Notes started while looking down at broken clouds over north Georgia and finished at another Starbucks back home:

On Sunday evening, we were headed out of the Renaissance Waverly with our four bags of equipment when we spotted actor Vic Mignogna. A couple of minutes, we bumped into actor Mike Sinterniklaas. It was the first time we had seen either man all weekend.

For the first time in three months, we returned to our practice of setting up a photo booth and selling prints to costumers. It was the hardest we've worked all year, because business never slacked off. From our 9 a.m. Friday arrival to our 5:45 p.m. Sunday teardown (barely ahead of a hotel crew that needed to reset the area for another event), there were few breaks. Saturday was so busy that we had a big collection of costuming pictures ready to upload to this site, and a good (and thankfully free) WiFi signal to use for the upload, but we just didn't have the time.

All which worked perfectly for us. The worst thing that can happen in that situation is to be ignored, and we certainly weren't ignored. Many people made a trip to our booth just for pictures and prints, and some stopped by two or three times. One of them was David Carpenter, known for his astounding Guyver costume. Carpenter had retired the outfit, then revived it when he was contacted by ADV Films. After that video company got the rights to the Guyver series, they reached Carpenter and asked him to appear at their AWA dealers' room booth. Carpenter was a hit; he said that it took him a half-hour to walk the few hundred yards from the dealers' room to the artists' alley because so many people stopped him for pictures.

The door staff at the Renaissance Waverly did their best to make the author feel spoiled, even though this writer did not have a room at the hotel. We chose the cheap approach of staying at a Red Roof Inn a mile to the north, and each night we headed to the Waverly's front desk and asked them to call a cab. The first time the cab arrived in 15 minutes, but the second and third nights, the valet desk attendant insisted on loading us and our equipment into the hotel's Lincoln Navigator and driving us to the motel. We tipped the valet the same amount that the cab fare would have cost, but there couldn't have been any conventional profit or benefit in giving us a ride - unless the hotel staff was trying to be as nice as possible to out-of-towners. That must have been the case, because the pattern continued with the other way the hotel staff made us feel spoiled. Each time we got out of a cab or a shuttle and tried to get inside the Waverly, right there was a member of the bell staff, taking our bags before we had a chance and loading them onto a baggage cart. We're so used to being self-reliant on trips, especially those where we haul around 150 pounds of equipment, that we didn't know how to react to the instant offers of help.

Thanks also are due to the AWA security volunteer who offered to help with out backdrop setup when we were climbing up and down a chair to clip backdrop material in place, and our French friend who held the backdrop's center support while we made the change from Saturday's teal (most popular commercial art color of the 1990's) to Sunday's burnt orange. The artists' alley staff came through as well with the annual barbecue order on Saturday: too bad we got tangled up and spilled the french fries on the carpet.

We got a lot of work out of our camera and our new Canon printer, and we were fortunate enough to bring enough ink to last all weekend. We were running short of paper after Saturday night, and had to made a stop for more on our way to the hotel on Sunday. Good thing we got more, because otherwise we would have had to disappoint people such the costumer and her mother who were delighted over the daughter's winning a costume contest award for her Pacifica costume from Scrapped Princess.

The quality of the costumes didn't let off, even on Sunday. PikaBelleChu, the noted Pokemon fan, broke out the Pikachu suit for her boyfriend while she played Satoshi, joining up briefly with a Blue from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Among the last costumers of the weekend were young ladies playing Chikane and Kimiko from Kannazuki no Miko, in the shrine maiden outfits we'd been hoping to see someone portray.

But the one that got away was a five-foot Audrey II, the people-eating plant from both versions of Little Shop of Horrors. The costume was in eyesight, but we had to handle customers first and couldn't break away from the booth.

Missing the big Audrey was one of the few disappointments of the weekend. We missed the hotel's famed seafood buffet because of the volume of work (we'll make it up when we get back home). The inept handling Saturday night costume contest made you wonder if the people in charge had ever done anything like that before. On the Monday after the question, there was talk on the AWA BBS that the wrong winners were announced on Saturday night. All we could do was to document the people called on stage: we'll wait to find if there are corrections to be made.

And there was another hilarious case of convention security guys playing the obey-me game, this time when they managed to elevate a fan's twisted knee into a “medical emergency.” The poor woman was so badly hurt that she was busily talking on her cell phone when the medtechs wheeled her out.

And there was that white stuff on the plate with our omelet at the Waffle House. Was that what they call “grits” in the South?

Speaking of the South: it says a lot about anime's popularity that AWA attracted so many people in the area that's been billed as the capitol of the “new South.” There were plenty of Georgian, Tennessean and Alabamian accents to be heard over the weekend. The Cobb County area where the convention was held is a rime example of that change. The “don't let the sun set on you” days are long gone and the Vinings and Smyrna areas have blossomed with urban affluence. Across the Cobb Freeway from the convention site, next to the Cumberland Mall, is the construction site for the area's new arts center, a theater that looks a little like the Sydney Opera House laid on its side. It'll be the major landmark of the area when AWA returns in 2007, assuming the convention goes back to the same place.