The flight back was no fun, but the convention itself was a lot of fun.

I played a number of new games, checked out some of the competitions games and visited with a lot of people.

Thursday night I had to give the speech at the event we do with all of our volunteers at every convention. I didn't have everything organized as well as I would have liked, but it was easy.

Friday night were the Origins awards and we ended up winning in a surprising number of the catagories that we were nominated in. I had to go up for a couple, the former owner of the company went for a couple, and our sculpting managers went for a couple. The weirdest thing for me was that I was nervous. The crowd was smaller than the night before, was much smaller than other groups I've talked in front of -- but I was nervous because of the way they'd set up the stage. See, the room the dark, but there were spotlights on those of us on stage, so we couldn't see anything. So, not seeing the audience was harder for me than seeing the audience. Weird.

Honestly, the biggest surprise was that the game that I work on won the award for the Game of the Year. I don't think I could have been more surprised. I went up to accept the award, and because I was so freaking discombobulated I had no idea what to say, so I went on for a minute or two about what an honor it was and how surprised I was and how cool it is to know that people enjoy what I do and all that.

But later, I had a chance to think about it and I thought of what I should have said because chances are I'll never win an award like this again. I still should have said roughly what I did, but also include:

"I'd like to dedicate this award to Dave Bridier. Like most of the people in this room there is one person that I can trace my involvement in games to . . . and for me it leads back to my friend Dave. He lived next door to me and we started playing games together, Life, Stratego, other board games. Then he pulled out Panzer and Star Fleet Battles. And finally he introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. Me standing here tonight can be traced back to that moment. To that person. And I have to dedicate this to Dave because even though he died 12 years ago, he still has an effect on every day of my life."

That's what I should have said.

Maybe writing it here is good enough.

Oh, and here are the awards we won (mostly for Mom, who won't see them anywhere else).