Chicago Clawcon

This past weekend was the second of our summer Clawcons, this time in Chicago. It was a bit of a different Clawcon compared to the west coast one we had in Indianola, WA. The west coast one was in a house we rented together. We spent most of the time at the house just hanging out and cooking our meals together. There was drinking (yay pirate night!) but it wasn't anything too crazy.

This Clawcon was at my condo, so the boys got to see where and how I live, and probably got to know me a bit better that way. When we're raiding or arenaing or whatever, they now have a mental image of me sitting at my desk in my office looking west towards the lake. So it was a bit more personal in this way, at least for me.

I did have the boys do some stuff for me at my place, as Heidi fixed my surround sound, Sam suggested wall colors, and Jess gave me suggestions for overhead light fixtures. They laughed at me and my shortness and what I have to do to get stuff from my tall ass kitchen cabinets. When we arranged to meet up with our friend Thormaine for lunch on Saturday, I told him that we'd be pretty easy to pick out of a crowd, four tall 6'1" to 6'5" guys and a short asian girl.

We went out to eat more at this city Clawcon (mmm Tango Sur... mmm Lou Malnati's), and did some touristy things including going up to the Sears (er ok Willis) Tower and checking out their four plexiglass platforms that hang over the side of the building, 103 floors up. The other difference was that this weekend was just Claw folks, no spouses or kids. Thus, I think there might have been a bit more drinking and staying up late. I also introduced the boys to shots of Korean soju.

Since I had wireless at my place, we did also take the opportunity to play together a bit.

There is the pic of my table. I also ended up pulling out my work laptop and putting it on a little side table so we ended up having all 5 of us at the same table. The 5 of us did two battlegrounds together, Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm. I'm not sure if it was luck, or the fact that the five of us were sitting at the same table, but we totally pwned both of them!

Makes a pretty damn good case for the importance of communication in a bg, which I think we knew already. I think a couple of folks said that they were instinctively pushing their push to talk button, which was funny as well. We're not on vent kids! We can yell at each other face to face!

It was also very interesting to look over folks shoulders and see how other people play. What? Your screen looks like that? Huh? What is that there? Whoa, what are you doing with that left hand of yours? Why is it moving all over the place? What's all that clicking you got going on there? Oh the Razer Naga mouse? You use the mouse like that? What you use the arrows?

All in all, another great time!