I did make it home just fine — the TSA just asked a few questions and it wasn’t that big of a deal (my bags weren’t even searched, but I’ve read that’s the case sometimes). It sounded like I wasn’t the first person who’d lost his or her wallet (in fact, while I was waiting, a man came up and said he’d lost his ID, but he had other things with him). It seems like it’s a pretty common occurrence during Comic-Con.

While I was waiting for my plane, I overheard a conversation where one guy was complaining that it was “too crowded” this year and he didn’t go to any panels because the lines were too long. He didn’t specifically say what he wanted to go to, though. But I do kind of get the feeling that a lot of the “big” announcements that come out of Comic-Con don’t really need fans to be there to be announced. I do think the debate of “Is Comic-Con too big?” will be one that will never be solved.

(And just as a point of reference: Most people don’t care about Comic-Con. The TSA agents said they’ve never been and didn’t even know it went on until a couple of years ago. My hairstylist today asked me what it was.)

I do think it’s a problem that Comic-Con sells out months in advance, though, sure. It means people really have to plan ahead, even before knowing if there’s going to be anything they want to see there. I don’t know if there’s an answer to that, though, without radically changing the structure of the show.

As for me, next year, I will plan ahead a bit more, not lose my wallet and bring more than one pair of shoes. And not make ridiculous trip-home plans that involve late-night flights and then hanging out in O’Hare for three hours in the early morning. I have no clue as to why I picked that itinerary.

And just for fun, these are the celebrities I saw just hanging around:

• Kristin Schaal and Eugene Mirman
• Grant Imahara and Kari Byron
• Daniel Dae Kim (2/3 of the way down the page — in the Guy Fawkes mask. I saw him at the Giant Robot booth and I knew it was him. I knew this because I read the Internet and knew he’d done this before. So this is possibly my nerdiest celebrity sighting. And I do remember seeing Grace Park, too, but I didn’t know it was her at the time.)
• Mark Hamill