Much cheering to another PAX (main) in the can!  This was my third year tagging along with The Totally Rad Show as camera girl/kid sister/mom/official fan picture taker (1,2, SE-GA!) Even though PAX Main continues to grow a tiny bit bigger each year (holy more showroom floor!) the spirit of PAX remains the same, making it by far my favorite convention.  Comicon I could skip, but PAX is a must.  Everyone from the vendors, fans attending, and official PAX crew (Enforcers)  have such a great attitude and love for gaming.  Everyone wants to just game, talk about gaming, and do more gaming – all the good of the gaming world without the bad… minus Duke Nukem ;p

Here are some of the highlights:

-DnD Red Box picture with TRS PAX crew!!  Dougie is in the front – the awesome guy that lets TRS (& me) get to PAX!!!!

-My first panel!
I sat on my first panel for Raid Warning!  Some of my old WoW raiding buddies run the Raid Warning podcast.  I came to support last minute, but ended up on stage shooting the shit about WoW news (hello CC again!) and drinking their beer.  I also handed out prizes to the audience members.  Thanks again Seven & crew.

-ZOMBIES!!
PopCap had zombies out in full force for Plants Vs Zombies – mostly by cones for your head.  I snatched one up, as seen in the picture below.  I also got a walnut tattoo – skipped the zombie face paint.  They had this guy dressed up as one of the zombies too handing out headshots – he talked like a crazy zombie too.  Loved it.  Braaaaaains.

-Table top games!
LOVE that the people I go to PAX with also love table top games.  It was at PAX two years ago I played my first game of DnD!  I decided that it was only appropriate that I buy my first set of dice at PAX as I think I have some more DnD in my immediate future.

We also got some limited time to sit down and try a few other games.  One being Traitor! – which is more or less a smaller card based version of the campfire game Mafia.

We also did this tabletop train game (Ticket to Ride) where you have to connect your color trains between different cities across the US.  I lost by 2 to Jeff

Alex also ended up picking up the Back to the Future Card game that had just come out this last weekend, for Dan.  We played some of that last night in the hotel room – and if you’re a fan of the movie you TOTALLY need to get this game.  Amazing movie references and also really fun game play.  Dan made the mistake of tweeting about what cards he had =p

-General Floor
I got hands on with Tera and Duke Nukem – mostly because TRS had appointments to see the games.  Tera was pretty fun! They set us up to do an instance with the guide healing.  I played tank (weird) – but also got to do it on an Xbox controller OR keyboard.  Considering I have a rather unique way I platy MMO’s, I went for the controller.  The game was really pretty and the instance as a whole was really fun.  We even won hoodies

Duke Nukem – meh.  Nuff said.

I also got a bit of time with some other indie games, but sadly didn’t grab cards or remember names.

There was also this sweet 2 person arcade style Castle Crashers machine setup!

-Matching shirts!!
It turned into a thing with the guys to find all the other people wearing the same shirt I had on.  I’m kind of sad I only took one picture – but my Girl Gamer shirt, space invader school shirt, mega man shirt where out in full force!  I also got this cute gameboy shirt from fangamer.com !  It included a cute bag and pin too

-Omegathon
At the end of every PAX, they have the final game for the Omegathon.  The Omegathon being different attendees pitted against each other to compete in a series of 10 games to win tickets to the Japanese version of E3 in Japan!  It always opens with “The Final Countdown” and Tyco and Gabe come out and say some closing remarks.  Two years ago it was Excite Bike on the NES, last year it was skeeball, and this year it was THE CLAW!  They two guys got about 7 tries each to see how many stuffed video game related animals they could get.  I love love the Omegathon.  It really feels like you and 2000 of your friends are on the couch cheering on your buddy to win. I can’t imagine a better ending to anything.  One of the guys had mad claw skills and got 4 animals out of the machine!  Who does that??

-That game from “Inglorious Basterds”
Sunday evening for the last two years, the TRS PAX crew grabs food with David Ellis (formally of 1up.com – now Xbox man) and play that game.  I have a few pictures from the evening, as well ACTUAL real working HALO 2600 Atari Cartridge.  David has promised to help me out with FPS gaming ;p

Until next year PAX (unless I do PAX East…)  I love you PAX!!

Running around like crazy – you can catch me at the Jinx party tonight, TRS panel at 3 pm tomorrow, and the DnD bus sometime tomorrow as well. @twitter me if you want to say hi and get a sticker!!

Also, here is me with another awesome lady in the same shirt! I’ve even seen a few guys wearing it! ;p

Something GeekyMake Your Own Font!

Have my own font is something I’ve been looking into for many years and was just getting to the tipping point of finding and installing a few pieces of software so that I could finally be able to write in my own font. It just always seemed like it was either going to be a lot of money or a really cumbersome process to get all the software I needed to create one.

Last night on some late night internet search, I decided to look into it again and finally found the answer of all my vain personal font dreams! YourFonts.com ! This site is AMAZING. I created my own personal font in about 10 minutes!! It actually creates the front as it uploads! How crazy cool is that?

However, I learned that there are some drawbacks to making the font process a little manual. I ended up redoing the font when I realized how many of my letters were floating around. I also had an ink spot mess up my g. I ended up taking the scans into photoshop and taking heavy advantage of the grids and then used the best drawing of each letter I liked in the end.

If you look below, you can see how in Try #1, some of the capitol letters are floating up into space.

Something GirlyLovely Airmail Stationary

It’s rare these days (or most of my life) that I hand write letters anymore! I actually did send one earlier this summer to an old best friend from high school, but never made it around to responding to her. It’s almost like I’m a pen pal again!

Regardless, I have the chance to maybe go to Ireland soon, where I have extended family! I was there about 17 years ago and met 5th cousins but haven’t seen them since. I’m hoping to write them a REAL letter to get their online information so I can hopefully meet-up with them next month.

More importantly, this gives me an excuse to use my Airmail stationary from Cranes I got about 15 years ago. I LOVE maps. So, MAPS + Cool light weight airmail stationary = my favorite stationary EVER. I mostly just wanted to share some pictures of its awesomeness and how thin it is!

BEHOLD:

Something Geeky

Kid Mario Halloween Costumes

I am currently helping watch a friend’s dog and house and they happen to have little kids.  I saw a costume magazine poking out from some mail and probably would not have given it a second thought if it wasn’t for seeing that kids on the cover were dressed as MARIO!  What the what?  Yes, Mario is still live and well to the young kids of today, but I’m pretty sure some genius at this costume place decided to prey on parent’s nostalgia and make these costumes.  I enjoy that they at least include bellies for Mario and Luigi.

Check out that Toad!

I have also included the Star Wars spread for good measure and the most ridiculous toddler costume. P.S. WHY ARE THESE THINGS OUT IN AUGUST?  And why does the website (costumeexpress.com) already have sales??

Something Girly

Types of Dresses!

I recently just purchased my first “maxi” dress - except I didn’t know that was what kind of dress it was until I showed a friend who said, “oh! I’ve been wanting to get a maxi dress!”  Clearly a hole in my girl knowledge.  So here, I present the different types of dresses that you’re most likely to come across these days!

The Maxi Dress - Just a long dress that is ankle or floor length – usually form fitting.

The Jumper Dress – A dress made to be worn over a shirt or something else.  I have one now I and feel like I’m 4 when I wear it.

The Surplice Dress – Seeming similar to the “wrap dress” – this dress is defined by the v-neckline being formed by two pieces of fabric overlapping to make the v-neck

The Wrap Dress - The dress that I think formed out of people liking to wear bathrobes – but it is a dress that wraps around your body and has this sewn on belt that you have to jam through a tiny hole one side of the dress to then wrap/tie around you to make sure you don’t show everyone the goods.

The Shirt Dress – I think this can just also be called the Gap/BR/J-Crew/Brooks Brothers/Ralph Loren dress?  It’s a longer than normal button down shirt…dress.  You tie something around your waist with this to add curve and give yourself shape.  The end. (Okay, so I DO like them, but they’re preppy as all hell).

The Sundress - Light, airy, worn in the summer or when it’s hot as hell.

The Sheath Dress – No waistline  and fits like a glove.

The Shift Dress – It’s basically the sheath dress with no waistline, but just not as form fitting.

The Tent Dress - Can’t say that this dress is typically referred to in a good way, but its style comes from the dress flaring out from the above the bust.

The Muumuu Dress - Okay, you might not wear one of these, but they do exist   A Hawaiian styled dress that I think is basically the Hawaiian version of the tent dress.

The Hoodie Dress – Or the grunge dress.  They’re pretty cute now, but I know the first one I owned was all black and worn with my Doc Martin boots.