ran to ask if we were allowed but she was kind of like uuuuhhhh I guess it's not up to me ask the actual staff I'm just a volunteer?? So we went to ask the staff and they were like uuuhhhhh but the one girl was like YES. PLEASE. So we went to fuckin' TOWN on that thing!!!

A me, Kelsey and Gabi group effort. Sera chose to remain seated, attempting to wi-fi and judging us from afar as she is wont to do. All was well haha. 

(Sidenote: We were disappointed that there was the R in Rock, the S in Star, and the G in lounge to decorate house-themed but no H for Hufflepuff, so we wrote "HOLLA!" at the bottom as you can see in the photo. We were then approached by an older gentleman who informed us that there was only one L in "hola." lmao.)

When we were done we sat back in our corner and chilled some more. I ran into Casey Hatch my ConQuest friend from last year working registration as a volunteer, and Heather and TJ strolled past and came and gave us some hugs too, which was nice~ yay friends~ I also saw this hella awesome starkid!Dumbledore cosplayer and he was quite in character and impressive hehe.

Eventually some other girls kind of sat up against the wall near our corner and we struck up some light conversation with them :3 They turned out to be Hannah and Phoebe, coolkids from Boston. We liked them a lot! We were also approached at one point by two tiny baby children who were challenging everyone around them to answer hard HP trivia questions (affectionately we nicknamed them the "trivia babies," the youngest one couldn't have been older than 11 and the older one was not MUCH older) and so we made teams of me/Sera, Hannah/Phoebe and Gabi/Kelsey and tried to outsmart them in a sort of thing that went on for a fair amount of time. Their questions were hard but only in an annoying, pedantic kind of way but they were cute so we indulged them and were actually being way too serious about it and haha. And then after a bit they peeled off to go challenge some other people and we were like, bye~

So okay, a thing that was happening at this con was that ShelterBox was toting one of their boxes around trying to see how many people could all be inside the box at once as like a ~CHALLENGE~ thing. Naturally I was like, wait a fuckin second let's get in the box. The record before us was 5 and I was like we're so doing this, so once we clarified the rules (you could have only one foot inside the box as long as your other foot was not touching the ground) we piled the six of us PLUS another girl we'd kind of acquired by the name of Kat into the box!! We were like DAMMIT WHERE DID TRIVIA BABIES GO THEY WERE SO SMALL THEY WOULD FIT but we set the new record at 7 and let them go on their merry way. But I was like, if they come back with a higher record later, we're so trying again, we're gonna winnnnn. (Turns out later on they stopped holding fast to the "feet can't touch the ground" rule and with that BULLSHIT we were nowhere near the top record. I was madddd.)

So TJ came back through at some point and was in the room that was for like guests and stuff and was like hey come here I have a thing I want you to do?? So she beckoned me over and I was like uuuuhhhhhhh but she was like yeah we're doing a thing are you gonna be around and I was like, sure. BUT THEN SHE NEVER CAME BACK. I sat in this corner like "what the fuck does TJ want me for oh my god what is happening" like forever and never saw her again ahahaha?? so confused. And eventually we had to leave anyway because the line for opening ceremonies was growing much too long and we hadn't even realized it was happening because we'd just been chillin in this corner with our new friends (WHO TURNED OUT TO BE SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS we were like, how, you are so mature and smart and nice and not annoying) so we had to go get in line and yeah.

Me and Kat were the only ones without RockStar.........

so we tried to do the thing I did last year where we just crept in in a group of other rockstar friends and hopefully didn't get noticed, so we sat with everyone else in line and to entertain ourselves we played Harry Potter Uno that I had brought with me, the seven of us and then a girl by herself in line just ahead of us who was a cute Ravenclaw and whose name I forget idk but you were presh. And also A.??? was here??? at this point????? I think. Several people in this group had either never played Uno or hadn't played in a long time so we kind of had to tutorial-style for a second and then A. ended up winning very quickly so we were like whatever, we'll just play for second place but IT WENT ON ACTUALLY FOREVER. Sera ended up with like half the fucking deck in her hand and we were screamin like why won't this end and we finally just gave the fuck up and were like WE ARE NEVER PLAYING UNO AGAIN THIS IS SO STUPID. Wow how dumb.

We were all very hungry and time before opening ceremonies started was running out so we were like, hmm, we've been seeing everyone with Subway bags, let's send a party to Subway for everyone's food while the other people hold the line down? I think Hannah, Phoebe, Gabi, Sera and I ended up going and getting food for like, everyone, and we made it back with perfect timing so yay good. I got a ~*~magical sandwich~*~ ahh so good and most everyone else did too except Gabi got a lil pizza. This was hilarious because about ten minutes later we were also gifted a random FREE PIZZA?? from some people who were just walking by?? what the hell. so much the pizza.

Unfortunately we figured out eventually that trying to hide in the RockStar line wasn't going to work this year, and Kat and I needed to make other plans. So instead, A. smuggled us into her huge posse of non-RockStars, who were all at the front of the line. It was awkward because I don't really...know...any of them??? So that was p uncomfortable but eventually we got in and sat and watched the thing!! ANTHONY RAPP. Like everyone else was freaking out because balaaahhhh leakycon shenanigans but I was mostly like, my mark cohen feels, my desperation to play mark cohen, can I cry on the floor a little bit. I ended up sitting right behind emilianadarling and got to chat to her too! And next to this hilarious dad lmfao we sat down and I was like hey these are decent seats for being so far back! As long as no one big and tall sits in front of us... and he was sitting next to me and he was like "No, the big and tall person is sitting next to you." hahaha what a cool dude, he was such a good sport about things, like, "my daughter's in rockstar but I'm back here," hehe. 

We went to the vendor room after~ which was pretty legit. Scopin' out who was there and where things were and stuff. I think this was when Gabi and I got our sweet wand holsters from the Hungarian Wand Shop guys. THEY'RE THE COOLEST GUYS MORE ON THEM LATER. We also found the huge display-version of the new Prisoner of Azkaban cover that had been revealed during the opening ceremonies by our new friend Cheryl Klein ahahaha and went to take a picture with it onLY TO DISCOVER MELISSA ANELLI AND CHERYL KLEIN IN THE NEAR VICINITY WHILE WE WERE DOING SO??

Wow look how awesome we managed to be. We had some silly banter with Cheryl about meeting her at the airport and Melissa did hers even though she looked hecka busy SO NICE. I LOVE THIS CON.

But yeah then after that we gave up because tired and because nothing else was happening and the vendor room was closing so we went back to the hotel to veg out and take some showers and do p much nothing - more of same from the previous night - and we were the hungry so we ended up ordering MORE PIZZA. THURSDAY WAS PIZZA DAY. But mine was like "spinach dip pizza" and it was SOOOO GOOOOOOOOD we were like, omfg thank, and in the special instructions for mine I was like "draw a cool pic on the box" and they drew on EVERY BOX. Sera got some alien face that was like "I am an alien," I got Homer Simpson going "mmm pizza," Kelsey got just like a slice of pizza drawn on hers lmao lazy, and Gabi got weird peace signs and crosses and pentagrams??? SATAN PIZZA. (or maybe I got gabi and kelsey backward here BUT STILL.)

And, y'know, plans to get up much earlier than anyone but my renegade body wanted to the next morning.

We had a fun-filled funfun day planned for Friday! I got up earliest, as usual, and suited up as Ginny :3 best costume everrrr. It was dumb though because I had asked Gabi to bring a wig cap for me but Gabi forgoooot, which was not a huge deal since I asked kind of last-minute and it was a trivial thaaannng, but because I didn't have one I ended up trying to use the SHOWER CAP?? that came in the hotel bathroom. It actually mostly worked! Between that and the wedding-style-grade bobby pins Kyrie had given me after Morgan's wedding I got everything secure and styled correctly. The issue/hilarious part being that because the shower cap was plasticcckk, every so often if I or someone else brushed my head in a funny way it would make a plastic crinkling noise. ANNOYING. But Gabi kept laughing at it and ffff. Also, it made things much hotter and sweatier, which was less amusing. D:

I had to get up and pop in line for that day's autograph wristbands, since I wasn't a RockStar wizardface who could just get wristbands all fancy-like. I didn't end up getting the Friday StarKid signing, but I was less gung-ho about that than I was for the signing that included some of the StarKid ladies independently and also Anthony Rapp! And that one I got with relative success. Unfortunately, this hecka cute Candy cosplayer we'd seen earlier didn't manage to get either at first, and the second time we ran into her she was crying :((( She was really dead-set on seeing Jaime Lyn while in her Candy costume, for obvious reasons, and she got really upset when that didn't look like a possibility. She was nice enough to consent to a Jaimetimes picture with me anyway gosh what a cute~

And fortunately the THIRD time we saw her she had talked to a friend of hers who was working volunteer and he had managed to sneakily swindle her one to the Anthony/Jaime/Julia/Lauren/Devin signing so she was going to get to go after all! Hooraaaayyyy happy endings :)

The third time we saw her.... Kelsey and I were waiting in line for the StarKid signing, which I wasn't going to but I wanted to keep her company, while Sera and eventually Gabi also went off to do other things. It was while waiting in this line that a Get Back to Hogwarts singalong arose. I know how annoying these can be sometimes, but in convention-type situations, I actually really enjoy them, especially if I'm dressed as Ginny at the time, because, well, you know what I have to do. As soon as it hit her spoken part I whirled around and leapt into the fray and Did The Thing and everyone seemed really pleased and aaahhhh yes good?? SUCH AN ATTENTION WHORE but people really seem to like me as ginny and aahhhh it's my favorite thing. The whole thing got better and better as it went too because I guess I set an example, because when it got to Draco's speaking part this girl dressed as lauren!Draco APPEARED OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE like she wasn't even waiting in this line, just materialized, and did Lauren's part f l a w l e s s l y. Like she had all of her physicality/stage presence/mannerisms down and she did the cape and rolled a little and was perrrrffff. And then when we hit Dumbledore's part this girl sitting in the line on the floor popped up and she was rly tiny but she was wearing a fuzzy lion hat and she belted Dylan's whole epic WELCOOOOOOOMMMEE power note and just fucking nailed that too! THIS WAS THE BEST SINGALONG EVER WE WERE SO PLEASED aahhhh and it turns out rumbleroar girl and Draco girl were friends so I went to take the photos with them because they were perfect and I was like I must commemorate this occasion~~

What a goooooood. If only I had been better about looking at the cameras that were actually taking the pics (there were a ton omfg we were ~*~famouzz~*~)

The singalongs continued into several other songs, mostly spearheaded by a short-haired girl closer to the front of the line and a dude standing up near the middle who was really awesome and totally rockin' it. We did a couple more AVPverse songs and Gabi and I kept trying to start Voldemort Is Going Down and failing which was funny but then annoying when they were doing like slower less singalong-able songs instead BUT EVENTUALLY we got around to Harry Freakin' Potter and much like my Ginny shit, I leapt up and did the entire Rita Skeeter monologue with that cool dude shouting back the Harry lines. SO MANY PEOPLE HAD THEIR CAMERAS OUT honestly not to be a brat or anything but I've been expecting to be on YouTube this whole time omfg I can't wait till we scrounge it up we were SURROUNDED. I loved that kid and I loved doing the thing and just yes. He did the Umbridge version of Stutter and was PERFECT?? And also we moved on to Holy Musical B@Man and the number of people singing dropped off dramatically but he and I kept powering through together :) and while we were doing Rogues Are We these two girls dressed as Superman and Robin swooped in from elsewhere and ran around all flying-like with capes a flutterin' and they were great and the whole thing was just fuckin great. 

I went up to my bro when the RockStar line that I wasn't really in finally started moving and I had to leave, I was like "dude you are the fuckin' coolest give me a high-five" and so we did and HUGGED and I got his tumblr and he is Ethan sweettooth169 and we are friends as of this moment. The end. Best bros.

Since I had to skidaddle anyway, I went to reserve our group a spot in line for the Art of Making Shit Happen panel with Corey and Julia!! This was a relatively lame line-waiting experience. Kelsey was at autographs and Gabi and Sera were doing some other thing I don't recall (a Lit Track thing I think) so I was there alone for a while, though Gabi did give me some poptarts to munch~ and I tried to be chummy with the people around me but eh wasn't quite worth it. Much better once Kelsey finally got there, because I could talk to her and plan with her and it was going to be way easier to save 4 seats with 2 people hahaha. Corey and Julia walked by to get things started and everyone applauded for them because they are flawless, and then the panel was ACTUALLY SOOOO FLAWLESS. I could honestly listen to Corey and Julia talk and be geniuses 5ever. They had such great things to say that Sera and I were legit taking notes and asdkjagkjshgu I want to do it agaaaiiiiinnn. But I had one question at the end that they didn't call on me for - but another girl kind of said it, though not quite how I was going to - which was, what do you do when you don't have access to other PEOPLE that want to do projects with you? because human beings/friends are a valuable resource, and stuff? And it was so sad/funny because this was literally the only question where they kind of stumbled like "Uuuhhhhhh Corey and I were very lucky to make such good friends in college that we've been able to continue working with" and I was kind of like YEAH LUCKY YOU. SHOW ME WHERE THESE PEOPLE ARE. grumpy ahaha.

Then: run straight to Greg Laslo from Hungarian Wand Shop doing his panel on wands and wand lore! THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD PANEL. It was legit like being in a class at Hogwarts and talking about wands and he kind of went back and forth from talking as if we were actually wizards to talking as if we were the Muggles we really are and he really understood his audience I think despite the fact that he was HECKA NERVOUS AWWW BRO IT'S OKAY UR AWESOME and he brought up some points I have ALWAYS BEEN SAYING, namely how this is bullshit: Hagrid gets kicked out of preppy wizard school for something he didn't even do and they BREAK HIS WAND FOREVER NO MORE MAGIC FOR HAGRID, but Bellatrix &co. get sentenced to AZKABAN for FELONIES and they pop right out of their jailbreak with what appear to be the same wands they've always had? What the actual fuck. I actually applauded when he brought this up I was like THANK YOU I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS. I don't think he was expecting anyone to come to this panel but it was literally so crowded that I was sitting in the back on top of the trash bins. IT WAS THAT GOOD.

We had a brief break for fooooood which we got from this place inside the con center that was selling food things (I think this is the first time we did this anyway) and we mostly got chicken strips + fries and little did we know at this point that we would be living off this food for the rest of the con oops. And then we immediately had to head over to the Judas Iscariot panel! WHICH WAS ALSO GOOD omfg they did the best things, they had a little skit at the beginning where Corey was like a professor lecturing on good and evil and Judas and sin and stuff and Lauren and Julia were obnoxious students complaining from the back of the classroom and Joey was a pastor (gabi and I saved the url "pastorrichter" as soon as the words came out of corey's mouth) who stormed in and tried to tell them they were all going to hell and askdjgahdkjfg. Then they all talked about it and made pretty words with their mouths gah so smart and theatre and showed some CLIPZ from the old version!! one with Reed and Darren b l e s s and one with Sean who is perfect and one with Lauren screaming and cursing at Darren and she was so embarrassed to be watching herself ahahah so cute. And Julia and Lauren told us the saga of their efforts to get Guirgis's agent to let them livestream it and how he basically hates them from when Julia tried to put the old one on YouTube the first time and aaaahahaha. Also Dylan and Shashona were cute all over each other and Britney is flawless the end.

After hunting for her all day Kelsey FINALLY caught Rae Votta at the end of this panel and she gave us her Rae Votta Secret Stamp! It literally looks exactly like the Twitter bird logo and she was like "Yeah we're gonna get sued." Beautiful. Then they were all taking some pics and doing things and it was cute.

Nothing else on the schedule for that day except for my signing which was much later, so I was finally like, I am too sweaty, I gotta go de-Ginny. So we hit the hotel to drop off some of our things and let me change and then ninja'd on down to the Ben & Jerry's right next door for an ice creamy snack! I was being gross and indecisive and could not for the life of me pick a thing so I finally just picked a thing and it was hella unsatisfying and I was like, shit I should not have done this. But whatever. It was nice to be wig-free and drinking something cold and yeah. Back to the convention center for my signing, which was pleasant and cute and Anthony Rapp is a sweetheart and Jaime and Julia remember me (this was like the fourth time I'd seen Julia that day so she was like "WELL HELLO AGAIN" ahahaha) and then rejoining with everyone else to hit the vendor room again! We wanted to scope out Ann Arbor Tees proper since they hadn't been super set up the night before and we were excited to do it and it is here that we met our new best friend Mary Kate.

Mary Kate works for AATs and she is flawless and wonderful and we are her best friends now. We actually none of us bought much Friday evening but we spent a ton of time there befriending her and the other silly butt that worked there, Debashis, while we watched Nate the Doofus try to slap a slap bracelet onto their post that was holding up their iPad for credit card purchases by throwing it from several feet away, and examining the fact that they seriously did have StarKid underwear for sale. I was like, I need to think about what I'm getting and come back tomorrow. We actually stuck around long enough that we also ran into Corey who was over there for some reason and we had literally the nicest most pleasant interaction with Corey I've ever had. IT WAS SO GREAT *____* I am no longer convinced that he hates me and thinks I'm creepy because look at this picture and look how cute we are.

We talked to him about things~ like merch (which he is no longer in charge of, which explains a lot), and Judas, and Airport for Birds - I was like, I didn't get to talk to you there, I just saw you and Sarah Petty being very SERIOUS BUSINESS in a corner and didn't want to disturb you, and he was like "mmmh, were you there the night we filmed it? because THAT WAS A DAY." and yeah haha. what a good cute wonderful sassy person bless your everything you little hottie. COREEYYYYYY.

After deciding we were done with the vendor room we were like FOOD, ICE CREAM WAS NOT ENOUGH and I remembered I had seen a Red Robin and was like fuck yeah let's go to Red Robin! This was a wonderful decision because not only did we get a shitton of delicious food but we also had THE MOST FUCKING RIDICULOUS WAITER. His name is Danny and I did not even know what to do with him omg. He kind of looked like a cross between Marty Scanlon and Clark Baxtresser??? BUT ONLY FROM THE FRONT like if you saw him from the side it was way less of a thing. Basically he was like half-and-half of them but then not quite as attractive as either of them. But still pretty cute. Which was good, because he was sO OVER THE TOP JOKEY FLIRTY CHEESEY LIKE SERIOUSLY FLIRTY that if he had been ANY LESS CUTE it would have been super off-putting, but was just enough that he kind of got away with it and we left him a really nice tip because that was obviously what he was angling for. But seriously, he OPENED with a joke about the bottomless fries/going "bottomless"/not wearing pants. and we were like. you can't OPEN with that you have to save that for a little later we just met you oh my god. But regardless: delicious hunger-satisfying food. I am actually getting gross hungry just typing about it right now.

On the way out of Red Robin we passed where they had an old Philosopher's Stone movie poster up on the wall and all stopped and stared at it because it was coooooool when we sort of noticed the front-door host kind of looking at us and chuckling, and we were like ahahahaha, have a lot of people been stopping and looking at this, and he was just straight-up no hesitation "Yes." lol best.

THEN BACK TO THE ROOM FOR MORE SLEEPING AND DYING. Between our whacked-out sleep schedules and the energy we were expending having ALL OF THE FUN, crashing at the end of the night was kind of the best we could do. It's a good thing we weren't super-invested in any of the WRock because we never would have stayed awake enough to actually go and check it out.

SATURDAY I WOKE UP EARLY AGAIN OF COURSE UGH but no we actually kind of all did because we were committed!! this year to attending the Mina-Lima panel since we skipped out last year to have coffee with Molly Scanlon instead. We did still get coffee, though, because the Starbucks was right by our MAX stop and Sera was dying without it hahaha. And then we got magnificent seats to this thing?? Like we were literally in the front row and we were kind of farrr off to the side but no one stopped us from sitting there so we were like why the fuck not. SO COOL. GRAPHIC DESIGN. WIZARDS. AKDGJSLHDKJGSHLKJHNL. I'm kind of sad we missed it last year because soooo coooooool but getting to go even once was worth it.

(I took a picture of a picture they showed of them building a Gringotts chandelier. dis 4 lily.)

BASICALLY the neatest thing ever. I want to just own and touch all of their cool shit aaahhhhhh.

Also roaming the halls this morning I encountered Ethan in his UMBRIIDDDGGE costume. He was so in character and perf omg he asked what house I was in and I said Slytherin and he seemed pleased and then he asked some other girl near us and she said Gryffindor and he was like >:( HEEHHHHH. and he complimented my MAMD shirt like "oooh, das mah favriiittt" and I was like ME TOO GRRL. 

What a babe.

After Mina-Lima we went back to the vendor room, because that was pretty much the best place to hang out if you weren't trying to eat food and had nothing else to do. At this time I should point out something I've neglected to mention so far, which is that HPA was running this bracket-tournament for who was going to "get married" at the end of the con. I'd been relatively disinterested because my two HP OTPs, Harry/Ginny and Remus/Sirius, were up against one another in the very first round, but I'd cast some votes anyway and even threw a couple toward Gabi in the Percy/Oliver camp. But by Saturday, there were only four couples left on the chart, and one of them was fucking Snape/Lily. AND AT THIS POINT WE GOT AGGRESSIVE. We managed to sneakily vote three or four times for Remus/Sirius, whom they were up against - which was cool, and all, but I'd honestly have voted for ANYONE if it meant cockblocking Snape/Lily. We don't even understand how they got up there in the first place - why any of the het couples were there, considering the whole event was supposed to be in support of all the marriage equality legal action that's been taken recently. We were so furious l m a o.

So once we'd made sure we'd done all we could regarding that, we headed back over to the Ann Arbor Tees booth, where we doofed around with Debashis some more and I bought like $80 worth of crap (including something that wasn't for me, I at least TRIED to be nice and responsible), and Julia was there signing some stuff so we chatted with her --

-- and then eventually Gabi and Kelsey left to do a thing and right after they left Corey was there again. And we talked to Corey some more, and Julia and MK and Debashis some more, and MK signed some postcards she had smuggled us for free earlier and was like WHAT I'M SIGNING THINGS but we were like of course you are you're Best Friend Mary Kate, and all things were nice~ Then Sera and I went to get some food and we got chicken strips + fries again because they were tasty and filling and like, right there.

While we were sitting and chilling and eating we ended up next to this cool dude who had a ton of awesome HP tattoos and we talked to him a bunch and he was like, a hair stylist from somewhere else in Oregon and he had cool adult-dude opinions on this massive crazy thing that was mostly younger girls and that was a nice experience. We also saw the weirder, short-haired girl from the Friday singalong just...standing in the middle of the room...singing Les Mis songs to no one?? Okay friend if you insist. And we found Kelsey and Gabi again, but only for a smidge of time in between them doing other things, and Sera got a coffee, and idk this part of the day was fuzzy to us even LATER THAT DAY when trying to reconstruct the order things happened in. Saturday early afternoon clusterfuck. All I know is that I got a thing called Chocolate Bread from an in-con cafe thing and it was goooood and at some point we were in the vendor room talking to Tyler Brunsman and then eventually we had to go get in line for this stupid mustache thing.

Yeah okay the story here: Similar to last year's footie pajamas record, Leaky 2013 set out to break the Guinness record for the most people wearing false mustaches. Which, okay, whatever, do what you like, but I personally am 8000000% done with the ~mustache~ pop trend?? idk. BUT in a very CLEVER but mildly ANNOYING ploy for higher participation, the main events room was NOT going to be cleared out between the mustache record attempt and the StarKid event performance which was immediately after. SNEAKY DEVILS. So if you wanted a seat for the StarKid event that wasn't in like, the ballscrack back of the room, you had to line up and attend/participate in the mustache thing too. So like. Okay fine.

Sera and I sat together for this and it was just about as dumb as expected but not quite in such a bad way. Devin Lytle was MC-ing the thing and she was being a d o r a b l e, going through the audience and picking random people and asking them cute questions about Leaky and StarKid and all "who's your favorite starkid ~booyyy~?" and ahahaha. She asked one boy, and who his favorite girl was, and he was SO PRECIOUSLY EMBARRASSED and finally stuttered out "l...lauren lopez" and the whole room was like AWWWWW. She also called people up for a little contest to see who had the best original dance moves and this kid Max -- 

Let me explain Max for a second but Max was this six-year-old little precocious adorable shit of a kid who was all over the convention getting literally everyone to fall in love with him by dressing up as either Harry or avpm!Voldemort and just in general being too cute to live. AND HE WAS WELL AWARE OF THIS FACT. He was the most precious perfect little attention whore and you wanted to be annoyed by it but you like COULDN'T because he was so cute and he knew exactly what he was doing and so you had to give him some respect for that and gaahhh. Gabi was like "that kid is you" and I was like "that kid is me at that age." good job, lil bro.

-- Anyway Max went up there and did some dumb stuff and people cheered for him and let him "win" just because he was Max and he was adorable and fffff. Then we all had to wear the mustaches for five minutes and this involved some singing along dramatically to Bohemian Rhapsody and some other stuff and I snagged my boo Ethan for a mustache selfie.

Sera probably has some of her and me in the dumb things as well!

THEN THE STARKID EVENT HURRAH. This was so fucking fun and dumb because they literally just did every Potter musical song from start to finish, Get Back to Hogwarts thru Everything Ends. I was like, okay friends. They let Clark sing which was nice and had Britney do a sassy soulful version of Hey Dragon which was GR9 and also just, TYLER. I don't care what context Tyler is singing Not Over Yet in, it's still flawless and tyler. tyler. TYLER. TYLER every time. And guuuhhh Joey doing Sidekick *______* ALSO SOME HILARIOUS INTERPRETIVE DANCING/TROLLING DURING GRANGER DANGER Like Joey would be singing and behind him Lauren would be werkin the WHOLE STAGE being obnoxious and falling on the floor and stuff, and then when it got to her verse Joey did the same to her right behind her trying to crack each other up, and then when they were both singing the wHOLE TEAM GOT UP AND DID IT ahhh perfect, these little shits I love them so much.

So I guess it was around Senior Year or Wizard of the Year when I leaned to Sera and was like "Wait hold on a second, oh god, who is going to sing Get In My Mouth?" And she was like, "Dy...lan?" and I was like "Ty...ler?" and then I was like "Oh ew, I bet it's going to be BHoldz," and we were like, "ew, yeah, bleh" and continued onward but then like four seconds later I was like "wait holy shit what if it's Nick." But of course that would be too good to be true for me and Sera to be together witnessing our husband Nick Strauss doing something that spectacular.

BUT THEN IT ACTUALLY WAS NICK AND SERA AND I JUST ABOUT SHIT OURSELVES oh my god I can't wait till an official recording of this goes up, because I guarantee you will be able to hear me flipping a shit even from like the middle-back of the room. Sera was doing the calmer/more Sera-ish version of same and I actually could not handle this. NICHOLAS JOSEPH WIENER PUSSY STRAUSS MATATHIA. FIRST OF ALL how DARE You. His voice has improved SO much and he was dancing inappropriately everywhere and being overly sexual because IT'S GET IN MY MOUTH and I just. Thank you universe for giving me this???? aaaaaaaahhhhhh (And then Sera and I had it stuck in our heads for like the rest of the day and kept singing it lol.)

We stopped briefly in the vendor room again because that's What We Did that weekend. But it was so fun! You could just stroll around and look at things and touch things and have nice conversations. I saw these quality cosplayers in there.

Dumbledore is Mom. So presh. Also, I stuck my URL on the big Tumblr Wall thing they had goin on in the front corner. I saw Ethan over there and he put his up too and we used the same color post-it~ meant 2 b. But we weren't there for very long, mostly long enough to kind of pause and go "Hey, anything else we want to do today before we go get ready for the dance?" and then go "No. No there is not." So we MAX'd it back to our hotel on a train that also contained several StarKids who were also going back to our hotel hehehe. 

Now okay the whole time we've been in this Portland hotel it is literally RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO A POTBELLY and I kept going GUYS LET'S DO THE POTBELLY but it always closed at 7 which was waayyyy before we were ever anywhere near it because convention?? But it was like, 6:52 when we passed it this time and a couple of other people were gunnin for it so I was like, screw it, I'm goin' in. No one else came with me though and I felt lame but it was worth it because I was like the only person that got dinner that night and I think everyone else was sad about not doing it, so. I felt a little bad about it, though, so I bought Gabi a Diet Coke and got two blackberry Izzes for me and Sera to mix with the alcohol that we were theoretically getting to pre-game the dance with.

Unfortch, all the liquor stores ALSO closed around 7 so while Gabi and Kelsey napped-ish, we went on a quest for booze and nearly ran into Hank Green crossing a street because the sun was too blindingly bright for us to see him at first. Ultimately we ended up with a sad six-pack of Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade, which we split 3 and 3 and which was enough to give Sera a fun lil buzz I guess but mostly just made me have to pee a lot. haha. Then we all got PRETTY we were so PRETTY and it took longer than anticipated because pseudo-naps but we finally hopped back on the MAX ready to party and be awesome and so we pARTIED AND WERE AWESOME.

I waited in line for longer than was necessary to buy me and Sera a drink that was pricier than necessary, and Sera and I danced on each other a lot, and I danced a little with Casey Hatch and tried to snag Ethan to dance with him too but the one time I saw him he was On A Mission. We bounce-danced to Call Me Maybe like, aggressively, which was hard for me because I had a dress with massive pockets so I was carrying ALL THE THINGS in them and it was weight me down ahahaha, and we danced a little with A., and saw some cute drunk starkids dancing near us too (Tyler, Julia and Clark mostly, until Nick Strauss and then everyone else eventually got up on the stage). This was idk a little less fun than last year because Alex Carpenter is still a shitty DJ and we arrived more-than-fashionably late so I think some good stuff had already happened that we missed, but once it got to be time for Total Eclipse of the Heart the party really got going again, and we were up near the stage (not too close, like five rows back or so) and we'd lost Gabi and Kelsey but Sera and I were singing passionately to one another and it was beautiful. Nick was singing passionately/drunkenly to Melissa and it was also beautiful.

Then, turns out Stephanie Dornhelm missed the song because she'd been in the bathroom or something, so we WENT AHEAD AND DID IT AGAIN!! This time we DID manage to find Gabi and Kelsey and the four of us like melted onto each other and were sad and emotional and loud and sweaty and this was easily the best part of Saturday night for me. I didn't need to be drinking and I didn't need to be dancing to Alex Carpenter's shitty song selections, I just needed to be wrapped up in my friends and our feeeeelings. I really need you tonight.

After TEotH round 2 people were clearing out bc the dance was over but lots of us were also trying to filter forward to hug like, Nick and Anthony and Dylan and such and I went to hug Nick and instead of hugging me he leaned down from the stage and kISSED THE TOP OF MY HEAD??? NICK STRAUSS TECHNICALLY KISSED ME I was like what....happen......... alsdhgasjh. He was so beautifully intoxicated and I love him forever oh my god. Also hugs, and we were about to talk to Anthony and he vanished, and we were about to talk to Dylan and they started shooing us out of the room. So we had to leave, not having really danced with Mary Kate at all like we'd talked about with her (she got there after us and left before us, though we did get to chat with her for a second and make some tentative plans to hit Voodoo Donuts with her and Debashis on Sunday night!!) Then we stumbled on home. Some very nice dude was holding the train for us because there was a huuuuge wash of us all trying to leave at once now that the dance was over, and we were like bless. There was barely any room on the train but it was worth itttt because we just had to TRAIN FOREVER and then sleep 5ever.

Here's our hot mess selves wooooo sweatin!

The worst thing about the dance being Saturday night was that Sunday was the day we really, seriously had to get up as promptly as possible so we could get in line for the Sunday morning StarKid panel without being allllll the way at the end. As it was I barely managed to rouse Gabi and Kelsey and we finally just had to leave Sera. We got there and the line was already m a s s i v e. Gabi and Kelsey were okay in RockStar but just barely, but the general admission line wrapped all the way around the inside curvature of the building, up some stairs, and then probably over half the way back to where it started. I thought I was going to die. But I was like, at least I'm going to see it??? I stayed up there for a little bit waiting to see how things were going down and I ended up participating in the saddest singalong I have ever seen. Some volunteer staffer, bless her heart, was trying to boost our morale about being at the asscrack of the line, and encouraged all of us to reenact the Granger Danger shenanigans from the day before. Being a good sport I volunteered to play Ron, and a tiny baby girl came up and did Draco, and everyone else goofed off and rolled on the floor. Then this awkward asian kid tried to keep it going with a really pitiful version of Get Back to Hogwarts, but it was CLEARLY Sunday Morning At A Con and everyone was tired and losing their voices and it just never went anywhere. It was so pitiful. I genuinely felt sadness arise from this.

Gabi texted me and said that I could probably sneak in with A.'s crew who was once again at the very start of the general admish line, and though it was awkward central because I still don't really know any of them at all, they accepted me in and that pretty much saved my ass. It allowed me to collect Sera later when she finally emerged (she was like, I woke up JUST as you guys were leaving, I noticed Kelsey shut the door, why didn't you wake me? and we were like lol dog we tried for like half an hour) and I was able to sit with her for this dumb panel in like, the fourth row which like SUCCESS. PRECIOUS HUNGOVER BABIES. Nick Strauss was dressed like Thor and Clark was such a hot mess o m g he literally had glasses instead of contacts, a sloppy crew-neck sweatshirt and the LARGEST SIZE GATORADE YOU CAN BUY. the struggle is real.

I wanted to ask a question about Slamaganza so I got up and got in the question line but they cut it off before I could get to the front :( But lots of people asked really good questions actually! I finally saw someone get them to do impersonations of one another; they all compared the person on their right to Disney characters and when no one was sitting on BHoldz's right he went "Belle's mom" and Strauss lost his shit; Strauss also said if he could marry two StarKids he'd marry Dylan and Walker so that he could get "some sweet cuddles at night after Walker...y'know." BOYS PLS. Overall a good. Then the panel backed right up against their Sunday signing, which Sera had graciously given me a wristband for - and Sera had also brought my rocketship, because like a dumbass I left it in the hotel room that morning. So all for the best that Sera came later! Then yaayyy autographs and MK was there being presh and Joey and Clark were stupid-hot and BRosenthal saw my rocket and went, "Do you just bring that thing with you e v e r y w h e r e?"and I laughed and was like no only when new people because britney! Said hey to Julia and Jaime again and complimented Strauss on his Get In My Mouth performance and had a silly nice time with starkids yay yay friends and finally got Britney to sign the rocket. So great!

Gabi was off somewhere else I think but Sera and Kelsey retrieved me when the signing was over and told me about CoreyQuest, which was this dumb thing where you had to take a ConQuest button from AATs because they have ACTUALLY A MILLION left over and stick it on Corey and tweet a pic to get free sunglasses. I think the point was to leave it on Corey so they could get rid of them but the great part was that Corey was like "no, I'm only going along with this if you take it back to them." So y'know.

such a Coreyface, so good. In the end I took like 9 ConQuest buttons in different colors to maybe include as part of a giveaway on FYCL, if we ever get that shit together, ahaha. We found Gabi, and the four of us went and voted at HPA again - we'd managed to eliminate Snily, praise, and now we were mostly set on making sure that Remus/Sirius beat Ron/Hermione because a) straight couples for a gay pride thing why? and b) THEY'RE ALREADY MARRIED....?? So. lol. I went to this place that was selling cute house-themed hair accessories to see if they'd marked their prices down because it was Sunday and they HAD thank goodness so I bought a Slytherin tie-in headband and Gabi got lil baby Ravenclaw bow clips. Then Gabi and Kelsey had one more thing they wanted to do so Sera and I continued to vendor room 5ever until they returned, at which point we went to get food/coffee for Sera and I ran into tumblr user Makenna flirtykurty~ We had had a bit of an exchange in the StarKid signing line where she was like "were you ginny yesterday, it was great" and I was like "aww yeah thanks I miss my harry sad she couldn't come, but you can always check us out online hahaha shameless self-promotion follow my tumblr" and she was like "i...already do...oops" and I was like YOU ARE ADORABLE WE'RE FRIENDS NOW. We invited her and her best bud Raven blaineywainey to come eat food with us as we feasted yet again on those dumb chicken strips+fries from the ~DRAGON CAFE~ or whatever it was and then we headed upstairs for closing ceremonies~~

THE FINAL POTTERCAST. Gabi was very emotional and even I was getting emotional and I have never pottercast'd before?? Their Canon Conundrums were very cool and got us thinking and stuff and then they challenged the whole audience to best John Noe and special guest Anthony Rapp at trivia and Gabi went to go do one but the VERY FIRST PEOPLE IN THE LINE were our trivia babies from Thursday!!?? and they asked the same question Gabi was going to ask! ahahaha! Both of them went and each of them stumped the panel like badasses and won things. Few people after that were as fierce. It was so neat to have the trivia babies right at the end like that when we'd seen them so early on it was like the whole con was coming full circle and lksajdgahlskjdg awww

Then someone asked this question like, what is the ~moment~ that always hits you with the most emotional impact, and Melissa & friends started answering, and I was trying to think of what my answer to that would be?? And I realized my answer was that moment when Sirius invites Harry to live with him when he's free and Harry (and the reader ugh) finally thinks he's going to be free from the Dursleys to have a nice lil wizard life. THE FEELS ERRYWHERE. After that we were a bit of a sad the-con-is-over-no-why mess and the most we could bring ourselves to do was to case the vendor room one last time, bother MK about donuts later, and then reluctantly depart from the convention. Booooooo :(

We all had naptime then, MK included, and then idk what else but it mostly involved packing to make sure we could leave BRIGHT AND STUPID EARLY for the airport the next day to get on our flight to Chicago. One or more people may have showered?? IDK but we coordinated with MK about donuts and then went to donuts. DONUUUTTTTSS. Debashis was supposed to come too but he punked out and got demoted from Best Friend Debashis to merely Friend. OOOH BURN. 

Voodoo was such a hot mess of a thing omg?? The walls were SPARKLY and it was so sweaty and you had to get off at Skateboard Fountain (aka Skidmore Fountain which we all misheard as this at one point and thus continued to call it forever). Then you wait in line but you can't?? see the menu??? So you get up to the front and are expected to order having NO awareness of what your options are. We panicked and just got a random dozen for the four of us and MK got SIXTEEN to take back to the merchy room. Then we sat outside and ate them!!! All the ones I ate were tasty but I avoided any that had dry cereal on the outside because I was just so not into those. Gabi and I had to fight for the boston creme one but since we are good diplomatic friends we each just ate half. While we munched we talked to MK about our lives and things and also all the good StarKid gossip that she didn't know and she seemed SO entertained that we were such big Corey fans like "awww Corey you like Corey?? he's so cool ahahaha awwww" and yeah wow what a fun lil time. Here we are being sassy with some donuts.

Then she had to go because she told them she'd be back by nine-thirty and it was like ten haha whoops WE'RE JUST TOO COOL and we told her debashis didn't get any donuts because he punked out on us. Then we went our separate ways from Skateboard Fountain~ and we were like OKAY. WE SAW MK WE DID THE FOOD NOW WE HAVE TO PACK.

Our plans naturally were interrupted, but the interruption was REALLY GOOD, which was that Boston friends Hannah and Phoebe were sitting in the hotel lobby and we chatted with them and gave them a donut and invited them up to hang out later for one last time before we all left. Gabi had bought that dumb Sorcerer's Stone trivia game that I have for $10 in the vendor room and we were like LET'S PLAY and so they didn't come up RIGHT away, and we did manage to pack some, but then they came later and hung out with us and it was so great because SPOILERS THEY'RE REALLY AWESOME??? THEY LOVE WORLD'S WORST MUSICAL AND HAVE GOOD OPINIONS ABOUT THINGS AND WE WERE LIKE "WOW HOW ARE YOU ONLY 16 THIS SEEMS WRONG SOMEHOW." I love make friends omggggggg. And Hannah was a wizard and fixed Gabi's malfunctioning computer! Wow! And we played the dumb trivia game and shouted and laughed at each other and had a beautiful time. friends :) wow :)))

And then the con was pretty much over, man!! We packed, and slept and died, and then geared up for round 2 of our adventure, which was CHICAGOLAAANNNND. May or may not make a long texty thing about that, too. Needless to say we were all very sleepynappy on the plane because what a nice, pleasantly exhausting con :) God I can't wait to go back. I want to go next year and every year. I want to party with my friends and scream Bonnie Tyler songs and spend too much money on food and love fandom and love life and I want to do it forever. FOREVER'S GONNA START 2NIIIIGHHHTHTT~~

I do think next time, if I can swing it, I might cave and do RockStar. The perks were limited at best, and if I were with anyone else I probably wouldn't even consider it, but after the second year of "everyone has rockstar but me" and trying to work that into our plans, it'll ultimately be so much more convenient for ME if I can do the same things that all my friends can also do. But that means saving up starting now, basically. yeesh. OH WELL. SOME PEOPLE HAVE DRUG ADDICTIONS I HAVE CONVENTIONS.

Mostly-irrelevant con stats!

Purchases: "Sidekick" tee + SK "tramp stamp," "Schlong-Bottoms" undies, wand holster, Slytherin headband, and Judas Iscariot gel bracelet for me; "Smile!" Luna tee for Jessi Cosplay: ginny weasleyyyyy yeah u know Memes abused: "do a thing"/"do the thing," "what a good"/"what a dumb," "hello friends I am here"/"goodbye friends I am gone" Food: THOSE FUCKIN CHICKEN STRIPS + FRIES OMG, also donuts MVPs: Corey, Mama Ethan, Best Friend Mary Kate, Boston Friends LVPs: Nate for just failing and being Nate, mean staff people, annoying people who think they are our friends but are not