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yet another event has come and gone...let's see if i can get a report up while i still remember all that happened! worlds was a week long event for me, beginning thursday morning as ech and i boarded the bus for seattle. you'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now, but greyhound just won't let go of us. it's not so bad though if you travel with a friend...and this time we were going on the 1337 bus!!! take a look and see for yourself. and yeah....we chose this route on purpose :D who could resist?
we got to see a lot of....well, we saw a lot of brown and grey and sagebrush. utah through idaho was pretty much one big long stretch of the same old drab scenery. occasional diversions arose in the form of stops at convenience stores but there is only so much junk food one can buy, and there were never any good books. i did have my skirt to work on though, and that filled up the time admirably. i sewed and ech watched. if he was paying attention, he now knows how to put in a lapped zipper. thank goodness for my cd player...it can also play mp3 files burned on cd so we sat and listened to a six hour cd. that also helped pass the time (i'd bought a splitter so we could share my cd player) and eventually the sun went down and we got a little bit of sleep. the middle of the night transfers weren't fun, but we managed.
we rolled into seattle at about five am. wow, did that ever feel early! we got off, i went to change my shirt and try and make my hair look a little more orderly (ha!) so we would look respectable to the hotel check in, and we headed out into seattle. it was still kind of dark out. we could see the hotel from the bus depot, so that was easy enough. a few blocks walk and there we were. i went up to the desk and inquired about early check in. now, there is early check in, and then there is early check in. i don't think ANYONE will let you check in at 5:15 am, but they were very nice to us and let us leave our bags which was an enormous help. 5:30 and we were back on the streets of seattle, with about five hours to kill until a room might be available. pretty much nothing was going on. not a lot of people, no stores open, and we looked around for someplace to eat. we decided to check out the convention center, so we walked over to that and spotted a kinko's. yay! kinko's is open 24/7!!! so in we went, and filled up about forty minutes using their computers to get online. i did a short update and we hung out in the chat room and talked to people. that was fun. then we looked at the forums, and decided we'd go find something else to do. ech went and looked and said the convention center was open, so we headed out into the main builiding to see what there was to see. nice convention center! they did have some food places, none of which were open. we spotted a big pokemon event banner and headed in that direction. up four floors to the exhibit hall.....ooooh....there it was with one temptingly open door. should we or shouldn't we? ah of course we should. we sauntered over and poked our heads inside. nice! it was a really big setup and we wished we'd brought our cameras. it sort of reminded us of when we got into the event hall early back at the first super trainer showdown. the room was in the process of being set up, and no one was there. we walked a few steps in and looked around. within five minutes or so a security guard appeared and ordered us out. she said 'we saw you on the security cameras! you kids have no business here!' very brusquely. hee hee...but we left amicably. not even six thirty--we've been in seattle for an hour and a half and already we've gotten in trouble. all i can say is they didn't ought to have left the door open if they didn't want anyone in there. :D by now the attractions of the convention center had palled a bit, so we went back out on to the street to see if we could find someplace to eat. there was just nothing. we walked down pike street, and every food place we found was smoking only. i hate smoke so we kept looking. eventually we just gave up and ate at the turf. it was smoky but they had really good oatmeal there, served with butter AND brown sugar. by now with one thing or another we'd managed to pare the clock ahead to eight thirty. time was just crawling, i tell you. we left the restaurant and figured we'd head back to the convention center since that was at least smoke free and had places to sit. i stopped in to a drugstore on the way there, and that killed some time, but it was still a bit before nine o clock when we got back to the convention center. all of our decks and cards were in our luggage, else we could have played a few games i guess...but we hadn't thought of taking them out before we stored our bags. we sat down at a table near the telephones and thought of things to do to pass the time. i noticed that there was a phone book there that was not tied down, so i went and got it and we looked up all the people we knew from the seattle area. if you live in the seattle area we just might now have your home phone numbers. ^_^ a lot of people had unlisted numbers and i commend them on their sensible decision. you never know when crazy people from out of town will come and look you up in the phone book! that only took about ten minutes, though, and then we were bored again. we decided to go see if the visitors' information center downstairs was open yet. it was, so we collected brochures on just about everything and got at least one of all the free offers for visitors coupons we could find. then we went and found a table and sat down to sort through it all. this is when we more or less planned all the extra stuff we wanted to do while we were in town. by now it was a little before ten, and we decided to go back to the summerfield and see about early check-in. happily for us there was a room available, so we collected our bags and went on up. niiiiice digs!! it was great to finally be installed in our new home. i showered then lounged on the couch for a while, working off and on on my khaki skirt. it still needed a waistband facing and a hem. around eleven thirty or so, gloom and poinko arrived, pretending they were room service. i was happy to see them both and they admired the room. we sat around and talked and snacked for a few hours, then headed over to the convention center to check out the action at the grinder. pkmnx was going to meet us there, as were frank, chris, and jake--some friends of gloom from his league. there were quite a few people lined up waiting for the grinder to begin. we found pk pretty quickly and that was great. it was so nice to see him again. gloom found his friends easily as well, and introduced everybody. pk mentioned he'd been there helping people with their decks, as a lot of the people lined up waiting were there in response to local ads on tv and so forth and weren't really up on the format. i think that was pretty nice of pk to be helping out people who were essentially his competiton. what a guy. anyways, they opened up the doors and we all went in. we took some pictures, and spotted mtm and dmtm. we said hi to them when they had a chance to talk to us and gave dmtm some of the new promos. he said baracus (tyranitar)'s power was too long. lazy lazy dmtm! but after he read it he liked it. we said hi to a few other people there that we knew, then i expressed a wish for a drink so we went over to subway (adjacent to the exhibit hall) while we were sitting there, team compendium showed up. it was nice to see them all and we talked for a bit. they headed on in to the event, then came back to ask us if we wanted to go to gameworks with them. we said sure! and headed back in to the event. it was due to start but was getting off late, due to the overwhelmingly large number of people who'd showed up unprepared as far as decks went. all over everywhere, dci staff, wotc employees, tc and other helpful people were spread out going through players' decks and card binders, helping them to make their decks tournament legal. they could have just disallowed the entry of the people who weren't up to the format, but instead they helped them get their decks into shape. even though it delayed the start a bit, it was a nice gesture to the people who showed up not really knowing the game or format all that thoroughly. hopefully people will carry away that positive experience and keep an interest in the game. anyways, eventually they had to start. there was a big crowd particpating, so we wished pk and gloom's friends luck and looked around for team compendium. it took them a bit of time to collect themselves but soon we were headed off to gameworks. of course after we got there i remembered that i'd gotten a coupon for gameworks that let you buy a $20 card for $10. poinko offered to go get it, and left. it was only a few blocks to the hotel, so we waited. and waited.....finally ech decided to go after poinko. i gave him some stuff to put in the room, and we waited....and waited.....gloom and i wandered the place looking for our favorite games. finally ech and poinko returned with the coupon. five of us could use it, which made 'sensei happy. ;) we got our cards and scattered. ech and gloom hit the crane machines. ech got a badger on the first try and gave it to me. i tried for a dinosaur, picked it up twice only to have it drop out of the claw. i gave up, but gloom went after it til he got it and gave it to me. we went over to watch poinko who was winning a lot of tickets on this big wheel of fortune thing. gloom headed over to the house of the dead games, and i played that ping pong basketball game thing, which is pretty much the only ticket giving game i'm any good at. meanwhile poinko had actually managed to hit the 1,000 ticket jackpot, and he came rushing up the stairs trailing tickets everywhere. chrisbo took a picture of us all waving our tickets. my string of tickets looked pretty lame compared to poinko's. i managed to get ech, poinko, and gloom to stick together long enough to pose for an instant sticker photo group shot. gah we all looked awful! but oh well. how about that festive jungle border? niiiice!
then i wanted to go play my favorite game, which is the jurassic park one that you sit in with a friend and shoot the dinosaurs. i played a few rounds of that with ech, then we went to look for gloom and poinko. we found them over by the house of the dead games, and we watched 'sensei and big daddy snorlax shoot zombies for a while. then we watched gloom play the sniper game. he was really good at it too. apparently i missed gloom playing house of the dead 2 with both guns at once. oh well. i'd have liked to have seen that.....i do that with point blank at home but i've never tried to do it in public. it was nearing five thirty so we headed back to the grinder. poinko had gotten a blue stuffed frog with his tickets, and he also got gameworks pins, tattoos and candy necklaces for us as well. awww! poinko is so nice. so we were all decked out with prizes when we returned. at any rate, we got back to the grinder. jake had gotten eliminated, (it was single elimination) but chris and pkmnx were still playing. we pestered dmtm and mtm a bit more, and told them we had no idea where tc was. we thought they were on their way over. we took a few more pictures and handed out some promos, and waited for the last match to end. pkmnx was almost there! he won his last match, and we were all really proud of him. poor chris didn't make it in though, but both he and jake took the disappointment really well. the fact that poinko was chasing jake around and generally having a great time with him probably helped a lot. tc was there by then, i told them we were going out to eat and they told us to drop by the crown plaza later if we liked cause that's where they were going to be. it was looking like the grocery store trip was not going to happen, since it was nearing seven o clock at this point. i wanted to go out to eat at least once, and we decided that friday night was as good a night as any. gloom asked if we minded if frank, chris and jake joined us and we said of course we don't mind. it being seattle, i wanted seafood and if anyone there didn't like fish they did a pretty good job of hiding it! we decided to investigate the 'sea feast' over at the crab pot. after dropping off our stuff, changing clothes, fixing faces, whatever, back in the hotel, we walked back down pike towards the waterfront through pike place market, looking at a map, we managed to find the crab pot. ouch! it was really expensive though. more than i really had to spare, so we decided to try ivar's acres of clams. (mainly cause i just loved the name.) we found that place and had about a half hour to wait. it was nice to just sit down after all the walking and so forth we'd done that day. one woman who was also waiting found us alarming for some reason, unless that was her customary facial expression which i suppose is possible. eventually they could seat us (it takes a while to get a table for eight, but not nearly as long as a table for 37) we'd all pretty much made up our minds what we wanted to eat at that point, since we'd been staring at the menu the whole time we were waiting. all the food was good and the soft drink refills were free! everyone was happy but poinko who'd gotten strawberry lemonade instead which didn't come with refills. it was a long and noisy dinner but a lot of fun. afterwards everyone was really tired, so we took cabs back to the hotel. the cab thing was funny, because on the side they say 'emerald city taxi' which is humorous on two levels...the oz thing of course and also cause gloom's league is called 'the emerald city gym'. ostensibly we were going to playtest when we got back...uhhh....did NOT happen! i had to make some phone calls and get the team shirts ready for the next day, and we all wanted a good night's sleep. so finally around eleven thirty or so, we all turned in. the first day in seattle had been a lot of fun. and you're probably sick of reading my report. but hey, i'm trying to be thorough.
ah the first official day
of the tournament. first on the schedule for the day was the
team sealed play event, which i was playing in with jd
gloom. pk and poinko were up and out early, and ech had
gotten up and gotten ready, while gloom and i sort of
dawdled. since ech was ready before we were he was nice
enough to raid the breakfast buffet and go see about signing
us up for the event. gloom and i got our live nude sneasel
shirts on and off we went. ech couldn't sign up for us, but
the line was looking good so we got into it and signed up. i
filled out the team card, writing in 'live nude sneasels' in
the team name section and hoping for the best. i wasn't 100%
sure they'd pass the name. oh well, we can but try. we'd
persuaded ech and poinko to team up, and we stood around
trying to come up with a good name for them. they settled on
'team redundancy team' and we were all set to go. after
signing up, we met up with soslowpoke who was playing in the
event as well with his little brother, and also magmar2000
found us. he brought us presents! he had some e3 boosters
and a cute stuffed gecko from when he went to hawaii and
also he brought a little gift from mars and ang....those
guys are nuts. 
4x gastly 3x potion 1x reverrrse hoooolllooooo
full heal energy yes, it's heavy on energy but the one thing i've always rued not having in draft is enough energy, so that's what i decided to do. 13 basics in a 40 card deck really ought to have covered it, but i had the most fantastic run of bad luck in drawing basics i've ever experienced in a tournament. i didn't write down specifics of our games...i remember we won the first two, and then lost the rest that we played. we didn't finish the tournament cause mtm asked us if we'd go teach some new players how to play (we weren't going to finish very high at that point so we figured why not help out) ech and poinko however did great, winding up in third place. soslowpoke and his brother edged them out for the final game, coming in second. it was a lot of fun, i love legendary sealed and in the team format it was even better. i had a great teammate and if i'd done better at drawing basics we might have finished farther ahead. i don't know what our final standings were cause we both forgot to go look. during the tournament, in between rounds, digital kaizer myuu came over and gave me a sign to wear that she made. apparently the fact we both had red hair was confusing people, (we've both got the same first name too, what are the odds?) so she labeled me so people would know which of us was which. i made a hole in it and put it on one of my dog tag chains.  (i guess my hair was a bit on the pink side at this point, it fades like argh! in the utah sun...no wonder there are so many blonde people out here.) also she gave us one of
her cards that she made, and i gave her one one of ours. the
blank she made looked really cool, take a look!  after the team play, it was late afternoon. we'd gotten a partial list of the expedition set, talked to the people who were displaying it (i was surprised that they'd heard of zeo and had visited the site) took some pics, etc. i was feeling really tired at this point so we decided to take a break before the prof event. i STILL hadn't picked my deck. typical...anyways so we headed back to the suite. poinko and pk and ech offered to go to the grocery store, so i wrote them out a list and off they went. i laid on the couch a bit to rest, then remembered i still hadn't finished my skirt so i got up to do that. i got it most of the way done by the time the grocery shoppers had returned. then i got up to make dinner, which was nachos. we were supposed to have chicken on the nachos too but somehow the chicken had gotten left behind, so we had vegetarian nachos which made magmar happy. ech accused mags of hiding the chicken, and mags denied it. hehe....(later on we found out the cashier didn't bag it). i wasn't feeling very energetic at this point so i went and showered to perk myself up a bit. it helped a bit, and we all got ourselves sorted out and ready to go. realizing the ONLY unlimited deck i had in 60 card ready to go condition was the sneasel king krow i'd built a few weeks earlier (and played a total of 3 games with) that was my deck for the event, i grabbed it and we left. got there just in time......said hi to people and sat down. they announced pizza, then posted the pairings. i was to face (i think his name was eskil, and i can't remember his last name, i'm sorry...i meant to take notes and didn't.) it was looking like it would be a really fun event, everyone seemed happy and excited to play. i kept getting a sort of vertigo feeling, which kind of sucked but i was eager to see if i'd be able to pull the deck off. lo and behold, eskil was playing sneaselkingkrow too! hehe....apparently a LOT of people did. who knew? anyways, he got the slowkings out first and that's a big part of the game. he won pretty quickly, and offered another game to pass the time. i really needed the practice ( i wish my lucky duck deck had been ready to go!) so that sounded great. we played again, and i have to say he played that deck excellently, beating me again with not much contest. pretty much everyone was finishing up at this point. gloom had won his match, i forget if ech had won his, and i never found out if poinko did or not. i'd been fighting off feeling dizzy since the second game. it happens now and then and usually if i just sit it will pass. it wasn't passing so i put my head down a bit. at some point ech and pk came over to ask if i was all right and that's about when i realized i wasn't. bleh. i sat there for a while, and gloom and poinko came over, and everyone discussed what to do with me. (i'm not dead! i don't want to go on the cart!! ;) ) i think by this time the next rounds were starting so i told them all to go play. pkmnx sat with me, and got me some water. (i'm probably mixing up the order of what all happened here, i can't really remember it that clearly.) professor maple came over to see if i was all right, and i embarrassed myself by starting to cry 'cause i'd blown the tournament. he lent me his stuffed jigglypuff and ech and pkmnx took me back to the hotel. i insisted ech go back and that poinko and gloom stay and finish the tournament and then i guess i fell asleep. pk stayed tho which was really nice of him, i hope he wasn't too bored. and that finished saturday for me.
i feel really bad about sunday. ech and i were going to play in the team constructed. we'd made amphy decks that we had high hopes for even though we'd not had the time to actually PLAY them yet (typical!). the event started at ten. i am pretty sure i'd told ech i'd play in the tournament the next day but no one woke me up til about eleven thirty. they all figured i should sleep, apparently. poinko had left to do his shift and pkmnx was waiting for his theme deck challenge at 2, so we got ready rather slowly. i finished up my skirt, we talked about what all we wanted to do that day (and i apologized repeatedly for missing the team constructed) and we headed over to the convention center around one or so. i really wanted to actually finish and turn in a create a card (i've never actually finished one) so we stopped off to buy crayons and then went in. there was some space to work, so i sat down and stared at the thing. what to make? i had wanted to make a live nude sneasel card, but there were glittery lavender and green crayons in the box so i decided to do shining charizard. i sketched it out and started to color. i don't really think it looked all that good though. some days i do a really good job, other times i don't seem to get the right touch. BUT i finished it and turned it in, and there finally i've done one. will it ever see the light of day? :D who knows. i guess i ought to have taken a picture of it, but oh well. poinko sat and made cards too, he did a weezing that looked really great, and then an elekid and a bunch of others. he drew a lot of pictures for people which i thought was really nice. ech and gloom and i had our professor shift starting at 3, so we figured it was time to go change into our (shudder) khakis and t shirts. we went up to the desk, and were really sad to learn they were out of shirts. i don't really understand how that happened, cause i thought everyone was supposed to register weeks beforehand. :( i know we did....but, alas, no staff shirts for us. aww! i was lookng forward to adding yet another shirt to my collection. oh well. so we went and put our khakis on, and i'd somehow managed to make my skirt too big. i guess that's what you get sewing on the road. we went back and checked in with the registration desk to get our assignments. i'd assumed they'd stick me someplace where they figured i couldn't do any harm, but apparently they'd added a third theme deck challenge (response to those was overwhelming!) and jake sent me over to be the head judge. eep. i was happy to see greg
sauk was there as a judge already, and richard whom i hadn't
met previously. i told them i was there to judge as well,
and the whole thing ran really well. we had a smaller group,
only 32 and that made it easier. greg did all the legwork
between the registration desk and the play area, so i mainly
signed off play slips, answered some rulings questions and
generally supervised the players. for the most part they
were all well versed in the game so it went quite smoothly.
i did see some familiar faces which was nice. ech and gloom
had both received gym drafts to run, so on the few occasions
i needed to run up to the registration area, i checked in on
them. ech's went well but gloom had, as he put it, 'the
draft from hell'. poor thing! i'm sure eventually he'll tell
you all about it. pkmnx and soslowpoke dropped by
occasionally to tell me how their theme deck events were
going (they had both managed to get the same theme deck)
both were playing very well. our lot played really quickly
on the average, and the entire tournament took only about 2
and a half hours. still no bounties!
awww....i really wanted to play dmtm cause he had these cool
imakuni! game boy straps....but i also wanted to play mtm
cause he'd been working so hard i'd barely seen him the
whole event. i knew i was clear from playing any of the rest
of the suite cause they were all waaay ahead of me :D
anyways, my last match was finally a bounty match. i got to
play greg sauk. that was a lot of fun. he really gave me a
run for my money too, it was a great match. in the end it
came down to me not being able to get energy back to save
myself, and i was on the verge of decking myself. he won
when time was called with more prizes. really enjoyable note
to end on though, the game was great. the whole prof
tournament was great, i wish i'd been there for all of it on
saturday night as well. and i wish i'd played my lucky duck
deck, which probably would have gotten creamed but it was my
own. still i am a little proud of how well i did with an
unfamiliar one with a low energy count. 
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