Oops, I crit my pants

I think it comes as no surprise that Russ and I are kind of very nerdy. It would stand to reason that we would train raise our spawn child to be a nerd as well. Her first nerdy outing was last weekend at PAX11. Russ will tell you more about the convention, but I wanted to mention my highlights. We sat in on a panel for Journey Quest. It's a series of webisodes shot here in Seattle. The cast all have day jobs and do this in their free time. It's perfect for people who like to watch D&D (like me).
Speaking of which! That was the main reason I wanted to go this year. The founder Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins (tyco) and Mike Krahulik (Gabe) play with Scott Kurtz (from PVPonline) and Will Wheaton (Wesley Crusher, my teen crush). Last years session is at here and I bet this year will be up soon (or probably somewhere on youtube). There is no way I can describe it and do it justice, but it was entertaining.
Saturday was spent with Ivy in a cocoon my chest so there was no way I was going to touch keyboards that hundreds of gamers have already handled. There's a reason people get sick after going to conventions and thanks to obsessive compulsiveness and hand sanitizer, we got out unscathed.
Sunday, however, we were able to go back on the motorcycles (see how I brought it back to riding) thanks to Mom coming over in the afternoon to babysit.
~Michelle


The thing about PAX is that it is not so much a show, as a Nerdstravaganza. There are concerts, panel discussions, Q&A with game makers, artists, developers, and studio bosses, as well as games representing just about every tribe and tongue of geek: board games, dice games, dance games, guitar games, first-person-shooter games, strategy games, console games, computer games, and even sometimes meta-games encompassing multiple activities the crowd is knowingly engaged in or not. You'd be sorely disappointed if you're looking to gain an impression of tense competition amongst attendees with all this focus on gaming. To the contrary, there is a pervasive spirit of camaraderie, of kinship, of shared experience, of common heritage, and of hope that despite the embarrassment of riches gamers enjoy, something better still is just around the corner waiting to be discovered.

It makes sense that PAX should turn out this way. The founders conceived of it out of exasperation at the deficiency of all other conventions serving the interests of gamers. They literally wondered where the convention they would actually WANT to attend was, and not finding it, decided to start their own. They didn't set out to make money off it. The first few years were almost entirely volunteer-supported. From those roots, it grew and expanded into something relevant to folks outside the greater Seattle-metropolitan area until today where it is a bi-coastal, twice-yearly nerd hadj. It is still largely built on the enthusiasm, hard work, ingenuity, and good will of volunteers (called Enforcers). Gaming companies with billion dollar budgets are on the same show floor as garage-based operations without a payroll showing off what they think counts as fun.

It is hard to think of gamers as constituting a culture, but there are memetic currents everywhere, evidenced by in-jokes, songs about things everyone seems to understand no matter how obtuse, iconography, and mutual recognition. It isn't so much that attendees think everything is a game but that as gamers, they share a perspective on how to approach problems, how to get along, and what the normal stratification they withstand for the other 362 days a year means at PAX. I know I've gone on for 3 paragraphs without completely defining what PAX is. I guess you could look it up (the Internet is literally MADE by and for the same folks), but 2nd-hand experience from accounts online are a dim shadow of the real thing. Why not join us next year? Michelle and I will be there, lugging around our motorcycle jackets in the near-stifling crush of people filling the Washington State Convention Center to its full capacity (no joke, they sell out of all passes each year now).
~Russell

Biker Geeks and Baby Withdrawal

This Saturday, Russ and I had our second date since the arrival of Ivy 4 weeks ago. (By the way, thank you to Mom and Carla for watching Ivy so that we could go out to watch a movie on Wednesday).

Russ started working for Übermind back in April and works with some awesome people. Some of which planned to go on a group motorcycle ride and I was invited to go with them! We had to be down to the office in Freemont at 9am which meant the grandparents were gracious enough to catch a 6:20am ferry from Kitsap. We went over the basic nervous parent routine of where things are and what to expect. How weird it was to explain child care to a child care educator/lactation consultant. Then we were off!

When we got to Übermind we met up with 4 of his co-workers, Achim, Michael, Eden and Jean. There were 3 of us girls, but I was the only one that was driving! We had a vague destination in mind: somewhere on the Olympic peninsula. On the ferry we decided we should go to Hurricane Ridge and stop for food in Port Angeles.

The ride out was BEAUTIFUL. I love going over the Hood Canal Bridge. I have a little fear of bridges, but somehow I've made my peace with this particular one. Maybe it's the fact that it's a floating bridge so don't feel so high up. Maybe I just am intrigued by the mechanics of how it's able to float a section out of the way in order to let boats through. Or maybe it's just the span of water that it covers that lets me get used to the idea of being on a bridge in the first place. Whatever the reason I LOVE that bridge. The weather was just perfect, sunny, but not too hot. The wind did try to be a little obnoxious, but for the most part it played nice.

By the time we reached Port Angeles and had eaten lunch I was starting to really miss baby girl and my body was letting me know it. I kind of anticipated this so I brought my pump. What I didn't bring was a power supply. So we bid our party goodbye and headed back home through Kingston. I felt like we were flying on the way back, but I still enjoyed the views as we rode through Discovery Bay and past Fat Smitty's (too bad riding a motorcycle doesn't burn off 400,000 calories)

We got home around 6pm exhausted. All I wanted to do was cuddle and snuggle with my little bug, but someone else beat me to it. I can't believe we were away for 10 hours! We had such a wonderful time. We're so blessed to have the support so that we can still go on adventures as a couple, but I'm more excited for the day that Ivy can join us.