Perseid Meteors and Light Sabers

Stayed up late last night trying to watch the Perseid meteor shower. They don't really get going until 10 or 11 p.m., and are best in the early morning, like around 3 or 4 a.m., I guess. But we started out around 10 p.m., and spotted a few here and there. It was a little chilly, so we sat in the comfort of the hot tub and star gazed. Very comfy. For a while. Then it got too hot. Sitting in 101 degree water for an hour is not really a Good Thing IMHO.

So after ditching the hot tub and changing into "real" clothes, we gave it another shot. This time - of all the possible things that might stop viewing a meteor shower - fog began to roll in across the hills and block the view. I even had the telescope out and was aiming it straight at Mars (which is to be pretty close to Earth this year), when the little red bugger just vanished from sight.

Oh well.

We had a Maglite handy - one of the big three-cell kind - and shined it into the fog and made stupid Star Wars sound affects. It really did look sort of like a 30-foot light saber. If you had a good imagination.

Dragonflight 2005

It's getting on that time of year again, and I'm pretty darn excited. Dragonflight, the besting gaming convention in the Pacific Northwest, is coming up August 26-28. New venue this time, though. No more "post-Dragonflight reports" about trudging into communal bathrooms because the rising sun heated up my dorm room to 800 degrees by 6 a.m.

This time it's at the Sheraton in Bellevue, and so I anticipate a regular sized bed, air conditioning, and my own bathroom. I don't think I'll know what to do with myself!

I'll be running two GURPS games - one set in Da Nang, Vietnam 1969, the other a Rainbow Six ripoff I've been dying to try out. Both pretty combat intensive, but I guess I'm kinda brain dead to come up with something great and characterized. I *may* talk to some of the GURPS folks this time around about running a GURPS supers campaign each year at the con. I have an extensive world background (from an ongoing campaign that spans over 10 years of real-time), and it might be fun to let everyone make up characters - even before the con - and play 'em regularly when I run games at DF or Gamestorm or whatever.

Anyway, come up to Seattle if you're off that week and squeeze in gaming. The Vietnam game (Namo Bridge) is on for Friday at 2pm; the R6 game will run Saturday at 7. I'll be doing some pickup games, of course, some SJ Games board game stuff, and talking about the new Hogshead releases that I've done lately, and the ones yet to come.

Topping off the weekend will be playing Horror Rules with my pal Chris Weedin, and my all-night gaming sessions with the Flying Frog guys - Jason Hill, Scott Hill, and Chris Kemnow. Those are my personal indulgence in gaming goodness, and have nothing to do with GURPS, Hogshead, or anything else that requires any brain work on my part. I love it. :)

Hope to see you all there!