csi_sanders1129 | PRS OPEN HOUSE (DAY 1)

In epic planning fail, this weekend was Parent's Weekend at Penn State which meant hotels were not easily locatable. The one Mom and I ended up in was in Altoona, which is like almost an hour from State College, PA. Not a fun drive, really. Though pretty. We confused the poor old GPS to death because they must have like changed the roads or something since the last time the maps got updated. It was like 'Recalculating... ... ... Recalculating... ... ... WHAT THE HELL YOU PEOPLE ARE DRIVING ON NOTHING!!! *power off*'

But, anyway. We made it from Altoona to State College B&N by like 11:45 only to discover that Ryan's book signing (go buy it) was not at 12, as originally advertised, but at 2. So. We had like 2 hours to kill. Fun.

Chilled for a while, ended up driving aimlessly around town for a little while in search of a Panera Bread (found one, but it was packed because it was near the PSU campus) and then just went back to B&N. By then the line was pretty long so we joined in and waited. I GOT MY JAVA CHIP FRAPPUCHINO OMG DELICIOUS HNNNG. Ryan showed up a little after two and did a quick Q&A sessionbefore he started signing. Took a while but eventually got up to the front (and god damn there were like 300+ people there see?). Ryan, Michelle Belanger, and Stefan Petrucha (dude who helped Ryan write the book - mostly transcribed what Ryan dictated and edited accordingly in bits when Ry was too busy) were at the table thingy. Sergey, Eilfie, Katrina and Josh were all chilling around the area, too. I had 2 books. One for me and one for

cynical_sweater to get signed and while Ryan was signing those, Michelle was like 'Ooh, I like your tattoos! (Aequitas/Veritas) Good values to have.' And Ryan was like 'Huhwhat? Oh. Boondock?' 'YESSS.' <3 Got some haphazardly taken pics with them then got shuffled out of the way. Got Katrina to sign/get a picture, then Sergery and Josh and Eilfie. :D We hung around until the line was mostly gone because somehow in the tattoo conversation the books missed her in the signing process so I was hoping to catch her. Didn't.

Headed over to the new PRS headquarters and got signed in and everything. Had to chill for a while as other people showed up. Thus began the tour (led by Chris, old friend of Ryan's from high school and PRS crew). She led us around the offices - which are really cool. Tech room. Josh's office (and Josh!). Paranormal Insider TV Room/Chillaxing room (Xander has a bed in there, too <3). Katrina's Office (and Katrina!). Sergey's Office (and Sergey!). Conference room. Ryan's Office (no Ryan, he wasn't there so we weren't allowed in). Kitchen Michelle was just out of frame there - a vampire eating a sandwich, as Chris introduced - and Xander has foodbowls in there <3. Eilfie's Office (and Eilfie!). Library. Seance room.

Thus ended the tour. We were then sent back outside while the others groups finished up their tours. There were maybe like... 30 of us? Idk. Not too many, really. From there, we got sent off to the various lectures we'd signed up for.

For lecture #1, I picked Sergey's. It was on the History of Spirit Photography and it was really neat. I'll probably post about it more later. Xander showed up toward then end of it and got lots of belly rubs. (God, I miss my dogs!!)

For lecture #2, I picked Ryan's (and Stefan's). Which was lucky since he got stuck at the bookstore for a while and then couldn't do the one on Sunday (will explain in next post). He basically just talked about the book and stories about writing the book and stuff that got cut out and details and stuff. It was really interesting and seriously funny at times. (He and Chris broke into some church in South Carolina with a screwdriver looking for evidence of a haunting when they were in HS and are pretty much not allowed in that town anymore?)

From there, we all headed out to Damon's for dinner. OMG FOOD THAT ISN'T FROM THE CAF AT SCHOOL!! <3 YUM. Ended up sitting with Stefan Petrucha amongst several other PRS goers. Ryan and Sergey and most of the others were at the table in front of us, Josh was at the table behind us. Ryan kept stealing Sergey's food, lol. They had some serious technical difficulties on set-up, but eventually they got Ryan's laptop (it has Xander as a background, aww <3) set-up and hooked up to the projector thingies in the room. They showed us one of the new potential openers for the show 9set to Red Right Hand? xD) And then screened an episode (called They Only Come Out At Night). It was pretty damn good, and I will refrain from spoilering you all. I think it's one of the ones that air on 10/17. Then they played a few random clips (one of their episodes is going to be a total crack-fest, I warn you all now, lmfao...) and then another episode called ... Dead Room? I think. Pretty sure that was what it was called. That one was amazingly done and very powerful. Apparently Ryan has been trying to re-vamp how the show gets done, trying to break pattern and try new things (like the new theme and such). I'd say it's working.

After dinner, we all headed back to the PRS headquarters. Mom and I were in seance group one and we all sat around in a circle in the dark dark dark seance room. A few people stood around a tipping table and one brave volunteer went into the spirit closet to stare into a creeptastic mirror. Pretty much nothing happened, except that people's stomachs growled and some of us felt like our heads were really heavy. Michelle (the host of the seance thing) said that we'd p[retty much just covered how exciting Dead Time usually is.

Once that was over, we headed out. We had an hour drive back to Altoona and we were both pretty exhausted by the time we got there. Z.z

Signed stuff! --->

1. Ryan, Stefan, Michelle, in clockwise direction. 2. Katrina at top, then Sergey (no points at all for guessing that.) Josh is on the bottom left, Eilfie on bottom right.