I got up at 6 this morning. I never get up at 6. I will tell you why it was so vital I get up at 6: we had two panels today. And while that is the laxest daily panel schedule we’ve had to date, they were the ones we were the most excited for: Doctor Who and Being Human/Torchwood.

And Doctor Who started at 10. Which means that in order to get in, and also to get decent seats, we had to start lining up at 8. Yes, we are that dedicated. Notice I use the word “dedicated,” not “obsessed.”

The panel itself? Let’s put it this way. When I clap my hands, my right pinkie bangs against the jade ring I have on my left middle finger. By the end of the Doctor Who panel, my pinkie was swollen and bruised from the impact. I won’t go into too much detail about the announcements made during the panel, since I’m sure you could easily find those elsewhere on the internet, but I will say that David Tennant’s sparkly Stormtrooper t-shirt was awesome but I wonder if he ever wears shirts that don’t ride up when he lifts his arms. Amber wasn’t complaining about the view, though.

Doctor Who ended at 11, and Torchwood wasn’t until 2:15, so Amber and I popped down to the convention floor and I picked up a copy of Nick Simmons’ Incarnate for a coworker who’s nuts about him. I read the thing myself while waiting for Torchwood to start, and I have mixed feelings about the thing. Incarnate has some pretty good ideas behind it, and the comic had a few moments of win (“Quit being dramatic, I only shot you once”), but the artwork is a little too anime-styled for my liking and the panel layout is a bit clumsy. Also the dialogue can get very clunky in spots, especially since conveying maniacal laughter is so difficult in a soundless medium, and Nick Simmons commits the cardinal sin of overwritten first-person narrative, which is the reason I can’t watch Dexter. With a little more polish and some time to establish itself, it could be a really good comic. If not nurtured and edited properly, it could become one of those comics that’s all concept, no execution.

To make sure we had good seats for Torchwood, Amber and I sat in on three short movie panels: Paper Heart, Mystery Team, and Alien Trespass. I already knew about Mystery Team, and had failed to get into a screening, and I’d distantly heard of Paper Heart, but Alien Trespass was new. I want to see it so very much now, it looks beautiful and hilarious and awesome.

The Torchwood panel was a composite of itself and a panel on Being Human, which I watched back in January via slightly illegal means and enjoyed thoroughly. There was nothing new in the panel, since they were previewing it for the BBC America crowd, but Russell Tovey was adorable nonetheless. Poor guy.

You can also probably find out more about the Torchwood panel elsewhere on the internet quite easily, but my pinkie finger got even more bruised and my throat is sore from the shouting. Seriously, I sound like a pack-a-day smoker right now, Amber won’t stop making fun of me. John Barrowman’s shirt was quite hideous, too. Not in an awesome way. A bad way. It’s a shame, he’s always dressed himself so well in the past. Barrowman was trying really hard to be good this year, but Torchwood fans find innuendo in everything so really he was trying to bail out a submarine made of Tulle with a Pepto Bismol cap.

The Torchwood panel ended pretty close to closing time for the convention centre, so after it ended it was down to the floor to grab some merchandise. I prefer to do all my convention shopping on the last day, since vendors want to move product more than anything else and I can pick up plenty of goodies on the cheap. I’ve now got a 10-piece Doctor Who action figure set from series one, the Dalek of which will be a gift to my boss so she’ll stop playing with mine at work. Also I grabbed the Optimus Prime Mighty Muggs figure and won an auction for a wonderful painting by Michael McCaslin. Pictures forthcoming (I forgot my camera charger at home).

After we got kicked out it was dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory (again), where Amber and I lamented the fact that the convention was over while simultaneously agreeing that if it were even one day longer we would probably collapse from exhaustion.

Now I have to pack, which I don’t like at all. It’s like I’m admitting defeat. But tomorrow I will be home and will be telling stories about this trip for six months, at least. Really, just tune me out if I start going.

I hope I arrive in decent condition. I do not fly well.

There are few words as magical to a sleep-deprived convention-goer far from home than, “we don’t have any panels until tomorrow afternoon, we should sleep in.” Oh my god. I didn’t know only sleeping until 9:00 could be so rewarding. I feel more refreshed than I’ve been in a long time, and that’s at the end of the day.

So I and Amber, Friend of Cancerbaby, got to the convention wonderfully late after breakfast at Cafe 222. A word of advice for eating there: the menu says that the stack of pancakes is only three high, but don’t let that fool you. The pancakes are huge. I was starving and I only got about a third of the way through. Also you can get leftover pancakes boxed up, but they do not travel well and people look at you funny if you take them out in the middle of a panel for a quick nibble.

Panel number one of the day, at a luxurious 1:30 in the afternoon, was the “Bram Stoker: The Joss Whedon of His Day?” panel, which didn’t really discuss Joss Whedon all that much but laid out in no uncertain terms that vampires do not sparkle and that’s that. On the panel, among others, was Dacre Stoker, a man with one of the most unlikely names I have ever heard. Also Tony Lee is awesome.

After that, in the same room, was “Spotlight on June Foray.” Oh my god, June Foray. One of the people who shaped my childhood; my Dad raised me on Rocky & Bullwinkle and Loony Tunes. What a wonderful, beautiful, amazing, vibrant woman. And she can still do Rocket J. Squirrel perfectly. I hope the special Rocky & Bullwinkle audioplay they did gets YouTubed, because my father (and everybody else) needs to hear it.

There’s a certain genius to the writing of Rocky & Bullwinkle, in that they can get an entire room howling with stupid puns and silly punchlines far easier than the best social commentary or pop-culture jokes ever could. I think the same goes for a lot of comedy from that era, especially animated comedy, and it’s something I think modern comedy is lacking. I hope it makes a comeback someday.

While still gushing to each other about June Foray, Amber and I popped over to “We Control the Vertical: Writing and Producing for Television,” which was a lot less informative than I’d hoped it would be, and inevitably had a few “pitchers” in the questions queue. You know the type: the ones who ask in a long, rambling, roundabout sort of way about whether the panelists would be interested in this idea they’ve got. I hate these guys, they’re almost as bad as the ones who show up at writer interviews and ask for tips. Anyone who does either of these things: this may come as a shock, but we do not care about you. Chances are, neither do the writers or panelists. I fully appreciate that you need an ego to get into the writing business, but to truly succeed you need to learn when to shut the hell up.

But I digress.

In order to be able to get anywhere near the Mythbusters panel Amber and I had to wait in the line and watch the pilot for The Vampire Diaries. Think Twilight but trying to be “edgy” and made for the CW and you’ll get the idea. Also Boone from Lost is in it.

My hands hurt so much from clapping, and my throat is still burning from cheering when the Mythbusters showed up. I don’t think Discovery knew when they started the show six years ago that a bunch of SFX guys would have so much rock star quality. I’m fairly certain we out-screamed the Twitards. SCIENCE!

Also I had no idea Kari Byron was pregnant. Huh.

For once we’ve got an early night. We’ve got to show up early tomorrow if we want any chance of getting into the Doctor Who panel. I’m not sure if I’m going to have another freakout like I did around Neil Gaiman. I guess we’ll find out.

One last thing: as I was writing this and Amber was reheating some food, we found out that our microwave goes “ding”. Hooray!