And Drink the Wild Air: BlizzCon 2010, Part Five: The Convention Ends

Our second day of BlizzCon actually didn't happen all at the Anaheim Convention Center like on the first day; in fact, we spent at least four hours right in the middle of the Con at Downtown Disney.

What the heck, right?! We spent $300 on tickets for this event (not to mention airline tickets and other expenses) and didn't even spend all of day two--the last day!--there? Trust me, we're not crazy (okay, okay, actually, we kind of are), because we had a perfectly good excuse: college football.

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Mr. L's team had a huge game that day versus a mutual SEC rival, LSU. To many, this probably wasn't a good enough reason to miss a good chunk of BlizzCon, and to be honest, we didn't plan on spending that much time there. But when you've got a fun group of people hanging out with you as well as food and alcohol, well, you don't really want the good times to end.

But let's start from the beginning of the day.

We woke up a little earlier than the day before and made our way to downtown Anaheim for the last time. All three of us were pretty excited about the final day, but Mr. L and I were just a wee bit more excited about it being Game Day. Mr. L's team, Auburn, was looking at a big game rank-wise, while my team, Alabama, was looking at a big game historically speaking (Alabama versus Tennessee, a very old rivalry). We'd made plans to head to a sports bar in Downtown Disney called ESPN Zone (which was pretty awesome by the way!) to watch the Auburn-LSU game later in the day.

We spent a little bit of time at the Con and met up with our friends again. I think the guys managed to get a little Diablo III playing time in before it was time to head to the bar. Our friend "Barackas," a fellow football lover (and Alabama fan!) tagged along with us to join in on the fun.

ESPN Zone was a pretty awesome place. There were even TVs in the ladies' restroom with our game on! I really wish we had one around us -- I'm pretty sure we'd spend almost every Game Day there having a blast.

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We saddled ourselves up to the bar after figuring out which TV had our game on and started having a great time!

(Just arrived and getting ready to get trashed, I think -- personal photo)

(View from our seats! -- personal photo)

The original plan was to only stay until halftime, but when that rolled around, the game was tied up and the guys were pretty buzzed on their beers. So I told them we could stay another quarter (although I don't think Mr. L or the others really realized what was going on by then). I'd made friends with the woman sitting next to me by then anyways and was talking to her for a good while. It turned out she was a good friend of Gene Chizik, Auburn's head coach, so she was there to root on the Tigers to a victory over LSU. Our bartender was also looking for an Auburn win, but only because he'd bet on the game ;)

"We'll leave at the end of the 3rd quarter" soon turned into "Okay, we'll watch the whole game," so we ended up staying at the bar for about 4 1/2 hours. But the guys really enjoyed themselves, so I figured there was no harm done. Well, except the harm to their sobriety -- for example:

(Joe kept thinking throughout the rest of the evening that I was taking pictures of him when I was in fact recording video)

Somehow, thanks to Barackas's level headed albeit drunken self as well as my trusty GPS, I drove us back to the convention (thank God there wasn't a lot of traffic!) in one piece. We made it back inside and they made me take pictures of them in front of things, which they didn't remember at all later.

(They made me retake this picture later because they thought they hadn't gotten one with the statue. -- personal photo)

We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the convention, and it was a lot of fun when we got to meet the rest of Steamwheedle Cartel that made it to BlizzCon! I'm pretty sure there were like, 20 people or so just from our realm, which was crazy. I had no idea that many would be there, but it was nice to meet everyone and listen to Joe and Mr. L try to drunkenly recruit for our guild!

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We only stayed at the meet up for about 20 minutes or so because we had to find some kind of seats for the closing ceremony. We ended up standing next to a wall since no more seats were available :(

What was the closing ceremony? Just Tenacious D. :)

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They were awesome and really rocked hard! It was a great way to end the two-day nerd extravaganza.

We hung out for a little while after the concert, but it was pretty evident that we were all exhausted. So we said our goodbyes to our new (and no longer virtual!) friends, promised to keep in touch on the game, and headed back to the hotel to crash. However, before we left the convention, Mr. L and Joe made me stop and take the same picture I took before (although they didn't believe me when I said we'd already taken this picture until I actually showed it to them...)

(personal photo)