The Road to PAX East: T-Minus 5 Days

Just five days to go, and I'm feeling the crunch; I still need to pick up my passport (it will be ready Monday) and there are various odds and ends that I still need for the trip, but otherwise, I think I'm set.

Today, I went to the bank to get some Amurkan monies. I was taken aback by two things;
1) American Money is way smaller than Canadian Money and 2) American money looks fake. All you americans out there, I know, you all think Canadian Money looks like Monopoly money, but when it boils down to it, our fancier currency with holographic strips and crazy interwoven iridescent stuff, and other features like partial numbers on both sides of the bill that make a whole number agaist the light makes it seem a bit more genuine. That and it's easier for us to tell what a ten and a 20 look like at a quick glance (Purple and Green, respectively). Oh, and it's currently worth more too.

So recently, I bought a fancy hat for PAX. Knowing me, you can guess what looks like;

But it doesn't end there; when I was looking for a bag, I ended up finding something that would go perfect with it.Well, not only did I aquire this item for only $30 (from $60), but they were just too cool to pass up. So, what better to go with a new hat than new shoes?

Speaking of bags, do you know how difficult it is to find a decent canvas back pack around these parts? I spent hours in Halifax shopping center trying to find a canvas bag period, never mind one that was big enough to look decent on my massive frame. Guess what? No dice. Granted most of those hours were also dedicated to waiting for flight arrangements to be finalized, but still. I was deliberating what vinyl bag I wanted and all the ones that didn't feel like they were going to fall apart with anything at all in them were like $200.00. Heck, most of the $80.00 bags were pretty much crap, and much too small.
So I ended up going to the Army Navy Store yesterday and lo and behold, five minutes there, and I found exactly what I was looking for;

And how much was it? $100.00? $75? $60? $50? $30??? No, a mere $25.00. I also picked up a neoprene computer bag for twenty bucks and a mid-sized tripod for another seventeen. Multiple tripods are likely going to be needed for this trip, so now I have a large, medium and small stand for a steady shot at any angle. Speaking of shots, since it's so hard to film a camera that you bought with the camera itself, a picture will have to do.

This is the camera I got for the trip. The Samsung HMX-T10 is a dandy flash camcorder that records in Full 1080 resolution. Wanna see what stuff looks like that's filmed with it? Catch CHC episode 13 on We Are Arcade  next week. Among some of the key features are a 10X optical zoom with 100X digital zoom, macro mode, touch panel display, tilted lens for added comfort and 4.7MP Still image capture.
I guess all I need to do now, outside of snagging some new threads is to sew some patches onto this new bag of mine. And I have two that will be absolutely neccesary!