Home Again, Home Again, Jiggetty Jig

My flight back was delayed by, hmm, I don't remember exactly, but not more than an hour. It might have been only half an hour, actually. Anyway, I arrived back at my apartment by around five (just in time to hit traffic on the way back from the airport) and I'm happy to report that my plants are still going strong. I'd forgotten to have Seth water them while I was gone, but they looked none the worse for the neglect.

A slight recap of the week and a half in Vegas: I know I covered some of this last time, but I forgot to mention that I went to see two shows -- the first time I've ever gone to any shows in Vegas (other than the pirate show in front of Treasure Island (which is now annoyingly renamed just "TI") or the fountain show in front of the Bellagio) -- they were Zumanity on Sunday night and Penn & Teller on Monday night. They were both very good shows, but the more I see cirque de soliel-style shows the more I think they're not worth the eighty to ninety dollars they charge. They're good, but not that good. Penn & Teller were great, but I felt like their show was too short... which, I guess, is probably quite a compliment now that I think about it. I would have loved to have seen another hour of them. That would have been great.

Apart from those shows I did a lot of walking around, got to see some of the craziness that is NASCAR, and lost a bunch of money at the blackjack tables. I also have a new editing project which will start tomorrow and should be a pretty fun even though it's the heftiest project to date. I was happy to hear that the guys at Green Ronin are very happy with my work.

That's the majority of the news from the show. Things at the booth went how you'd expect; lots of people, lots of talking, moments of boredom and sore feet, but mostly it was fun and went by quickly. The most disappointing thing I heard was that roleplaying games are apparently really in the pits currently. Hopefully they'll make a recovery and small publishers won't have to worry too badly about their upcoming products.

Speaking of roleplaying, I'm really looking forward to running my D&D game on Tuesday. It was on hold for a few weeks due to travel, absences, and other such things, but now we'll get it rolling again and I can wrap up the storyline that's been on hold with the game.

This weekend I've been mostly resting. I managed to get a good amount of sleep in Vegas, but the show and the place really tired me out -- and did I mention the sore feet? So, Friday night I had a nice evening out with Seth, Matt, Shane, and Cathy. We went to Wasabi Bistro for some of the best sushi (Why do I always want to capitalize sushi?) in Seattle. It was a long wait for a table, but wow, was it good.

Saturday I woke up early and caught up on email, read some blogs I'd missed over the last week or so, did laundry, and then went for comics with the gang. Afterwards I did a lot more laundry, finished reading The Phoenix Guard and then got ready for a night out with Katie, Kate, and Beth to celebrate some birthdays and a graduation. It was fun and I stayed out too late, so I didn't wake up Sunday until about 11:00. Sunday I drove down to Burien to Wonderworld and picked up a couple of comics and books I'd been looking for. I also grabbed a copy of Castles & Crusades. C&C is a new roleplaying game that I've been hearing a lot of good things about, so I figured I should judge for myself. I'll log a review when I've read it a bit more thoroughly, but it seems good at first blush. Lots of similarities with classic D&D but with an easier task resolution system that will help to keep things moving quickly.

After the run to Burien I took care of some things at work, answered emails, checked my schedule of meetings for Monday (solid from 10:00 until 4:30 or 5:00), and loaded up my car with all the product that had been dropped off while I was gone. I was pretty happy about that because we received some great stuff (including a full set of Pirates cards, which we heard we might not receive). Then I played some City of Heroes with Matt, Seth, Kerry, Kevin, and Kim.

Based on Glenn's recommendation, I picked up The Deed of Paksennarion a while ago and I started reading it today. I figure I'll read Book I, then read something else and come back to it later. I forgot to mention that I picked up Sethra Lavode in softcover this weekend, plus I found an old Magic: The Gathering novel by Mark Sumner called The Prodigal Sorcerer. I've never read any of the Magic novels, but I really enjoyed Sumner's novels Devil's Tower and Devil's Engine, so I thought I'd check this out.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll post more this week. Hopefully it will be equally informative.