Ugh. Too many things have come and gone, and I've been letting LJ gather dust.
Ok, point form, then details...

This Is Not A Game
My order for Dave Szulborski's book "This Is Not A Game" arrived last week! Now, I need to find the time to read through it. It's praised as a wonderful, detailed book about Alternate Reality Games and the genre. I don't think I've heard or seen any critical reviews :).

Dave just got out hospital again, and has been the subject of quite a segment of the community's good thoughts and well-wishes. A campaign was even set up for him called Folding The Wish, when he was first admitted a while back. So I made sure to give my own little tribute in my pic-of-the-day :). I was also fortunate enough two Christmases ago to be randomly chosen as Dave's Secret Santa at Unfiction. That was nerve-racking! I set up a little puzzle for him in the book... I still don't know if he solved it ;) Dave was the brains behind the arg for the movie "The Host" called "Monster Hunter's Club", from whom I received a collectible monster toy of the Bionic Bigfoot.

It's been a privilege to meet him in person at ARGfest, and to have so many indirect communications with him :) hehe. It's great to know he's doing ok again, and I wish him the best for a speedy recovery...

ARGFest/ComicCon
Dates are announced! yay! And the dates are perfect... ARGFest July 17-19, followed by ComicCon July 22-26. Now, it's just a matter of organizing transportation for a week and a half, and accomodations...

ARGFest is in Portland, Oregon, and ComicCon is in San Diego. Which means leaving Buffalo or Toronto, to Portland, joining a big group of people for the exodus to ComicCon in San Diego folloing, then returning from San Diego to Buffalo or Toronto. I have vacation enough for the 8 or 9 days I'll need, but money is the other factor... gotta find out what's available, what's possible, and what's required.

Thankfully, writing for ARGN and Wikibruce, I should quality for a press pass entry to ComicCon (and there's plenty of relevant subject matter there!) which means free ComicCon. Getting to both ARGFest and ComicCon should satisfy my geekdom for the year, I'm sure. There were a couple of other events I was interested in, but I think this year it'll just be ComicCon. I would love to get into E3 one year, but that requires a heavier duty press certification. I don't work for a video gaming magazine or media resource. :)

reminder-to-self: take plenty of business cards to both events!

PS Home Mystery
I just picked up a tip from this 'arginsider' twitter, that something was up in Playstation Home - mysterious text messages and video snippets containing the greek letter Xi... I've had a PS3 for months, but had only begun setting up PSHome. I'd never actually booted it up. This gave me the nudge... Home is pretty nifty, and I believe it's got a lot of potential for...interesting content :). It's still in beta stage, but I believe it's getting to the point of Alpha or full release very shortly...

Anyway, I've reviewed the details at wikibruce: http://wikibruce.com/2009/02/home-is-where-the-mystery-is

Volleyball
Stupid. There are two churches with similar names. Nowhere near each other. I keep getting them mixed up. Thursday, I went to the wrong one... the one nearby, downtown. The other one's outside the city. starbursidereus was kind enough to drop me off, then come back and pick me up. But sheesh... I missed our last round-robin match, and my absence meant we had to forfeit for lack of players. That put our team at the bottom of the roster. Man. So this week, we get to play the 1st place team - and this team is practically olympic caliber.
Wonderful! Well, it'll be a fun, short-lived match... volleyball this season was fun while it lasted! bah.

Retreat weekend @ Miller Lake
The college & careers group at Central had its now-annual winter retreat over the long (for some) family weekend. It almost didn't happen, but we had 9 people in total, and it ended up great! This was the first time we occupied the new winterized building up at camp, rather than the rustic old main building with no heating, iffy plumbing, and icky water. The new building is nice, but it doesn't have that 'cozy' warm feeling the other one does (whites/open concept vs browns/carpets/sofas/etc). Fireplaces are nice though. Always nice in winter.

Anyway, I've uploaded pics to flickr... some of the best moments were our little excursion to the beaver dam, walking on the lake and cracking off ice fragments from the shelf... the snow didn't have as much presence this year as previous years, and it was sunny all weekend long, so tobogganning and random snow hijinks were hard to come by. So we mostly socialized, played games, ate, did a lot of walking and enjoying the outdoors... good times :)

We're working to revive the group this year, and there are a number of new people waiting for a group to move in to, so hopefully things get flying this year. I'm really happy with the direction the church has been going this year. Very encouraging!

I think that about covers it. I'm sure I missed something. But I always do. Stupid brain.