Moon Moon, the Christmas Reindeer

So early this week I had the idea to bake some sort of holiday themed goodie to bring into work on our last day before our holiday break and to give out to family/friends over the holidays. I wanted to do something cute - I randomly brought in Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes early this year and they were a big hit. ------------------------>

So this week I looked around the web and I found a cute reindeer peanut butter cookie recipe that looked super easy to do. I'm still fairly new to baking I didn't want to attempt something I didn't feel confident I could pull off. I went out to the grocery store yesterday to get the extra ingredients I would need to bake tonight.

Now, I'm not the best judge on telling when food is ready to come out of the oven. I'm either way too early or way too late, so I usually have my boyfriend, Adam, double check that part for me. I rolled up the cookie dough balls, stuck them in, and called Adam down every time I thought they might be ready and finally he ok'd them to come out. The trick with this recipe is you have to add the "antlers" (pretzels) and the "eyes & nose" (M&Ms) immediately after taking the cookies out of the oven so they harden around the decorations and set in properly. I had two sheets full, so I asked Adam to stick around to help me with this step, which he thought would be fun and had no problem doing.

We were acting stupidly silly with each other and joking about the back story to the different reindeers. Adam even made one with red eyes and sharp antlers to make it a "devil reindeer", the one spoof out of our set that we would keep for just ourselves. Once we were all done decorating, I started switching the cookies over to a cooling rack. They looked so good! I was so proud of how they turned out - they looked a lot like the picture! I got over to Adam's pan and something didn't seem quite right. They didn't really look like the picture and I couldn't figure out why. The more I studied them to find out what was wrong, the more they looked like "special" reindeer. Their faces were contorted and you couldn't tell their eyes apart from their noses. And then it hit me. Adam hadn't noticed the pointed noses of the reindeers I had pinched while they were dough to form the structure of the faces. He had completely disregarded this and gone with his own "vision" and placed the eyes and noses randomly and all over the place. All of Adam's cookies looked like this and he had more than half of the batch on his pan.

I asked Adam, in hysterics, why his cookies didn't look like mine to which he explained to me that he had "creative freedom" with his and made some into birds and some were to look like David Bowie and/or an alien. "But I didn't want birds and David Bowie cookies...I needed reindeer!" I asked Adam why he didn't just put the noses on the spot that was meant for the nose like I did on mine. He just didn't see it... This is why I don't ask him to help me decorate things. No one sees my vision... le sigh.

These are what the Reindeer cookies were supposed to look like:

These are what mine looked like: 

These are how Adam's turned out: 

I mean, really? What is that? This one doesn't even have antlers:  

This one was supposed to be an alien, according to Adam, and I tried to fix it for him by adding the nose and now it just looks like a tweaked out bird:

This one is his "Krampus cookie", aka devil reindeer:

And I don't even know what this one is: 

All I can say to you, Adam, is...

I published my book!

http://www.amazon.com/kindle/dp/B00GI2XAME/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_eos_detail

I received the copyright registration back after submitting to the Library of Congress Copyright Office months ago and now I can finally put my poetry book out for the world to see! Kindle download for free if you're an Amazon Prime member! Hard copies will be for sale soon as well. 

My new video: Pokemon 151 Voice Impressions + Ash

It's Been Awhile

It's been nearly a month since I posted anything on here, so I'm playing catch up. Nothing huge has happened, so just little updates :)

I've been in the process of acquiring a new set of doctors for me to see that are closer to where we live and that work better for me. Adam and I are now seeing the same medical practitioner and dentist, which is nice.


I attended the Action on Film Festival at the end of August with my Mom, Ally, and Adam where my short film, Until College (http://www.untilcollege.com & https://www.facebook.com/UntilCollege), won the Best Musical Award.

Chance has been enrolled in Intermediate obedience school this month and he already graduates next week! Our plan is to get him all the way through the Advanced course so he can be certified. That will mean we'll have more protection over him and ourselves if there is ever a scuffle with another dog or an incident in our future with Chance. It will also mean that he will be able to test for TDI Certification for him to become a therapy dog and participate in programs. Yay, Chance!

We visited the Ronald Reagan Library this month and saw the Lincoln exhibit with the hat he wore and a ton of other stuff. Here's us on Air Force One:

Lincoln's Hat

This month it has been SO HOT, especially in the valley. To keep cool, we went to Malibu State Creak Park to swim in the lake and had a beach day with family. I haven't been to the beach in three years! Felt great to be back in the relaxing atmosphere and in water again. 

Adam & Caitlin at Beach

At the lake

Adam and I have been catching and keeping up with a lot of our favorite shows lately. We are finally all caught up on Dexter in the nick of time for the final episode EVER - coming out next week! We're excited to finish up this series and move onto our next new show - Orange is the New Black. We've been keeping up with the final season of Breaking Bad and it's been intense! We're both waiting for Hannibal to come back on the air as well as Game of Thrones and American Horror Story. I'll be waiting for The Walking Dead and True Blood also (not Adam's favorite shows). And I've been watching my guilty pleasures: Kate plus 8 and Teen Mom, which Adam does not partake in with me. 

Adam has been busy creating his web comics series, "the grand adventures of cody & chance".  I made a website for it where you can see all the comics, drawings, and have access to the online store: http://codychancecomics.blogspot.com. There's also a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/codychancecomics. Besides working on this, Adam's day job has been finishing up his work on a short film he was doing VFX for called 'Four Winds' (you can see the trailer on their website: http://fourwindsfilm.com) and has been editing video game trailers for the company WayForward (http://www.wayforward.com). He actually edited this video here for a campaign of theirs: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1236620800/shantae-half-genie-hero. 

The company I work for, Electric Entertainment (http://www.electricentertainment.com), has just announced three films we will be making, one of which with Martin Scorsese executive producing with us! Here are the links to all the announcements: 

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/toronto-martin-scorsese-dean-devlin-on-board-the-wannabe-1200599767/

http://www.deadline.com/2013/09/dean-devlin-sets-next-directorial-effort-as-electric-entertainment-picks-up-two-projects/

The president of my company, Dean Devlin, is also going to be directing his global disaster film with Skydance and Paramount (http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2013-07-16/aAXCWoqkPFR0.html). Looks like we have a lot coming up! 

I'm waiting for the official copyright for my poetry book to be sent to me so I can finally publish it! It's called 'There's a Light Underground". I can't wait until it's out there for the world to read! Adam drew the cover image for me: 

In other writing news, I've been posting "articles" on buzzfeed.com and a couple of them have been featured on the main page and gotten a bit of "buzz"! Here's a list of all my articles published: http://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlin873. 

We've been having game nights hosted at our place with a group of friends about once a month for a few months now. It's been really fun! We've enjoyed playing all sorts of board games like Game of Thrones and Catan (which I FINALLY actually WON last time). We also try new games each time. Pandemic was my favorite that was introduced to us. I'll probably buy that one myself...eventually! :)

The game of Catan that I won =P

That's all the news for now! Catch you next time!

The Days of the Week as said by my Dogs

 

My Sad Attempt at Watermelon Cupcakes

I made Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes last week (blogged in a previous post). That was my trial run at themed cupcakes. I love themes. I love themed birthday parties, holiday themed things, seasonal, anything with a theme, really. So Minnie was a great first theme. Easy to make chocolate cupcakes, even though I've never baked cupcakes before. Easy to put pink strawberry frosting on top, stick white chocolate chips in it, and easy to twist Oreos and use the non cream side as ears - just stick them into cupcakes after being frosted. Bam. Done. It was so easy, I was ready for something more challenging (I thought). This time I wanted more of a purpose for going all out on a cupcake. I though, hey! - my sister loves watermelons and watermelon themed things and it's also summer time - watermelons fit summer time theme and I can show them to my sister and give some to her! Perfect idea.

Image in my head

I made the cupcake mix and put in some red food dye. Mixed in some chocolate chips with it too and then poured it out into paper liners in the pan. The mix was a little more liquidly than the Minnie ones were. I thought something seemed a little off about it, so I added a little more flour. Still didn't feel quite right, but I shrugged it off and threw them in the oven. 22 minutes later and they were ready to come out. The chocolate chips, the "seeds", were not visible through the paper liner, which was a bit dissappointing. That was one of the main effects I was going for to make it look like watermelon. I decided to let them cool and would take off the paper lining after so you could see the seeds in the red cake better. When time came to do that though, the paper stuck right to the cake and it looked horrible. So, I frosted the cupcakes with their liners on and tried to make them still look somewhat resemblant to watermelon. I experimented, tried out different ways that they could maybe still pull it off. I got frustrated and ended up with this assembly:

This is a watermelon with the seeds on the outside...  

This is a "tall, grassy hill with poop droppings all over it"
according to my boyfriend, Adam. 

This is happy watermelon Steve. He's just happy to be here. 

This is happy watermelon Harold. 

And this is what happened after I tasted one. They were really, quite awful. Adam agrees.

Doggie Drama at 2am

The boyfriend and I have a wonderful, loving, playful, goofy, and fun American Bull Dog Pit Bull mix with a little bit of Boxer in him too...we think. You may have already seen him in an earlier obedience school graduation post. His name is Chance. We think he is about a year or so old. We adopted him in February of this year and we instantly fell in love. He has been a delight to have around and he very quickly adapted to our home and our other dog, Cody. Needless to say, Chance is now a member of our family - he fits right in.

Cody is my dog. I got him when I was 11 years old. He is now 14. He has chronic pancreatitis (Grandpa fed him too many hot dogs) and he often will become sick due to a table scrap he licked up here or a crumb he nibbled there. We're always on the look out to see if we need to make a trip back to the doggie hospital for him, but so far so good since our last (huge) incident - when we actually found out he had pancreatitis. It's still scary, but not so uncommon, to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Cody throwing up or see him get sick and take him to the bathroom so he can (yes, he does) throw up into our toilet. He rarely has pain attacks anymore and we don't even have a bottle of his medication around simply because he never needs it these days.

This is a random picture my boyfriend drew of our dogs.

So last night we really weren't expecting what happened with Chance. Adam and I were in bed by around 11pm and didn't get to sleep until around midnight. Cody sleeps in the bed with us and Chance sleeps on his doggie bed on the floor by Adam's side. Cody was sprawled out at the bottom of our bed and it took a while to find a good fit between the three of us up there. I moved Cody up by me so we could move our legs, he walked back down and sat right in the middle. I moved Cody to the middle of me and Adam, he moves back to my side and spreads out. Anyway, it was about midnight when we finally settled in and drifted off. At 2am, Adam and I wake up from a gagging sound and a lot of licking. My immediate thought was that Cody had jumped down from the bed and was throwing up. But it was coming from Chance's side... We looked down at Chance. He was literally eating Adam's shirt. He had it about halfway down his throat, actually. And was making gagging and licking sounds from it. Adam quickly pulled the shirt out of Chance's throat and mouth, but he kept licking. He tried to grab the shirt again to eat it, so we pulled it away from him. We were so weirded out... I have never seen a dog do this before. It was actually quite scary to watch.

After seeing that he couldn't get the shirt, Chance started to chomp away at his bed. Adam went down next to him and tried to stop and soothe him. But Chance kept licking and acting anxious. Adam took him to the door and then started walking him downstairs. Worried, I got out of bed too and followed them. I could hear the licking from all the way upstairs and when I went down, I saw Chance trying to pull up the carpet - like he was trying to rip it up and eat it. It was almost like a cow with grass. We told Chance "no", and he went running under the table where he found Adam's shoes. He then started trying to eat the shoelaces. It was so weird! I thought we needed to take him to the emergency vet hospital. He may have eaten something and we probably needed to get an x-ray to see what was going on. Adam wanted to wait it out since he thought it could be resolved on its own. Adam tried to get Chance to go out back through his doggie door, but he wouldn't go. We thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom or something. He wouldn't drink his water either, but he did eat a treat I gave him. I figured if he was well enough to devour a treat, it couldn't be that bad, right?

This could possibly be one of the stuffing suspects

Adam thought it would be a good idea to take him outside. He had seen something similar to this with his old dog and she ended up needing to eat grass to settle her stomach. So I clipped a leash on Chance (to which he seized the opportunity to try and chomp away my dangling hair off my head) and took him out front. He seemed really excited, with all the attention around him at 2:15 in the morning. He also got to go outside in the middle of the night and Cody had to stay in bed! It was a special treat for him. He wagged his tail, urinated on a bush and a tree and then started sniffing grass. A few seconds later, he was pulling it up and eating it. About a minute after that, he was gagging and then threw up. Out came some of his dog food from dinner and a material that we concluded resembled cotton. We assumed it was from one of his toys that he pulled the stuffing out - he must have swallowed some. After this lovely field trip Chance took us on, we took him back inside the house. Adam grabbed a baggie to put the throw up in, just in case we needed to show a vet later to see what was wrong. We climbed back upstairs to our bedroom and tried to get Chance back to sleep. Cody was awaken by our sudden presence and seemed to believe that it was already morning and time for his breakfast. So now we had our terrier jumping off our bed and ready to be fed and our bull dog filled with energy and not ready to go back to sleep. What a great adventure for pushing 3 in the morning.

After forcing the dogs into their proper night time spots, we finally were able to get back into bed. Just as I was able to ease back into the comfort of our soft bed and the peacefulness of the low background hum of our cool fan and gentle breeze on my hair, I heard the disgusting slap of a tongue again. A sound we knew well by now... Sure enough, Chance was licking again. Adam had to keep his hand stretched over the bed to keep Chance calm. Thankfully, it was enough this time but the occasional disturbance broke the rest of the night up for us. And at 6am, the dogs of course had to use the
bathroom. I don't know how he had the energy, but at 7am when my alarm for work went off, Chance was sitting by my bedside, wagging his tail and waiting for me to get up. I felt like death. And probably looked it too. You know that feeling when you know you haven't had nearly enough sleep? When your face feels overheated and flushed and your throat feels dry and like no amount of water could quench your dehydrated thirst? Where your lips feel chapped and swollen and you feel disgusting even though you've showered and brushed your teeth? And your stomach feels nauseated whether you go hungry or put food in it? That's pretty much how I felt.

I have no clue if this is even close to what it's like to have children, but it sure feels like it right now!

Thank you, Chance. For maybe showing me a taste of what it's like to have children and providing me with such fun packed into one long night. 

P.S. Chance has been fine since this morning and is back to his normal, non weird object eating dog, self. 

I like baking?

I'm venturing into the world of baking - a world I once hated. Last night I tried making Minnie Mouse cupcakes - success! Brought them into work and they were a hit! Made chocolate cupcakes, used strawberry frosting, then decorated with white chocolate chips for the spots and used Oreos for the ears. Yum.

Summer Days Slipping Away

My summer is quickly coming to an end. It always feels too soon! I had high hopes for a summer of wake boarding, swimming pools, scuba diving, beaches, water parks, and lake trips. I always imagine more than I can chew and though I couldn't fit everything into my schedule, I ended up doing quite a bit this summer!

I went on a family trip to Lake Tahoe - first time ever there and it was beautiful. The album is in one of my first posts if you want to check out all the details from that trip.

I put together an extended family picnic for Adam's (my boyfriend's) family and mine. I love planning events and I love picnics, family time, and summertime, so this was a great idea for me. We all gathered in a park with lawn chairs, blankets, coolers, and food. There were babies, dogs, water balloons, baseball, lounging, boba, and frisbee involved. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The babies ate watermelon and played on the blankets with water balloons. The dogs enjoyed the shade and the company of everyone around them. My boyfriend relaxed on a lawn chair and I played frisbee with the cousins and my family. We also tried something I made up called water balloon baseball. It's pretty self explanatory, but basically we had a bucket of water balloons that someone pitches from, and someone hits them with a baseball bat. The water shoots up into the air and then showers down over everyone playing. It was pretty spectacular. We also coordinated a water balloon toss and tried out hitting some real baseballs across the field. Such a perfect day!

Two of my best friends, Katey and Michelle, went with me on a hike in Malibu Creak to a small lake/water hole spot on the trail. We brought our bathing suits and joined the crowd in jumping off the tall rocks into the water. I. Love. Rock. Jumping. So much. The water was perfect. It was a hot day and the water was nice and cool and refreshing. Not freezing, but the perfect temperature for a warm, August hike day.

Adam and I went on another hike at Rocky Peak in Simi Valley with the dogs. It's mostly uphill and it was a hot day. My 14 year old pup, Cody, didn't get very far and Adam had to carry him up the hill and I carried him down. Chance, our city dog from the streets, was not used to the dirt incline and forced his way under a twiggy bush to get some shade. We decided not to attempt the rest of the hike since our dogs clearly weren't ready for this kind of adventure. I'm thinking this might be a hike for just Adam and I for a while. ;)

5ks, 5ks, 5ks. I LOVE themed 5ks. They're a great source of exercise and a great motivator FOR me to exercise. I love the way they make me feel during and afterwards and they help me escape into a place where I can be away from my cell phone for an hour and just enjoy the little things life has to offer. Over the summer, I think I found my favorite 5k yet. The Ridiculous Obstacle Course (R.O.C.). I ran it with my mom and we had a great time avoiding giant bounce balls swinging on a crane as we balanced our way across a beam above a pool of water. We bounced on the world's largest bounce house and got to slide through the finish line on the world's largest inflatable water slide. So much fun! 

I had many other trips and events planned out in my head that I wanted to squeeze in, but they'll have to wait until next year. This summer was a great balance of trips, friends, activities, relaxing, water, and family. I'm thinking a wake boarding and zip lining trip at Big Bear might be in my future for next summer. And maybe I'll be able to be scuba-diving with Michelle by then too (I had too much dental work being done to go under this year). Summer always seems so short, but before we know it, next summer will be creeping up faster than this year's did! ;) 

San Diego Comic-Con, 2013

After packing up and dropping off the dogs, we were on our way to San Diego Comic-Con, 2013! With our professional badges in hand, we stayed Wednesday, July 17th, through Sunday, July 21st, and it was a blast. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel using points and drove to the Fashion Valley mall to take the trolley to the convention center every day. They even had their own Comic-Con 5 day trolley passes set up for sale. 

 Though we were exhausted pretty much all of the time, we made the effort to get up early in the morning to make it down to the con to beat the crowds and get good spots in line for panels and signings. We stayed out every night to eat dinner and get drinks with friends. By the end, we were sleep deprived and dehydrated, but everything was completely worth it. 

Some Highlights from SDCC this year: 

1. Hugh Dancy in the Hannibal panel! I am absolutely in love with the show, Hannibal - it may actually be my favorite show on television right now. And I'm in love with the two stars of the show - Hugh Dancy, who plays Will Graham, and Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Though Mads wasn't able to make it to the panel (sniff), the producers and Hugh were there to show us sneak peaks of the blooper reel (so hilarious!) that will be released with the DVD set and talk about what it was like working on the show and what may be to come. After the panel was over, the fans rushed the stage and went crazy for Hugh. I just had to run up and snag a picture.We were threatened with security, so Hugh promised us he would meet us outside. Such a cool guy!

2. Meeting Michael McMillian who plays Steve Newlin on True Blood. He had a booth set up in the autograph area and we just happened to stumble upon it while he was there! He's one of my favorite characters from the show, and no matter how weird the show starts to stray, his character is always entertaining and consistent. When it was my turn for his autograph, he actually talked to my friend and I about how the convention was going and what we saw. Turns out he likes The Walking Dead too. I told Michael he was my favorite character from the show and he told me I was his favorite fan. I'm sure he says that to all the girls!

3. Running into Justin Chambers. After a long day at the convention, my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to join him and his friends in a late screening. The convention center was closed, with the exception of these few, later panels. My friend that I was hanging out with was heading back to the hotel, so I decided to join the screening. I found out it was a panel and advanced screening for Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. Not my usual thing, but the screening was actually pretty awesome. It was geared towards a mature audience (not what I was expecting) and I actually enjoyed the cinematography and action sequences. My stereotypical expectations of animation were proven wrong yet again. After the screening was a short panel with the creators and voice actors. I had no idea that Justin Chambers played Flash! I know him as Alex from Grey's Anatomy and it was cool seeing him in a different element. After the panel, we were on our way out of the convention center to go grab dinner and I realized we were walking out right next to him. We told him he did a great job with the voice and I got a picture with him. Really chill dude.

4. George R.R. Martin! We waited in line for a raffel drawing for an hour and a half and out of the six of us in our group who drew tickets, three of us got winning tickets. This meant we could come back in an hour to meet George R.R. Martin. None of us expected to actually win so we were a bit unprepared. One of my friends and I each had a book for him to sign, but my other friend didn't bring anything with her. We rushed down to the floor of the convention center to search for autograph-able Game of Thrones materials, which were strangely difficult to find once we were looking for them. We found no books for her so she ended up getting a poster. I found two vinyl figures of Daenerys Targaryen and Robb Stark and snagged those for him to sign too. Once we got back up to the autograph section to get in line, we found that they were selling Game of Thrones books right on the table where George was signing. Sometimes I really feel so blonde. When it was my turn, George took a look at the vinyls he was signing and mentioned "Oh, Danny! I see they ran out of the headless Ned!" followed by a laugh that reminded me of Santa Clause. I had a stupid grin stuck on my face for about 15 minutes straight after that.

5. Giving a random girl dressed as Daenerys a Game of Thrones poster. So the poster that my friend bought for George R.R. Martin to sign was going to waste since she was able to buy the books for him to sign at his table instead. She was ready to throw it away when I yanked it from her to give to someone randomly. Better than just throwing it away, right? I was about to give it to a small child when my group of friends shouted at me and pointed out a girl dressed up in a Daenerys costume. It was too perfect. I went up to her and called out "Daenerys! You want a free poster?" She said, "sure, thanks" and unsurely accepted the rolled up poster. I told her I liked her costume and started walking away to the sounds of her unrolling the poster and shrieking to her friends in delight as she realized it was a poster of Game of Thrones in the background. Pretty awesome feeling!

6. Spending time with friends & meeting new ones. One of my favorite parts of being at SDCC was being there with my friends and meeting people. An awesome part in one of our days was a break we took in one of the corners of the convention center behind the Telltale games booth and next to a Mrs. Fields cookie stand. We sat on the floor with our group and eventually snagged a table to camp at. We drank soda, ate cookies, took turns leaving our stuff at the table and wandering the floor, and watched all the fascinating costumes and people go by. After being at the convention and lugging around a backpack filled with goodies, a camera, and give away items, it was a great feeling to leave it all at the table with our group and walk freely in the crowds, 10 pounds lighter. It was also a very cool feeling being able to walk the floor alone since I was always with a group trying to keep tabs on everyone's location and stick together before. Having a home base to report back to was such a relief and I had a great time wandering through aisles of booths alone and buying nicks and knacks for myself. We witnessed a Walking Dead costume contest at the Telltale booth too. An awesome Shaun of the Dead costume came by and I had to grab a picture just because he looked so much like the actor! And I saw a Booker from Bioshock Infinite. It's such a cool thing to play into someone's world. Calling people by the names of the characters they are dressed up as and seeing them respond in character. There were a ton of other great costumes too and I enjoyed our commentary and discussions as we rested at our little table.

7. Kit Harrington in the DreamWorks Animation panel! What a lucky surprise. We didn't attempt waiting in line for the Game of Thrones panel in Hall H, so we didn't expect to see anyone from that show, but here he was - in the flesh! While waiting for the Hannibal panel all day, we sat through a ton of other panels that were scheduled before, one happening to be DreamWorks Animation. Once they started getting into the next How to Train your Dragon movie, they announced the voice actor of the bad guy in the film to be someone we would all know and someone who was going to be joining the panel with us, then Kit Harrington walked out! They showed clips from the film, including two full scenes (it looks awesome - I can't wait to see it!). Kit talked about what it was like working as a voice actor opposed to what it's like on Game of Thrones. He was there for a split second and then it was back to the panel and back to waiting for Hannibal.

8. FREEBIES. One of the best things at SDCC every year is the free stuff that is given away. We pay for gas on the way down to San Diego, we pay for a hotel to stay at (or not in our case since we used points!), we pay for our trolley pass so we have transportation to the convention center, we pay for overpriced junk food at the convention center and for dinners and drinks when we go out, we pay for the must haves we see at booths, and some of us pay for our tickets to get in (we went free with our Professional passes with $170 value). So when something is given out for no cost at Comic-Con, it is quite exciting. I looked up where the freebies would be beforehand and found out that the Petco booth would be giving away Yoda dog ears. Preview night was way more crowded than it was last year and I was cut off right before getting a pair for my dogs, Chance & Cody. The next day I came early and prepared and snatched them after a minor loss of control I had when yelling at my boyfriend to grab the small dog size for Cody as I had grabbed the large size for Chance and we could only take one each. Freebies can be so stressful sometimes (embarrassed eye shift)...
My friend and I ran The Walking Dead Escape at Petco Park again this year and we got a free exclusive poster and The Walking Dead Rise of the Governor novel for participating. I also got a free Ghosts Portfolio artwork book signed by artist Rochelle Heagh Phister. I hadn't seen or heard of her or her art before but since it was free I thought, what the heck. It's Comic-Con! We were also given How To Train Your Dragon autographed artwork posters from the DreamWorks Animation panel and a Hannibal sketch of a body signed by Hannibal. Not too shabby for a grand total of $0.

9. Hanging out with Dave Fennoy, voice actor of Lee from The Walking Dead Game and his wife after his signing at the Telltale Games Walking Dead booth. This booth was awesome, first of all. The staff allowed us to go inside the prop car and there were actors as characters from the comic - Lucille was there, if you read the comic, you'll know what item that is. We stumbled upon a signing with Dave Fennoy so we all got our picture with him and I got an autographed still from the game. This is my favorite video game, so this was a pretty awesome highlight for me. I can't WAIT for the next game to come out, and if you haven't played the first season, you really should. The teaser game for the next season has me pretty amped up. Anyway, after getting our signing and sitting at our home base table, Dave's wife came over to sit with us and talk. We bonded over being pit bull owners and she convinced us all to call our mothers (she is a mother and expressed her displeasure when her children text back instead of call back - she had good points, actually). After Dave's signing was over, he joined our conversation. For about an hour or so we got to hang out with them like it was nothing and it was awesome. He's a great voice actor (also the Hulu guy!) and it was actually really hard to tell it was him just by hearing him talk. But when he did his impressions, I could totally picture Lee's face and/or felt like I was watching something on Hulu. 

Great view of Rick! 

Us in the booth earlier

Us in the Governor's office earlier

Daryl and the Governor! 

10. Seeing the entire Walking Dead cast on the floor! My friend and I were walking the floor on one of the days we were there and we ran into a stop in traffic. An entire direction of the floor was blocked off and we were told to turn around.  Then I noticed that there was a massive swarm of people around The Walking Dead booth where my boyfriend and I had gone in earlier and got our pictures taken. It was made up to look like the prison from the show and on the inside was the Governor's office. Pretty cool, actually. I assumed the crowds were for the cast of The Walking Dead show since I knew there was going to be a signing. After making our way around, we were able to get a pretty decent view of the entire cast there. The actors who play Rick, Herschel, Glen, the Governor, Daryl, and Tyrese were there along with Robert Kirkman and the creators of the show. Perfect sighting and photo op!

 All and all, this was a great year at San Diego Comic-Con. It was the most crowded year yet and the first year I didn't venture into Hall H. I really enjoyed my experience outside of it though and can't wait to see what will be in store for next year!