Thursday, August 24, 2006

I'm finally a Biology Teacher!

After recovering from Gencon the Spouse of Proteinstar and myself fell into a bit of a morass. All our vacationing and Genconing were really just elaborate attempts to mask the fact that I, Proteinstar, was still without a job, and that it looked as if the Spouse would be working again. This time with our 3rd broodling due in Feb. To say the least, the week was grim, to say the most, it was absolute hell. Up until Wednesday the 16th of August. I received a message from a local High school principal offering me a teaching job in their Science dept. Praise God!

I've since taken the job and gone through several days worth of traning and such.

So we have begun a new facet of my life, that of the teacher and educator.

And so let me leave you with this excerpt from a fantastic little book:

"Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are."

-The Farthest Shore
Ursula K. Le Guin

So my advice to us all is carefully choose the acts you make, or you may wind up frozen in a place and time that is not to your liking and your acts will have left you with no other.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Girls in chainmail?! A dragon poster 2 stories tall? Sign me UP!

What am I talking about you might ask? Only the 4 best days in Geekdom.




That's right..Gencon. Which stands for Geeks Encouraged to Not Care about Other Normals.

I couldn't possibly tell the many sights and sounds that I witnessed. An exhibit hall so large it could have swallowed a Walmart whole and still have room for a 7-11 and a Hardees. A hall stuffed to the gills with board/card and Roleplaying games. Huge displays and massive layouts dominated the hall. Wizards of the Coast displayed a Dragon that was basically lifesize.

The ventilation was thankfully adequate enough to remove the inevitable Geek Reek that would have stripped the flesh right from our bones.

The females of the Gencon though were an interesting breed. Most happen to be of a Goth persuasion. And since they felt no threat from any of the geeks in the facility, all of them too wrapped up in some hyper-rare copy of a Evil Superman card to even realize the body they plowed into was a girl, that they feel they can wear whatever they want. it's like all the males are simply some exotic form of fungus and that the most revealing attire will result in nothing more than an annoyed grimace as the geek realizes that the person wearing only fish net stockings and a thong is blocking his view of Apollo from the original Battlestar Galactica.

Let me just clarify and let you know that the person wearing the stockings and thong was a chick. Yeah I was pretty shocked. Soon shock gave way to stupification when a girl sauntered by in only chainmail. It didn't take long to become numb to the thousands of girls in corsets so tight it looked like they might burst clear out the top in a fountain of well thats enough.

Played a ton of games.
Here's me about to pluck the liver out of Sir Francis Drakes champion.

G4 was there hawking their videogame stuff.

That was kind of cool, got to play a bunch of video games and such. There was a pretty sweet pirate game that a liked.

Collected about 3/4 of a ton of swag. That was sweet. Demoed games in order to get free games, that was sweeter. And I sold $20 dollars of my Magic cards in order to fuel my obsession.

Speaking of Magic, I played in a Two Headed Giant Tournament with Fistzilla. Oh, I should give a rundown of who went.

Proteinstar (myself duh), SirFrancisDrake, DredBen, Fistzilla and 25 Year Scotch. The five of us drove 9 hours or so to Gencon and loved it. The drive back with a Crave case (should call it a Grave case) of 30 White Castle burgers was amazing. Amazing that we made it back at all.

You don't need to see my identification.

Oh yeah, Magic tournament. Long ... long ... story but the short of it was I got spanked like a red headed stepchild, or circus monkey, pick your prefered idiom.

Bought more games than I could physically carry.

Ate a steak so good I nearly considered regurgitation, just to do it again.

I'm not going to post any images of the ladies of Gencon, because I um..didn't take any! yeah, Didn't take any pictures of the girls.

But I did take a picture of this...




Which effectively makes me a dork of the highest caliber.










Although not nearly as dorky as these tools!!


WOW...good pun huh?

Well the event was awesome, Fistzilla couldn't wake me with his Snoring of Fury although SirFrancisDrake was overcome by it's sheer power and I have a ton of games to play.



Although I'm going to have to find a way to get that chainmail underwear burned out of my brain.