Saturday morning started WAY too early for my tastes, but we had a whole lot ot do and a short time to do it. Saturday is the day of small events, accidentely eating, and vending. Of course, that is all in the morning and afternoon!
We woke up, despite early we were dreadfully late, and dragged all of our asses out to the Plaza. It was a motley crew of four -
lolitasir, littleprinceaj, badfaggot and myself. We had loads of stuff to do - pick up our registration packages, and go through vending. The leather mart at MAL is nicely packed, with lots of high profile vendors, such as Mr. S and CJ's Leather. It's also booby-trapped! Every step you take is another person to say hello to! I may be exaggerating, I may not, as my memory is already getting fuzzy, but I swear it took an hour to get our way from the lobby to the registration table. Crazy! We managed to finally make it inside to the vendor mart, and got our packages. Everywhere we turned, there was a friend. I could hardly keep up, trying to introduce Matt to everyone we ran into. We wanted to hit vending, but it wasn't time yet, as there were socials to attend!
We then went down 14th st. to Hamburger Mary's. No trip to MAL is complete without a meal there... great burgers, and generally horrible service. But, we lucked out this time. Ran into an old old friend from Atlanta... hadn't seen him in 3 years. It was good to see him... and smiling. He had a run of some bad times, so this meeting was wonderful. Then it was upstairs to Titan's Bar for the MAsT Social. More friends, more pimping Matt off, more! After a little downtime over a bear... um... beer... it was back to vending.
Vending! Craziness! Matt kept realizing how many people he actually knew down there. That's the joy of MAL... EVERYONE is there. Some even bring their mothers (I'm not kidding.) Ran into the ever darling red-headed Tim from Boston... one who is very special to me, and is becoming a growing friend for Matt. Seems everytime we are in the same city at the same time, the two of them hook up... and usually gang up on me!
We soon split up into small groups - Lolita and AJ went one way, Matt, Tim and I another. That was... strange. I have never gone through vending without Lolita. It has always been something we do together. Yet, this was good. It was good to hang with these two fine men. While deep into the mart, I ran into
slavepug. We had made plans to run into each other there, as we had lots of catching up to do. A short, rushed talk, and soon she was off to find her club brothers from LA, and I jumped back into the fray. Vending was just so crowded that we didn't get to do much. Which has good parts to it... it was the least I have EVER spent at MAL! YAY!!!! I bought two canes (one of which shattered in the first stroke I attempted with it, damned cold) and a package of socks. Yes, that's right, socks. I went to MAL, and I bought socks. I am such a leatherman, it hurts. You guessed it... to be continued.
