Out of Chaos . . . .

Well, the past 72 hours have been unbelievably chaotic. First, as many of you may have heard by now, we have announced a new venue for our Gamers Gone Wild party.

The event will now be held at Felt in Boston. For reasons that are still not clear, the management of our previous venue decided to begin adding mutiple restrictions (dress code, cover charge, reduced gaming presence, etc) on our event at the 11th hour. After unsuccessful attempts to discuss and rectify our concerns, the Gamers Gone Wild Team, led in this case by the stellar work of SFX-Pallidian, scrambled to identify and confirm a new venue where we could host the party that we had envisioned in our minds, one that was welcoming to and awesome for everyone. After many phone calls placed from Florida and with some help from a few former Boston residents, Pallidian came through in Champion form and secured Felt as the new venue. Having attended an employee event for Life is Good at Felt in 2009, I can assure you that this venue is far and above better than our original choice. You will NOT be dissapointed.

But wait, you might ask "So Waterborn, you live in Boston right? What the hell were you doing while Pallidian was making calls to your city looking for a new venue?" Well, I was on a 48 hours whirlwind road trip from Boston to Chapel Hill, NC to pick up the newest member of our family - Jackson.

Jackson is a 2 year old Rottweiler rescue. He was found in the woods of Chapel Hill back in December, close to starvation and weighing a mere 60 lbs (he now weighs 90 lbs). As many of your who have been following this blog for some time may know, we lost our Rottie/Lab mix Nygel about 18 months ago to old age. After Nygel passed, my fiance and I decided that we needed some time to mourn his loss. Over the time since Nyel left us, we have frequently talked about getting another dog, but figured that if it was meant to be, something would be a new puppy into our lives when the time was right.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago when my aunt, who lives in Chapel Hill posted a picture of Jackson via Facebook, saying that his initial foster home had not worked out for him (apparently Jackson REALLY likes cats - For Dinner). My aunt's vet had taken him back but was getting pretty desperate to find him a new home where he could settle down and start a normal life. As soon as my fiance saw Jackson, she wrote to my aunt and the vet for more details. After a few exchanged emails and more pictures, we scrambled to secure time off from work so that we could drive down to Chapel Hill and pick him up. We left on our journey at 5:00 am on Friday and drove straight to North Carolina, stopping only for bathroom and caffeine breaks along the way. We may the trip in record time (11 hours) and settled in for some food with my aunt and uncle at the local brewery before crashing. The next morning we rose early and met Jackson at the vet's around 8:30 in the morning. After the paperwork was done, we received a proper introduction to Jackson, with whom we immediately bonded. Following some tearful farewell's from his foster family at the Vet's office (is seemed everyone had fallen in love with Jackson and came out to say goodbye to him) we loaded up in my fiance's Forester for the ride back to Boston, which took almost 14 hours due to traffic and increased stops for "doogie breaks" along the way.

Jackson is beginning to settle in already and even slept in our bed for a few hours last night before removing himself to his official bed where he has more room to stretchg out. Before we met him, Jackson was already house trained and responding to voice commands to sit, lay down and stay (well, stay needs some work still). Within less that 24hours he is already responding to silents hand signals for sit and lay down, reinforced by a few 15 minute practice sessions and ample rewards (this dog is HIGHLY food motivated, making him an apt pupil). We are so happy to have him as part of our family and cannot wait for all the adventures to come. Here are a few more pics of Jackson in his new home.