OK, so after about 3 hours of restless sleep, I got up, showered, and headed over to the Sheraton Center for more rehearsal for the opening ceremonies. We ran the piece about 5 times before we had to stop so that they could let the audience in.
The piece went rather well. People cheered when their favorite characters came on stage... people "aaawwwed" when Haldir died... the cheered when Frodo climbed Mt. Doom. It all went rather well. When we were done, Cliff "Quickbeam" Broadway from TORn came on and did some general annoucements before the event officially started.

Now begins the official event!

I wanted to get out of my Shieldmaiden dress, so I headed up to the hotel room after the ceremony. Can I just say that the Sherton center has some of the nicest hotel beds I've evern seen! Big and fluffy with down comforters and 2 pillows each! Squeee!
We then decided to go watch "Haldir and Gil-Galad Live", rather than eat (hey, wouldn't you!?). Sound like a stand up act? Hehe... well, it basically was like one. They started out talking about Canada and how they went to a hockey game... and when given a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, Craig went on to laugh at it, stating, "shouldn't it be Maple Leaves..." They also did their best Canadian impressions... ay! They were hilarious... perhaps I can transcribe some of the interview once I get to watch my video of it. Or, even better, perhaps I can get some clips up once I figure out how the fuck to do that with my camera. It's definitely worth seeing.
We then went to eat some lunch... we saw a real Hobbit sized woman in the restaurant... seriously!

After lunch, we decided to go check out the dealers room. We thought we'd wait until the next day to get autographs, because they'd probably have super long lines (which I believe they did). I was a little upset that I didn't get to get Ted Nasmiths autograph... but he was only doing one session! Darn it! The vendors room was quite small... but boy did they have a lot of stuff I wanted to spend my money on. Tolkien Town was there, and I bought a Legolas charm necklace for my friend, Liz, from them (it was inexpensive... and I knew she'd love it). I also bought some TTT candy bars from them... and they were giving away these cool One Ring necklaces that light up red! Sweet!
The vendors room also contained official Gathering merchandise, lots of costume choices, swords, books, music, all movie related merchandise, original artwork... basically, I was drooling. They also had those mini bust machines there. When I walked over to those one of the FOTR ones was open and being fixed. I asked the guy if I could give him $2 and take a Legolas one (since that's the only one from that set that I'm missing), and he said, "sure". Yay! So, now my set is complete.
After that I went back to the Gathering merchandise table because I wanted a button. At that moment Quickbeam came over to do a book signing for the TORn book. I though, "what the hell, I've been planning on buying that book anyway." So, I bought it and had him sign it. He is quite pleasant. We talked about acting and about Chicago (because he used to live there). He then told me I should come to his speech about "Ringers" and that he'd be at the Medieval Times dressed as a tall Samwise. So, I then told him about the Ponies! Hehe... my friends say that he was totally flirting with me... but I think he was just being nice. He said he wanted to see me in my corset! *gasp*

We spent the rest of the time just wandering about the place... seeing what we could see. I went to the Games Workshop room and painted me an Uruk-hai figure. Those little figures are a bitch to paint, I tell ya! I got some peaks at Craig and Mark signing autographs... but I didn't meet them until the next day.

That evening we decided to dress up and go down for drinks. We put on our "sexiest" clothes and got a table near the bar. I drank two chocolate drinks (can't remember their frickin' names, but they were good) and a B-52.
While we were there, the guy dressed as Jack Sparrow came in... so I went over to him with my camera and asked him to say, "Yes, but why is the rum gone!?" That was for Morgan, who is in love with Johnny Depp, and is now in love with this Jack Sparrow. He looked a lot like him! Marvelous! He even did the drawl and the walk very nicely! Hehe. So, the whole time we were there in the restaurant, this group of young boys kept walking by the window and staring at us. We were like, well, that's nice... but they're just a little young for us.
After drinks we wandered the hotel a bit... perhaps hoping that we might run into one of the actors... no luck. So, we just took some stupid movies of ourselves and went back to the hotel room where we eventually fell asleep.

Coming next... the best day ever!!!!! Tuesday!!!!! You'll see why it's the best day