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=======~~~magnet20's Journal~~~=======
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=======Current Stuff=======


Status 8-11-08 "Otakon and Ohio"
Great, its already the middle of August. Summer vacation is almost over and I'm due back in North Carolina at the end of this week. Though the entire vacation was fun, the highlight of it all has to be Otakon 2008 (for those of you who don't know, its a giant anime convention that takes place yearly in the Baltimore Convention Center).

Myself, my cousins, and a couple of their friends arrived in Baltimore on the 8th of August at about 6:00pm and stayed there until the 10th. For three days we wandered around the convention center, playing video games, watching anime, taking pictures of cosplayers and generally having a good time. The highlight of the trip was the "masquerade," essentially a talent show performed by the attendees. Speaking of which, the majority of the attendees cosplayed as a wide range of characters, ranging from movies to real life to anime to games. There were several awesome skits and shows, the best of which (IMO) was when a gifted flute player played several selections of music from the Legend of Zelda series. He sounded awesome and the entire audience gave him a standing ovation. Another highlight was the movie "The Girl Who Leaped Through Time," an excellent animated movie created by Bandai; the quality rivaled several Disney movies.

There were several places of interest during the con. The "Dealer's Room," was a massive hall with hundreds of different stalls, all of which were selling everything from clothing to manga to weapons. The "Artist's Alley" was another large hall where hundreds artists would sell their work and offer commission. The "HD Theater" was a large room with a massive movie-theater like screen and seats (This was the location were attendees could view movies and such). These are just a few of the places, I'm far to lazy to list all of them. The whole experience was great, it was well worth the $65 price tag for the three day experience.
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=======Older Stuff=======

Status 6-29-08 "Vacation and Volunteering"
So yeah, It's like 12:01am at the time of me posting this. I got back from a 2 day trip at the Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park in Williamsburg VA, yesterday at about the same time. It's a pretty good place to go if you're into aquatic activities. For an indoor facility its pretty expansive containing 2 large rides in which you have to take a 4 person raft, 3 smaller rides that you use intertubes for, a fairly large wave pool, etc. The room we got was pretty nice also as it had 3 beds (we reserved a 2 bed room but they overbooked and gave us a larger room which had 2 floors ^_^). In other news I'll be heading over to Ohio to visit my cousins at the end of this week.

Later on today I will start volunteering at my church's vacation bible school program in order to get at lest 20 hours of community service. The only reason I'm doing this is because I have to in order to graduate >_<. All of the hard work is pretty much done though, the band I put together knows most of the music we're going to be playing and the place is already set up and decorated. I would much rather be playing Team Fortress 2, Mass Effect, or sketching that helping out little kids though. Speaking of sketches, I haven't posted much of anything lately because I'm still getting used to my tablet. I've been doing a lot of sketch work recently in between gaming, LAN parties and trips to places. Hopefully Ill get used to using my tablet soon so I can start putting out finished pieces. The new dA Version 6 looks pretty solid,the only thing I regret about it is that it no longer functions on my PSP...

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7-14-08: "Mid July Update" [link]
6-29-08: "End of June Update" [link]
6-14-08: "Father's Day Update" [link]
5-29-08: "New Journal" [link]
4-25-08: "School Update" [link]
4-15-08: "Tagged" [link]
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