Spring is the perfect season to suck in stale air, to sit in the shadows, to gorge on Funyuns while strategizing how to take over the world… it’s the perfect time for RowleyCon. Coincidentally, spring is also the perfect time for graduate school to ruin the perfect time for RowleyCon.*

This April, our friend Jeremy again hosted a weekend-long tribute to all things geek. Videogames, board games, anime, cosplay, and nerdy crafts all had a rightful place at this affair, as did I. However, school, the enemy of free time, inhibited my undivided appreciation of the chaotic masterpiece that is RowleyCon. Drat my needy education!

Jason and I won the costume contests at RowleyCon again this year but no one else dressed up so it would have been literally impossible for us not to. Yippee! We achieved first place… and last. Yet, assembling different sets of costumes both Friday and Saturday was kind of an accomplishment in of itself.

For college claims most of my innovative energies these days, leaving little oomph for other original endeavors. My brain still has a few tricks up its nodes though, tricks to bypass school’s creativity tax. I thought of a new steampunk-pirate-ensemble idea as I was drifting off to sleep the night before RowleyCon, something with a little Middle Eastern panache that incorporated harem pants and Moroccan jewelry. Sometimes I think my noodle pulls fast ones on me during my waking hours and saves all of its good stuff for sleepy time.

Jason and I didn’t play too many games at RowleyCon. (Did you somehow miss all of those whiney comments about school?) We did undertake a little 7 Wonders and learned how to build Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Jeremy, of course, underestimated the amount of time needed to play Castles of Mad King Ludwig by about 5000% so we weren’t able to finish constructing our royal residences before the lateness of the night ended our stronghold struggles. (Only a crazy person would think they could erect a castle in half an hour.)

We also made meeples, which are personalized players’ tokens that can be used for just about any board game. This was probably the highlight of the con for Jason and me. I sculpted one meeple strutting the exact outfit I was currently wearing, which happened to be a Starfleet uniform. I also molded a slave Leia version of myself to go with the Han Solo that Jason crafted. I’m pretty sure my Leia could eat his Han for dinner and still have room for a Hutt; like me, she has a big head. Drew and Simone organized the meeple animation so thanks Drew and Simone!

And thanks Jeremy for putting up with a bunch of messy, kid infested, ungrateful gamers for an entire weekend. Despite my presence at RowleyCon, I’m afraid I’ll never achieve my 8^th-level potential. As carefully constructed as my schemes to take over the world are, I think school’s plot is much more liable to succeed. For graduate school is like a prestigious and unstoppable doomsday machine that sucks the energy out of the universe one assignment at a time. Funyuns anyone?

*I actually love school. But I also love a whole lot of other things too and school makes enjoying those other things nearly impossible.