This weekend did not go as planned.
Friday we were going to go see Fantastic Beasts… but I was still feeling a little under the weather and wanted to save my energy for the con Saturday, so we stayed home.
That night, I did finish the Phis and Gracyn that matches the other SunDowner character refs I did a few weeks ago:
And I added them and Yfandes to the group pic:
Yay!
So then Saturday, I got up, had a leisurely morning (when I should have been packing I realize now), then slowly got ready for the con. I wore my Donna Unicorn & the Wasp, set it all out the night before.
Inspected a Luna:
Since it had turned chilly the night before, I decided to add my fur jacket to the dress and I loooooooooved it
I felt so FANCY. My aunt gave me this coat a couple of years ago, suggesting I use the faux fur off of it for like, a game of thrones cape or something. I was like no way this thing is fabulous.
It did me want to go “Grandma it’s me… ANASTASIA”
So we headed off to the con. Went to the dealer’s room and Chase actually found another one of his childhood toy Lions:
He had this lion when he was little and it got lost. A few years ago he did some research on it, found out it was a toy given out by a northern bank back in the day, and found another one on etsy and bought it. So it was surprising to run across another one in the dealer’s room! The dealer only wanted $5 so we got him and now we have twin lions.
I decided to enter the costume contest. CRAZY I know… I haven’t entered a costume contest in YEARS, I think last was Adcon in 08? Or was it 07? I don’t remember. Anyway, I was in my Donna Unicorn and the Wasp, I’m proud of it, so why not. Did the contest prejudging, after that went and had a little dinner, took some photos.
Then lined up for the contest. I ended up being only 1 out of 2 pro/master level entries, and I ended up winning my division. Looking around at the other contestants I was really surprised to win at all. But that was awesome and I was happy and won a gift card to use in the dealer’s room.
The sucky part came around the same time unfortunately. When they called my name that I’d won, I was sitting an armchair in the back of the room next to Chase. When they said my name, I leaned forward and set my phone on the arm of his chair, thinking he realized I’d done this (since I didn’t have pockets… you know how that goes in a Donna Noble costume) and headed up to the front. From up front I could see him standing up at this point, so I was trying to motion to him asking to make sure he’d gotten my phone, but he wasn’t responding, so I decided to just ask him later.
He met up with me and we checked in at the dealer’s room about what to do in order to spend it tomorrow, then started to head out when I finally thought to ask him, “hey, you have my cell phone, right?”
He did not. So we rushed back to the room… and it was nowhere to be seen. The total time between setting it down and coming back was maybe 20 minutes, so in that time somebody picked it up or it got knocked somewhere. We checked in with con staff, hotel staff, and thus far no one had turned it in.
Not to mention – it’d only been on 4% when I set it down. I hadn’t been worried about that, considering the day was almost done and I could plug it in when we got to the car. But after trying to call it twice, it died.
Having to leave without my phone was AWFUL. It felt like I was leaving like, a pet of mine behind or something. It totally put a damper on the whole day which, up until that point, had been really fun and I was really proud of winning. As soon as we got home, Chase logged into everything and locked my phone, with alerts set to spring up as soon as it connects to the internet. I did go in and change all of my passwords to EVERYTHING as a precaution. THANKFULLY…. I’d just backed up my photos Friday night, so I only lost my photos from Saturday – and as you can see above, I was able to scrape most of those off of instagram. I think I only lost 1 photo, and I texted that one to a friend, so I might be able to get her to send that to me.
Sunday, Chase headed back up to the hotel (I stayed home trying to do some laundry and start packing, and also because I was grieving over my phone and didn’t want to deal with it) to spend my gift card for me and ask after my phone again. It still hadn’t been turned in, but the whole con staff knew and were on the lookout for it. Honestly they were super on top of it and I’m really, really grateful for that.
So without my phone, Chase came back home, we ate lunch and then headed out to do a photoshoot for Mel and her family, which was a lot of fun. On the drive we brainstormed over what to do about my phone, since we didn’t want to go out of town with me being phone-less. Since my phone was really pretty old at this point (a 5) and had several problems (battery problems, hence the 4% battery, and storage problems too, which is why I was constantly backing up my photos, so I could delete them to make room!), we decided to just go ahead and bite the bullet and go get me a new phone that night.
So I got a brand new 6 (I did NOT want a 7, which was good because they would’ve had to order it and it would’ve been 1-3 days), and I got to get it in rose gold which is what I had wanted. AND I went from 16gb to 32gb so hopefully I don’t have the constant storage problems like I did previously. At least, not as often. My last phone backup on my computer (I don’t use icloud, cant stand it) was from mid September, so not terrible, it set everything back up to pretty much the way it was (contacts, email, apps, etc). I think the only thing that was lost was one license plate we found in the license plate game.
I did turn down buying a case so at the moment it’s unprotected which is freaking me out. I wasn’t going to buy a $40 case at the store I didn’t want just to turnaround and go to disneyworld where I can buy one I DO really want.
Back to my old phone, I’m still super sad and upset about losing it, it was my own stupid fault, I should have put it in my jacket pocket (since at that point I was wearing it), or been more deliberate about handing it to Chase. I’m beginning to suspect that NO ONE picked it up and it fell and got kicked into a corner where no one has seen it yet, since thus far no one has tried to plug it in or anything. Or the hotel lost and found has it and just hasn’t done anything about it (if con found it they would’ve let us know). Going to check back in with the hotel in a few days to see.
But all that drama put me way behind in packing, not to mention our printer decided not to work yesterday so I couldn’t print my packing list and I cannot pack without my packing list. I got everything basically together last night and I printed a packing list at work today, so tonight will be trying to finish everything up so we can get out of here. I haven’t gotten excited yet… maybe that’ll come tomorrow.
OH, and because I probably won’t make another post where these fit in — last week I was still trying to dig up old art by hunting around on google (using my name, my name +art, my name +fanart, etc) and the wayback machine. I didn’t find anything but I did have two instances I had to screencap.
First, google sees all, it KNOWS when you change your internet handle. What a creeper!
I also discovered I had another deviantart account… and that this apparently was not the first time I’d forgotten and rediscovered it. It looks like in 2002, I signed up for deviantart as kell, and then in 2003 signed up as kellilla, which was the account I used for several years before leaving DA. Then in 2009 I rejoined as kelldarian and that’s the one I currently “use.” (Use as in, I go upload a new costume photo maybe once or twice a year).
So I found this old kell.deviantart.com and yep it’s me, there’s my old website address, the icon is an ancient photo of me. I looked back in the comments and found this jewel at the very end:
I had SO many problems back then with people stealing my art and pretending to be me. That’s why I had giant watermarks all over everything. It was so frustrating and stupid. So it appears that in 2003 I came across the other account, forgetting I’d made it, and right off the bat thought it was another person pretending to be me and called them out on it. And then I thought well maybe it isn’t a pretender… tried to log-in and it worked… and had a conversation with myself. LOL.