Quick Clawcon debrief

I'm supposed to be catching back up on work and all my emails, but I thought I'd do a quick Clawcon debrief from this weekend. This was effectively our third Clawcon since we kind of did two Clawcons last summer, one in Indianola, WA and one in Chicago. This time we were in Port Townsend. The view from the back deck of the house this year:

Most of us had done this before, so we were pretty comfortable with everything. Nkm, who did not attend a Clawcon last year remarked how closely we sounded like we did on vent. Imagine that! :) I have to give a lot of credit to Chanti, who came out despite knowing and playing with us for the least amount of time. I hope that our old friend and guildie Rap did not scare him away. We joked that he better not gquit when he got back Sunday night.

Anyways, we did a lot of eating. We joked that we probably ate better than those top raiding guilds would eat if they got together. You can have your world first Paragon or whoever is getting world firsts lately... I bet we eat and drink better than you when we get together! (I'm sure they're hurt).

Jess made breakfasts of blueberry pancakes one morning and french toast the next. Jess, Wut, and I made yummy dinners as well. (We are maxed in cooking IRL). There was a lot of fish and seafood feasts to be had given we were in the Pacific Northwest. We got some dungeness crab one night and I joked that we needed to put it in a pot and take a picture of it as our seafood feast (since we didn't have lobster). Unfortunately I forgot to take the pic... it would have been so cute!

Not to be out done by the eating, there was also a lot of drinking. Lots of dark microbrews from the region, very nice bottles of wine from Wut and Chanti (heck we even had rose champagne one night), and I think the boys were drinking fancy scotch or something Friday night.

So yes, the two pallys Wut and Chanti bonded over their shared love and knowledge of nice wines. I also made them pose together with a pillow that Rap brought:

OMG Carebear stare! At one point I was hugging the pillow hoping that the never endless pally mana would somehow rub off on me.

And yes, of course there were references to WoW as we were out and about. When we went to Fort Worden and were walking around there, we were walking up a narrow path. We had to step to the side to let this guy on a lawnmower through. Good thing Chanti called out, "Pat!" so we didn't grab aggro.

Also when we were walking around the abandoned artillery batteries there (which were so freakin creepy... I am convinced that place is haunted), Jess walked down into a pitch dark walkway. I did not want to follow him so I was kind of lingering at the top of the steps and waiting. But then Jess called out "Heals!". Gosh we're such dorks.

We also spent some time walking around up at Hurricane Ridge in Port Angeles. It was quite stunning up there.

I came across an interesting sign there:

Huh? Tree skirting? Chanti offered that perhaps its the tree version of t-bagging. Yeah! You better not mess with us trees... we'll tree skirt you!

So on Saturday night we were treated to a fancy dinner from Wut. There were two non WoW players at this dinner and at some point we did talk about the whole phenomenon about us getting together. This one guy said that he was just so surprised, or that it was just something that he couldn't imagine, that we would all gather together to share a house with people we didn't know.

I had to correct him though. You may not have never met or shaken hands with each other, but we KNOW each other. I would argue that many of us know each other probably better than some of the people we physically interact with daily, like at work for example.

If you really think about it though... it does take some level of comfort to be ok with sharing a house together. You're cooking together, you're seeing people sleeping, stepping out of the shower with towels wrapped around their head, etc etc. But I don't think anyone had any reservations about sharing a house together. It just seemed so obvious. There is no one in our guild that I would even second guess feeling comfortable about sharing a house with.

We also talked about how this is the kind of guild that we want to play or raid in. Its not just about the phat lewts. I would not trade a guild further progressed for the guild that I have. That's not what is important to me in the game. I am pretty sure that many of us would not be playing this game anymore if we weren't in this guild. It's the people and the relationships that have kept us in this long.

All in all it was a good time but I also think it helps people understand each other in game better. When someone does something in game, or says something, meeting and having spent time with them gives you a context for all of that. I hope some of the other guildies can make it out next year.

We did have a little bit of sad news on Saturday. Buns our gnome lock let Jess know that she was leaving the game. I was really sad to hear that. Besides Jess and I, Buns was our only other current raider who dates back to Kara with us. That's a long time. I'm also kind of sad that we're losing a female raider. I think back to some of our Kara runs when we were usually 50% or sometimes even 60% female. I miss that. We need more women!

Buns' name came up over the Clawcon weekend, as did all of our other guildies who were not there. When we had all these bottles of really nice red wines, we mused that Buns should be here. Buns has this wicked sense of humor and sarcasm that sneaks out from time to time. She's been a long standing member of the guild and I am really going to miss her.