Draggin’ Butt and Takin’ Names

For most of the day, I felt tired and kind of sad. It wasn’t really depression, it was more like a general “down” mood with a few tears caused by reading or hearing emotional things.  I was tired, but I think the sad mood was helping that along. I also thought that I might be getting sick, but I think it’s just allergies. At least I hope it is. Twitter informed me that at least two people I follow who attended Gen Con have con crud. I suppose mine could be late onset, but I hope not.

The day improved after lunch. I had meetings, but they all went well. I’m not a person who likes meetings just for the sake of having meetings, but I like it when things get accomplished.   We also got some scheduling stuff figured out, and that makes me happy because it’s more consistent now and allows for some extra evening time, at least for the time being. There have been some other changes at work that have made me happy. I came back to a couple pleasant surprises, so for now, I’m feeling pretty “okay” on the job front.

Trying to figure out what we were going to do for exercise was a pain in the butt, but we finally settled on the mall.  It was too hot to walk outside, and we’re trying to get three days in at the gym and then three days doing a Couch to 5K program each week. We finally figured we could do our first C25K day in air conditioning at the Town Center, and so we did.

I’m calling this first C25K Phase 1, because I’m not going anywhere near jogging or running. Instead, we alternated walking normal speed with a faster pace of walking.  In hindsight, it wasn’t so bad. Thirty minutes went by relatively quickly, and there weren’t many people at the mall, so we were able to walk around easily. But that’s in hindsight. While we were actually doing it, it felt hard! I know it’s just walking, but it’s definitely faster and more advanced than I’m used to. Intervals, man…I was sweating! At the same time, it was fun, and I’m kind of excited about finishing the program and seeing how much I improve over the next few months.

Phase 2 will be continuous improvement and possibly some running. We’ll see. My default reaction to any sort of running program is that I’m just too big to do it, but then I read stories about big people who run, and I figure it’s not impossible. I think after we finish this one, we’ll try to do the Zombies Run program, just to keep it exciting.

We stopped and grabbed a geocache on the way home. I finally finished putting away the laundry before dinner. After dinner, we retreated to the back room, turned on some air conditioning, and played a couple games of Trains. We’ll break out some of our other games soon, but I didn’t have the brain power tonight to learn something new.

The night is now winding down, so it’s off to shower and sleep in hopes of tomorrow being a little more energetic.

A.

 

 

Gen Con 2013: Day 1 – Into the Exhibitor’s Hall

There was no geocaching to kick off the first official day of Gen Con because getting out of bed wasn’t as easy the second morning and  we had things scheduled for 10am that we didn’t want to be late to.

We were just two gamers in a sea of excitement.

 

We got to the convention center early, grabbed some caffeine at one of the convention food areas, and waited for the Exhibitor’s Hall to open. There was already a huge crowd outside the doors waiting for the kick off, but we opted to sit to the side and wait until closer to the opening. We might have waited longer, but since we were chosen as volunteers for AEG’s Big Game Night, I was scheduled to do the run through on my game right away. My friend, J, was there, and we got to learn the game together during the demo. It was so much fun, and playing it beforehand made me feel a lot better about showing it to others.

“Trains” quickly became one of my favorite games ever.

Jon took off to do his own thing, so when I was done with my game, I ended up wandering about the hall for about a half hour just looking at things and trying to find the Blind Ferret booth so I could get some art from Randy Milholland and Jeph Jacques.  I picked up a few prints from Randy and met Jeph with the promise to both of them to come back with cash so I could tip for sketches and buy some QC merchandise.

Jon and I finally met up again and went and picked up our green bands for the Cards vs. Zombies game. With our down time, we went and did a swag dump in the car then went to find our Wyrd game demo location. We ended up playing a miniature board game called Puppet Wars. It was so fun! It’s pricey for a game, but you can use the figures as proxies for another miniatures game that Wyrd puts out, and it’s a game that really interested me.  After playing it, we debated long and hard about picking it up. Unfortunately, we opted out at this time, but I’m really hoping to pick it up in the future.

Puppet Wars

For lunch, we decided to try one of the food trucks outside the convention center. We opted for the BBQ truck. The pulled pork sandwich was so good!

Our next stop was the playtest hall, where we played a game called Champions of Olympus, which involved moving around Olympus and doing quests for the gods.

Champions of Olympus

I really enjoyed it and ended up winning, though I always get into deep thought mode with new games because I’m both trying to figure out how to play and trying to strategize. It wasn’t so far over my head that it was an issue, but I was still in concentrate mode. This was about the time that I also ran out of steam and started feeling tired.

When the game was done, I walked with Jon to his AEG training, then I wandered around by myself for about an hour and a half. I grabbed an iced tea, read for awhile, checked out the auction, and did another lap before finding a sitting and waiting in a spot closer to the parking garage. I had to perch somewhere since my phone was dead by that time, and I wanted to give Jon a location of where to find me when his game was done.

We had tickets for a concert that night, but we decided to give it a pass. We weren’t out any money and we would have had to wait for two more hours for a concert that wouldn’t be done until midnight. As fun as it sounded, I wanted to rest and be ready for the rest of the con, part of the whole “healthiness” of vacation. No so healthy…we got back to the room and ordered pizza and wings, but I had no guilt and the food was delicious.

It was so nice being able to walk around with no back pain. My only issues involved a little bit of soreness in the feet and knees, but that was from standing in one place on the few occasions we had to.  The other issue was that after we’d been sitting for a period of time, I was stiff and limpy for the first few steps. But once I got going, I was fine and didn’t need to stop. No rests for back pain this year!  I’m still walking at a snail’s pace, but you know what? I’m completely okay with that.

We finished day 1 of GC feeling good and happy!

A.

Vacation Recovery Day

I’m always glad of the extra day of vacation I take after Gen Con. It’s a day to relax and recharge, but it’s also time to get stuff done and get my head in the right space to get back to the regular grind.  I slept in a few hours and felt like I had a road trip hangover when I finally got up. A shower cured most of the fuzziness, but I’ve been kind of dragging all day. I suppose that’s to be expected.

I received a confirmation letter today saying I was awarded one of the scholarships to the Being an Outdoors Woman program, which means I’ll be able to attend for less than I’d anticipated. I figured I wouldn’t get it, so I was pleasantly surprised. I’m really excited for that weekend, though I am a little nervous. I suppose that’s normal. I never went to summer camp as a kid, at least not until I was in junior high, and then those camps were more academic.

We started the day off with laundry. I wasn’t in the mood to try and multi-task, so I sat with Jon at the laundromat and played through the Learn to Play pack we got at Gen Con for Legend of the Five Rings. It definitely feels more involved than MtG. I think I liked it, but I’m going to have to practice more to figure out what’s going in, and I’ll probably have to enlist the help of one of the local players to help with further understanding the cards.

After discussing Chipotle in the car yesterday, we went there for lunch. I love their burritos, but they’re huge, and I tend to realize only after I’m done that I probably shouldn’t have eaten all that. We were going to go to the gym, but then Chipotle and tiredness happened, so we called today a rest day. We stopped at Dillon’s to pick up dinner and lunch for tomorrow. Since Chipotle had felt indulgent, we decided to juice for dinner, something I want to get back into to make sure I’m getting my fruits and veggies.

On the way home, we decided to hit up a geocache. It was one we couldn’t find before, and I figured that with some experience under our belt, we might be more apt to find it this time. We were successful, but we were a little irritated that we didn’t realize what it was the first time around. Even this time, we looked at it a few times before finally “finding” it.  The irritation was at ourselves, not at the person who placed it. If anything, I thought it was pretty clever.

I scheduled a couple more Gen Con posts to post tomorrow and Wednesday. If by some chance you’re reading this but didn’t read about Day 0, you can find it here.  I should have used the evening to put away laundry, but decided that playing Trains with Jon was infinitely more important.  I won both games, but I suppose I had the edge since I’d played it a lot this past weekend.

Some other cool stuff:

Jon got an email to set up a job interview with a firm in Missouri.

We’re going to try to do the Orc Stomp 5K at Gen Con next year, which means we’re going to start training right away. We’ll most likely walk it, but we’re going to do the Couch to 5K program to try to up our walking speed.

In other gym news, we’ve set a goal for ourselves. Since we’re going to be 5K training three days a week, we’re going to aim to make it to the gym three days a week. This is to both increase our exercise level and to decide if we’re going to keep our memberships after the end of September. If we make our three times a week goal, then we’ll keep them. If we slough off and find excuses not to go, then it’s really just a waste of money and we’ll cancel our memberships in favor of more walking.

There is a chance we’ll get to volunteer for AEG at a gaming con in KC in November. It’s the week before our trip to St. Louis, which means we have to work out a few more logistics of the trip. Nothing is set in stone yet, but it’s definitely something that might happen.

Gen Con sparked some gaming mojo in us, and it looks like we’re going to try to do a DnD 4th Edition game. I believe we’re also going to do some Pathfinder in a couple months. I’m easing back into it. Still not sure if I’m ready to run any games and I’m going to hold off on doing anything online (partially because my computer is having some major issues), but I’m kind of looking forward to gaming in a small group again.

I’m sleepy already, so I might punk out on putting away laundry and just pull some clothes for tomorrow.  An early night’s sleep should be helpful in getting my mind back to the work day mindset that starts bright and early tomorrow morning.

A.