Dragon*Con 2006: Day 2

Saturday morning marked two firsts for us. One was that we were in Atlanta for DragonCon early enough to actually see the parade. The second was that we were actually in the parade! Not only that, we were part of the debut of drumming and dancing in the parade’s attendance. We got up at 7:00am to get ready – Jeff and I had an ultra-expensive breakfast in the hotel – and get out the door by 9:00am to walk to the parade starting point. It was an awesome expanse of Star Wars characters, pirates, anime, superheroes, and things I couldn’t quite explain. For 7 blocks, Atlanta became a nightmarish spectacle of everything good and evil about science fiction, fantasy, and the geeks that love it. We headed up the parade with loud drumming and louder costumes (the dancers) like a high school marching band. Good times – I hope to do this again next year.

Later that morning we arrived at MARTA to pick up Balthazar and treat him to day at DragonCon as well. He had to nap almost immediately upon arriving, so he and Amy took care of that while Jeff and I (he as Boba Fett) strolled around the con. We met up with Bob (Vader Painter) and his wife, Kristen (Sith Vixen). They took us on a celebrity strole to meet David Prowse and others before Boba Fett and I split. By the time Balthazar woke up, Jeff was Willy Wonka and I was Superman. We gathered up the family and took them down for some costume walking. Balthazar really wanted to see the monsters and he got a good eye-full. He was so excited to point them all out to me. Everyone was very kid-friendly too, so we were able to reinforce that “monsters are our friends.” That’s something we tell him to help push away the in-grained childhood fears of monsters in the dark.

We stayed in costume long enough to get some pictures made, meet and greet, and sweat a healthy bit. After that, it was off to dinner in the hotel – a bad choice. We thought it would be convenient and quick. We were dead wrong! It took us nearly three hours to get fed and of course it cost an arm and a leg. Three hours is waaaay to long to expect a 3-year-old to be patient. By the end, I was tempted to just allow Balthazar to do whatever he wanted to do in the restaraunt. Joshua had joined us for dinner, though he didn’t eat anything they had. We had good conversation between the four of us, and we taught Balthazar some tricks he could play on his friends. He had a pretty good time playing them on all of us, including Joshua whom he had just met.

We are crashing relatively early tonight because we have the boy and because we’re just plain tired. Tomorrow, we take Balthazar back out to MARTA to join with the grandparents again and we’ll be childless parents for our last day at DragonCon.