Okay, so I'm alive now! Woo. Here goes a longer post. Day-by-day breakdown seems like more fun than person-by-person.
Thursday: Arrived in SFO at 3:30 Pacific, and promptly (i.e. before the plane finished taxiing) got a call from Yakko asking where the hell I was. It's nice to feel wanted! Met him, QR and Niu at the baggage claim, beheld QR's awesome sign, and went back to Gate and her's place to hang out while she get the house taken care of. Got reacquainted with the various DL types who were already there, including Elfboy, Meeple, Grefter, Tai, OK &c. Mild panic over the 25-and-up-only rule ensued before Jenna got that settled with mad skillz, and after dinner of Whatever We Could Find In The Local Strip-Mall (mmm, Chinese buffet), we slowly migrated to DLCon Ground Zero. Spent more time than I expected hanging out with OK, and enjoyed it - we've got very similar senses of humor in person.
Rest of the day was spent meeting people, playing video games and staking out sleeping space. Super arrived very late and very fried. Surprisingly, he refrained from killing anyone.
Friday: Food! MC and I collaborated on French toast for 20 people or so. Good fun. No challah in the Safeway, though, so we coped with white bread. There was also a wealth of Uno (and a related game whose name I can't recall) in the morning, instigated by QR and Hal, and lots of DMC - the DMC3 succession run with Xer, Meeple and me, and DMC4 on OK's laptop, generously donated to the cause (thanks!). Afternoon had awesome games of A2A and Betrayal At The House On The Hill (culminating in my character, a big jock whose likes include football and "shiny objects," soloing a houseful of vampires). Lunch was had at a pretty awesome fish-and-chips place around the corner from the house, then more gaming ensued, followed by noshing on Tai’s meat-stuffed croissants and Gate's excellent Portuguese chicken - yeah, he claims it was substandard, whatever. I'll believe that when I taste it.
At sundown, Super somehow badgered OK and me into re-enacting the opening of Castlevania: SotN, with OK as Richter Belmont. We went through a good 10-plus tries before he could remember all his lines, followed by me chucking a can of Mountain Dew at him to begin the epic battle. Then we both chased down Super AND MURDERED HIM DEAD ahem.
Xer showed off various games all day, including SRW OGs, Sengoku Basara (four thousand hit combo what the hell), and more. Around midnight, Ciato arrived and promptly terrorized us poor law-abiding folk, scarring me for life.
Saturday: Started with a Safeway run with Ciato, which was the first chance I had to talk to her one-on-one for a decent length of time...ever, I think. Yay. Proceeded to make scrambled eggs for 15, including the largest single batch of food I've ever made. I was pleasantly shocked when it came off as well as it did. Laggy ran I Wanna Be The Guy, because he's fucking insane, and it was hilarious. Especially when The Kid played Richter Belmont in the SotN opening, humiliating OK's puny drama skills. There was more DMC4 including the Legendary Dark Knight difficulty, AKA "DMC: Musou Edition," another epic A2A game, culminating in Monkey’s choice of a winner for “Sexy” (“My Hair”), followed by Meeple's music quiz, all of which were far too entertaining. Elfboy and I made a hardware store run (long story), which was an odd time to get some conversation in, but hey, whatever works.
The obligatory DL bowling trip went great - Ego Interlude: I got the top score in my lane for the first time - although Granny-Bowling no longer reigns supreme in the standings. That was followed by a fruitful trip to Game Crazy, including a movie sale where I grabbed a copy of Children of Men to give away (Ciato got it, I think?). Things wound down with Niu flaunting KH2 Final Mix + at CK and Xer showing off the Tales of Destiny remake, and the group's third and final game of Arkham Horror, involving some seriously epic dice-rolling by Alex.
(Full explanation: Between Yakko and myself, we had the ability to re-order the next three "Mythos" cards - which determine the events in the game world over the next turn - and then discard the first one in the list without it taking effect. This was used throughout the game to hold off impending doom, but by the time we were actually in a position to win, we were also out of ways to manipulate it; we just knew because of the order we'd put the cards in that two turns from then all hell was going to break loose. To win the game, Alex had to roll a 5 or 6 on at least one die out of two. He didn't. So he spent four "clue tokens" to let him add extra dice to the roll. He still didn't. Then Sopko used his character's special ability to let Alex re-roll every failed attempt, which brought the roll to a total of 12 six-sided dice. NO SUCCESSES. On the next turn, in defiance of all precedent and every indication of the game’s hatred for us, he pulled it off on the first try and we won.)
Incidentally, the chance of rolling 12 six-sided dice in succession without a single 6 or 5 showing is 0.77%.
Spent the last hours of the night shooting the breeze with MC, Andrew, NEB, Ashley, and some other people I can’t remember at the moment because it was late. Lots of fun, and Andrew and MC had some interesting tidbits to share on the inner workings of the game industry. There wasn’t a person in the house I couldn’t have a great time just sitting down and talking with, which was great.
Sunday: We had to vacate the house by 10 AM, which was surprisingly easily accomplished given how many of us there were. We hung out at Gate's place for a while, and I got drawn into a game of Gloom, which Soppy brought. GLOOM. IS. AWESOME. And got me kicked in the head by Elfboy for sheer wrongness, which as far as I'm concerned only proves how awesome it was. Got in some SC3 afterward, but not nearly enough - next time, Gadget! - before heading off to the subway station to visit my family in Petaluma.
Overall? A very fun weekend, and almost everything went off without a hitch. Again, high praise to everyone involved in the planning, and in general you all rule.
