my moral standing is lying down

For whosoever might be interested, I just got this email:

Yoshitaka Amano Comes To NYAF!

(Really! We're Serious! Amano Is Coming!)

This is Lance Fensterman, Show Manager behind the New York Anime Festival. I am very pleased -- very honored -- to announce the New York Anime Festival's latest Guest of Honor, Yoshitaka Amano! Mr. Amano is an artist whose credits include Final Fantasy, Sandman, and Vampire Hunter D and is known and loved by anime fans, gamers, and art collectors from around the world. He joins fellow Vampire Hunter D talents Hideyuki Kikuchi (the author behind the Vampire Hunter D novel series) and Kevin Leahy (the translator of the Vampire Hunter D novel series) at NYAF. All are Co-Sponsored by Dark Horse Comics.

Yoshitaka Amano began his career at Tatsunoko Productions where he served as a character designer for animated series including Gatchaman and Casshern. After 15 years with the studio, he chose to leave the comfort of a steady job to pursue his career as an artist. As a freelance illustrator, Amano contributed covers and illustrations to novels including Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D, Kaoru Kurimoto's Guin Saga, and Yoshiki Tanaka's The Heroic Legend of Arslan, teamed with Mamoru Oshii to create the film Angel's Egg, collaborated with Neil Gaiman to make the award-winning graphic novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters, and partnered with video game studio Squaresoft to create the look and feel for the company's flagship Final Fantasy series.

Mr. Amano has worked with media including pencils, ink, paint, ceramic, stained glass, and fabric, and exhibitions of his work have taken place in cities including Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin, and New York City.

I hope you'll join me this September at the New York Anime Festival as we welcome Yoshitaka Amano to New York City!

This is a "pseudo" con report because I didn't actually do anything at the con but work at Anna's booth. Not that I'm complaining, I actually had an awesome time working there with Anna, Jim, Ben, Judy, Rymel, manga Chris (why is he called manga Chris anyway?), Charles, uh... who else was there? I'm sure I had more fun at the booth than I would have had just roaming around -- it didn't seem like there was a whole lot to do, if you weren't involved with some of the behind-the-scenes things. I will leave reporting of any WCS drama up to Chris. ^^;

It was also really nice that NoE people came by to visit me, and also have their pictures taken! It was good to see some of you whom I haven't seen in quite a while -- Lizette, Yoshi, Will, Angelica, Isha. =D koyappi, I'd like to see a con report from you since I didn't get to see anything else of the con. I didn't even get to see the other side of the dealers room other than the two aisles that I had to walk down in order to get to Anna's booth! ^_~; Which wasn't bad, since I didn't spend any money on unnecessary things. The only money I spent aside from food this weekend was $2 on one of Maryann's pins -- the Weighted Companion Cube, of course. &hearts!

Dinner on Saturday with NA people was fun! It was good to see Joe & Morgan again; it's just too bad Judy and I didn't make it up to the Tower bar at the end of the night. ;_; But huge dinner last night was SRSLY HUGE! And lots of fun; with lots of bad jokes and puns going around. Noise glands and all~! Dessert was, as Jim described it, a block of lactose, thinly sliced... aka, a massive sundae (whipped cream and ice cream over bananas and fudge with nuts and other sweet cookie things) called the Titanic. Of which I did not have very much because the brandy-soaked strawberry shortcake was just amazing, oh and that whole being lactose-intolerant thing.

Split a cab home with Maryann, didn't get home til 12:30am, didn't go to sleep til around 1:30/2am. And then overslept! Luckily, still got to work on time. Whew!

Oh yeah! Judy, Maryann and I had our picture taken by Anna against her photo paper backdrop -- they were really cute pics. =D I'll scan the stickers we printed out at home later and post them.

Last night I got home late; something like 11:30pm or so. I started making kanji flash cards, but I know I fell asleep around 1am. I know I was having some weird/funny? dreams because I woke up around 3:45 giggling hysterically. Damn, but I wish I knew what the hell I'd been dreaming about! I wish I'd been able to do more than just open my eyes and look at the clock, turn off the light, and go back to sleep. I think I even started laughing again once I settled back into sleep. It's really amusing and also quite weird to wake up because you hear yourself laughing and don't realize until you've dragged yourself into awareness that, oh, that's me. ^^;

Just before I woke up at 7:15, I'd been dreaming that I was standing in a bedroom that Maryann and I shared; it was a really large room, about the size of the whole first floor of my house. It was really messy with clothes all over the floor and surfaces (which isn't hugely surprising if you've seen either of our rooms). I was looking around and spotted an orange and white striped cat curled up on one of the beds. I turned toward Maryann to ask her when she'd gotten a cat and as I looked around the room again, I spotted FIVE more of them! They were all curled up in places where they kind of blended in with the background; it was kind of like playing "Where's Waldo?"

In other RL oddness, 8 or 9 of us got stuck in the Tower elevator last night at Nerd Avengers. We were all amused -- to varying degrees, or at least I was. When we used the call button to contact help and said that we were stuck, I think they thought we were pranking because we were all laughing a bit. >_<; We called back a couple times (in which they hung up on us), but finally got through and said that we were stuck, and they sent someone to open the doors. It was pretty fortunate that we were stuck so close to the actual floor, so we could exit relatively easily with just a step up. I think we were probably stuck in there for less than 10 minutes, though, so it could have been worse.

I think Chris decided that it was all AJ's fault, but I don't remember why (aside from him leaving early?).

I'm really beginning to look forward to NYAF now~. Yaye for working with friends. =D

I thought I was going to have something more interesting to say, but I guess not.