I head out Monday for PAX Aus, and when you leave Monday for PAX Aus you actually arrive on Wednesday. I’m sure that I say that every year, I’m not even going to check. I’ll never get used to it. I can look directly at the time it is in another part of the world and disbelieve it. I’m sure I’ve said that too. Last year I did the posts like twelve hours in advance because I didn’t trust anything. Surprisingly, having reality perpetually called into question does not hamper my enjoyment of said trip.

In fact, I can’t wait for it. Outside of PAX Unplugged, it’s the show I’m most able to truly attend, though with two “actual play” RPG sessions for D&D and Call of Cthulhu I’m gonna be functionally haunting main theater. But I know where everything is and I barely need a map there anymore. That’s a kind of joy which is hard to build, it requires going frequently to a place you aren’t from, and it’s a gift the show has enabled. I have given Australians directions. It’s like that. And folded into the shows other manifest virtues, I mean… I started really looking forward to the strip months ago.

I’m also excited to teach Amy and Kiko how to play Warhammer 40k: Kill Team out there, before and just after the show. I’ve already packed a softcase full of damp Genestealer Cult and dry Thousand Sons to contend with Keek’s T’au Empire, that band of unruly teen cowards, and by the end of the trip it’s my firm intention that Amy understand that the Emperor has not two arms but six, which is more and therefore better. Just imagine the efficiency such a configuration would enable in the kitchen, and then cross-apply kind of certainty to the administration of a galactic empire. It maps.

Obviously I will miss Mike but the asymmetry is profound; he’ll just think I never got to his Shadowkeep invite like usual as opposed to being shredded by the psychic winds that dance and blow when an aeroplane is so near to space. To his credit, he did provide a useful instrument - a device I call a snacksimile - to tamp down any airborne discomfort.

(CW)TB out.