Asian Ball-Jointed Doll Meet-Up, Ellicott City, Maryland
April 30, 2006

(Originally written on May 2, 2006)

Last Sunday morning I dropped my husband off at Baltimore-Washington International Airport for a business trip to California. After I dropped my husband off, I decided to skip church in favor of going to a ball-jointed doll meet-up in Ellicott City, Maryland that was organized through the Den of Angels forum. (I don't feel too guilty about skipping church because I spent most of the day before cooped up inside of church because I was invited to attend a workshop that discussed how our congregation can reach out more to teens and young adults and it ended up being this three-hour forum that was facilitated by a consultant and we had to break into small groups and write things down and stuff like that.)

We met in the historic part of Ellicott City (which harkens back to the town's origins as a mill town). I brought three Asian ball-jointed dolls with me--a Volks Dollfie Dream, a Soom Mini-Gem Uyoo, and an Orient Doll Ji (my newest doll that came just last week).

We started out meet-up hanging around in the parking lot waiting for people to arrive. We killed some time by placing our dolls on the back trunk of a fellow doll owner's car and taking some snapshots. (Click on any of the photos to see a larger version open in a new window.)

This was the first doll meet-up I've been to where I saw a tanning doll in person.

I also got a rare glimpse of a Catsy doll at this meet-up. Most web photos make this doll look huge but the doll is really tiny in real life. From time to time I've seen snarky comments on a certain doll forum (and, no, I'm not talking about the Den of Angels either) about how "ugly" Catsy is. Well, after seeing this Catsy in real life, I think the doll looks far cuter than what the official Catsy web photos suggest.

I liked how the nails on this doll hand were painted.

Once we all assembled together, we went to the B & O Railroad Museum, which was originally built as a B & O railroad station where, until 1946, people could use it to take the train to Baltimore and further points west. We saw a short film on the history of the B & O Railroad and how much of a lifeline it was to the people living and working in Ellicott City. Then we saw a short multimedia presentation that highlighted this miniature railroad model that took up the entire building it was housed in. The railroad model recreated the era when the B & O railroad first started (in the early 1800's) and it included mockups of the big B & O railroad station in Baltimore and the surrounding area at one end of the table, the smaller B & O railroad station in Ellicott City and the area (which is now known as the historic district) and the sparsely populated wooded area in between the two. There were a bunch of tiny railroad trains that passed through the entire length of the railroad model. Once the multimedia presentation was over, we were allowed to walk up to the railroad model where we could get a closer look at the whole thing.

When we were through with watching the film and the railroad model, we went outside on the grounds of the museum, where we decided to shoot photos of our dolls up against the steel fence that blocked off access to the railroad tracks behind it (mainly because those tracks are still in use even if the original B & O train station is now a museum).

At one point during the photoshoot, a train actually passed by.

We also did some doll comparisons. I managed to put my little Orient Doll Ji next to Catsy and we all deemed Catsy as the smallest Asian ball-jointed doll present at the meet-up. Catsy is not only shorter than Ji but she is also much thinner in the torso as well (yet she is incredibly busty with a large rump to match, compared with Ji's thicker asexual body).

After the photoshoot, we wandered through the rest of the museum where we learned that there was a time when men and women passengers had to wait in separate waiting areas for the trains (we were told by the museum employees that, prior to the 20th century, men and women who weren't related to each other by blood or marriage were discouraged from socializing with each other, which even included sitting next to each other while waiting for a train to arrive). We also saw the room where the train station's quartermaster generally lived with his family (which was basically consisted of one large room where they ate their meals and slept in their beds--there were no separate bedrooms or dining rooms).

We managed to see much of the museum in under an hour so we left. We managed to walk briefly around some scenic areas before we felt hungry for lunch.

Try spotting the female mallard duck among the rocks.

This sign is proof that there are still a few doll hospitals left in the United States.

After walking around the streets of the historic district looking for a bite to eat, we ended up eating at the Ellicott City Brew Pub and Restaurant while talking about doll stuff and even taking a few photos of our dolls doing some crazy things.

After lunch we walked around the town and was doing some window shopping.

We came across this one guy outside one of the stores hawking these giant bubble wands.

Someone in our group had an idea of walking to just beyond the edge of the town taking photos by the small river that runs by the area. As we were walking past this cafe, we saw one guy who was sitting outside at one of the tables who took one look at our group holding our dolls and he started yelling "OH MY GOD!!! THESE PEOPLE ARE CARRYING THESE WEIRD DOLLS. AND THEY LOOK JUST LIKE THEM!!!" I question his assertion that we resemble our own dolls but whatever. We laughed at that freaky guy.

So we came by this cool stone wall near the river and took some more photos of our dolls.

We doll owners also posed for a few photos with our dolls. (The next three photos posted here were taken by Baru. All other photos posted in this entry were taken by me.)

Someone said that she was by that river earlier and it looked like someone had an old car parked by the river banks while someone had managed to rig a clothesline between two tree trunks with a pair of pants hanging from it. That area is not really a designated campground so we were speculating as to whether some homeless people were squatting there illegally. While we were busy socializing and taking photos of our dolls, this woman had suddenly emerged from the riverbank area clutching an empty plastic soda bottle (or water bottle). She walked towards us, the stopped and began to hit her own thigh hard a few times with the empty plastic bottle. Then she continued to walk and looked at us with this totally wild-eyed look. Then she paused at this street sign in front of us, turned around so she could look at us behind the street sign, and began to hit the street sign pole with the same plastic bottle with all the strength she could muster up while giving us this bug-eyed look (yes, I saw the whites of her eyes) and started to show her front teeth like she was a snarling wild animal. Then she turned around and walked across the footbridge into the town itself.

We just sat there and stared at this bizarre scene. After she left, we started to talk about that crazy woman and we started to wonder what the hell was that about. Some people in our group were leery about going back into town out of a fear of meeting her again (never mind the fact that there were 11 of us in the group so we could have easily ganged up on that woman if we had to). So we waited several minutes while we talked and stuff. Eventually we concluded that the crazy lady was long gone and wasn't going to come back so we walked back into town.

We ended our meet-up outside the B & O Railroad Museum (since most of our cars were parked there). We all started to admire the tanning doll and someone asked his owner to pull his pants down. She complied and we all got a chance to see what he looked like down there.

As you can see in the photo, he is pretty well hung.

hen some people decided to pair that doll with another male doll for some same-sex gay yaoi make-out session while we all took photos.

We talked some more but, after a while, the afternoon sun was at its highest position and our skins began to bake under the heat and we all began to get tired. So we parted around 3 p.m.

With the lovely weather, warm temperature, and low humidity, it was a perfect day for a meet-up. The only bad thing came after I got home. While I was loading my dolls and my digital camera out of my car and into my arms, I began to fumble for the keychain because I needed the house key. Well, I accidentally dropped my digital camera. I picked it up and rushed inside. I found that the camera stopped working. I tried switching batteries and it's still the same result.

I had that camera for at least seven years and, compared to the newer digital cameras that are on the market now, it was pretty primitive. I had an inkling that I owned the digital camera equivalent of the Ford Model T a few months ago when I attempted to buy a SmartMedia card to use as a back-up because I only had one such card that came with my camera and I became paranoid that the card would eventually fail since storage devices can and do fail. (Such as my computer's hard disk crash last year.) I went to three different stores and I was told that the store had stopped carrying that type of card and if I wanted a new one, I would have to order one off the Internet.

So the photos from that doll meet-up are the last photos I will ever take with my old digital camera. (R.I.P.)

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