The Gaming Bug

One week ago, at this time, I had just arrived in Dallas. I was on the same labored flight as my friends, James and Megan. Boarding was delayed. We were delayed on the runway, while they rerouted us. We waited while they shuffled us in the planes to take off. While in the air, they rerouted us again, perhaps failing at dodging the turbulence, which at one point gave me the distinct feeling of weightlessness. When we touched down, it was a couple hours later than we expected, but Larry, who suffered some setbacks as well, arrived at nearly the exact same time, so Matt could round us all up and DIAF CON south could begin.

It felt like exhaling after you have held your breath for a long time. The relief of sitting all together, or nearly all together, in silver Odyssey. We were on our way to Matt's house, the venue for the Con, as he talked about the plans for the day and the weekend. I know I talked and engaged and discussed, but my memory is of the feeling. We are here. Something special is about to begin.

The scenery outside of the car slowed. I saw a new brick wall, no time for the rough edges of the red hardened clay to soften in the rain. A long cement name plate, a foot tall, has been set into the wall. It say's "Avalon." Appropriate, I think, for a group of games who are not unfamiliar with virtual knights. Matt turned into his neighborhood.

He pulled directly into the garage of a house, which to me looked very much like the others around it. We tumbled out of the van, grabbed our gaming bags, what you might call carry-ons, and entered the house. Tasha, Matt's wife, met us in the kitchen. A couple of his kids, the boys, stared not sure what to make of us. Kevin, Matt's long time friend and co-host, who had flown in the night before, stepped from the back room. I held out my hand, me default greeting, Kevin ignored that and gave me a hug.

We broke out the Chic-Fil-A we had purchased and started with a common meal around the kitchen table. Beside us was a table of games, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Fury of Dracula and many more. It was stacked nearly two foot high and it grew, as we purchased games, through the week. As the meal wrapped up, Matt brought out gift bags of Magic Cards, several games, d20 necklaces and a poster for the Con. As the meal ended we couldn't take it any more, we broke out our first game. We played games until midnight. Then, for the next few days we played games back to back from nine in the morning until midnight. It was like a never ending celebration. Fun, but exhausting.

On Tuesday night I was sharing the first meal I had had with my kids. Shelly picked me up from the airport the night before and at had taken the day off, both to recover and spend some time with her. Anyway, we ate the pizza we ordered quickly, so that all the chores could get done and we could.... wait for it.... play games. You might think I would have had my fill, but that has not been the case. We played Noah (a card game where you help Noah load the Arc) and Catching Fire (a game based on the Hunger Games series).