I have to admit, when I got from Celebration 3, I was still a bit... miffed about the whole thing. Now, almost a year later, I can look back at it and say that I did have a good time.

But (and there's always a but, isn't there?) it was a pain in the... butt. My typical day went something like this: wake up early (earlier than I would wake up if I was home and had to go to work... what kind of vacation is this? Then again, it always works out like that when you're on vacation, doesn't it? But I digress...), eat breakfast, stand in line to get into convention center (and that was a long line), stand in line to enter dealer room, stand in line for (insert product here), stand in line for lunch, stand in line for (insert exhibit here), stand in line for (insert presentation here)... you get the picture.

That was how it went, day after day. Except for the second day there, when I actually waited outside the convention center, in the cold, pouring rain (and trust me when I say, it was pouring) at 3am with my friend Jason so we could be the "first" ones to get on the line for the C3 store and dealer room to get the GG Sandtrooper bust exclusive. Needless to say, I put "first" ones in quotes because it turns out that after waiting outside in the cold rain for seven hours, we enter the convention center only to find that hundreds of people who have "special" passes (press, exhibitor, dealer, etc.) were allowed in early and were all waiting on the lines already. Thanks for that, great idea!

Anyway, after that fiasco (although I have to say, I actually did get my GG Sandtrooper bust that morning, thanks to the fact that I actually knew two of the guys standing outside the dealer room closer up to the front of the line who let me cut in. Shhhh!! But I never made it into the C3 store - the average wait was pretty much the entire day - about 9 hours), can you believe that I'm even contemplating going all the way out to L.A. next year so I can do all that over again? OK, maybe I won't have to wait outside in the cold, since it's L.A., but still...

For one thing, airfare is going to be more costly, because it's a longer flight. Another thing - I'm sure the hotels in L.A. are going to be more costly than the hotels in Indiana were. Plus, from what I'm hearing, the L.A. center isn't really close to any kind of hotels, so you're probably looking at renting a car to get back and forth as well.

For C3 in Indiana, I spent almost $2000, but that included everything - airfare, hotel, food, drinks (and trust me, there were lots of those), merchandise (lots of that, too), and the other odds and ends. It sounds to me like I'll need almost that much just for airfare, hotel, rental car, and food/drinks, which won't leave any cash left over for merchandise. So it looks like I'm gonna have to bring closer to $3000 with me this time. And that just might not be doable.

See, being from New Jersey, flying to the center of the U.S. makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than flying all the way across to the west coast. I'm sure that all of you out there in L.A. and the surrounding area would feel the same way if they announced this con would be held in, say... Jacob Javits Convention Center in NYC? Now that would be an ideal place to have Celebration 5... let me call George right now and start talking to him about it