We’re on a plane back to CO!  Actual posting resumes tomorrow!

Today the plan is to hit the sales floor and attend a ton of events.  I’ve been asked to attend a DungeonMaster’s panel, so that will be a fun chance to meet some new people.  Later on today is one of my events, an unofficial gathering to play some D&D with friends.

This is probably my best day to hit the sales floor, so I should get to see the sights and get some cool gaming swag!  More soon!

This morning, Tasha is competing in the Queen of Geeks Pageant.  Last year she ended up in the Top 3, this year I think she’s got a good chance to take the whole thing.  Her costume is great, her talent is a takeoff on last year’s wild success (there were people still talking about it getting prepared for this year), and she’s totally awesome.  So hopefully we’ll chime in later today with pictures of her in the coveted sash.

She seems to thoroughly enjoy competing, so win or lose it will be a positive experience.  I’m hoping she wins, she worked hard on that costume!

By the time you all read this, Tasha and I are touching down for GenCon Indy 2009!  We’ve got an action packed weekend of meeting with RPG Bloggers, playing new and exciting games, and hob-nobbing with Wizards of the Coast reps this year!  Tonight is the RPG Bloggers meeting, so we’re going to meet a bunch of people some of which we’ve never met in real life before.  Last year we got the opportunity to hang out with some of the founding members of the RPG Bloggers Network and had a great time, so there’s no reason to think that it’s not going to be great for Year 2.

After an excruciatingly long work day, I spent most of the evening getting ready for Gen Con.  Getting gaming gear together, organizing our events, getting prizes together… all necessary pre-convention tasks.

This is the longest vacation I’ve had from work since I started this new job.  I can’t wait to unwind a little and hang out with friends, new and old.  I will be blogging from the convention, but since its so erratic I’ll be blogging some placeholder posts in case I’m not able to find the Internet.

More from Indy!

Tonight was workout #2 at the Arvada dojo!  We did some basics to warm up, then moved into more complicated combinations with partners.  I would attempt to describe the combinations but they were rather intricate… one was straight punch from standing, step back and with the opposite hand rising block, slide up halfway and jab, front leg roundhouse kick and then reverse punch as you land.

After around 20 minutes working on those partner drills, we moved on to katas.  We did Tekki Shodan, then our individual katas.  I did Sochin and Nijushiho, the latter for fun.  It was a good workout!

Not much to say today… good day at work, came home and grilled some hot dogs, watered the lawn, and blogged a little something for StupidRanger.com‘s second birthday.  I watched the latest Futurama move “Into the Wild Green Yonder”.  It was good, a little boring in the middle.  I think that Futurama is much better as a 30 minute series, they can’t seem somewhat hit and miss on the full length movies.  I’m still excited for new episodes starting next year.

That’s about all for me at the moment… its my annual review time at work tomorrow.  At least I’ll have a topic for tomorrow!

After a good, long sleep I woke up very sore this morning from all of yesterday’s yardwork.  We did our grocery shopping today, and now I’m unwinding a bit before the work week.

Last night I upgraded the operating system on the Eee PC to Easy Peasy 1.1, the latest of the specialized Ubuntu distribution for the smaller form factor computers.  It worked very well, only two things not working: sound and the wifi hotkey.  I got sound fixed last night, and I don’t really care that the wifi hotkey doesn’t work.

The visual upgrade to the Easy Peasy OS is pretty cool… they swapped out the burnt sienna color for a trendy blue, and swapped out all of the Ubuntu logos on the loader and OS with the Easy Peasy lemon logo.

That’s all for me right now!

I finally got to sleep in today, and as a result Tasha and I ate a late lunch at Denny’s.  Afterward, I headed over to Black & Read to show Derek his new website design which I had done for them as freelance work.  It was mid-afternoon, and I was lamenting how bad our yard has gotten bemoaning the recent letter from my HOA.  Tasha pointed out that there was a Lowe’s right around the corner and that we should pick up some yard care stuff and I could do that while she worked on her costume.

That was fine with me, I remembered something that my Dad told me about yardwork being good stress relief so I was looking forward to it.  I bought these giant loppers, some organic fertilizer for the yard that some guy recommended that was also shopping there, a weeding tool, and some lawn bags and made my merry way back home.

I started out by weeding all of the obvious weeds from the yard and cleaning out the planter underneath our pine tree.  We had some small to mid-sized trees that were growing in our rocks around the house, so shortly I had a driveway full of felled pseudo-trees.  I chopped them up with the lopper and bagged them.  Feeling pretty good so far!  After a short break, I watered the front yard with the fertilizer and then I ventured into the back yard with my weed eater and cleaned up our patio.  It sorely needed weed-eating, so I swept up and bagged the remains.  I took the lopper to a few more small trees, adding to a pile of detritus that had been accumulating in the corner of my back yard waiting for yard bags.

I was getting pretty tired now, but I vowed to get that pile of debris cleaned up.  An hour and a half later and three full lawn bags, I was down to just the recycling bin and a black tub filled with lawn waste that the previous homeowners had accumulated prior to our moving in.  I got the recycling bin cleared and moved on to the black tub.  I grabbed a few things out of the top of the tub, and I noticed that my glove was wet.  “Oh,” I thought, “some pine needles have just plugged up the bottom of the tub a little and I got some rainwater in here.”

Not a big deal, right?  I tipped the tub and was nearly overcome by the smell of sewage.  It seemed that rainwater HAD gotten into the tub, but there were no drainage holes in the bottom.  The water had liquefied everything in the tub, save for a very deceptive plug of sticks, twigs, pine needles, and pitch black sludge.  When I tipped the tub back upright, some gas or steam of some kind was wafting out of there.  The sludge smelled like a zoo, or something that had been dead for a long time.  I had to go get the snow shovel to pick up the pile of sludgy remains that had so convincingly fooled me into dumping out the bucket.

I ended up having to get my hose and spray out the bucket and the affected area of my yard, since the smell was now permeating the neighborhood.  My adventures in yard work ended shortly thereafter.  At least I didn’t have to chop up the debris in the final bucket, right?

I’m somewhat of a good neighbor now… my yard is much more well-kept.  I also know that I have a pretty strong stomach too.  If anyone in my family gets Teenage or Mutant in the next few days, I give you all the permission to create comic books about us.

After happy hour at work, I made my way back home and Tasha and I went out to Red Robin.  For some reason, the water said “did you have the cheese logs” as he delivered our fried cheese sticks and it was quite funny.  In addition, it seems that several of the waiters there were sporting 1970’s mustaches not unlike Napoleon Dynamite’s brother, Kip.  One of them even had a 70’s style perm.  It was scary.

In other news, we’re about to start a long relaxing weekend prior to GenCon.  We got a pleasant letter from our HOA informing us that we have to water our lawn more, so I’m going to have to get someone in to look at the sprinkler system.  I’m going to walk down to talk to the president of our HOA and see if he can recommend someone.