Miskatonic Valley!

Hey all. So it's been a dog's age since I've been in here, but I've been busy with silly little things like marriages and such. But that's all complete now.

Anywho, this isn't a normal blog. I've been fiddling with another CUUSOO project [I believe I've mentioned the site before]. This one's more complicated, though, because it's a board game. And board games usually have rules. So here they are.

Almost looks real, don't it?

Fan Expo 2011: Recapitulation

The Fan Expo is kind of a big deal. If you don't know what it is, look it up. It's sort of Nerd Christmas and Nerd New Years rolled into one weekend for all the basement dwellers in the area, in that it's super exciting and awesome and also frustrating and terrible. Or not, as the case may be?

Last year was legendary in its awfulness. The thing was moved to a smaller hall due to bad scheduling, which combined with the unexpected astronomical growth of attendance, and the generally mishandled entry/re-entry system, made it a festival of waiting in line more than anything else. And people bitched. Oh... did they bitch. But even at the best of times, people at this thing are gonna bitch. It's the Bitch Expo. Waiting in line, you can sorta tell who's a veteran and who isn't by the relative amount of bitching they're doing.

Regardless, this year's entry system was vastly superior to last year's. Yeah, there were lines. Of course there's gonna be, but hey, sometimes if you're in the line at the right time you get this happening to you:

Freddy is easily distracted, and Bishop is easily confused.

Yeah, there's me and my brother in line behind the ribbon-cutting ceremony. So that's sorta rad. It might also be the only official photo we have with celebrities. On account of, you know, our general overall cheapness.

Someone's got a case of the Mondays!

Hello again, and welcome to December. Today is Monday, and it's cold as a witch's teet out there. I'm hiding in the apartment so as to keep all my digits. It's also snowing, which is welcome because snow is good, and this is, like, the 2 week [if you're lucky] period where snow is cute. I'm a big snow fan, but that junk gets old but quick.

In any case, here's a story: I was all prepped and ready to go to a place called Snakes and Lattes this weekend. Dree and I learned about it during a temporary paralysis which left us watching the Polish show on CityTV. If the clever name was too obtuse for you, it's a coffee place that is also a games enclave in the Annex [really Koreatown, but the edges are rather nebulous]. Either way, the interview was all this-and-that and what-have-you, when this popped up on the screen:

I'd reached the point where I was sure I'd made this game up.

I dunno about you, but this game is kind of a big deal. It's a game I had in the halcyon days of my youth, when summers were filled with WOIO and Big Chuck and Lil' John and The Fall Guy, and whatever other nostalgic stuff I can come up with. I can't even remember if the game was any good, I just know I loved the pants off of it and it disappeared at some point. Probably during that damn yardsale.

But yeah, I really wanna play this game again, is what I'm saying. And apparently this place has a copy, and so I decided to go.