Origins 2012

The trip there was pretty uneventful, had no problems! It took about 4 hours or so. We had a good time laughing and being silly. The last hour or so I was ready to be done driving! Got parked Wednesday at the convention center and headed in. We helped finish setting up and followed our friends from Q-Workshop back to the hotel. We stayed in the room next to theirs. We then went to a hardware store and ate dinner at Arby's. We found Ryan's store and got some better deals using his employee discount! Can't think of anything else for Wednesday!

Thursday we got up, ate free continental breakfast and headed out with them to the convention center. The first day was kind of slow. It's a lot smaller than Gen Con, about half I think. We left the booth a couple of times to walk around a little. Crystal Caste makes exclusive dice for Origins as well as Gen Con and they come in a purple tin and were blue this year, so I picked up a set. For lunch we had some snacks we brought and they brought some muffins. They had bought a lb of bacon from the store and left it sitting out. Ryan asked them about it and they thought since it was "smoked" it was ready to eat! He explained that it was raw.  After the convention we headed back to the car and stopped at a place called RBar and had some food and drinks. We got back the hotel and I got ready for bed, but Ryan went over and hung out with them for awhile and had a good time.

Friday we got up before them and headed down for breakfast. Friday was more busy than Thursday at the con. We got to meet Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton! We saw them first out in the hallway, but then later they came to buy dice from us!! She liked the Elven dice and I showed her the glow-in-the-dark ones we had and she bought them! She even posted a picture of them on her twitter!! (https://twitter.com/feliciaday/status/208638470674067456/photo/1). I got to walk around some more and went to a couple of dice booths. Got some neat dice from Koplow. I didn't really see anything I didn't have that I would like from Chessex. For lunch we had some Polish food from this little place across the street. They said most of it wasn't as good as home cooking. After the show, we had to go to a laundromat so they could have some clean clothes to wear. Apparently they don't really have them in Poland and Ryan had never been in one before! We all got it figured out! Lolz! Afterwards, we went to Johnny Rockets for dinner and went to a couple shops nearby.

Saturday was pretty busy! They got "Vietnamese food" for lunch. It was like subs, but different. Mine was kinda like a gyro, but I only ate the meat off of it and part of the bread that didn't have any veggies or stuff. After the show we ate dinner at Panda Express (our first time there too) and then went bowling! It was fun teaching them about bowling. I think they had both done it before, but it had been a long time. Marta ended up not coming with us for bowling unfortunately. But we had a good time with the Michals.

Sunday was a slower day for the most part. It would be busy for a bit and then real slow for a bit. We had Subway for lunch. The show ended at 4 instead of 6 and we started to close up and pack up everything. We didn't get done til about 9:30! We ate dinner next to the hotel at McDonald's and then packed up our stuff. We said good-byes to our Polish friends and headed home. I think we got home around 3:30 in the morning. We stopped once for gas and then once at a rest area to stretch. Luckily we didn't see any deer (except for a freshly hit one) and traffic was easy going!

We had a really good time hanging out with these guys! We've worked with the main guy 3 times now. The other girl is his girlfriend and then the new CEO of the company. This is his first time in the US and he's only been learning English for a short time. They've been teaching us some Polish words, but it goes in one ear and out the other unfortunately. We kept hearing "Dok" and asked Lisu about it and he was like "what?!" and had no idea what we meant. Finally we asked what word is "yes" in Polish and he replied "Tak"! We're like ohh, that's it!! So we learned yes and no and kept using them! Haha!!  It was really cool learning about Polish culture and everything. They invited us to go to Poland some time! That would be amazing!!

Wish we could just stay on "vacation" forever, but alas we must go back to the "real world" tomorrow and head back to work. :(

I posted pics on facebook earlier from our trip and of the purchases I made. (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100101085206554.2259299.32301871&type=3&l=bed61a7864) Didn't get too much. Ryan got lots of HeroClix that he's really in to right now. Even got Lord of the Rings ones. We opened the random figures and got some named characters and I pulled a cool rare one!

Can't wait til Gen Con so we can see our Q-Workshop friends again!!!! Only 72 days away!