Gabe essentially began anti-anxiety medication and planned a trip for Paris in the same week, possibly even in the same moment, and as an observer - it is literally my job to observe - this was an intriguing process. He wasn't yet ensorcelled by the chemical, and yet with full awareness of his own agony he went through the previously unthinkable process of putting all this together. It must have been something like jumping from a plane with a strange backpack and a pamphlet entitled "Your Parachute." The hope was that his mind would be in the correct gear sometime before coming into contact with the Earth's crust.

We realized once we'd arrived at Emerald City Comic Con that we had neglected to tell anyone we were going to be there. With the upcoming trip, imminent game launch, Scott's visit, Boom Blox, and breaks to teach my son words like Chthonian and Trepidation, let me tell you, dogs: shit had gotten extremely real. Still, the event was not a total loss, and many positive events occurred. For example:

I secured several buttons from the young ladies at The Color M, which allowed me to exhaust them with "fascinating" trivia about my historical namesake. I sampled incredibly delicious Chicken Snax. I was able to spend time with Sam of Sam and Fuzzy fame, who is almost always tolerable. He sat very near to Jeph Jacques, who I could not see on account of the dense throng of young women, and also the birch forest of dangerously thin young men standing very near the young women, looking vague and desolate. Originally Jeff Rowland was to attend, but eventually decided against it for some horseshit reasonin' likes o' which prolly t'ain't e'en true.

I met some of the men currently at the helm of the revitalized Battletech, and it was a pleasure to again use terms like "lance" and "drop pod" with people who know what the fuck I'm talking about. I haven't had a chance to crack the books they offered, updates to old tech manuals I already own, but I must admit to being somewhat blindsided by Battlecorps. As a young man, I read many of the novels set in the universe - and Battlecorps is a site that brings old and new authors to bear on the setting. It is a subscription fiction service, routinely stocked with new stories. How something like this escaped the clutch of my iron gauntlet is beyond me, but like many others I assumed the old ways were gone forever.

Also hard to believe is that a man writes one-hundred and one word short stories each day, subsequently collecting them in books, and I didn't know about it.

Saturday night, I met someone at a party who is half the team behind "Fold It," a videogame based on Protein Folding. I talked with him about how strange it is to make a game based on actual quantities, where you don't get to design around reality. I'm afraid to link it, because I don't want to hurt the site, but it's so amazing that I sort of have to. There are many automated ways to fold proteins, as you are no doubt aware, but at the core of Fold It is the idea that there may be creative solutions to the same problem that have a marked advantage. This is something I want to believe.

(CW)TB out.