Neonjade

What does Artist Alley, Untold the Game™, and the Huntsville Gem, Jewelry, and Mineral Show have in common? They are all events that yours truly participated in this week.

When you’re my age, it’s definitely possible to sign up for too much fun, but I can’t regret it. As far as time management failure goes, I’m going to recoup some time right now, by not taking any to talk about writing in this article. Instead, I am going to tell you about all the cool things I did!

Copyright 2009 Yuri Ozaki

This week started with the 29th Annual Madison Street Festival. I’m proud to say that I’ve posted most of the pictures and contact information that I collected. I hope to finish entry and categorize the results by this Sunday evening.

All the arts and crafts, events, and shows featured enthusiastic artists and cause representatives, who were sharing work they felt passionate about. The whole experience was energizing. I look forward to follow up interviews with several of the attendees for future articles.

Following the festival, I had the opportunity to learn a new RPG (Role Playing Game) called Untold. I hadn’t role played since my military days and I’m just amazed at how much fun I had, pouncing around with my “Sunny” L’Na Dawn kitty cat that I named “Gleep,” after the dragon in Myth Adventures. I didn’t even fall back on my old tendency of being the thoughtful, if slightly boring, one who always says, “Hang on a minute, and let’s think about this.” Luckily, there were enough of those already present and, within ten minutes of being introduced to the established players, my character’s personality was concreted. By the end of the night, or should I say morning, a few of us decided to toast a newly formed alliance, code name “Team Chaos!”

I’m also looking forward to some follow up interviews and articles on this game. I’m in an awesome position to do so, seeing as the group’s GM (Game Master) and two of my fellow players happen to be part of Wandering Men Studios, who created Untold the Game™. Brannon Hollingsworth was even kind enough to share a brand new piece of previously unreleased art with me to share with you. It’s by John Gonzalez and based on the character type that I played this week.

Copyright 2008-2009 Wandering Men Studios

And here’s the art from the Untold game card that describes the “Sunny” L’Na Dawn character, also by John Gonzalez:

Copyright 2008-2009 Wandering Men Studios

Finally, many of you from Huntsville, Alabama, know that the Huntsville Gem and Mineral Society proudly presents their 41st Annual Gem, Jewelry and Mineral Show this weekend at the Von Braun Center, South Hall. What you may not be aware of is all the hard work by the Society to make it happen.

Like, hard labor kind of work! I pulled, toted, assembled, lifted, and moved stuff, like big buckets of fricking rocks kind of stuff, for about three and a half hours Thursday morning.

I deserted them because I was whooped! Men and women, many twenty years my senior, carried on for a good portion of the remainder of the day. My sore self wishes them much luck and success with their show!

They’re going to have really cool glow in the dark mineral displays, a big mining flume to “pan” in, Children’s gem digs, society member exhibits, and, of course, over thirty five wonderful vendors of gems, jewelry, minerals and lapidary supplies. I encourage you to go if you are in the area.

The rest of my activities that managed to put me behind schedule this week were pretty mundane, wrangling with WordPress formatting challenges and such, so that’s it for this week!

Heck, I had enough fun putting this recap together that I might just have to change the focus of this blog. It’s new enough that not many will notice, anyway. If you read this and have an opinion, share with a comment. That’s the only way anyone will know your thoughts on the matter!

If you would like more information about Artist Alley, the Madison Street Festival, Untold the Game™ or the Huntsville Gem and Mineral Society, use the comments or contact form to shoot me a question. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll be happy to research it for you and get you an answer.