It was hilarious how it happened, and Laura's reaction to me winning was priceless. We had promised each other that whoever won would invite the other one as their +1, so when I told Laura I won she had a fit. She was hysterical. Best IM ever? "Wait my phone is dead but I'm gonna charge it so you can hear my real tears". Every time I read that over I start cracking up.

Anyways, May 2nd comes along and we dress all nice for it. Our friend Nikki came along and managed to squeeze herself in via the "waiting line" so we were all sorts of excited. They had a reception area for snack foods and wine and whatnot, then we were guided to the screening room, where, after the preview of the episode was shown, the projector screen went up and out comes the PBS people, Steven Moffat and Benedict Cumberbatch for a Q&A session.

I love Benedict's character. Despite his growing popularity, he's actually pretty humble and doesn't understand why people like him so much LOL. He seems to be pretty chill and silly at times and definitely not stuck-up. I'm sure he was a bit shocked at all the love and the hype he was getting from his fans.

After the Q&A was the autograph signing, and the line for Benedict was -LONG-. Ridiculously long. So long that it kind of went around the inside of the building, up the stairs, and right out the door.

We almost didn't make it for the autograph though... we were on the line for two hours, and my knee was acting up at the time, had my brace on and everything and at some point they decided to close -off- the autograph line -right- in front of us. I was beyond pissed because of the stress I was putting on my leg from standing on line and waiting that long. Me and Laura obviously weren't going to give up just like that. There weren't any real security, just the PBS people trying to bar the end of the line. Didn't really want to act cunty but I ended up being really pissed off and cussing and all this.. LOL

I don't know how, but somehow we made it from right in front of them to -behind- them without them letting us through. I guess at that point they gave up when it came to us? In any case... xD we got our autographs lol

Unfortunately with the time we had, I never got a chance to shake his hand or hug him to take an actual non-candid shot with him but at least I was able to talk to him for a minute or so. ♥

I had asked him "Would you mind taking a group picture with us?" and though the PBS people were like 'sorry, no more photos, etc' he said "well, let's see how things turn out after I'm done signing". Of course after that there was no time (they were ready to shut the place down) but he at least wanted to try. After he was done with the last of the autographs, him and his people dipped to the elevator close by to avoid the rest of the crowd that remained, we had followed them since it was near the exit anyways. As they were in the elevator we shouted goodnight and farewell, which he returned with a lively "goodbye!" and he waved his hand at me just as the door closed. I was able to get this last shot:

Just as the doors closed. Mad skills. (Just a bit irritated because the original photo without the watermark got stolen and put on tumblr by some random chicks.. thanks Laura for pasting the original from my facebook = w=)

The end of an awesome night.

The moment I got home I put up the autograph on my wall.

You can see he was making sure he didn't go over the photo... I should've told him to do it though. I was going to put the white spaces out but what's done is done! His print was so small despite having all this huge space... it says "Amber / Thank you". We had blown up the images and printed it out on actual photo paper, it looks so nice ; w;. Benedict really liked Laura's, where he said "Holy-- my mother would love this photo!" and Laura was like PFFFT she has so many photos of you plz D: This is for me lol. I guess he doesn't like a lot of his photos but the ones we chose looked really nice xD He looks kind of dorky in some of his other photos.

SO glad I had the opportunity to meet him. ♥ I love living in New York, haha

As sarcastic as that may sound, there are really no words to describe everything that went on during this trip. It was mind-blowing, every moment of it, and me being the hugest dummy, I forgot my camera. So barely any pictures. I took the -one- photo above off my phone and it doesn't do any justice.

Friday morning at 5:30a I woke up... 5:30a was the time I was supposed to be at the church (but guess who was on the internet all night?). My phone was blown up with texts and voicemails. I return the call and all I get from Lady M was "uh you better get a cab and get over here before we leave you!" We actually didn't leave until like, 7 or so but I still scrambled my butt together, called a cab. The operator said the guy would be there in -3 minutes- and those three minutes, I literally pulled out my suitcase, threw a bunch of clothes and crap in there, face stuff, hair stuff, toothbrush, etc., and nearly broke my neck down the stairs when the cab came beeping. Of course halfway to the church I realized I forgot something important for the display and stuff and I had to go back home and get it.

It was a 5 hour ride from New York City to Speculator, pretty uneventful until we passed Schenectady and Amsterdam. Right after Amsterdam it was an hour's worth of a scenic route.

So beautiful.