(no subject)

[warthog9]

So the world is not as I knew it yesterday, nor will it be the same tomorrow.

Hey so I have some pent up blogging & things to get off my chest, hope you all are in the mood for a long read ;-)

Gencon: It's hard to describe 40,000 geeks, nerds, gamers, and a plethora of other people gathering Indianapolis for the best four days of gaming. Simply put, it's a geek fest waiting to happen ;-) It was great. Thought the story goes something like this:

Headed out bright and early on Wednesday morning of August 18th, wheeee long drive in my car ;-) it went vroom and complained when I had driven 2hrs without a signifigant break..... at 4hrs without a signifigant break and at 6hrs without a signifigant break ;-) wheeeeee. On the upside of the adventure I was able to go from the Quad cities (Davenport / Moline) to Indianapolis on like 3/4 of a tank of gas (maybe a little less) so I was very very pleased with my car. Good car good car you are in the good graces of the owner.

Now got to the hotel, which will remain nameless, I wandered up and said "yes I'm here to check in, I'm with the Brian D. party and my name is John" to which they responded "Ummmm your not on the room, we can't let you check in" WHAT! Now Brian is one of those people who is absolutely miticulous and when he tells you he's done something, it is bloody well done. He had told me he called the hotel and ensured that they had put me on the room. Now this bodes oddly so they kindly accept my baggage to hold, and I head out to visit Pat, Sam & my godson Mark, as they live just south of Indy. I hung with them for a while and boy is Mark getting big?! Wish I had taken my camera! Stupid John. Anyway all was cool and eventually the hotel was sorted out and all of that, though they messed things up constantly the whole time we were there which resulted in several free breakfasts and a discount on the final billing so all was well

The con itself was great, ended up playing in True Dungeon (think Dungeons and Dragons, only instead of a game, think of actually going THROUGH the game!) It was pretty cool, though I got bit by a spider and ended up being killed but it was fun. Played in Star Fleet Battles - Canisters which was awesome, Pat joined me for that and I know he had a blast (we ended up trading crippling blows as always, jeez pat we HAVE to stop doing that you know!), sat in on a game bout cartoon action hour, seems interesting but I probably wouldn't play it very long, and played in Live Role Playing Chess that Brian and his crew hosted, Patrick and Sam both joined me on that one. Quite awesome, I'll do it next year for sure.

Beyond that the exhibit hall was nice, though I don't think it was as packed as last year. But there was a lot better quality of stuff ;-). Ended up buying "Fishing for Terrorists" (bloody awesome game, think go fish with made up funny terrorists, and government agencies) Bought Ogre bash (mmmmm ogres bashing) and another game I can't remember the name of. But I ended up with like 6-7 new t-shirts and big pile of free dice, and a few free games, etc so it was a good trip full of good shwag.

Honestly I had a complete and utter blast, w00t. My family and I were all talking about my adventure and all and I made the offer to my brother that this next year he would be more than welcome to join us. Thought about it for a minute and than re-itterated he's graduating from high school, right? To which he nodded. I responded with "Well guess what, I suppose you just found out your graduation present, I'm taking you to Gencon next year." You should have seen his face, it lit up like a christmas tree :-D

But yeah all is well that ends well.

Life: Life has been ok, sorta, lot of changes recently. For starters I got old again. Man that really needs to stop ;-) Right after that I had to start going nuts trying to get an Application complete for work, went nuts and got it done this last Thursday. On top of that on the 10th I took posession of an apartment and got a large chunk of my stuff moved out to Des Moines on the 11th with the wonderful and very much appreciated help of Noah A., Bob A., Sean L. and of course Ben S.. Couldn't have done it without you guys, kudos go to you all! Slowly getting unpacked, kitchen is almost done (that poor poor dishwasher has run almost continuously!) The living room is almost complete (couple more things to deal with) the computer lab.... yeah. The bedroom... yeah. I'll get there. I have a couche, a recliner, a table w/ 2 chairs, couple filing cabinets, 3 wire mesh shelves, a desk (on loan), and a computer rack in terms of furniture it's not much but it's working out ok. Sleeping on an air mattresse for the time being, hope to change that in the next few months if I can (we'll see). But yeah giant insane changes over here.

However with moving one realizes much, as I have always realized when I've moved (and I've moved at lot for my age thanks to the U.S. Air Force which my father was in) 1) Iowa City really wasn't that bad, (2) I'm a lot more of an extrovert than I thought (3) I'm not a hugely big tremendous fan of Des Moines :-/ (4) My family means a hell of a lot to me (5) Stability is a new found feeling. Having moved a lot in my life it's hard to point to a time and say it was stable, but now that I had spent 3/4 of my high school career and my entire college career in one spot... I think I have a good taste for what stability is/was. It's just different though as of late very little has been able to call itself a pillar of solidity in my life, but I think I'm through the worst of it (I hope) so here's hoping.

Also to amuse my little sister (Molly), I would like to point out that today I was shopping around for a vacume cleaner. Yes, I was shopping for a vacume cleaner you heard me right, no wait STOP LAUGHING!!! I'm serious, jeez I doubt any of you believe me ;-) but I was! ::Sighs:: Anyway, I'm going to crash, early to rise and much to do on the morrow.