LTUE 2, mom/grandma's visit

Valentine's Day was a few Wednesdays ago. For it, Heather and I recreated our first date. Sort of. For starters, our first date was a picnic at Kawanis Park. But the tree we had it under had been torn down. In fact, that entire half of the park had been destroyed and recreated into some sort of water catcher thing in case it floods. So we couldn't have it in the same spot. Plus, it was raining out. So we tried to set up under a tree near our spot, but the rain was coming down. We decided to tough it out, and set out the blanket and food. Then it started hailing. At that point, we gave up and just went under one of the pavilions in the park. We picked the one we had our Provo reception-thing for our wedding, so there were still some memories associated with it. Then it really started pouring down hard so we were glad that we had taken shelter.

Olympics are going on! Heather and I watch them almost every single night together on NBC. Some of the events are super awesome to watch.

The Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before last were the Life, the Universe and Everything conference. This year I got my ticket early, and went to all three days (after work on Thursday and Friday). On Thursday I went to "The Art of Fun," which talked about game design and what makes games fun. Alan Bahr was on that panel. i sat in the front and after the panel he came up to me and said, "We have a meeting, right?" Yeah we did! He told me to meet him Saturday morning. After that I went and checked out the Good Move cafe in downtown Provo, and HOLY CRAP they have like every great game imaginable! I like, died and went to Heaven. my own personal Heaven is going to be like that place. They had an entire wall with large bookcases packed with games. I thought they'd only have Monolpoly, but they have, like, every awesome game ever. Dominion, Gloomhaven, Pandemic, Forbidden Island and Desert, Concordia, Great Western trail, Camel Cup, Codenames, Alhambra, Santorini, Steampunk Rally, Sushi Go!, Village, Settlers, Caverna, etc. etc etc. It was AMAZING! So naturally I have to go there sometime with some other gamers and have a blast. The next panel I went to was "Writing Your YA Novel," which Calista was also in. She was near the front. Then I went to "Bard for Life: Atomic theory" where a storyteller rocked some awesome stories and it was really fun.

Friday after work I made it to Board Game Recommendations, where Alan Bahr was on the panel. I was going to go to another panel but  got distracted at the gaming room where some people were playing Shipwreck Arcana. I have an entire post about this game, but basically it was a Kickstarter that I backed, and it came in finally a couple of weeks ago. Well, this guy obviously backed it too becasue he had it and was playing it. I jumped in (after showing I knew how to play I was invited to join) and it was really fun. Anyway, I played a couple of games of that and then headed off to "From Ragnarok to The Maze Runner: Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse in Fiction" and that was cool. Last year I went to a dystopia apocalypse one. I guess I find it an interesting genre. I wet to a creating movie and book trailers one next, but they didn't talk about movie trailers at all, just book trailers, so that was the one class I regret not going to something else instead. Then I went to a class about psychology and game design, and then in the game room played some more Shipwreck Arcana.

On Saturday morning was my meeting with Alan Bahr, and I gave him a copy of Somerset (the copy I got from the Game Crafter). He said he'd play it and get back to me. And if it wasn't something he wanted to publish, he'd contact me with some other game manufacturers. Then I went to a class called "Avoiding the dreaded infodump," which talked about spreading out your world-building information into your plot so that your readers aren't bored. Calista was in that one too. Then I went home for a bit and when I came back I went to "Making the Most of NaNoWriMo," which stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is Novemembr, which is what Eric did when he wrote his "The Anachronominion." I got some good tips there if I ever decide to do it. I've thought about it before but have never just done it. I wasn't going to go to a class the next hour because none of them seemed interesting, until I noticed that Brandon Sanderson was on a panel for one, so I went to that one. The next class the one I was going to go to about games was talking about computer games, not board games, so I left that, but then my second and third choices were both full so I played Lanterns in the game room. Writing Battle Scenes was next, foolowed by a short stop at the LTUE Benefit Anthologies Preview where I grabbed some snacks, to Communications throughout history.

And that was the conference. The next week my mom came for a visit. She got to meet Joy for the first time! We hung out and talked the first day. The next day my mom and I played Shipwreck Arcana, and she liked it. Other games we played when she was here were Century Golem Edition, Cover Your A$$ets, and Becky came over and we all played TZolkin The Mayan Calandar, which Becky and I both won becasue we tied.

Also, when my mom and I went in to the BYU Bookstore to get some stuff, Brandon Sanderson was there signing books. So we got a book for Alex, Mistborn, and Brandon signed it, and I got to ask him a question. This is the first time in my life I've ever spoken with him. I've emailed and he emailed back, and I've sat in the back of one of his writing classes and, obviously, LTUE panels, but this was the first time I've ever spoken to him. Anyway, I asked him about the fact that traveling faster than light is equivalent to going backwards in time, and he acknowledged that (which is good, I was hoping he knew that) and said this was something he thought about a lot, and basically in the Cosmere he kind of (he used the word "fudges") the laws a bit using magic to prevent causality from being effected. So now we know: there is faster than light travel in the Cosmere, but some sort of magic prevents causality from becoming effected by it. Somebody should put that on the forums.

My mom left on Saturday, and made it safely home. That night Heather and I watched the Olympics, men's hockey final which Olympians from Russia (ie Russia) won, and then we watched the women's 30K skiing race, which took over an hour but somehow was more interesting than we originally thought it was going to be.