cherydactyl

So, a few days ago I got back from GenCon. I went by myself; no

illyaa, no kids. Well, my friend Chip picked me up and drove; I stayed in a room with him and another friend at the Embassy Suites. And, boy is that hotel a little odd...the front entrance is pretty much on the 3rd floor inside a building facing toward the parking garage. And then you go up a level on an escalator to get to the lobby on the 4th floor. Very odd.

I again worked for the Train Gamers Association to help put on the Puffing Billy train games tournament. ( Read more... )

It was a good weekend. I am still tired, now four days later. Next year I want to see if I can get my parents or someone to watch M so we can go again. S wants desperately to go.

A week ago, I took a mental health day and went to Michicon. I made

illyaa deal with both kids' soccer games, and my parents, who came to one of them, to boot. Actually, he volunteered to let me go. I left about 7:15 am, got to Troy about 8:05, had time to go get water and pumpkin seeds at the nearby drug store, and still get there quite early.

There were maybe 125 to 150 people in the room at the peak. We had around 15 people for the Puffing Billy (train games) tournament, many of whom I have known for many years but only see a few times per year. I got to play the playtest copy of Africa Rails. I blew some newbies out of the water at Ticket To Ride Europe; I am a bit of a shark since I am ranked in the top 50 at the online game which has an international list of tens of thousands of players. I felt kind of bad about beating them so badly at that, but they will learn it quicker than if I try to play badly. I played Eurorails with Al, had an unfortunately-large pickup game of Express, but didn't get to play Lunar Rails.

John mentioned the idea of a Mars Rails, loosely based on Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom. He mentioned Space 1889 (the victorian space travel game) as a good resource for such a project. I thoroughly agreed that that would be a fun project. I mentioned that I have a full set of John Carter of Mars paperbacks. Al encouraged John and I to collaborate on such a thing.

As we came up to the 7 pm event slot, John and I were neck and neck, so Al made us play on the same board of India Rails. It ended up 252-220-220, with the win for John. I missed a PB championship, albeit a small-time one, by this much. Got second place and a Mayfair gift certificate.

Got home at just about 11 pm. The venue didn't allow smoking, but plenty of the people I played with are smokers, so I still smelled of it. I took a shower to wash the smoke out of my hair.

I have a long weekend coming up on January 12-15, since my employer has no school on January 12 or 15 for report writing and MLK, Jr. day. I really would like to go somewhere with

illyaa, and we really could use some time away together. But I have a hard time envisioning three or four days somewhere with him without something to hold our mutual attention, sad to say. In the summer or even the earlier fall, that could easily be hiking (like we did in the Rockies about a decade ago). I have my doubts he's interested in cross-country skiing, but maybe he will pipe up and contradict me. There's only so many museums I can stand to visit when we can't go walking in between without bundling to the nines.

Ideally this would be a game convention. Two and three years ago, we went to this cool little all-train-games convention in Chattenooga on MLK weekend. BTW, you'll find a picture of me there if you look through the pictures, and there is one of

illyaa as well. Last year, we were dealing with some bad stuff (

illyaa's mom had died a few months previous, and he was the personal rep of the estate, for starters), and we didn't go.

illyaa told me that the con was moved to February for 2007, which was corroborated by the yahoo group that Mark set up. It's not on the web site AFAICS.

Does anybody know of a games convention that weekend (Jan 12-15)? It's probably a long shot, but, hey, I figure I don't loose anything for asking.

I found an SF con in Boston (Arisa), but I've been off SF conventions for a while. Long story, with way TMI when told correctly.

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Entries tagged with pb

Flying Solo at GenCon

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Looking for a game con MLK weekend

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