Nik and I left Seattle 24 hours ago and I haven’t slept at all since. We had a three legged flight of doom, going from Seattle to Salt Lake City to Newark to Indianapolis. The flights were uneventful but uncomfortable so sleep eluded me. Amusingly, when we got to our gate at Newark it had two flights listed: Indianapolis and Freeport! I was surely in the right place.

We got our hotel by 9 am and I was fully expecting the typical “you can’t check in until 3 pm” runaround. But amazingly, they checked us in immediately and were really nice about it too. A far cry from how we were treated the first year of GenCon in Indie under similar circumstances.

After checking out or digs, we hooked up with Hal for breakfast at a great place called Le Peep. Then we went to collect our badges and check out the booth. Hal tore open a box of Mutants & Masterminds Second Edition so we could see the final product. It looks fan-freakin’-tastic, so big kudos to Hal on that one. We then started booth set-up. This usually takes us an hour or so, but we have a big booth, many new books to debut, and new floor racks as well. We ended up staying there until 5 pm getting everything in order. And man, was it hot inside. They turn off the AC because the loading dock must be open all day for exhibitors. This makes it a like a furnace and we sweated like mofos all day.

At last we finished. Everything is taken care of except for some last minute booth graphics. All our new books are either here already or will be here tomorrow. Apart from being sore and exhausted, everything is going quite smoothly. I was seriously ready for printer or shipper screw ups, but it’s all looking good. I’ve had a long hot shower and soon we’re going to have a big GR dinner. I’m trying to stay awake until 10 or 11 so as not to toally screw up my body clock. So far so good.

Tomorrow at 10 am the madness of GenCon begins. I’ll likely be incommunicade until next week. Have a good week, wherever you are.