Yesterday I went to the Wizard's Attic open house. Actually, it was more than just Wizard's Attic, more like all the companies that used to be the old Chaosium. They've moved to a warehouse at the Oakland Army Base right on the San Francisco Bay. The base is going to be decommissioned in a few years and they're starting to move out, so there's extra space that businesses have started to rent. But it's still a base so I had to sign in, show my driver's license, and the guard also jotted down my license plate number.

First off, the place is pretty big. There is an entry room, like in a doctor's office. Except you can't get in any further unless you're buzzed in, but it's easy enough to reach in through the receptionist's window and click the buzzer. Once inside you are in the first office area. Just about every employer has their own office in this building, which actually is actually like a block long, but it's divided up by hallways.

Eric has a nice office without any windows. Unfortunately, there are very few windows here, in fact the only window I recall was the one in the first room after getting through the entryway. If you look at it as a rectangular area with the entrance on the south (right side), there are offices on the south- east and north-west areas, with the main warehouse on the south-west and the Wizard's Attic warehouse on the north-east. The north-west offices seem to be just Issaries and Green Knight, and everything else is in the south-east area.

There weren't a huge number of people, probably about 30, half of which worked here. There was food scattered about, I suppose to make people congregate in little groups throughout the place. Eric gave me a tour of the place, with Dave Sweet and Dave Pickering tagging along (they got there a bit earlier and already had gone through the tour). Speaking of which, I had a pretty easy time getting to the base and getting to the location, but it took me about half an hour to find the actual entrance. Nondescript buildings with numbers that are not street numbers. Only two groups of parked cars, and no sign other than the Chaosium dragon as a big emblem on a wall, which I mistook for some kind of unit insignia.

We talked some about Wizard's Attic and the other companies here. A very laid back event. The only thing that bothers me, and this is not about the event itself, is why I came here. It was a weeknight and held from 18:00 to 22:00. And what disturbs me is that I didn't give a second thought on whether or not I was going to go. And yet I never went to one of Shannon and Kimberly's Saloon Nights, which were also on a weeknight from 19:00 to 22:00.

This bothers me a bit, because it's not as if I don't like Shannon and Kimberly. But why did I avoid their events? It can't be Kimberly's friends, which -- although I know now I don't think I'll ever warm up to them -- I didn't know then. Timing is about the same, location is close enough. Maybe a subconscious aversion to the two? I hope not.

The only thing I can think of is that the Saloon Night was intended to be a weekly thing. I do like family games, so that's not why I didn't go. But if I had gone to one, I'd be obliged to go to the next, so that would involve a recurring commitment that I wasn't prepared to make. Whereas the open house was just a one time event, the Saloon Night would have been yet another block of time I'm giving away. I still don't feel much better, but I understand why I went to one and not the other.