  so i'm going to urlLink otakon in july. very excited... blah, blah, blah... but seeing that i have the attention span of an amoeba, i'm already looking for vacation plans after that. otakon takes place in urlLink baltimore which is a very drivable distance from here. the metric of whether or not i can drive there determines for me if it is, in fact, a real vacation or just a weekend trip. with all that said, otakon just doesn't feel like a vacation to me. anyways... so i was thinking of going to the urlLink penny arcade expo in seattle.
i am a fan of the urlLink penny arcade! web comic but what really appealed to me about the expo was that it is really a gaming convention. alright, so i have a vacation idea - now comes the process of feeling out a cost for this excursion. i, by no means, am a rich guy and am in a savings mode at the moment (new car being the intended ultimate expenditure). there are three key components to this trip: getting off work hotel tickets airplane tickets felt out the boss today about taking a couple days off in august. evidently i'm doing my job with some measure of success since he had no objections. okay, #1 is golden. the expo website says that there's a group rate at a local hotel of $79/night. times 3 nights gives me about $240 (probably taxes and junk on top of that).
urlLink expedia says the cheapest roundtrip airfare from philly to seattle i can get is $407. so the bare minimum total is $650 (not including food, car, and misc. other expenses). realistically, the trip will cost me a grand. ouch! *wallet wincing* financially, i really must choose otakon or the penny arcade expo... because i can't afford both. otakon will obviously be cheaper and i already got a coworker going with me. plus, otakon is a guaranteed success where as the p.a.x. might have no turnout. on the flipside, i've never been to seattle... and the promise of a massive lan party boggles the mind. shit... 
