Had a great time at Anime Iowa. It was really pretty relaxing. The drive to Cedar Rapids is about half the drive to chicago, in a totally different direction, so it was easy for Pete and Matt and I to keep each other entertained. That and I brought my walkie talkies, and we were able to caravan with smuga & maciek_smuga who had in their car a wee Eli, and a Shylina.

I camped out in the Fluffalope room thursday night, and was able to get up and moving at a good time on friday. Helped Pete take the stands and banners down to our table in the dealer room/art alley. Then I hopped a shuttle bus out to the airport to pick up divalea from the airport. I saw her right away, with her gorgeous pink hair, at the baggage claim, and absconded with her back to the hotel. (somehow bypassing 2-3 actual convention people who had come to officially pick her up, oops! I just couldn’t wait, haha, sorry AICon people. )

We got all our stuff settled in the hotel and headed outside for some food to settle the growly stomachs. We did stop across the street at the coffee shop, randomly running into K&M with Eli and Shylina. Pete decided to stay for coffee and a sammich, but we continued our wandering until we ran across “The Blue Strawberry” where fantastic salads were had.

There was, of course, the normal kind of artist alley silliness. I said hello again to Roku’s Drazz (who never seems to recognize me), I’ll just write this time off as due to my fab new haircut.

Then we managed to wrangle 14 artists and ect out to dinner, where we crashed a bar and had fabulous food. (It was quite a while before the food came, and some of us began to resort to cannibalism.) We ate bruschetta with goat cheese! and some really great open face sandwiches. We also took a rather large number of silly pictures. Honestly, I felt drunk without even having a drop of alcohol, I was laughing so hard the entire time.

In fact, a lot of the rest of the weekend was a big blur, I helped moderate the Webcomics panel, Maciek and Allie ran a life drawing panel, there were hours of artist alley time, and after all that a most fantastic time at the hotel bar with Pete, Matt and Ray. We had rum and whiskey in our cokes and amazing macho nachos. There was some art jam time, and then hunger took over and peoples raced back down to the bar for more nachos, but they were only serving pizza. We ordered some of those and traveled back up to the room to gnaw down on those till about 3 am.

All in all it was a fantastic convention, very relaxing for a con, though I did pretty much lose my voice by friday, as per usual. Happily, I had enough of a voice to last the rest of the convention. I enjoyed the extended time spent with Studio and Fluffalope, and Nick and Miss, as well as with divalea, and the general silliness that always ensues.

Very inspired to get back to comicking.

Check out the rest of the pics here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/metahari/sets/72157594229749024/