On Thursday night, Tom and I met up with Jen and her NIU buddies. Because the Hyatt messed up our hotel room, we were all crammed into a single bedroom. There was barely any room in the bathroom. The Mario Party loading screening was on repeat. It started to annoy Tom, so Tom entertained us by playing Mario Party 4 while cursing obscenities at the screen.

The very next morning, Tom and I dressed up as Yomiko Readman and Donnie Nakajima from Read or Die. For those of you who don't know, Donnie is Yomiko's former lover interest. They are both paper users, bibliophiles, and wear thick framed glasses. Tom had a creative idea to use a wire hanger to string paper. Security thought he was carrying around a sign. So, Tom had to register his paper prop as a weapon.

Tom and I went to opening ceremonies. Most of the guests of honor were introduced, but opening ceremonies was cut short due to a fire alarm. The whole hotel had to be evacuated. Everyone started coming out of the Hyatt. Fire trucks were lining up near the hotel. The word on the street was a car ran into a sprinkler in the garage and triggered it.

We also took pictures in our Read or Die costumes.

I had Tom go through the sky walk from the Hyatt to the convention center. It was mainly for the shrinking room. Normally, I would walk from the Hyatt and cross the street since it's faster. We wandered around Anime Central and ran into a couple of friends - Brianna, Randy, Lionel, East Side Cosplay Mom (and her daughter) and Albert. We also ran into Shinichi Watanabe, Tiffany Grant, and Greg Ayres.

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