Dallas PRIDE!

Happy birthday Caroline! She turns 8 today! I'm going to miss her party tomorrow for school, but she's super excited! XD

So I spent the last two days at Oktoberfest performing, and then today I spent six-and-a-half hours at the Dallas PRIDE Parade and Festival. Shoo wee I'm pooped!

The whole thing was a ton of fun...I've never been to the Dallas festival before and I'll definitely be returning. I was supposed to be meeting 8 or 9 people there from the LGBT artist group I run on deviantART, but there were so many people there I wouldn't have been able to spot my own family members, let alone anyone I'd never met in person before.

Seriously, there were so many people there...it was the thickest crowd I've ever been a part of. It felt like I was IN those old videos of Woodstock. It was ridiculous! In the morning (it started at 11am) there were probably less than 100 visitors, and by the time the parade started there were several hundred if not 1,000, and when that parade finally ended, holy crap. There had to have been at least 10,000 people in that little park! Don' believe me? Every picture I took that wasn't zoomed in on something looked like this:

(click to HERE see a larger version on deviantART)

I was only there for  a few minutes by the time I found the beloved HRC (Human Rights Campaign) booth. They asked if I was a member and I said yes but that I never donate because I don't have a job and I'ma full-time student, but they used some mental ninja powers on me and I donated $35 on the spot. What put me over the edge was the adorable little HRC canvas purse/bag that I got for my donation. I love it! I also ended up signing on as an official HRC volunteer for future events.

Apparently determined to bleed myself dry, the very next thing I did was buy thigh-high tube socks with rainbow stripes on them...and then a purple tee-shirt with a saying on it that I can't repeat in polite company...and then a $10 cheeseburger from the Chili's booth. >_< I did save a lot of money by not buying any water, though! Every bottle for sale was $3 but I was able to mooch a ton of free bottles of water off other booths as well as an energy drink or two and saved like $30 doing so. I also won a whopping $2 cash on a game! :-D

I also got a ton of free stuff, and kept having to refuse offers of extra bags...I got so much stuff that I had to return to my car three times just to unload!

Here's some more of my photos, most of which were from the parade (on a bit of the road that had no shade and thus was a small pocket of NON-crowd where I could easily snap photos).

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

I took something like 450 photos and videos and most of them haven't even been filtered through yet. For those that I HAVE looked through, I've put them in a facebook album. If you want to see those go to my facebook album for the festival that has about 30 pictures in it so far.

I had lots of fun, the music was great, the people were fantastic, I felt at-home. I eventually had to leave because I had already spent more money than I'd meant to, I was getting hungry again, my allergies were kicking in, and it was starting to be painfully obvious I wasn't going to meet any new friends (or find the people I already knew) because of how incredibly crowded it was getting.