Saturday, August 8

Had to get up again early today, because Dan was scheduled to play in a game called "Sports Fuzz!" Stuffed animals. Football. At eight in the morning. Sounds more like a game you should play after two or three shots of your favorite liquor, but it proved to be cute and silly. I hung around for awhile watching them get the Fuzz Bowl players (stuffed animals in football helmets) ready to go, then headed back to the convention center (Sports Fuzz was in the Arena, two buildings down) in time for the opening of the dealer's room.

Sometimes getting there early works out for the best, and this was no exception. I was able to get my hardback Shadowrun book signed by several of the FASA folks before very many other people showed up and formed a line, which meant that Jim Nelson and Fred Hooper had time to do some really nice sketches in it. Jim did a dragon (because I'd told him before how much I liked his dragons) and Fred did a really cool Harlequin. Throughout the day I also got signatures from Mike Mulvihill, Sharon Mulvihill, "Skuzzy" Nielsen, Matt Wilson, Donna Ippolito, Steve Kenson, Jon Szeto, and Tom Baxa. I felt like I was back in high school getting my yearbook signed!

I also discovered that they hadn't sold out of hardcovers after all--in fact, what had happened was that they'd received only a partial order the day before, and now they got the rest. I bought one more (#297) to use as a prize in a contest I'm going to run on my website, and one more softcover so Dan and I could each have our own.

Dan got back from Sports Fuzz and we puttered around for the rest of the day until it was time for me to go to my Earthdawn game and him to head off to dinner with a guy he'd met on the rec.motorcycles newsgroup. Made one more purchase in the dealer's room--the same lady I'd bought the blue and silver shoulder dragon from now had a gold one with purple eyes, and much bigger. I could not resist it.

The Earthdawn game was a lot of fun. First of all, it was run by Loki (of Poisoned Elves website fame). When I told him he'd given my site his "Dragon's Deal Award," he remembered me. I played a Swordmaster. It was a typical intro game--not a lot of character interaction--but it was fun anyway. One guy playing a dwarven weaponsmith really got into his character (I guess Dan isn't the only one who thinks all dwarves are Scottish!) and provided a lot of comic relief. My character was quite ineffectual in the final fight with the Horror, since she kept rolling fumbles and dropping her sword despite having probably the highest Melee Weapons skill in the group. She spent the entire combat chasing it around, and by the time she decided to draw her wimpier sword, the Horror was dead!

Dan came back with his friend and his friend's wife, and we spent an hour or so just hanging around the convention center talking. They took us back to the hotel around 11. One more day--hard to believe we're already going home tomorrow.

Onward to Sunday