That. Was. AWESOME!

My boyfriend and I were in Seattle from Thursday to Monday at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) .

IT
WAS
AWESOME!

Other than our horrible and I mean HORRIBLE flight screwing-overs, of course. Let me touch briefly on that. We booked a month and a half in advance for a direct flight to Seattle from Philly and back. No problem. Around $400 a person. A few weeks before the event they email us telling us they've changed our flight, which now gets us in later than some of our plans. We had to call and change...that was bad enough, but we almost ALMOST missed our connecting flight in Las Vegas on the way home (we ran through the airport, but fortunately the flight out of LV was also delayed about 15 minutes, which allowed us to get our baggage transferred too-- hooray!), and we still got in at midnight EST. We would have gotten in at 6am had we missed that flight, all because they cannot keep their freakin word and give us the direct flights we paid for. Oh, and did you know they have ads the entire way on planes now and you have to pay for like ANY in flight food? Ok.... end rant about the plane flight.

Thursday we went to a "pre-PAX" dinner at P.F. Changs which was awesome. We met some Canadians at our table and had tasty food and got free appetizers. Afterwards, we crashed because of all the wonderful jet lag.

Friday we went and took the Underground Tour of Seattle, took lots of pictures, etc, then we went to the con a wee bit late. It opened at 2, we got there at about 1:45 and because of the line we didnt get in until around 2:45. Lots of DS playing. We rushed to the first theater to see some speed runs of games, then we lined up and got to see Wil Wheaton as the keynote speaker! We checked out the exhibition hall (I ran into my ex and that was kind of awkward). Then we chilled for the rest of the night.

Saturday was even awesomer. We watched people pitch their game ideas to a judge's panel. I went to a short panel on the "History of Guild Wars", but I didn't get to stay the whole time because we left to watch the Assassin's Creed Live Demo! Then it was a little bit of "I'm Getting Old When Life Cuts Into Gaming", focusing on how to balance and intertwine your "real life" and games. Then we took a nap and ate dinner before the concert of: John Coulton, MC Frontalot (OMG OMG OMG) and the Minibosses from 8-2am.  It was awesome, but my back and feet were killing me by the time we got back to the hotel. Also, can someone PLEASE tell the artists not to request that the thousands of smelly nerds raise their arms?

Sunday we watched a round of gaming Family Feud as our wrap up, and we dined at the Space Needle which wasn't even revolving that night, but it was still good.

Monday we came home. I happened to meet and sit behind Tom Fulp, Founder and C.E.O of Newgrounds on the flight home from Las Vegas, which I didn't even realize until now. Awesome!

Hooray for vacation!

P.S. In other less important news, I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I've started reading the rest of the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. Yay!