August 05, 2004

San Diego - Thursday - Day 1

Myself, my best friend Ramiro and my youngest brother Marc, arrived in San Diego unscathed. I've come to realize though, that of the very few airports I've flown into, Denver is one I just don't enjoy. We had to stop there for a layover (and I stopped there before on my honeymoon) and it just blows. 1) Nothing to do 2) Every-time (ok it's only been 4 times) there's seems to be some sort of bad weather over that airport, that paired with my nervousness regarding leaving the earth via manned vehicle doesn't make for an enjoyable experience.
After landing I was pretty impressed with the San Diego airport, it's clean and modern looking which is always a plus, we grabbed our bags and headed off to the taxi stand. A short cab trip and we were dropped off at our hotel, The Westin Horton Plaza, excellent digs I whole heartedly recommend staying there. Actually....scratch that, we need hotel rooms for next year, find your own place!

Anyway, it was about 5 (PM) when we settled in, so I decided that instead of schlepping all our crap to the convention center and setting up, that we should just grab our badges and walk around together for probably our only time for the weekend. We grabbed a cab down to the hall and checked in. It was during the checkin that we realized that there maybe something wrong with our registration.

"Brian Kirsten, Brain Scan Studios I'm checking in for our exhibitor badges."

"It says here that we never got your California Temporary Sellers Permit."

(Temporary panic, then realization that I brought it...but it's at the hotel)

"Well I'll have to go back to the hotel to get it, so you all never got the faxed copy from last Friday?"

(Semi-quick note: I waited WAY too long to fill out that paperwork, I literally got it at the last possible second.)

They pull out a folder with my company information and lo-and-behold there was the permit, someone just forgot to enter it into the computer. OOOPS. We ended up getting everything settled, walked over to another line to get our badges printed (what's up with that?) and enter the majesty that is the San Diego Comic Con. We wandered around for an hour, during that time I told myself I wouldn't purchase anything until Sunday (more on why that was a dumb decision later) and just enjoyed ourselves. Due to our East Coast to West Coast time change we headed back to the hotel, got room service and passed out.

Day One Completed (Yes I know, it wasn't all that exciting, but it was mostly plane trip, what do you expect? And you know what? I was at Comc Con! So Thursday ranked in the top 4 of the 4 most ass-kicking-est days of the 4 day trip....).

Posted by bkirsten at August 5, 2004 05:59 PM | |