The Chicago LAN

First off, I absolutely need to thank gamerchicklet again for allowing me to attend the LAN this year.  Things are fairly tight on my end financially and I would not have been able to afford a ticket, but unfortunately for her chicklet was unable to attend, so she quite generously let me use her ticket instead.  Props also to Phreak who was going to pay for my ticket herself before chicklet stepped in with her offer.  Ok, now that we have the fact that I'm in fairly pathetic shape let's move on to the weekend:

In theory I live and work fairly close to the LAN site.  Chicago traffic tends to fuck with theories like that though, so it took me a solid 90 minutes to get to the LAN from work on Friday afternoon.  Once I got there I made my way to the end of the check-in line.  Thing with me is I tend to be a bit shy and fairly insecure in awkward social settings, so I was pretty quiet and nervous in line.  Then when I checked in you had Phreak greet me like she knew me forever (did I mention how awesome she is? Most of you know this, but it bears repeating) which made me feel a bit better. 

Since this was my first-ever LAN I had no idea what to do or where to go, so I followed the guy in front of me and decided to do whatever he did.  Happily he was not a psychopath bent on carnage (cause ya know, following his lead might've been bad in that case), but rather he was Mutus Letum.  Quite nice to meet him, it was...he was on my FL already so it was good to start off meeting someone I had some contact with already.  Plus he's a pretty cool guy, so that was a bonus.  Got myself set up at the table and realized that a good amount of the people already set up there were on my FL already, such as Zorbs, Retrogirl, and Poonga along with Mutus.  Worked out pretty well, it did.  So I set up and plugged in, and we got right into some Forza 2.  Took a quick break to take advantage of the open bar situation and lubed up before hitting the virtual roads again.  Spent most of the night playing Forza, took a little break with Poonga to hit the sammich shop across the street.  I gotta admit, I never thought I'd see not only a $4+ PBJ, but one that was put through a toaster oven as well.  Yet Poonga said it was good, so who am I to question it? 

Hung out until about 1ish, was a bit tired so I spent the last bit of time just getting to know some peeps.  Mike James taught me some words to live by: "Because I'm Mike James...BITCH!".  I shall treasure those words always.  I didn't know who doodi was so I asked Mike to point him out.  He looked around and decided doodi wasn't in the room at that time.  Bummer.  Mushroom Samba was crashing out at my place for the weekend, so once he was ready to go we hit the tollroads (don't even get me started on the concept behind that bullshit) and called it a day.  A bonus: the parking attendant was gone when I left and the gate was up, so in short...SEE YA!

So the next morning we split back for the Wyndham and of course, I got lost...embarrassing.  Well, actually I wasn't lost but I thought I was and tried to correct it, which in turn led to me actually getting lost.  I even stopped at a gas station for directions, and wound up fortunate enough to find some lovely young ladies getting out of a car who were gracious enough to bend over in their lowcut tops while they were telling me how to get to Manheim road.  See, now THATS how you get directions.  But I digress...

So we hit the hotel in time to partake in the free fajita bar.  Mmm, fajitas.  I opted to pass on the refried beans.  I lurve me some refried beans, but it was a long day ahead and I had to be sensible.  So I got to plug in at the same table and got a little Forza in, wound up chatting a lot with Retro and enjoying her general awesomeness, then we played some Guitar Hero on her 360 to get her some co-op achievements.  Then we came up with a nifty little idea of an achievement exchange.  She's pretty good at GH2, while I am not.  So in exchange for her getting me the achievement for 5-starring all the songs on medium (hey, I told you I wasn't very good) I popped in NCAA Football 08 and landed her a good 700+ points while she worked on that.  Then I went back across the street for some dinner with Mike James (more sammiches), had a good chat (I realized at that point that all those people who told me he ate babies and clubbed baby seals were just kidding.  Probably.) and headed back to see what else was playing.  Just as I got back Retro and Mutus decided they were hungry and wanted to go get some food across the street, so for shits and giggles (and good company) I went right back across the street with them and hung out while they ate.  Meantime I had asked MJ again to point out doodi...and again, he was unable to do so.  At this point I turned to him and said "You don't know who he is either, do you?". 

So we gamed a bit more and then the raffle went on, which was really something you had to experience to believe the insanity.  Then we gamed even more, and I got to chat with people here and there.  I held out til about 1:30am this time, figuring the sweet spot for the parking attendant to be gone was probably 1am, and sure enough...free parking again!  I said my goodbyes at that point since I wasn't planning on coming back for Sunday (it seemed everyone would be cutting out early anyway) and hit the road.

All in all it really was an amazing time.  I can see now why the 2o2p community is so strong with events like this.  I'm failing to mention many of the great people I met (really, everyone I met was great) like Banjo, Big0ne, 5x5, Em, and countless other people.  If I failed to mention someone, don't be offended..its late and I'm still tired.     I've now begun the countdown til next year's LAN, I can't wait.