This past weekend (Mar 13-14) was a very busy one for me as well as life changing as it was teh weekend on the 8th Annual Emerald City Comicon (ECCC) and when I got married.

It started with Brie and I getting up at 6am to meet Sekou and his family at ECCC around 7:30.  From there, Sekou would quickly marry Brie and I while we waited in line from the comicon to start.  The marriage didn’t happen then because it was already too crowded.  While it was better than last year, we were like a bunch of cattle waiting for the slaughter.  Thankfully, we only had to stand cramped in the middle of the crowd for two and a half hours.

Once they opened the doors, we split up.  Brie went the ECCC booth to get an exclusive ECCC Witchblade print, I went to the Steam Crow booth to get their exclusive, and Sekou and family got in line to get Stan Lee’s autograph.  I then met back up with Brie and we wondered around until about 11 for Sekou.

Taking a break from the con, we found a quite corner in the convention center so Sekou could perform mine and Brie’s marriage.  It wasn’t anything big.  It was more or less signing of the paperwork.  Sekou did do it like the Old Spice commercial where the guy says “Ladies, look at me.  Now look at your man.  Now look at me…” or however it goes.  I think Brie was more excited about getting the ring than the marriage.  We are planning on doing something big later when we can afford it.

After that it was back to the con to get more prints and meet more artists.  Brie and I got prints from Jason Pearson, artist of Deadpool, and Brie got a picture with him.  Actually, she asked to get a picture with him and he said something in the effect of “for the girl with awesome red hair, yes”  then he lokked at me and said “but not you”.

We then went by Joshua Ortega’s table to get my Gears of War 2 collector’s edition signed.  Josh is the main writer of Gears of War 2. I guess my copy was only the second collector’s edition he has ever signed.  I then picked up a copy of his book, Frequencies, but more on that later.

Following Josh Ortega and after lunch, I met Thomas Jane and got a photo with him.  He seemed very hung over.

Brie then tried to get in line to get Jhonen Jasquez’s autograph.  He is the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Invader Zim.  This was not the best experience of the con.  People tried to line and a guy at the table told everyone not to line up and to disperse because they weren’t ready yet.  Later people lined up again and the line went all over the place, blocked other tables, and was just unorganized.  The guy didn’t know what to do.  Brie then suggested they line people up again the wall and he was like “good idea”.  Brie got here autograph and a picture with Jhonen which made her happy.

While we were in line for Jhonen, I noticed they were doing some kind of signing at the Microsoft/343 table.  We went over and a bunch of people that have worked on Halo were signing free posters.  I was game.  The first guy signing turned out to be Greg Bear (who is writing a new trilogy of Halo books).  Just wish I knew he was going to be there before hand so I could have brought something else for him to sign.  About halfway through the line or people signing, one of the MS guys asked how we liked the con.  That is when we mentioned we just got married a few hours earlier.  Next thing you know, after loudly expressing her disbelief, one of the reps asked if we wanted a wedding present from Microsoft.  We said sure and they gave us the grand prize for the raffle they would be holding.  The prize was a Halo backpack stuffed with Halo strategy guides, Red vs Blues DVDs, and other Halo related goodies.  I am a big Halo geek so it was an awesome present.

We didn’t stay much longer after that and would be back the next day.

The next day, we slept in longer than planned because of the time change and me not changing the time on my watch before going to bed.

The biggest thing of the second day was Brie getting her picture taken with Leonard Nimoy.  We did find out while in line that I could be in the photo as well without pay twice and I got my picture taken with Brie and Nimoy.  But to be honest, I never saw Nimoy’s face.  We stepped into a room where Nimoy waited sitting on a chair not facing us.  I walked behind him to get in place while Brie got next to him.  By the time I got to the other side of Nimoy, the photographer took the picture and we were sent on our way.  Because they were not able to print the photos there, we have to wait for them to send us the photo.  Not sure how it turned out.

The last big thing of the day was another trip to see Josh Ortega, not that he remembered us from teh day before.  I wanted to get a photo with him and tell him I started reading his book.  The guy is really friendly and talkative to the point he was going hoarse from the day before.  I then mentioned that I had started reading Frequencies and how I liked that it took place in Seattle and I knew the places we mentioned in the book.  This set off a whole level of excitement and him pointing at me a saying “I love this guy”. 

Also, have to mention Snakebite, the artist sharing a table with Josh, is an awesome artist.  I picked up a really cool print he did of G.I. Joe.

Can’t thin of much else that happened during the Emerald City Comicon other than someone asking to take a photo of my tattoo and seeing a Sonny Bono impersonator that looked just like him.

Can’t wait for next year.