Conifur 2004

I went down to Conifur yesterday, to do my normal one-day thing, on Friday this year instead of Saturday. People at the con who heard that I was doing this said, 'Nothing happens on Friday!', but there was a lot more going on than normally is when I go on a Saturday. I think they were mostly talking about the Dealers' Den, which wasn't fully staffed.

I got to see several events I've always missed before -- the opening ceremonies, Uncle Kage's Story Hour, and 2 the Ranting Griffon, although I think the last didn't *happen* before. I was going to see Pictionary, but lost track of time trying (unsuccessfully) to get some people to go out to dinner before all the restaurants closed, and playing magic, and missed it.

This year I sat in on both of the demo RPG games happening the day I was there. The first was Ironclaw, a very simple module where we were all soldiers sent out to kill some monsters, and did so, with only a slight complication. ( ironclaw summary )

Right after Ironclaw was an Albedo: Platinum Catalyst demo, which went only slightly better than the last Albedo demo I went to -- but no, it *was* better, and Steve Galliachi still holds the title for Worse DM Ever. This time, the DM just didn't know the system, and so had us playing a warped and dysfunctionally crippled version of the system, which is death for a demo -- if I hadn't read over the rules afterwards, I might have thought the game was actually as bad as he made it out to be.

( albedo: platinum catalyst summary )

I'd already bought a copy of the game in the dealer's den before the demo, so I was able to read it over once I got home, and it looks like a fairly interesting simulation of the Vietnam War. Seriously -- characters are in more danger of suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than of getting killed by enemy fire. I want to try it for real sometime; the idea of having troops supporting each player character is sort of neat.

I also got to play Rez in the game room, some. It looks neat -- I'm sorry I was never able to get my hands on it when it was actually for sale. Supposedly, it'll be coming out in a platinum hits type $20 release -- I hope that's accurate.

And, I finally got a con badge done this year. It came out... okay. I don't know who the artist was -- it was just some random person who was doing them cheap -- and they sort of messed up the hat, in a totally different way than it's messed up on my current default icon. I'll have to scan it sometime, if I can ever get my scanner working. It took her five hours to make it (well, it and the ones in the queue before it) -- she'd estimated two. I had to leave in the middle of the Albedo game to run up and get it, although GOD KNOWS there was enough time spent doing nothing to do that without any problems.

So, overall, the con was pretty fun. I didn't meet too many new people this year, because I knew so many of the people there from the Sunday meets, and hadn't arranged to meet anyone from out of town or anything... I talked some with Elix, I guess.

I ended up driving Kitsunetaur home (he failed to find a room to crash in) after 2's Rant, and got home at 2am. SO HUNGRY, due to lack of eatage all day, that I cooked myself some hot pockets and waffles despite the late hour.

Stevie's First Birthday

Today, I went to a birthday party for my cousin Stevie, who was 1 on Thursday. He had a bunch of his friends over -- or, well, Anna and Alex had a bunch of their similarly baby-equipped friends over, for a big bad babyfest and barbecue. No, they didn't barbecue the babies, although at one point a couple of them were wandering dangerously near the grill.

The grill was mostly a success, but I got an exploded and dangerously undercooked bratwurst... I cooked it more, once I noticed the inside was raw, but at least one bite of undercooked meat went down before I noticed that, so I hope I don't get sick. Or tapeworms. So far, so good...

Stevie didn't want to play with the other kids. He kept running off on his own and climbing up and down the rough cement stairway next to the house. Eventually, he was placed in the center of everything, and after looking around confused for a while, started crying.

Alex also made a pretty bad faux pass... the invitation had said 'no gifts necessary', but as this was birthday season -- all the friends present were from baby support groups, with kids of extremely similar ages, and so everyone there had been going to and will be going to more birthday parties every weekend for the next couple months -- they'd just a week previous gone to a different party that was 'no gifts necessary' and found themselves the only ones who hadn't brought gifts. So it was particularly crass to ask the person who'd brought only a card where her gift was, especially considering she was the one they'd just snubbed.

The party was successfull, though, in that the adults and children were both mostly entertained. As a family member, I got to stay behind and help clean up, and then we walked down to the locks, to look at the salmon in the fish ladder, and the goose on the prickly hill. There was a bit of spookiness -- the locks cycled several times while we were there, and always had boats in them -- different boats -- when they were going up or down, but we never saw even a single boat in motion out on the water. Where were they coming from? Where were they going?!

After the long walk back uphill from the locks, we sat around for a while, put Stevie to bed, and then I begged off, claiming fatigue (not entirely a lie), and headed home. It was almost their bedtime anyway.