Shaun "BrooklynX" Donagher writes...

Ok, Greg, here is my Gathering Journal. I'll admit this is the one year I almost didn't make besides the first 3 Gatherings (learned about after the fact). Money ended being rather tight because I needed to get my wisdom teeth out back in July. But I managed to catch a couple breaks, so I was able to come.

Wednesday, August 19th:

My Gathering trip started by driving down to Sunnyvale from Sacramento to meet Tigris for the drive down to convention. I left my house a little later than I wanted and got to her place around 10 pm. We gamed for a little while and decided to leave around 10 am the next morning.

Thursday, August 20th:

I got up around 8 and slowly started to unpack a few items I didn't need to bring on the trip. Around 10, we took off and hit Safeway where I picked up some Gatorade for the trip before we got gas. After those two things, we hit the road for the long drive south.

Around 12:45 we stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch. I got a hamburger with jack cheese and wished they had pepper jack. After eating, I picked up a shot glass to add to my collection. Our next stop was just north of the Grapevine for some more gas.

Traffic was pretty smooth until we hit the 1-5/ CA-14 junction where there was a pretty big slowdown. Speed up for a little bit until we hit Valencia. After got just south of the 405 junction, it was nice and smooth all the way to the hotel.

We managed to arrive around 5:10 and we saw Jennifer Anderson and Karine right we got out of the elevator. On the way to check in, we also ran into Cindy, Patrick and a couple of others. Managed to hi before getting our room keys. Much to our surprise, they didn't work, so we had to go back down to get them recoded. Went back up and got rid of our backpacks.

Our next trip was for the main suitcases and we when we got back, they had put in the mini-fridge that we had requested. The final trip was the drinks and cooler that had come along. Wandered back to the lobby where I ran into Vicky (from the U.K.), Banshee, and Gside. We talked for a while before Jade Griffin and her husband showed up.

Around 8:30 to 9 pm Tigrise, Jade, her husband and kid, Karl, and I all walked over to City Walk to get some dinner. We ended up at a sushi place. I ended up having the Salmon salad, which was actually pretty good. We talked about a variety of things before heading back to the hotel around 10:30 pm.

We said good night to each other before trying to crash for the night. I think I managed to pass out close to midnight.

Friday, August 21st:

I woke up around 8 am. I took a shower and then tried to call Gside to meet up for breakfast around 9. Never did manage to meet up with him, so I went over to City Walk and ended up going to Jamba Juice for breakfast. While it wasn't the greatest choice in the world, it was something.

Went back to the hotel where I ran into Sarah the Great. We chatted for a while before putting her luggage into my room before trying to track the registration desk. I got my stuff and proceeded to help Patrick.

Around 11:45, I helped Greg X move the items for the silent auction and books down to the dealers room. After all of that was taken care of, Susan and I got to work unpacking everything. After a while, it became clear that there wasn't enough room for everything. Once the stuff was labeled and out of the boxes, I helped Karine with the pricing and trying to condense all the auction items.

After that was finished, I sat down with Cindy to take a break. We chatted for a while trying to juggle the sales of the graphic novels and keeping an eye on the art room. I picked up a copy of both Gargoyles novels and the Bad Guys one as well. I spent some time reading through them was happy that we had gotten some additional material since the show got canceled.

I helped Cindy close up the art room around 6 before heading down to the opening ceremonies. I missed part of it, but did get to catch Greg's usual talk and videos. Granted I had seen them nine times before, the tenth time was still a treat.

After that was over, Tony, Andrea, Jade Griffin, Trevor, Cindy, Karine, several others and I headed down to Fat Burger for some dinner. After the guy taking the orders for my name, I spelled it out for him and somehow, it came out it as “Ahun” on the receipt. Usually, most folks mispronounce my last name, but I think this was the first time my first name got mangled.

I decided to take a picture of it since I found it highly amusing after showing the receipt around. Before I got to finish, the second round of folks showed up. Seth, Sammy, Greg Bishansky, Patrick, and several others whose names escape me. And poor Seth's receipt ended up with being named Sith. Most us were highly amused by the misspelling of our names.

After eating, most of us walked back up that blasted hill to hotel before heading to bed.

Saturday, August 22nd:

I got up some time between 7:30 and 8. I decided to check my email, read some web comics and took a look at Station 8 briefly. After a taking a shower, I decided to make a quick run to get some breakfast. I was half way to Jamba Juice when I got a call from Cindy saying Patrick needed help at the registration desk, but by the time I got back, the crowd had cleared up.

I ended up helping at the dealers table once again. At one point, I managed to get away for a few minutes to get Marina Sirtis to sign in Gargoyles Clan Building Volume 1, when I should have had her sign the second one. Oops. I also managed to get my picture taken with her, which was nice.

I joined Guardian at the desk for a bit before she went off to a panel. I decided that while Brianna Garcia was doing some commissions, I asked for her to draw one of my characters. While waiting for that, we tried to get folks to vote in the art show.

And by the time we closed down for the night, I knew how much it was to buy all three of the graphic novels. Or a combination of two of the three. Karine, Cindy, Tony, Andrea, Shing, and I headed over to Universal City Walk for dinner. We stopped at the crepe's place whose name I didn't catch. I had a nice one that was made with ham and cheddar.

After we found a place to sit down to chow down, we wandered into the Lush store for a while before walking back to the hotel. It proved to be a bit interesting since we ended up walking against the crowd that was leaving Universal Studios. After getting back, we chatted for a little before everybody got ready for the Blue Mug panel.

During the middle of the panel, Greg has to leave for a little and Edmund Tsabard showed up. Just in the heck is that guy? I swear, he sort of looks like Greg's evil twin, but I could be wrong. After insulting us and talking about his “Last Tengu in Paris” project, he left and low and behold Greg came back into the room. Talk about weird.

After a number of questions, none of which I can remember, the panel closed down for the night. I headed back up the room and was going to make an attempt to try and get 8 hours of sleep after checking a couple things on the laptop.

Just before Tigris and I were about to crash, Cindy's husband Max called while trying get in touch with her. After taking a note to have her call him in the morning, we ended up talking for about an hour or so before finally going to bed for the night.

Sunday, August 23rd:

This time I decided to shower a bit earlier before hunting down Cindy to drop off the message. I loaned her my cell phone so she could call Max while I went off to get breakfast. Once again, I ended up at Jamba Juice. Anybody sense a theme?

Once again I ended up back in the art and dealers room to help out since I was able to do the math for making change in my head. Sales of Clan Building Volume 1 and Bad Guys seemed to be fairly brisk, but we did sell some Volume 2 from time to time.

Most of us ended up talking for a while about a variety of random things. At 3, we closed the auction for all of the goodies that got sent to us. After sorting out what was going to live auction, we started selling everything else. Over the next couple of hours, we managed to take almost everything in the back, save for a few items.

At 5:30, we shut down the bidding for the art auction. After taking care of a few folks who were leaving during the night or very early tomorrow morning, we shut down around 5:50. I quickly back to the room and changed for the banquet and left behind the backpack.

I managed to find a seat with Tigris and several other fans whose names I didn't get. Our guest was one of the Spiderman writers, Nicole Dubuc. We ended up chatting about a variety of things, including how she was nervous about working for Greg at first.

The food was pretty good this year. I loaded up on some of the salad, a roll, chicken, mashed potato and roast beef. And decided to get a slice of German chocolate cake to finish it off. There was supposed to be a trivia game during dinner, but that didn't happen. Oh, well. The Q&A went pretty well despite Thom Adcox showing up a bit late.

After that was the masquerade. There was a pretty decent group of folks in costumes this year. I think the most amusing one was Rebeka as a red shirt. After the awards were announced, some folks danced and others circulated around and talked.

I think around 11:15 or so I headed back to the room to get some sleep.

Monday, August 24th:

I woke up around 7:30 and slowly got to work on packing up things. After I took a shower around 8:15, Tigris took hers. After everything was packed up, we did one run down to the car to drop off the suitcases and drinks. Came back up to get what was left and checked to make sure we didn't leave anything behind.

After checking out, we hung out in the lobby for a little bit before heading out to get some breakfast. I ended up going to Jamba Juice one last time. I had thought about going somewhere else, but decided to go one last time since I very rarely go to the ones up in Sacramento. Probably because the closest one is a good 3 or so miles from my house.

I went back up to the art and dealers room to help out Cindy once again. While she wrote out the receipts and looked up the total including tax, I took the money and gave folks their change. Ah, nothing like doing math in the head. A couple times I tried to calculate the wrong amount of change and she mocked me over it, but hey, it was in good spirit.

Once it started getting closer two, we started to wind things down and started to put some things into boxes to move up to Patrick's room after closing ceremonies. At 2, we walked over to that room and it was a bittersweet moment.

Cindy handed out the art show awards and thanked the few of us who helped make sure she didn't go insane. Quite a few folks were taking this being the last Gathering rather hard. I think a few folks did start crying and I don't blame them. I know Greg, Thom, and quite a few others took it rather hard.

After it was over, we opened up the dealers for a shot time to try and sell a few copies of the trade paperbacks and sell off as many shirts as possible. I decided to pick up another 2009 shirt. After about 20 minutes, the last of the stuff was put into boxes and was hauled upstairs.

A number of us hung out up in Jennifer's room for a bit and chewed down on some pizza. Around 5, Tigris and I said our goodbyes and hit the road for San Jose. I'm going to miss getting to see Jennifer, Patrick, Set, Sammy, Greg X and others year after year.

I felt sad that it came to end, but understand why. Hard to believe that I managed to go to ten Gathering, yes, ten. My first one was the 2000 Gathering in Orlando. I had missed '97 and '98 because I had learned about them after the fact. '99 I learned about 3 months ahead of time, which wasn't enough time for me to save the needed money.

It has been a great ten years. And it's been an honor getting to meet you Greg.

And here are the photos I took this year: http://www.shaunpup2.com/gallery2/v/g2009/

Pardon the red eye. I couldn't find the needed software to fix them up.