Dragon Con 2019

This past weekend - Labor Day here in the US - was also Dragon Con, the highwater mark on the nerd calendar in these parts.

 I took my son for a single day last year and he enjoyed it enough that he had a full pass this year. Attending a convention like this with an 8-year old who can't sit still for things he likes let alone things he doesn't, means going to panels of interest to dear-old-dad was out, but we managed to make a time of it doing things we both enjoy.

Mostly that meant hitting the retro arcade where we played games from my youth:

There is a large RPG and table top gaming event list, but most of these are not child friendly. Reaper is present every year for a Paint and Take, but when I suggested to my son that we do that, his response was "We do that at home."

Fair enough.

Costumes are a huge part of Dragon Con for a lot of people - but I don't take pictures of costumes so you'll have to go elsewhere for that. I did snag some pictures of some honest to goodness robots though:

One of my long time loves is puppets, so when my son spent some time with his mother, I caught a puppet show, of course:

Outside of gaming, the puppet track is my favorite part of  Dragon Con - I hope to turn my crafty skills, such as they are, to making a puppet for next year.

And of course no trip to a convention is complete without spending too much money in the vendor area (the line was so long on Saturday, I have heard that the wait was around 3 hours. We went Sunday morning when everyone was in bed with their hangovers).

I may have gone overboard on my son's "mementos" - here's a sample (I happen to love Lego minifigures, too, so I may have pushed some of the acquisitions):

And this is mine:

My son already has a Princess Unikitty, so he won't covet this one. She may or may not turn up in a game.