Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Things I Learned This Weekend

We got back from Michigan late Saturday after attending the visitations and funeral for Angie's grandmother. It was a difficult couple of days for the family, but all went as smoothly as one could expect. I did, however, learn a few things from my 3 and 4 year olds this past week.

  • Great-grandma is going to sleep with the flowers. (The cemetery was loaded with them.) Never ceases to surprise me what details of a situation my daughter will choose to focus on.
  • My old cat, Cirrus (died last March), is apparently still sick and with the vet. (Try as I might, I can't get her to wrap her mind around the notion that the little furball isn't there anymore.)
  • Stairs are remarkably entertaining. We were at the visitation for two 2.5 hour blocks and the kids asked to go to the bathroom about every 15 minutes just so they could go up and down stairs. Who needs a stairmaster?
  • Apparently it's okay to strip naked at a wake so you can go swimming in a pool with water temperature somewhere in the vicinity of absolute zero. (I was not involved in this decision, but in fairness, it was a very casual atmosphere and they weren't the only kids jumping in. Also, there were -eventually- swimsuits.)

Anyway, with that ordeal dispensed with, hopefully things will start getting back to normal. GenCon is coming to Indianapolis this weekend. The thing I find interesting about GenCon is that it's the one weekend of the year in which I get to feel like... well, not the cool one in the room, because in my life I have never been cool. But... well, when you're surrounded by people wearing shirts that say, "This T-Shirt gives me a +2 to Charisma.," suddenly you feel a little more mainstream, which isn't my thing either, but it's a nice change of pace. (Which isn't to impugn the guy wearing that shirt or the one next to him that's dressed like a hobo version of Gandalf. To each your own.)

I'm only planning to attend the show on Friday this year and follow that up with a get together with a few of the folks from the Gamers With Jobs community. It was a real blast getting to know some of them last year and it'll be a lot of fun to see 'em again.