Playing hooky in nerdtopia

You may have noticed it was a bit quiet here on Pharyngula yesterday. I took the day off. My daughter Skatje has been away for a few weeks, visiting her sweetie-pie in Kentucky, and we had to make the long drive to the airport and back, so we decided to make a day of it in the big city as long as we were there. I also had to drop by the Big U and sign some papers.

When my boys and I decide to paint the town red, guess what we do? We headed to Dreamhaven Books, Comics and Art, Phoenix Games, Uncle Hugo’s (what is it with the remarkable concentration of geekdom on Lake Street in Minneapolis?), and The Source Comics & Games. After eating lots of Chinese food, we headed to the airport, only to discover Skatje’s plane was delayed.

So we sprawled on the floor of the Humphrey terminal and played Zombies until she arrived. I have discovered that when faced with the shambling horrors, I will roll lots of “1”s, slapping ineffectually at them until they grapple with me and gnaw on my brains. My sons Alaric and Connlann will grab shotguns, fire axes, and grenades and cut a bloody swath through them on their way to the helicopter pad, where they will fly away leaving me in a slowly closing circle of implacable moaning flesh-eaters.

When Skatje finally showed up (she had a fine time with her boy toy, who apparently works in a comic book shop and plays D&D), it was midnight, and we had the long drive home to face…we finally staggered into the house after a long day of nerd decadence at 3AM.

As you might guess, now I’m feeling exhausted and my brains have been repeatedly chewed upon. And you all know what weirdos we are here at Chez Myers.

Home again!

We left Las Vegas on a 12:30am flight to Des Moines, IA, had an hour and a half layover, got into Minneapolis sometime around 7:30, made the 3 hour drive from there to Morris, and now I sit here a little shell-shocked and worn out. Give me a little time to bounce back and Pharyngula will be chugging along with fresh material again.

Now…coffee, or nap?

Nerd overload

My geekishness has a limit, I’ve discovered. We have a long afternoon and evening to kill in Las Vegas before our plane leaves, and we visited the Hilton, which has a huge Star Trek themed room and exhibit, and Mary even offered to treat me to the Star Trek Experience for Father’s Day.

I’m sorry, but it was too, too geeky for me.

Usually, I can wallow in any SFnal environment just fine; I can hang out in comic book stores with the kids, no problem; I’ll even seek out fringe SF and devour it as my guilty pleasure. But a place with nothing but ST memorabilia, bins of tribbles, a blue guy dressed as an Andorian, televisions everywhere replaying old episodes, and clerks in Star Fleet uniforms? I shudder. No, no…too much. I had to turn down my Father’s Day gift.

Please don’t take away my membership in the community of nerds.

YearlyKos wrapup

I’ve been off at the big meeting, and it’s been a long and tiring weekend in Las Vegas. It’s been strange, too: we’re surrounded by slot machines and show girls, and our crowd hardly notices them; I took a moment to step outside, and I had to tell my wife, “the sunshine…it hurts…” and we went back in. We were intense, nerdly aliens in a neon world.

It was a good weekend, though. I’ll dump a few of my impressions below the fold.

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Hello from YearlyKos!

I’m here in sunny Las Vegas, hanging out in the lobby with the free wireless and watching all the funny blogger nerds with the orange badges walking by. Heh. Oh, hang on…I’m wearing an orange badge and blogging in a corner. Yeah, I’m such a nerd.

I don’t know how much time I’ll have for actually posting things here this weekend, but I’ve queued up a series of reruns to appear automagically at various times, so the site won’t be totally drying up. Half the liberal blogosphere seems to be here, so I’ve got to do something to keep a void from appearing.

I’m back!

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Well, sorta. I arrived back home around midnight last night, and to be honest, I feel like I need another six hours of sleep right now. I also feel like I need to reply to some of the comments on that last godless post. And I also know I need to go take care of my fish for a while. I’ll be back in full ranty action in a little while, but meanwhile, contemplate this work of art, “Bob decided it was time to put his degree in philosophy to work.”