the egg is now in a nest made of shitty swords and soft puppet ass

So yesterday, trophy show in Galveston. Lots of neat stuff.

The real fun started when Aunt Boss had to peel me off the ginormous laser engraver the Xenetech people brought with them to show off.

Ginormous laser engraver: *is awesome*
Me: Oooooo. Shiiiiiiny. *pet*
Aunt Boss: ...! uh-oh. Sarah. No.
Me: but
Xenetech rep: Here, look at our fine and ginormous laser engraver, have a brochure, watch it engrave fuckenhuge pieces your puny engraver cannot [okay, ours is not that puny, but still]
Me: *sparkle* Ooo! *petpet*
Aunt Boss: No, Sarah.
Me: but
Aunt Boss: No.
Me: MY PRECIOUSSSSS.
Aunt Boss: NO. $$$$$$$.
Xenetech rep: XD

And then Manager Cousin found the Badass And Hella Fast rotary engraver that could do glasses and ice buckets and jewelry and shit that we normally have to do with the hand engraver if we do at all and was all "OOOO SHINY CAN WE KEEP IT HUH CAN WE" and Aunt Boss had to go peel her off that. So I got to pet the ginormous laser some more.

The people we order ribbons from had free samples out with funny sayings on them, my personal favorite being "Stupidity is not a crime... so you're free to go." Another company had pins with various smartass sayings on them. So I have a big handful of those. Yet another company gave out little samples of interesting metal bits to engrave on.

Toward the end of the last row, I happened to look over and see a nifty wood plaque with a tree design thingy burned into it, and metal plates shaped like leaves on the tree.

"Ooo!" I said, and went to take a closer look, because this was something new and different.

Many of the leaves were engraved, and the one in the middle was sporting the name "Charlie Pace."

"Oh," I said, "what an amusing coincidence, that one leaf on this tree plaque has a name on it that also happens to be that of a LOST character, ha ha--"

Which was when I noticed the name "Hugo Reyes" on another leaf.

"Waaaaaaitaminnit," I said.

Sure enough, the whole tree was full of LOST characters. Sun and Jin had a leaf (as "Mr. and Mrs. Kwon"), Michael and Walt had a leaf, Claire had a leaf, and Shannon had a leaf. No Sawyer or Sayid or Desmond leaves, sadly, but hey.

So then I had to point and squeal at the plaque and go "XD XD XD" to the lady manning that booth about this. She had no idea what the hell I was talking about. So I explained, and she said "Oh, okay, I'm not surprised, those guys do that all the time."

So then we left the trophy show for a while and went over to Ashton Villa. We took the guided tour; for some reason, they do not allow people to take pictures inside the house. Boo.

Then we decided it was time for lunch. We ended up at a nifty restaurant that had delicious rare grilled tuna with wasabi sauce on it. It hurt so good.

After that, we went to the railroad museum for a few minutes. The lobby of the railroad museum is full of these life-sized and very lifelike white plaster-y sculptures of people sitting on benches and reading papers and milling about the station. How lifelike? Can you say "uncanny valley?" I knew you could. These things were giving me the willies. Of course, that might just be because I've seen House of Wax recently. but still. QREEPY.

So then we decided to ride the trolley around. Eeh. For one thing, the trolley is not a smooth ride. It will beat the living crap out of you. For another, the A/C was not working all that well, but the operator would not let us open windows. Not that this would have done much good, because the trolley is not very fast. Seriously, I could probably outrun this thing on my bike easily.

After that, we went back to the trophy show, talked to a guy we do a lot of plates for for a while, and then we came home. So basically, I got to spend a day in Galveston and get paid for it. Yay!

I would really like to go to the big trophy convention, though. Mostly because it's in Vegas.