I forgot to mention this incident that occurred on the way to Milwaukee. It was daylight after we picked up Troy, which means it was Thursday morning or noon. We had stopped at some gas station to fill up on the awful smelling gasoline (I have mentioned that the gasoline in these South-Midwest states smell a lot worse than in California -- additives do help make gasoline cleaner). We were all tired and we piled back into the van and Dave swung out of the driveway and into the road heading for the freeway entrance.

That's when the yelling started. I didn't know what was going on but I looked back and the rear door was open and our luggage was tumbling onto the road. We quickly stopped and retrieved our wayward bags, not before a truck ran over a piece or two. My suitcase -- the suitcase I've had for the better part of twenty years, long enough to remember that it used to be way too big for me and now is a bit too small for me -- it was ripped up a bit. There are now sizable holes on the front, since it's a cloth front it wasn't that hard to rip through. But it still held my stuff. I was laughing the whole way, it was one of those weird things that's funny. I don't anything was really damaged, if you don't mind tire marks of course.

Saturday night I was online checking up on my email and Sarah once again said how she wanted to go to a convention but didn't have money for air fare. Naturally, being in a good mood at Gen Con and all I offered to pay for her air fare and I bought the tickets right then and there. That was my good deed for the week.

Anyway, Sunday morning when I woke up Sweet had already left. I was tired and just wanted to keep sleeping but then I felt that I'd be letting Woo down since the reason I wasn't driving him to the airport was that I wanted to see James Marsten. So I got up and left and went to one place then the other then back and forth and I never did find where Marsten was giving his speech. Sweet wanted me to ask him some vaguely vulgar question about Sarah Michelle Gellar and I may or may not have tried to ask it, so it's just as well that I didn't find the man.

So I went to the dealer room and walked around and everything was much the same as the last time I was here. I bought a copy of Imperium, 3rd Millenium from Avalanche Press. I guess they had assembled them like the previous night or something because the boxes weren't even shrinkwrapped. And when I later checked I saw that I didn't have one of the battle maps and it by then the dealer room had closed and we were leaving so I didn't have a chance to fix it then. But I emailed them a month later and they sent me the missing map.

Big and little Chris and I were waiting around in the hotel room for Troy and his friend, who did come back early. We were expecting to leave at 18:00 and managed to leave a couple of hours early. Just as well because I was wrong about how long it would take us to get them back. We got them back at 08:00 and Troy had a class at 09:00. He made the mistake during the trip of commenting that he was so tired that he was tempted to skip the class and test and make it up later. That got to Van Horn, I don't know he serious he was about it but he was a bit upset that we had cut our vacation short to get these boys back because Troy had said that he had to be back at this time and if it wasn't true then Chris had every right to be mad. I think that Troy was tired and wasn't thinking. If he had his wits he would probably have realized that he couldn't miss that test.

Troy did relate a neat little Hudson Leick story, which I don't really remember. He was in line for autographs and near the front of the line. Ms Leick had been asked to do one of her Callisto yells, which she did. A little later there was a responding yell from somewhere relatively far away, which prompted Ms Leick to make a comment and I totally forgot what Troy said the comment was. But it was funny.