Convention-fail!

Today we went to Comicon. I think Lawrence is now permanently opposed to all future conventions. We actually drove down to san diego on saturday. There was a bunch of stuff we had to take care of beforehand though so we didn't actually leave until 2pm or so.

The drive down was rather uneventful until Lawrence asked if I had brought our ticket printouts. I hadn't seen them on the bed (where he said he had put them) when I put the bedsheet into the washing machine (meaning there's no way I could have missed them if they were there). Turns out he had already put them into our bag.

We spent the night at Xin's place. His coworker, Lynn, came over with her griddle and we cooked Korean bbq for dinner. We played rock band, I chatted with Lynn, the guys played Wii Golf & Street Fighter IV. I totally conked out around midnight. Lawrence, since his sleep schedule has been skewed, did not go to sleep until around 4am. We got up around 7:30am and left for the convention at around 8:00am. Xin lives about 20min. from the convention center so it didn't take us too long. We drove around trying to find a breakfast place as well as parking. We parked, and then we realized we left the ticket printouts in our bag at Xin's house. Major-fail. By this time is was 9am. We had to drive back to Xin's house and then back to the convention center - by that time it was 10am and Lawrence's cousins had reached San Diego (they drove from LA). There was some traffic and in that hour we were driving, all the parking lots had completely filled up. We ended up parking at a mall that was about 5 blocks from the convention center.

I was real grumpy and tired because we didn't have time to grab food. We stopped by a Ralph's supermarket and picked up some breakfast burritos. After we left, Lawrence asked if I had the ticket printouts. I told him no. He had asked for them earlier because we had his cousin's ticket and he wanted to give it to his cousin (haha, before we ended up losing it probably). He never gave any papers back to me. This caused him to get majorly stressed and frustrated. He went back into the supermarket to try to find where he left the papers. Finally he found it and we proceeded on our way to the convention center. We got in without much trouble as there wasn't really a line. For being the last day, there were still a TON of people there. Of course, this was Comicon.

We walked through some of the exhibition hall...first back and forth through the artist tables and then all the way down the hall along a wall. At the end we were kind of tired so we sat down at the tables there. By then it was about 12pm and everyone wanted to get some food so we left the convention center and walked back to the mall we had parked at. We ate at the mall's food court - can you say BLEGH? I was hoping to try out some good local dining but the others I guess just wanted cheap mall crap. Um, so I guess I'm a food snob. :)

We went back to the convention center to explore the exhibition hall some more. Along the way, we managed to lose the others (there were 6 of us total). I actually kind of liked it because 6 people is too many to have to stop at every table every person wanted to visit. It makes me feel bad when I want to stop at a table because I take a long time and it's not usually anything anyone else is interested in. Then, Lawrence gets a call from one of his cousins and it turns out the other cousin is missing (Phillip).

Phillip didn't bring his phone, and he wasn't with any of us. This was around 2:45pm. We all sort of freak out because the place was freakin' HUGE and now we had to somehow find Phillip - who could have been anywhere. We all circled through the exhibition hall multiple times. Lawrence walked back to the parking garage. I walked through the upper level of the convention center. His other cousins sat near the Lost & Found. Unfortunately, they don't page people unless there's a medical emergency or it's a child under 10. We did not make any contingency plans, and I had not even known that Phillip did not bring his phone. That was admittedly very stupid of us. We were all so hot and tired...it took us until 5pm to find him. By then the convention was over and we didn't even get to explore the booths. I had even just found the area of booths I was interested in and I didn't get to shop around. What a waste of a trip to Comicon. :/

Not only was the trip a waste, there was so much frustration involved throughout the entire process. I feel bad for Lawrence because he said he expects to be frustrated. It makes me sad that we can't take it easy when we're supposed to be on a trip to enjoy ourselves. Is this how all our vacations are going to turn out? I hope not. Partly, I think it would be easier to go to things with just the 2 of us. I also feel like I should take it upon myself more to think about stuff that needs to be done. If I had been more diligent about keeping track of our tickets, it would have saved us a lot of frustration. If I had thought ahead I could have suggested we set up a designated meeting place in case someone gets frustrated (or maybe even suggest that we split up and then meet somewhere at a specific time). I hate it when Lawrence gets frustrated. I get sad, and then that feeds his irritation because he doesn't like making me sad. We get stuck in this stupid self-feeding loop of irritation until it blows up or blows over. At least we don't hold grudges against each other.

Now, we are back at Xin's place. Lawrence is sleeping, I got to take a shower (it was bugging me all day that I didn't get to take a shower this morning because my hair felt greasy). We're waiting for Xin to get back so that we can go grab dinner and then we'll drive back to LA. We would spend the night and drive back tomorrow but Xin has a 6am flight to catch. We'll probably just chill tomorrow and play some WoW so that we can hopefully at least do something relaxing this weekend.