This weekend I headed to Tucson Arizona to partake in a gaming convention called Rin Con. Now, by gaming, i don't mean just video gaming. in fact, the majority of the convention hall was set up for table top gaming. you know, cards, dungeons and dragons, that sort of thing (things of which i really have no interest).  I was invited by some folks in phoenix who wanted me to be on their video gaming staff. As of right now, while i'm writing this, it's about 6pm on saturday of the convention. But before I get plastered tonight with my fellow gamers at an after party, i wanted to write down my experience so far.

Day 0 (thursday)- As far as i knew the convention was going to be friday though sunday. It was on thursday night that i received the call "HEY! we're picking you up tonight so we can be in tucson fist thing on friday. okay, it went pretty smooth, got in the car, waited around for some other staff to show up, left for tucson. got to tucson. passed out.

Day 1 (friday)- Friday started early, and by early i mean, EARLY. as in, the sun isn't even up. Now due to my amazingly flexible work schedule, my regular sleep schedule is usually i don't wake up until 11am or so. we got up at 6:30am. that night/morning before, we didn't get to bed until 3am. We loaded up cars and drove to the convention center.
Unloading was a bitch, actually just finding the place where we were supposed to go to unload was a bitch as there was another expo going on at the same time and the parking personnel didn't know what the hell they were talking about. either way, after about an hour of driving around in circles, we found the place where we were supposed to unload. we got to work, and boy was it work. unloading boxes and boxes of consols, monitors, cables, setting up tables, and everything. It didn't help that none of us got that much sleep and attitudes hit a low point. Ah, but now that the gaming area was set up, wait...no! we left some of the cables back in phoenix. our manager person had to have one of the other staff people drive ALL the way back to phoenix just to grab some cables. lame, but hey, wasn't me. So here we are and everything is all set up. i decided to take a quick smoke break and went upstairs and out the front of the convention center where, to my surprise, there was an entire cultural festival event thing going on. So there we were, a tiny gaming con in the middle of a larger event in an underground (sort of) venue. Later I got some gaming in. I played some shoot 'em ups, some fighting games, some DDR (even though i was so tired, it was probably dangerous), and when the night seemed that it was dragging forever, i broke out my laptop and decided to play some old school games. Out of nowhere, no sooner that when i loaded up a game, this girl sat next to me and says "I'm bored. Can i watch?" "Sure, no problem, just playin' some Mario..." to which she replied "What's a Mario?". I didn't know whether to laugh or cry in disbelief. Composing myself quickly i responded with the first thing that came to mind "Have you ever played video games?" "Not really." "Ever? like you've never played video games before?...ever?"  "no, i'm here because my mom and dad play rpgs." (by this she meant of course table top rpgs). "oh well, then, let me introduce you to some classics" I had to show her how to use a controller, the basic functions, everything. it was crazy (to me anyways, someone who has played games since they could hold a controller). Use this to move, push this button to jump. you can move and jump at the same time! Mushrooms can't hurt you, those things that look like mushrooms but with eyes (goombas) are bad guys so jump on them! She didn't get past the first level so i opted for something a little less difficult, Tetris. You have to make the pieces move, spin them (oh my god am i glad that i'm a patient person) and create lines that go away (clear) after they are lined up. She seemed to have a little difficulty at first but was able to make something like 6 lines on her 3rd try. *sigh* "Let me show you a game that's a little bit easier and it's cute too. It's called Pikiinya". She did much better at this and played for quite a while but when the penguins reached the top and the game was over, of course all of the little penguins froze and looked scared. "Oh my god! I killed the penguins!" she was genuinely feeling sorry for these digital pixels as if they were real  things. i almost felt bad that she felt bad. "Can we go back to playing tetris?" she asked solemnly. "sure. sorry about that."
And i let her play tetris on my laptop while i went and played rockband for the first time ever, i went for the drums as i play a real guitar and can't play a plastic one to save my life. Even though i only played a couple of rounds and i have a terrible terrible sense of rhythm, it was kind of fun. before i knew it, it was time to go back to the hotel, two small rooms for a 10 person staff. since i was the only female i opted to sleep on the floor. I slept well.

Day 2 (Saturday)- Today the air was filled with music and sounds. Everything from mariachi bands to martial arts demonstrations. Today set up just meant going to the convention center and turning on the consols and tvs. There were more people here today and it was much more fun than the day before. Early in the morning i kicked some of the other staff members' asses and super puzzle fighter 2 turbo until none of them wanted to play with me anymore. Then, since some of my staff mates were getting on my nerves i took it out on the drum set over at rock band. hey, i'm gettin' kinda good at this. I played for at least a couple of hours, taking breaks to see what foods the vendors upstairs were offering. There was this one booth that had $1 meat skewers and $2 boba drinks. best breakfast ever. When i came back there was a pack of kids that weren't there before. The rest of the staff was off at a table playing some card game, while i was one of the only people greeting others and making sure to pretend REALLY WELL that i knew what the hell was going on. "When is the Smash Brothers Brawl Tournament?" asked some kid with weird looking hair. "uh..." i ran to the front of our area and examined the crude dry erase scribbles on the sign board. "It's at 4:00pm..what time is it now?" "3:40" "oh." I grabbed one of the clip boards and had everyone sign up. I had never really run an official tournament before, so this was new for me. We were short 2 players so i convinced a couple of other strangers to join in as the minimum needed to be 8 entries. It was best 2 out of 3, no items, double elimination. Double! you should have seen my confused bracket chart. it was so all over the place i accidently started calling players by the other players name, it totally freaked them out. the tournament lasted something like 2 hours, and they were pretty close matches. In the end it was one of our staff members that won. It was tons of fun though. I'd do it again now that i sort of know what i'm doing. lol. The rest of saturday was spent playing other games and just hanging out. That evening we went back to our hotel, and you know what that means right? TIME TO PARTY! But it was pretty tame. I got to be the bartender and make everyone's drinks. jokes were told and laughs were had, nothing got too out of hand. I had a few drinks and retired to my room where one of the beds were free because a couple of staff members decided to pull an all-nighter.

Day 3 (Sunday, Final day)- I awoke thinking "what a  nice sleep....WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING ON THE FLOOR?!" For the first time in my life i had a memory lapse, i really didn't remember AT ALL how i got there. I wasn't drugged, I was the bar tender so that wasn't possible. In fact, I didn't even drink that much. But there i was. I promptly jumped up, changed, and got out of there to go ask some questions. Found our manager and asked him. He just started laughing. "oh my god, something is really really wrong here!" I was really freaking out at this point, when we got to the convention center, i was able to ask around and finally get the answer I was looking for. apparently, it had happened that morning somewhere around 7am. I had been sleep walking, snoring at the same time, and tried to steal someone's blanket. I apologized profusely, even though they said that i was okay. i felt soooo bad about it. We all had a good laugh and that was the end of it. Time for breakfast, vodka and energy drinks.
Only at a con would such a breakfast be acceptable. oh, and cookies too. those cookies were good. The rest of sunday I got around to getting more film footage, and i even got an  interview with the Arizona Ghost Busters. Later there were more people in the game room, but since i was tired of the games that we had there i took my laptop and roms and sat at a table on the other side of the convention center with some people that i had met the day before and we played some of my games, mostly games that i had in my series. There was this little girl, probably 6, who had gotten a hold of one of my fliers and saw me with my laptop and came over to ask if she could play. It was SOOOO cute, so i let her play old video games on my laptop until we had to pack up and leave. While she was doing that I went and talked to someone across the way that was painting miniatures for table top games. Apparently he was also supposed to have an event there but it wasn't organized properly, similar to what happened to me, the video game trivia never happened. I even spoke to the director directly, he didn't even know what happened. Anyways, i spent the rest of the time there painting my first miniature. It was tons of fun and i got to take it home with me. After that, i retrieved my laptop and got to packing up the game area. monitors, consols, cords, everything back to where it went. we ended up not getting back to phoenix until about 9pm. Finally back, I went out to Ihop with my Bff, returned home, and crashed. what a con. It was a lot of hard work, but i think it was definitely worth it. Over all it was a lot of fun and i would probably work as game staff again.