The Merch

D and I spent some time earlier this month picking our favorite photos from the road trip (or, sometimes, the ones that would fit) and putting them into a photobook for our families. It took a long time, and the layout software left much to be desired, but it was fun to reminisce about all the places we'd been.

Here's a preview of the interior:



We're pretty happy with the finshed product. You can flip through a tiny Flash version of the whole book over at mypublisher.com.

~CKL

Famous!

I am told that one of the humans mentioned Bayla and me by name in this month's Stanford Magazine Class Notes. I believe this means that we are now FAMOUS!!!!!1!!!eleven!

Welcome to all you Stanford Magazine readers! You really should have been reading this blog, like, six months ago, but it will still be quite exciting for you to go through the archives and see what we thought of places like the Grand Canyon or New Orleans or Niagara Falls.

Oh yeah! PHOTOS! LET ME SHOW YOU THEM

And here are some new friends I have met recently:

The Unpacking Continues

Here you see all the DVDs (and LaserDiscs) in their new shelf. In the interest of saving more space, we've ordered some archival albums, like the little black number in the lower right corner, from Demco. Those librarians know a thing or two about storing mass quantities of media.

By the way, does anyone want a whole bunch of packaging from Region 2 Buffy and Angel DVD sets? Lots of pretty pictures, if you're into that sort of thing.

We've mail-ordered most of the rest of our furniture, and it should all arrive by Election Day. So even if--ghod forbid--Captain Caveman & the Buffybot win the White House, we can still be happy about our well-appointed new home.

~CKL

Address!

We cats are very helpful and informative! Here is the address of our new maxi-house:



Do you want to "telephone" the humans instead? Use this magic button:



I'm still getting used to this new place. There are lots of strange noises around here, but also SQUIRRELS! And OTHER CATS! I love looking out all the different windows.

Unpacking

Our friends did a lot of the packing when we moved out, so we didn't actually see these markings until months later. We have great friends. And a lot of DVDs.

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~CKL

A New Home

Tired. Should go to sleep, but instead am wasting time on Facebook and, now, blogging. There's running on adrenaline, and then there's running on fatigue. It's kind of like antimatter, a negative energy source, unpredictable.

Yesterday, signed the lease on our new apartment, lots of paperwork, walked through inspection, made a big checklist of move-in to-do items, researched local broadband options. If we can actually get 12Mbps DSL from Qwest, I'll be a happy camper. Fingers crossed, waiting for CSR to reply to my email and confirm pricing.

This morning, hired a U-Haul truck and movers to get our stuff out of storage. No visible damage in transit, yay. Finished moving all stuff in less than two hours--thanks Jeff and Justin! Had lunch at Thai Terrace, a great restaurant within walking distance, then measured things and headed off to the sensory-overload rat-maze that is Ikea. (Meatballs tasty, though.) Found some stuff we liked, but realized we didn't have all the needed measurements. Drove back to apartment--only ten minutes away, w00t--and measured some more.

Returned to Ikea and bought $520 worth of bookshelves that would have been too big to fit into the Prius. (We have a lot of books.) Unloaded boxes at apartment. Dropped off U-Haul truck after the place had closed; D's going to get up early tomorrow and officially return it. I'm going to sleep in so I don't go off to Viable Paradise with an excessive sleep debt.

Returned to hotel to find that maids had tidied our room despite "no service please" sign on door. Fortunately, cats do not seem traumatized.

Showered.

We won't be fully unpacked and settled for at least another couple of weeks, but we've gotten off to a good start. I think I'm going to like it here.



~CKL

Photos Galore: The Other Bay Area

Okay, I know it's technically a sound, but in many ways, Seattle feels an awful lot like San Francisco. You've got the water, the bridges, overcast weather, hideous freeway traffic at all hours, and urban sprawl. (We're staying in Renton, right next to the Wizards of the Coast offices. Really! I'm tempted to walk in just to get a look at their lobby dragon.) And we've had a ton of fun with our friends Karin and Bryan, just like the good ol' days when they lived next door to me in Menlo Park:

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~CKL

Photos: Oregon Trail

From last month...

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~CKL

PAX08 Photos

My own scant collection:

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Others were much more thorough--just search for the "pax08" tag on Flickr or YouTube.

~CKL

PAX08, Day 2

Made it to three panels* today: Penny Arcade "Make A Strip" (in which Mike and Jerry created Monday's comic), Bethesda's Fallout 3 demo, and "Is Casual Killing Core Games?" (featuring Wil Wheaton, who says "No," and also, "Go kill pedestrians").



In between Fallout and Casual, D and I walked with Karin and Bryan to Serious Pie. We shared three excellent pizzas, and my IPA was pretty good, too.

We ended the evening in the tabletop gaming area, where we played Citadels and TransAmerica and ran into fellow Gamer Jessen. See, all the cool kids show up at PAX sooner or later.

~CKL

* Note that I stood in line for about 2 hours to get 3.5 hours of actual content. That's not a very good ratio, but the Enforcers continued to impress by being on the ball with crowd control. I don't know how they're going to handle next year if the number of attendees doubles again.

PAX08, Day 1

Friday was fun, but really crowded. I mean like ZOMFG crowded. And tomorrow is sure to be even worse. I'm bracing myself for a lot of waiting in line.

We met Karin and Bryan at their house around noon, then had sandwiches at Panera and got to the convention center just before 2:00 PM, when the doors opened. Crowded. We learned our lesson from last year and didn't bother waiting in line--the only reason we did before was to get concert wristbands, and we opted to skip that, since we'd just seen Coulton in Vegas two weeks ago.

A quick stroll around the exhibit hall, and then we got in line for the keynote. (Did I mention there's a whole room devoted to waiting in line for the main theatre? Really. It's labeled "Line Up Room" on the map.) My former coworker David joined us in line. We chatted, then sat together to watch Ken Levine's keynote and the Penny Arcade Q&A. I love these guys.

David and his friend went off to get in line for the Friday concert, and the rest of us went in search of a quick dinner. We ended up at Cyber Dogs, which had good food but a tiny space. We got our food to go, found an empty table downstairs in the convention center, and ate there.

Then, disappointment! The Raven Theatre had completely filled up for the Telltale Games panel (make a scene with Strong Bad), and the PAX Enforcers weren't letting anyone else in. We wandered over to the PC freeplay area, where I poked at World in Conflict for a while (not bad, call it Starcraft meets Red Dawn).

Went back to the Raven to see if we could squeeze into the screening of The Guild and Q&A with Felicia Day, but the line for that stretched all the way across the convention center, and we were pretty sure the room wasn't that big.

Wandered down to the console freeplay area, got a number, watched some people play Rock Band while waiting. Bryan checked out Guitar Hero III and two guitars, and he, Karin, and I strummed away while D watched with amusement.

And that was Friday. Tomorrow we're driving in separately, since the first panel D and I want to see is at 1:00 PM, and we'll meet up later for food and such.

I'm hoping the place won't be a complete madhouse, but I'm prepared for disappointment. I just hope everyone remembers Wil Wheaton's sage advice:



~CKL

Thursday Shindig Photos

Richter Scales + Rock Band = crazy delicious!

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~CKL

Coverville 500 Loot

Clockwise from left:

• the Shure SE310 Sound Isolating Earphones I won in the drawing;
• the Natalie Gelman CD which D bought;
• a postcard showing the poster/T-shirt image;
• the six souvenir poker chips I bought with my ticket pre-order,
• the Shifted Sounds Volume 1 sampler CD;
• the performer bios sheet; and
• a business card with show details which would have been useful when we were wandering the casino looking for the venue.

Not pictured: the Coverville 500 T-shirt which I also won in the drawing. Maybe I should have done some gambling after all...*

Brian Ibbott and company put on a great show Friday night, and I'm glad we were able to enjoy it with our friends Chris and Cherie (who got to dance with Richard Cheese and be a lesbian, respectively).

We also witnessed Jonathan Coulton being attacked by zombies. To be fair, he was kinda asking for it.

We're back in the bay area now, and Old Home Week starts tomorrow. Lots of friends to meet and catch up with before the final leg of our road trip!

~CKL

* D and I had fully intended to gamble away the $4.58 of nickels, dimes, and pennies that we've been collecting all summer, but we couldn't find any casino slot machines that actually took coins. They've all been upgraded to only accept bills, casino club cards, or the machines' own bar code tickets (used for cashing out). Vegas just doesn't sound right without all that jangling and clinking metal--it was one of the few satisfying and unique things about playing the one-armed bandits. Now everything's electronic, and you know, if I want to play a damn video game, I have more interesting and less expensive options.

Inexplicable Flower

When we returned to our hotel room tonight, this ceramic tchotchke and handwritten note were in a plastic bag hanging from our door handle:

 
 

It's very odd, because we checked in last Saturday--almost a week ago. Why are they welcoming us now? And what the hell is this thing?

~CKL

Denvention 3, Day One

Photos from today at the Colorado Convention Center and yesterday's walk around downtown Denver:

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We pretty much stuck to the schedule today, except for skipping out on the Wizards of the Coast presentation (which turned out to be about their novels, not their games) to go wander the exhibit hall and dealer's room. My favorite panels were "Survival Tips for Beginning Writers" and "Schmoozing 101" (a.k.a. The John and Mary Show).

Tomorrow, we get up at an unghodly early hour to sign up for a kaffeeklatsch with Connie Willis, Harry Turtledove, Henry Spencer, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and or GoH Lois McMaster Bujold. Wish us luck.

~CKL

Photos Galore: Wisconsin Dells

You've already seen Wizard Quest. Here are the other two places we visited in the Wisconsin Dells:

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Thanks again to Ammy for recommending the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory (formerly "Robot World." You'll never guess why). Getting to see an original MIR capsule was cool, but the whole place was a lot of fun--like a kitschy, 1970s, candy-colored mini-Exploratorium.

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D's favorite part of the Duck Tour was getting to see the debris from the now-drained Lake Delton. We even made a postcard out of it (last photo in second album).

~CKL

Photos Galore: Land of 10^4 Lakes

These are from last week. Yes, I'm still catching up. I'll probably be done by, oh, December.

D and I had a brief discussion about which place in the Twin Cities areas we wanted to visit first, in case we ran out of time or other circumstances prevented us from going out as much as we wanted (as they did in DC). Her final criterion was "Which place would I feel most lame about not seeing, when people ask us about our trip?"

So we started with the Mall of America.

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The next day, we drove over a hundred miles south to two unique museums. A lot of driving, but we're used to it by now, and it was totally worth it.

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Last but not least, we spent a day at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It's huge. We mostly hung out in the Star Wars exhibit (mostly), but also played in their "Big Backyard" and stayed until 10:30pm--which was still an hour before the place closed. (The wedding reception upstairs was still in full swing when we left.)

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~CKL

Postcards from the Sedge

 

Oh, I kid, I keeed! It's beautiful country out here in the Black Hills. We visited three places today:

 
Mount Rushmore, which is as impressive as you'd expect;

 
Custer State Park, where we saw a whole herd of bison up close; and

 
Crazy Horse Memorial, which has been under construction for sixty years (that's six-zero) and probably won't be finished in this century, IMHO.

Tomorrow: m*th*rf*ck*ng Deadwood!

~CKL

3M

We visited three museums this week: Ed's Museum, the Spam Museum, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Photos from all three excursions coming soon later. Each one was a unique experience--in a good way--though Ed's wins hands down for pure, inimitable nuttiness. Here's a teaser:



Tomorrow, we pack up and drive to the Badlands of South Dakota. We hope to not encounter any Maquis there.

~CKL

Grammar Girl

We had a shorter drive than usual today, and arrived at the hotel around 5pm. Even after having to change rooms (due to a leaky ceiling and broken light fixture), we were unpacked and the cats were settled in by 6:30pm. That gave us plenty of time to make it into uptown Minneapolis for the Grammar Girl reading and book signing.

The reading itself was mostly Q&A, which is my favorite kind of author event. Not all authors are great public speakers, but they're all interesting people in some way, and interacting with an audience is usually the best way to draw them out. Many of the questions tonight gravitated toward etiquette--e.g., if and when to point out another person's errors. I guess grammar sticklers tend to like rules in general.

After the signing, D and I had a very nice dinner at Chiang Mai Thai (open until 1am every night! Why can't more restaurants be like that?). Here's how we plan to spend the rest of our time in the Twin Cities:


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~CKL