OK, it’s time to turn the tone of the blog around once again.

PAX East #2 starts on Friday and against all odds, we’re going. I’d all but written it off this year what with everything happening with my mom. Once she passed I thought funeral plans would conflict with PAX. Well, my brother suggested to me that rather than have a funeral, we’d wait until a bit later in the spring and have a memorial for her. A kind of celebration of her life, at her house…everyone together probably for the last time. Since my mom wanted to be cremated, and that actual process happened yesterday, there’s no time pressure for when we honor her. And this makes it easier on people who have to come from far away. She has a sister in the DC area, and one of my step-sisters lives down in Alabama and wants to drive up.

Anyway, long story short, nothing having to do with my mom’s death is going to conflict with PAX. At first I still wasn’t going to go because it didn’t seem ‘proper’ but then people told me I was being silly, and besides ‘losing myself’ in PAX for a few days seems like great therapy. So, plans were back on!

Then Monday I bent down to pet the dog…something I do probably 50 or more times every day because she’s so darned cute. But this time… *crunch* my back went out in a bad way. No idea why. (Stress maybe?) I shambled, bent over, to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed and there I lay for most of Monday. I could barely roll over on my own, the pain was so intense. So I wrote off going to PAX once again.

Luckily I had taken some days off from work anyway, and through lots of heat, muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories and just laying there like a sack of meat for the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday, I seem to have more or less cured myself. I’m still twingy and I’m worried about those long lines and sitting on the floor while waiting in them (I still don’t think I could manage to get down onto the floor or up off it) but we still have tonight and all of tomorrow.

So PAX is back on again!

As soon as I remember where I put the badges. /facepalm

They’ve got to be around here somewhere. And we’ve got hotel reservations at the Weston for Friday and Saturday nights, and doggie-hotel reservations for Lola (who is going to be spoiled to death I think…this place offers doggie ice-cream)!

I still haven’t had time to really look at the schedule but last year, when PAX East was smaller, the problem was more about what to give up rather than what to do, so I’m pretty confident we’ll find plenty to occupy our time.

Of course Saturday night at 9 is the PAX East Tweet-Up at MJ O’Connors. Assuming Irrational gets the heck out by 9 pm. We’re using hashtag #paxeasttweetup11 to communicate about that.

Next step for me, is to talk myself down from bringing every piece of hardware that can play a game with me. I really don’t need a laptop and iPad and PSP and Nintendo DS and Android phone to keep me occupied. In particular it’s hard to resist installing a boot-camped Windows partition on my work laptop and installing Rift on there. If last year is any indication by the time we get back to the hotel room at night we’ll have just enough energy to flop into bed, and Saturday and Sunday mornings will be about showering and getting back to the show floor ASAP.

I think I’ll just bring my iPad and phone and call it a day.

So one day back to work tomorrow and then Friday morning we’re off to PAX East! Woot!

So who else is gonna be there?