Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can't remember.

Sakuracon...

What can I say? I had a great time, but #1aminefan had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the Seattle Convention Center when it was time to go. She told me early on that she was "in her element." I'll say.

We arrived early Friday and faced the only low-point, if you can call it that, of the trip. There seems to be something built into the nature of the these conventions where the organizers are genetically incapable of running an orderly registration. We waited in line six hours to get into this thing. I was cool until the very end when we were finally just a few feet from the registration counter but the convention workers kept bumping VIPS who had just arrived to in front of us. Thus the last hour in line was spent just a few feet from registration.

When I finally got up to the registration counter I didn't say anything until they insisted I pay for the whole weekend even though we weren't going to be there Sunday and we had missed most of the Friday events because of their lack of organization. I laid into the poor little volunteer but backed off failry quickly as it really wasn't her fault and this wasn't about me, it was about my daughter and she didn't care.

(This guy with the giant sword in the registration line was obviously compensating.)

Once we got into the Convention Center it was cool. #1Animefan was ecstatic, like a kid in a candy store. This thing was BIG. At least four times as big as the convention in Portland.


The first thing she wanted to do was head to the park attached to the center to join a "glomping game." "Glomping" means hugging in the cosplay lexicon. It was a hugging version of spin the bottle.

After that we headed over to the vendor hall to check out the swag.

About this time my daughter ditched me for some friends she'd made so I checked out the video game hall which had classic and newer games and systems. My favorite thing was this stage with Rock Band hooked up. They were running contests on the stage and the guys playing were really, really good.
They had tabletop and miniature gaming rooms, so I popped in those to see what they had. I was a little disapointed that Monsterpocalypse was a no show. I wanted to see that game played since I first read about it and this seemed like the perfect crowd to sell it to. Oh well.

I visited Artist Row. Great artists here.

The costumes were even more amazing than the last convention we went to. Some of the sights we took in...

(These guys were on hand-made stilts with air compressors. Pretty incredible.)

(Salt-bacon man was actually pushing product, not attending the convention.)

(There are even conventioneers in the trees.)

My favorite costume: this little girl in the Gir costume was arguing with her parents. I asked them if I could take her picture and they smiled and said yes. You can see by her face she wasn't happy about it.

It rains nine months a year in Seattle.

I'm off to Seattle with #1animefan for Sakura-Con.

I'll be the big one in the Ducks jacket not dressed like Sailor Moon. Although lord knows I have the legs to pull off a Sailor Moon costume. At least Mrs. Wormer says so.

Oh, that's a wonderful place to start! Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving besides the fact we spent it with my Mother In Law.

The real fun was Saturday when we had don snabulus, Ladybug, Overdroid, Swinebread and Swinebreadina and Swinebread Jr. out to Faber University for a second Thanksgiving. Swinebread Jr. is just about the happiest baby I think I've ever ever met. This leads to all sorts of embarrassing mugging by the adults trying to get him to laugh some more.

Overdroid ran a round of old school Call of Cthulhu which was pretty fun. It's odd getting old enough to have our kids play with us. We stopped the Deep Ones from destroying Los Angeles with a tidal wave. Not that it would've been much of a loss to the world had we failed...

Besides getting our geek on we also spent a lot of time checking the score of the civil war as my Ducks destroyed the cocky OSU Beavers. Even though the Ducks have been spotty this year I had a feeling it would go this way despite home field advantage for the Beavers. This was the biggest game of the year for the Quack Attack and the Beavers would have a tough time not looking past their in state rivals.

Overdroid's girlfriend wisely decided that playing role playing games might not be the best use of her time while she was visiting so she headed downtown to the Portland Art Museum. Even though we're no Seattle, we have a pretty nice art museum which left her impressed.

Lest I forget: happy birthday to #1Animefan who turned 14 yesterday. You're my little sunshine, hon. Here's a Hayao Miyasaki video for you--

Look at Mr. Addams. He's always developing outside interests.

We have three kids. Our middle child (13) is just about the sweetest girl you could ever meet.

At the end of the school year last year we had one of the teachers at her middle school call us up and tell us she was worried about her. Our daughter seemed a little withdrawn, shy and didn't seem to have a lot of friends. This teacher was concerned that there may be a an issue that would cause our daughter to get "lost" as she advanced into high school.

We had always known our daughter was a little behind socially but she's also very smart (an encyclopedic knowledge of Pokemon and anime for instance) and a voracious reader, if a bit disorganized in her studies. Her grades haven't been stellar but her standardized testing has been pretty good. We took her as a bit of an egghead who was sometimes unfocused.

But this teacher's concern forced us to reflect on our daughter and any little clues that there might be something else going on . Long story short- after a series of tests and psychological profiles she was diagnosed with mild Asperger's.

(As an aside let me just say that my wife owe and enormous debt to this public school teacher. She didn't have our daughter in class at the time and met huge resistance from the powers that be and fellow teachers in pushing that our daughter be tested. Because our daughter would sit quietly in the classroom and not cause trouble she wasn't considered someone with a social disorder by a few of the her teachers.)

Reading through the paperwork compiled by the district doctor and the counselors in their diagnosis was both enlightening and heartbreaking. At one point during an interview our daughter asked the doctor "if they could teach her to make friends." That's a gut-punch for a parent.

Going into this school year our daughter is meeting with specialists and learning how to socially interact with her peers. The district has been great in accommodating for this after the initial diagnosis. We are all looking forward to this year

Which brings me to yesterday. For months our daughter has been planning on attending Kumoricon, the local Anime convention in Portland. My wife had to work so I got tapped to escort the little mynx to the festival.

I'm going to be perfectly honest here. I love my daughter but yesterday I really didn't want to go to this thing. I had a hellish week at work and personally am not a huge fan of that particular style of animation. But I sucked it up like a good dad and off we went.


I'll do a little report with some more pics sometime later but let me just say that the convention was absolutely wonderful. There were costumes galore from Star Wars to Disney to Sailor Moon. The whole thing had a circus atmosphere that was infectious. I have never been around a more joyous group of people in my life. Everywhere you went people were breaking into song or dance. The convention-goers took over the park across from the hotel and it turned into one big anime party. These guys are just happy to be alive.

But what really made the day worth it, what really touched my heart was how my daughter (Now "#1Animefan" by her convention badge) took the whole day in. She was walking on air from the minute we parked the car. She danced (danced!) the Carmelldansen, chatted with other friendly people that shared her interest in anime, played Red Rover with a group of Pikachus and pretty much went crazy with fun.

For the first time in a long time (maybe her life?) she wasn't the odd man out. She had met 10,000 other "#1Animefans." She was in her element. She was happy. She was with friends.

She's not alone and that means the world to her and to her parents. Everythings going to be fine.