Last night I met with the Fandemonium guys at the TA Truckstop restaurant in Boise. Borneo, Ogredude, Eldon, and Bizzybody all joined me for a nice 1am dinner/breakfast. We talked about the ‘con, I exchanged some artwork for dinner, and we basically had a good time. I was pretty punchy after 6 hours on the road (I left Provo at 5pm, and arrived in Boise at 11:15) so there were lots of laughs.

I didn’t get enough sleep, though. I got to the house at 2:15, and the sneezy, snorky, allergic-to-the-cousins’-cat kids in the room with me kept me up until almost 4am. Then at 7am I popped awake. Bleah.

I made a couple of phone calls, and then at 10am joined Preston and Daniel, a couple of Boise-area Schlockers for 9 holes of disc golf at Ann Morrison park. The park is gorgeous, the course is great, and my game was atrocious. Sandra and Link joined us, and we had fun, but it was pretty frustrating for me. I watched a few of the locals play, and realized their drives looked a lot like what mine USED to look like before I had to switch hands. Then I just got frustrated because the course was too challenging for my limited ability.

After the game we went to Panda Express for lunch. Preston treated, and got a schlock-ish caricature of himself in return. I drew one for Daniel, too. We had a good time talking about stuff, and they enjoyed watching me draw. (At least I THINK they did. They were attentive, anyway.) I dropped a few hints about upcoming story stuff, but I’m not dropping those here because you guys didn’t come disc golfing with me or take me to lunch. Sorry.

And now, it’s nap time.

Turboschlock does at least 120mph.

I arrived safely in Boise.

There is a God who watches over damfools.

Sandra and the kids are headed up to Boise for a “cousins party.” They left around noon, and in the nice, quiet house I reviewed a few hundred pages of Product Requirements, and drilled into 60 of them.

I’m ready for them to come home now. This place is too quiet.

I had planned to spend the weekend on the Buffer-Fu, but the more I think about it, the more I’d rather throw me and a change of clothes into Turboschlock and drive to Boise. Sadly, I can’t do that until Friday afternoon, because I’m reviewing a few hundred pages of Product Requirements with my team in an all-day meeting tomorrow.

The way I figure it, without the family around it’ll be a non-productive weekend ANYWAY. I might as well spend 10 hours in my car so I can spend a day or so with them. And while I’m at it, there’s a really cool Disc Golf course in Boise…

–Howard

Turns out that the guy who wants me to go to Chicago REALLY needs me there. So we haggled, and I’m going. My travel-free month of July now has travel in it.

The good news is that we haggled to the point that my trip to Chicago is a day-trip. I depart SLC at 8am, arrive at O’Hare at 12:45, present from 2:00 to 3:45, and then zip back to the airport in time to catch a 4:52pm flight home.

There will be no meeting with Chicago-area Schlockers this time around, I’m afraid. But I don’t have to spend the night, either. It’s just a really long work-day spent mostly on planes.

–Howard