This year, I went to Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio for work. This is the first work trip I’ve ever taken that was longer than a day-long conference and not within driving distance. I was a little worried about how I would do, since I didn’t have a lot of roommate experience in my life, and I hated camp the one time I went. And, this was an entire week long…from Monday around 7am to Monday around 7pm. Would I be able to handle my co-workers for that much time? It turned out that I worried for no reason (…hmmm…seems to be a common thing in my life…). Everyone was fine, and the only times that I started to get even slightly annoyed with people, it turned out that I was just hungry. Luckily, I kept my annoyance to myself, and nobody had to deal with the wrath of my hanger. And, no apologies were necessary on my end. Phew!

I was also a little worried about how I would deal with being around people constantly, since Nick and I have a pretty quiet house, and I seem to do better when I get some down-time alone. But apparently, all the extroverted training that my mom gave me when I was younger didn’t go to waste, and I actually enjoyed going out after the conference closed with my co-workers and some of the volunteers. But after I got home…I crashed big time! And I took a smile break too. Not only were my cheeks in pain from all the friendly smiling at the convention, they hurt from all the laughing I did with our team. Good problems to have!

During the convention, my co-worker, Heather, told me about The Columbus Coffee Experience that one of our Instagram followers posted about. You pick up a passport, go to four of the coffee shops listed, and get a free Columbus T-shirt. What?! I have to drink coffee and try different coffee shops? Well, if I must… It was a lot of fun, and we even got Josh and Adam (Chip Theory Owners) to join us. We are now all proud owners of the t-shirt. And, it’s actually a pretty nice t-shirt that I would wear in public. (It’s pretty good for me if a free t-shirt doesn’t go straight to the workout pile!)

So how was the convention? It was good; tiring, but good. I met some nice people, played about three games, and stood a lot! We had an amazing volunteer in our booth that made me realize that I really need to up my game for our next convention. He had never played our games before, and he was running around and telling everyone about them and answering all kinds of questions that I had no idea how to answer. I could not keep up with him at all. Amazing!

As far as checking out other booths and playing games, I really didn’t do much of that. I did admire the art booths when I went past them, but I wasn’t sure how I would get anything home without damaging it in my suitcase. And I only played games on the night that I hung out with Seppy. Next time, maybe I’ll do some more browsing.

The next convention that I will be going to is GenCon in August. It’s supposed to be even more crowded and crazier than Origins, so I’m glad I had Origins to get me acclimated, since Origins was much bigger than Con of the North (the last convention that I worked at with Fight in a Box). Hopefully there will be another Coffee Experience to get me through!