The fun part about flying to Dallas was that I had three flights. Yep, not one, not two, but three. It was the cheapest I could find ironically. I flew from Syracuse, to Cleveland, to Houston, to Dallas. I didn’t fly to the DFW which I guess most people do, I flew to Love Field. I think this did work out better though, since it’s smaller and easier to go through. Not to mention Tiff was able to come pick me up very easily, she said it was a lot easier for her to get me there, and it was closer to her school. We didn’t even plan on that, so that worked out great. My suitcase made it to Dallas ok too, so everything worked out great.

Driving back to her and Derek’s apartment was hell though. Traffic was pretty much bumper to bumper until we got out of Dallas. We stopped by Derek’s workplace for a bit on the way home (I will always refer to their apartment as home when in this state =P ). Their apartment had been rearranged since I had last been there, and works out a lot better now in my opinion. Still highly decorated with posters and figures and everything, and making me jealous about not having a place of my own at the moment. ^^;;;;; We chilled in the living room for a while, watching TV and doing stuff on our computers while waiting for Derek to get home from work. Once he did, we went to this Mexican restaurant that they knew, and we got a lot of food. We had two of the fajita specials between the three of us, the table was loaded with fillings for them. If I can figure out how to get pictures off of my cell phone (I couldn’t e-mail them to myself for some reason, so I have to look at the dreaded instruction manual now to get cell phone pics on my PC -_-;; ) then I’ll post up the pic of how loaded the table was with food. Derek and I also got a couple pitchers of beer between us. Twas a great meal, and I became an honorary Texan by eating a whole pepper. I forgot what kind of pepper it was, but it was really hot compared to Northern peppers, and I was more than happy to take the challenge and overcome it. Afterwards we went back home to watch some Adult Swim and drink some more (we stopped at Wal-Mart for some more beer) before going to bed. Tiff had to go to bed earlier than us since she had work in the morning so it was just me and Derek for a lot of the night. I would’ve stayed up later than I did, but their bathroom is connected by their bedroom, and knowing that I’d want to be drinking more, I would feel weird always having to walk in their room while Tiff slept to go to the bathroom, so I eventually just passed out after Shin-chan (hilarious show btw, great acquisition for AS and great work by Funimation adapting the old school comedy anime).

Friday was a lot of running around for us. Tiff got sick on the way to work so she had to call in, but that worked out better for all of us with all the errands that had to be run before going up to the con. We did a lot of running around I can’t begin to remember all of the errands. We ate lunch at this nice Italian restaurant, where I got this nice 10” ham and cheese calzone that was amazing. It was loaded with cheese. So much that I couldn’t finish it. It was the first time in my life where my saying “there’s no such thing as too much cheese” was proven wrong. It was really good though. Derek had some more stuff to do afterwards, so Tiff and I played a lot of Mariokart DS against each other while watching TV. I totally pwned her. XD Derek was gone longer than we had expected, so we really had to rush to the hotel to get there before registration for the con closed. We got there literally minutes before then, barely getting our badges as we got in. We then got checked into the hotel and hung around in the room for a bit before dinner.

The hotel we stayed at was really nice. It was the Hyatt Reunion and it was simply amazing. It was a very nice hotel. We actually ate that night in the Reunion Tower at Antares, a really fancy restaurant. Derek wanted to eat there and even though it’s pricy, Tiff and I agreed to have that experience and everything, for a once in a great while thing. And yes, it will be a once in a great while event for me since that place was quite expensive. I won’t say how much I spent there, let’s just say I don’t plan on doing that again for a long time. It didn’t break my budget since I brought a lot of cash with me, but I really can’t justify spending so much on one meal like that anytime in the near or distant future. It was a nice experience to learn about really fine dining though, and the view of Dallas as we ate was simply beautiful. Not only were we right in the tower, but the tables are on a rotating turntable, so as we ate we were also rotating to look down on Dallas from all angles out of the tower. It was an amazing sight, especially in the dark of night. After dinner, Tiff and Derek drove back home because Derek decided he wanted to cosplay afterall and wanted to get his things for that. If I were Tiff, I honestly would’ve made him drive back himself. I understand that they’re less than an hour away, but so late at night and making her drive when she’s already tired just because he decided suddenly he wanted to cosplay is just inconsiderate imo. While they were gone, I checked out the gaming room for a bit since there really wasn’t much to do so late. They had a bunch of Konami music games there which I was impressed to see. DDR Extreme, Percussion Freaks and Gutair Freaks, which were linked making it even more impressive, and they even had Para Para Paradise, which was just plain awesome. Sadly, this was the best part of the room, for me anyways, since there wasn’t much for console gaming, and the majority of the room was dedicated to tabletops and card games. I didn’t play anything since I wasn’t going to play DDR unless it was in a tournament, and I didn’t want to spend extra money on the arcade games. I wanted to try Para Para but I didn’t see a change machine anywhere. I decided to check out the dance, which was in a nice big room, but there wasn’t that many people in there, so I just went back to my room and played Stepmania until they got back, and went to bed not long later.