I was just reminded of one reason why, though I often debate and dither about going to cons, I usually pull the trigger in the end. It's mainly that things usually go pretty well after the initial problems of uprooting myself and traveling somewhere are taken care of. That was the case with Dreamation this past weekend and now I'm back, secure at home and well into recovery mode. I think I've mostly caught up on the lost sleep, but it's going to take a bit longer to get the whole pain situation back to normal. During the con I pretty much pop more meds whenever there's even a tinge or hint that things might not be going well. That lets me keep ahead of any problems for the most part but also means that I tend to race through my stash at an accelerated rate. Now that I'm back home, I'm trying to cut back to a more normal schedule and it's a bumpy road as you might imagine. Trying to tell yourself it'll probably get better if you just wait and deal with it a little longer is never a fun thing to do.

As for the con itself, things went pretty spiffy overall with no major problems. I was able to run various games to help out the staff and also got to jump in on a few that interested me. Like usual, I won a few of the tournaments, though the only one that was really unexpected was the one for Texas Hold'em using a Chaos Poker deck. I mostly jumped in just to make sure they had enough people to fill out a table but ended up dominating more or less from start to finish. This was despite the fact that a couple of the participants had far more experience. At least one of them spent a lot of time playing cash games, tournaments, and at casinos and I think he was a little disgruntled that I made out as well as I did. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure I never sucked out on getting a lucky dead hand card and I had the best of it at showdown for all the important pots. Surprisingly, it was a pretty tight game all in all, despite the chaos poker rules, wrapped up with the blinds only having to increase once.

Lets see, other than that the rest of the con went pretty much according to past experience. I was put into a room with 3 other people, but managed to snag a bed which was pretty hunky dorey. I didn't interact much with the roommates though I was sort of amused by the dueling butt-trumpets that went off every night. They were serving lentils in the staff suite all weekend, which probably wasn't the best idea in the world in retrospect. Like usual, my diet the entire four days consisted almost entirely of ham, cheese, and mayo sandwiches and instant cup 'o ramen. Perhaps not the most interesting or healthy of diets, but I tend to never complain when the grub is plentiful and free.

And so that was more or less it. I ended up leaving the con a bit early on sunday, with Shelley offering to pick me up there and drive me home. I've spent the last few days in bed catching up on sleep and trying to lock down the pain issues without time for much else than that. If I'm lucky that'll all sort sort itself out soon and everything will be back to normal.