GenCon Indy Day 1

So yesterday was a hella long day... up at 5am for my 7am flight. Mechanical and air traffic control delays on the flight to Indy. Long ass day. Last night I made it to the RPGA meeting a bit too late for Karen's moment of silence, but at least there was some recognition for her. Played a Living Greyhawk mod that started late and ran really late.... got to bed at 5am CST last night, so a 22 hour day with minimal food.

Today I slept in and made it to my 1pm slot, having a reasonably good game. Ran my Living Force round tonight, which thankfully ended early, managed a nice dinner, and I'm about to go to sleep for about 9 or so hours.

All in all, Indy is a reasonably nice venue. The hotel accommodations were a room transfer from a guy on the Internet, so they turned out to be quite close and reasonably comfortable. Apparently you take a chance booking rooms through GenCon Housing because we supposedly had a double and ended up with a single king bed. Good thing I only have 1 roomie and not 3--unless I managed to find 3 gamer girls who wanted to split a room with me :>

Speaking of which, the female attendance at GenCon Indy seems to my recollection to be significantly higher than Milwaukee. Maybe a 1/5th to a 1/4th of the attendees? Not really a scientific basis, but still nice to see better gender balance in geek quarters.

GenCon Indy Day 2

Slept in this morning since I didn't have anything scheduled until 1pm again today, but this time managed enough sleep to get out of bed closer to 10:30am. Took a look through the exhibit hall hoping to find hackard--with no success--and to pick up a request for kerri_tgrl, which was a success. On my way into the area, they had some people dressed up as stormtroopers checking badges. That is not unusual for a con--there are klingons, Stargate SG-1 team members, etc. What was funny was the person in question was a girl wearing breast-shaped form-fitting stormtrooper armor with a bare midriff exposure, complete with pierced bellybutton. All I could think was: "Aren't you a little hot for a stormtrooper?". I didn't embarrass myself by attempting to amuse her with something she probably heard a billion times before, and with that blast helmet on, who knows her real attractiveness... Not the most protective of items, unless you are using the 'more skin of hot girl => more defense value' rulesets.

While wandering through the floor and stopping to check out the media guests, a somewhat lost looking fellow was standing nearby. Marc Singer then walked up with him encouraging the other guy, who turned out to be Ken Foree, to just "walk right up and say hello, like this guy..." at which point I shake both of their hands and stand with them a few moments before they move on. Now I'm not much of a media fanboy in these matters--although I might have passed out if Claudia Black did the same--, but it was amusing and made my morning. Particularly since I think the Marc Singer work I like the best was not his Beastmaster role but was one of his few dramatic roles in "If You Could See What I Hear". They had a ton of media guests all working little autograph booths in the same area: Walter Koenig, Gil Gerard, David Carradine, Virginia Hey, Herbert Jefferson Jr, Orli Shoshan, Erin Gray... Erin Gray is looking really good, and had some incredibly cute hippy-style tinted glasses on. She is also clearly really short since she was not wearing those crazy Buck Rodgers heels.

I finished my shopping picking up a gift for the jeliza/rubylou/drakemonger household and a few things for myself, and then played two Living Greyhawk rounds. One of the rounds I was able to play with some friends from the River Cities Roleplayers RPGA club down in Austin, which I helped form with Karen and her b/f. Good times.

So I'm off to bed to get some sleep. I have to run a Living Force round in the morning, and then I'm playing what I really came out here for: the first high-level two-round Living Force adventure. At this point, I'm quite likely to skip playing my last slot on Sunday, which is the low-level Living Greyhawk mod since finding a judge to eat it at home is trivial. Instead, some more sleep Sunday morning and then trying to hang with hackard a bit sounds like a better use of my time.

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This Microsoft house-cleaning has been in the works for a while, but damn it is painful for those involved...

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