Traveling, no vegetables

Two very significant things happened (for me, personally) in the past two days and neither of them have anything to do with vegetables. First, the van started for the first time in four months. Just in time for its fifth move with me. This thing is my age and from its humble beginnings (ending) as an as-is junker on a cash-only auction block, it has come to represent to me my vehicle for freedom (from both parasitic responsibilites and convention). I have enough stories in 6 short years to fill a movie. And it's taught me a lot of lessons on the way. It has a host of problems and quirks and legitimate dangers (caught fire. twice), and every one is MY fault; I try to blame it for every problem and without fail they have come back to something I screwed up. It is a moving van AND a rolling humility factory. If I had such an indomitable and unassailable spirit, I could accomplish absolutely anything. The other story involves an even more significant force in my life, Brittney. B and I went to St. Louis this weekend for a boardgame convention, and I think we knew it had to be special, whether by happenstance or by force. This was a major splurge for us and we were ready to make it count. B left the planning to me, in error: 1) My guess for how far St Louis was was optimistic by two hours. 2) We didn't have a place to stay either night or know anyone in the area. 3) We didn't have any directions or have our passes printed out. We got into St. Louis at 1:00am and checked into a Budget Inn with a very noisy television next door. The next morning, we got to the convention center at 8 in time for the early-bird giveaway. The crowd of people puts their hands on their "tail" or head, and the organizer flips a coin; if you guessed wrong you sit down. Continue until there's a winner. The guy was late though, the irony, and while we waited we picked up a lengthy and very popular game called Mage Knight. Lengthy as in 3-4 hours, and we rightfully figured from the people requesting the game next that 8am was the only shot we were going to have to play it. The game was play-to-win, meaning on Sunday that copy would be given to a random person who played it during the convention. I'm selling the weekend short by saying that kicked off 31 HOURS OF GAMES. A blur of games and meeting people and hunger and fatigue. We ate a sandwich or a sushi roll every 12 hours and stayed awake with gross energy drinks. 5am we couldn't handle any more and took a 3 hour nap in the car in order to get back in time for Sunday's early bird giveaway. The games were INCREDIBLE: 1) Mage Knight 2) Summoner Wars (4 times, with every basic race) 3) Quarriors 4) Lords of Waterdeep 4) Flashpoint 5) Red Dragon Inn 6) Pitchcar 7) Chaos in the Old World 8) Kittens in a Blender 9) Manhatten Project 10) Kingsburg 11) Timeline 12) Impossible Machine As you may know, many of these run over two hours. But we crammed in as much as we could before 2pm Sunday rolled around and it was time for a chance at some game acquisitions. To be continued...