worlds 2002--part 2!

welcome to part 2 of my worlds report. this is all the stuff we did on the days following the event. we had a lot of fun, so go read and see! monday, august 5th part one....we visit wotc! we had an invitation to visit wotc, and had arranged to meet dmtm over there at around noon. we had to take the bus, and no one knew the route, when it came, OR where to catch it-- so that made it necessary to be out the door by ten am. blaaaah...we'd have liked to sleep in but hey! it's wotc! :D with five of us to get ready, i got up first and showered and got the rest of the group moving along. unfortunately, pkmnx had to be on a plane at two so he couldn't go along with us. :( we bid him an affectionate and sad farewell, and set off to figure out how to get where we were going. we went back to the visitors info center and got some schedules, and for extra measure ech went and asked the women working there how to get to renton on the bus. they told us how, so we went to the metro stop, found the right bay, and waited. it wasn't long to wait. we managed to get the one big seat all the way in the back. this turned out to have been the way to go, because the road to renton was really bumpy, and sitting in the all the way in the back seat is the bumpiest. there were a couple that tossed me right out of the seat. fun! plus there were a lot of murals and stuff up on the walls we drove past and poinko kept calling out really funny captions for them. we laughed a lot and i am afraid we disgraced ourselves rather badly. laughing out loud in the back of the bus is apparently not the thing to do. we wouldn't have traded it though because laughing is good for you, regardless of how many people look at you oddly. that was diverting, but eventually we got to renton. then we looked at our map we got from the visitors center. damon and dmtm had given ech directions from the bus stop the night before, so with those and the map we set off. i had my my handy clock/compass combo but still managed to set us off in the wrong direction. anyways, we figured it out quickly and headed off. i learned there are a lot of blackberry bushes in renton. they are all over the place. we saw a chinese buffet place called 'foody goody' which was funny, and we stopped at chevron to get some pepsi blue because we decided then and there we needed to see what it tastes like. it tastes....blue. it wasn't bad but it was kind of odd. it was a much shorter walk to wotc than it seemed like. finally we found it! it was a large corporate looking building, with the wizards of the coast logo and hasbro logos on it. here you can see it, very blurrily. i think poink has a better pic..... look how happy we are to be at wotc!!! :D as we were leaving, we saw the brooks'es leaving. it was nice to see them since we'd barely run across each other at the event. dmtm and mtm were there so we said hi. mtm couldn't come with us cause he was just leaving to eat lunch, cause he had to be back to give scrye an interview at one o'clock. see...even AFTER the event he was still working his butt off. anyways, we signed in and got visitors' badges. everyone at wotc has to wear a badge identifying them. if you work there it has your picture on. the tour started in the reception area. there are a lot of statues and so forth of magic characters....like these! me i really like that dragon. i would like something like that at home, but with godzilla..... there was also an area there that had a bunch of products displayed, of all the different games they make. there's dmtm explaining them to us. then we went outside! dmtm told us they had rabbits running around out there. we did not see them, which is good cause apparently they eat visitors. ...or wotc eats visitors...or is it wotc eats the rabbits? i forget....anyways, no bunnies. the brookses didn't see bunnies either. here's the mana pool. isn't it pretty? there are no sharks. unless they are very very flat. there's a little fountain comes down over those rocks back there...and places to sit and eat if you like. then we went back inside. there's a lot to see in there too, i'll tell you what. we started off the detailed poking around in the customer service area. here's dmtm's work space! it's easy to tell which room is his.... doesn't he look happy and at home in his office? let's nose around and look at his stuff.... hm...badges and stuff from origins.....on the shelf underneath are some perfectly disgusting bottles of liquor with dead mice and lizards in, that came from i think hong kong..... some cards..... here's dmtm's whiteboard. looks like team compendium wuz there. ooh! zeo was there too! and they drew a really crappy gengar!!! and look there....why, its...the... good old fan club trainer!!! wow...i'd forgotten how many people signed that thing. gloom was happy cause he missed the chance to sign it last time. time to go bother everyone else! we went and met the woman (and im so embarrased i forgot her name! and she was really nice too..if you call and complain about a defective card, you treat her nicely!) who replaces the defective cards and things. mmmmmm lots of boxes of absolutely everything, from boxes to boosters to singles of every card.....they were a bit low on dark energy for some reason. right next door to that was a storeroom with just everything in it......dmtm said the brooks brothers asked to be locked inside, and have pizza slipped under the door for them. not a bad idea...... -_- there's my little red head getting in the way again... piles of product are all well and good but people are more fun to bother. so we headed out into the customer service cubicles. we found pat quite easily. unfortunately the cubicles are too high for me to look over without jumping up and down. it wasn't much trouble for ech tho. poor pat could not avoid us. down the little aisle, and we could see the rest of everyone. everyone say hi to wotc customer service!!! ahh you can do better than that...... pat's making a break for it......but steve still has to sit there and answer phones. look there on the right...it's the meowth balloon! want to take a closer look? that's right! we walked around the building a bit more. we saw r and d, we saw the art department (and it was really cool cause dave woods remembered me from san diego. and i would like to humbly remind him that i DID see an empty cubicle in the art department area. O:) ) and a lot of other areas. we had to ask permission to take pics of things......here are some that were ok to take! (and WOW did we see a lot of stuff we couldn't take pictures of....) conference room with doodles on the presentation pad..... there were white boards all over with stuff on em. this one was funny! mmmm lookit the card from the 5th movie....shiny and silver and JUST SITTING THERE ON SOMEONE'S SHELF!!!!! ooh, duel masters...wotc prints that in japanese. i speculate that they'll print it in english sometime. you saw this already-- top page of stack a printed sheets of expedition. dmtm said he arranged for these to be there for us to see. i think that was really nice of him and it was also nice to get a look at how the actual printing of the real cards is done. (ooooo you should have seen the ones underneath it!!!) poinko actually is the one who took a lot of pics on this tour. hopefully he'll get em scanned soon....anyways thank you dmtm and wotc for letting us take the pictures we took and see all the stuff you showed us. we also saw the wotc dojo, well....the door to it. there was a class going on that we did not want to interrupt. how cool is that? they have their own dojo. niiice. now it had been an hour and it was time for lunch! we went back to get pat, and they divided us up to go to the sandwich place. (dmtm and pat both have trucks. i got to sit in the little tiny seats behind the regular seats. lucky me!) lunch was really nice. they had great sandwiches there and we talked a bit about the event, about the decks there, the new formats, new sets, ruling revisions and all sorts of things. then it was time to head back to wotc to go bother mtm and see anything we missed. we were hoping mtm would be off the phone so we could talk to him but alas he was still talking to scrye. we talked to the guy who's taking over the professor program a bit, he was really nice. he works right next to mtm. then we hopped up and down outside mtm's cubicle a bit so he'd know we cared. :D aw....look how busy he is. and how much stuff he has in his cubicle. wotc is nice cause it doesn't seem to be all that strict about having personal items in your cubicle.... we had to leave without getting to talk to him :( which was sad, cause he was so busy at the event too. i hope everyone is grateful for how hard he worked on worlds, and pretty much everything. we went back to dmtm's office cause he said he had stuff for us. when we were there we asked how they do the wotc chat, and he showed us..... they all just log in from their individual computers with their little headphones on.. so if you were in the wotc chat on monday around 2 pm, you would have seen dmtm. he was in there all by himself.....hehe. we watched him check the forums too. but we don't know his password. hey he still has his gunslinging sign from san diego sts! i have mine too. then we got some nice stuff! dmtm gave us each a rare card and a set of first edition chinese base set holos. and from the magic room of card replacements we got deck bags stuffed with 14 boosters of various card sets and a full set of si cards (not in the binder, just as cards). dmtm was going to give us some playmats but there weren't enough so we said that is fine, you can keep them for the next people that come through. he walked us back out, and we returned our badges and thanked the receptionist. then we all walked outside and talked for a bit, we really wanted to be able to see the mt's again before we left. we agreed to call dmtm the next day, and then he told us to scamper off home. (new inside joke to pick on ech with....) and we did. we walked back to catch the bus back to seattle, and talked about all the stuff we got to see and just generally how nice the mt's have been to us. we're really grateful you all took the time to give us the tour, say hi to us, and just generally be nice. it was the most fun thing we did in seattle, i think. thanks! part two...what we did after we went to wotc! the bus back wasn't as fun cause we couldn't sit in the really bumpy seat. i fell asleep at one point. but...on the bus ride back we came up with a simply brilliant idea. i can't remember if it was me or gloom....but we thought it would be a lot of fun to do a sealed play thing with the boosters we got at wotc. now, there were 14 in all. 9 pokemon, from various sets, 3 harry potter from various sets, one mlb, one nfl showdown, and one star wars. combining all the cards into one game sounded like a party, and the prospect of sending dmtm a play report on what we ended up doing was just icing on the cake--so that's what we opted to do. we got back, detoured to pacific place to get our free souvenir umbrellas, and went back to the hotel. ahhh.....nice to sit down. we grouped around the coffee table and looked at the cards in our boosters. we discussed what the rulings would be on the various cards, since most of what we had was pokemon we wanted to blend the other games into that one. we also looked over the menu in the room, for restaurants that delivered. i then decided it was a good time to try out the webcam (i'd totally forgotten about it sunday night...that would have been fun) so i went and hooked it up. i told 247 to go watch it if they wanted to.....which several of them did for the entire night. they were treated to shots of us building our new decks, eating our dinner, and taking requests for things to hold up in front of the camera. it was fun and kept people amused for the rest of the trip. (look for the webcam gallery coming soon...) the rules meeting for our new game, which we decided to call 'not in the face!' was several hours long, and to type in a report in it here would take forrrrr ever! so, i will leave that for another time. gloom played ech...and i forgot who won, and then i played poinko and i won. we all decided that it was a lot more fun than just plain pokemon. the night wound down around two am or so, and we all went to bed. whew! what a day. tuesday, august 6th uh...this is the day we did everything else... err....well, we were a bit off our schedule that jolt, our social director, had compiled for us. since on monday we had not gone to pike place, the aquarium, or the space needle/seattle center, we had to do a bit of serious revision on tuesday. and....well....everyone sort of slept. late. a lot. cause we were tired. aaaaanyways...we called dmtm and set up dinner. mtm had already gone to gencon, and steve and pat were busy getting ready to go (they all had to get on planes in the morning) so, it was only dmtm who could meet us for dinner. we decided to go out cause we were out of cookable food (still had plenty of snacks!) so, we had to work that into the schedule. FINALLY we decided to go to the aquarium, to see the pacific giant octopus. it took a while to get everyone moved out the door. i turned on the webcam again while we got ready. off through pike place! i wish we'd had time to go wander around it properly. i never got to see them throw the fish. but, we got to the aquarium, where poinko bought us all tickets to get in. aww! what a guy. and then we went in. it was a nice setup. there are tide pools and things as an initial exhibit, and that was neat. i touched some things. aenemones are really kind of creepy feeling. starfish are hard. sea cucumbers are squashy, and i will never ever order them in chinese restaurants. we got to see a hermit crab trade up his shell and that was interesting. i'm sorry. it just does not look like food. then we went to look for the octopus! giant pacific octopus......we couldn't wait. check it out! it's not quite big enough to attack microsoft, but it was still a pretty big octopus. gonna git you sucka OH NO IT'S GOT POINKO SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING then we went to look at the other exhibits. they had sea dragons. a bunch of kids were talking about kingdras. no flash photography, tho.....but they had a land shark..... we went and looked at the aqua dome. i'd forgotten how big halibuts actually are. then we went and took pictures of the otters for jolt and ang. did you know that chicks dig otters? that's what jolt says anyways.   then it was time to run off and meet dmtm. we took the bus back to the hotel, then transferred to another one to take us to broadway. that was an entertaining stretch of territory, it was kind of like the east village but with really short buildings. we found the restaurant (aoki's) and it was closed.....but just then we heard a loud "HEY!" and turned around. hey, it was dmtm pulling up in his truck. we told him the place was closed for another half hour, and then we watched him park his truck and trotted along after him to watch him get coffee. on the way he berated us for coming to seattle and not drinking coffee. well what can i say. none of us are coffee drinkers. after he got his coffee we went to urban outfitters. that's a cool store, we have one of those in ny. after wandering around and looking at stuff it was time to go eat. it was a really good restaurant too. the sushi was great and the tempura was also excellent. and it was fun to sit and talk to dmtm. even if he did tell poinko that the wasabi was guacamole. eventually he had to get going tho and do his laundry and all to get ready for his trip in the morning. so, we told him goodbye and went on home. on the way, we stopped off at fao schwartz so poinko could play the floor piano. poinko had a good time overall, now that i come to think of it..... anyways then we went back to the hotel. we took a bit of a break, since we were all pretty tired right about now. i wanted to go to this japanese grocery store. fortunately it was open til 11, so we didn't need to hustle. we checked out the map to see where it was, and then went out to find a bus that went there. i must say, there are a lot of helpful people in seattle. you don't actually need to know how to get someplace...you just go stare bewilderedly at the bus maps or schedules and someone will come tell you how to get there. this old man came up and gave us a bus map sort of thing, and as we headed for the right bus stop, gloom joked that it was like a videogame, and we'd need the map later to solve some kind of puzzle. aaaaanyways, as we are waiting for the bus, poinko discovers an amazing thing..... :O the brick is loose!! if we're in a game, there's something good under here!!! the part of this i thought was just awesome was poink didn't even care that people were staring at him. anyways he was having a hard time so gloom gave him a hand.....   awww!! all that work....and there's no treasure under the loose brick. anyways then we went to chinatown and the store. we were there a looong time. and it was great. we bought some cool trinkets with ramune candy pellets packaged with, and a lot of junk food. we took some pictures to send to www.engrish.com, and the 'sanki the happy squid' song was born. i didn't see it, i was in a different aisle. but it was funny, i am assured. we got back really late. we turned on the webcam and then we packed our stuff and got ready to go. everyone was feeling kind of sad....cause, i mean...tomorrow we all had to split up again and it had been a fantastic five days. we were all tired and knew we needed rest for traveling, but it was really hard to call it a night. wednesday, august 7th sad goodbye day :( well, we all got up and got ready to go....it just sucked. i was going to miss gloom and poinko so much. i still had ech around for a few days, but still...we got all our stuff, checked out, and gloom and poinko walked with us to the bus terminal. we got our bags checked and got in the bus line. we all talked and laughed and all, trying to keep the good time going as long as we could. but they had to start boarding, and we sort of shuffled our bags down the line, looking pathetic and trying not to start crying. i gave poinko and gloom a last hug and kiss goodbye, and we got on the bus. they left to get a cab to the airport. as we pulled out of the bus terminal, we managed to get a shot of the space needle.... seattle was great, the tournament was great, the friends were great, the fun was great.....we had a fantastic time. we can't wait 'til worlds 2003!!!!! :D anyways, keep tuned for the special feature on the webcam, 'not in the face', and a couple more photo galleries.