Poor Lee. He was just called upon to break some bad news to me. I don't think I handled it well. I don't think I handled it horribly, but I didn't handle it well either. I got slightly squiffy and quiet.

Fortunately, it's not REALLY bad news. Mostly its just disappointing and inconviencing. Nobody died. Nobody else lost their job. (One of our friends lost his job this last week.) Nobody got hospitalized or was in a car crash. No. Nothing so horrible.

But...here's the gist of the bad news. I might (almost certainly) not get to go to E3. And even if I did somehow get to E3 via my other contacts or friends, Lee and I wouldn't really be able to hang out. You see, due to expenses and an expressed desire to get the guys from Lee's work to hang together as a working team, no wives, girlfriends, or other friends will be allowed to attend.

You know....I know it's not a big deal. It IS, afterall, an industry exposition, and people do often spend much of the time working booths--although last year, with no booth as a startup, the Scion guys just got to run amok as much as they wanted. I can see the point that for them, it's not supposed to be a video-game playing vacation--though of course, even with the best intentions, it's still going to turn into that.

But of course, I can tell myself rational reasons why I shouldn't be disappointed, like a child that's just been told that Christmas is going to be skipped this year because Mom and Dad have to make ends meet and we should really all just be grateful to be together. But it still sucks. I'd already staked out at least three days time from my bosses at work. I'd already made plans to eat yummy fondue at James and Dyana's. I was hoping to see both my brother and possibly Jerm and Aaron and Lise. You know, Trish--a friend of Lee's--had even jokingly said something last year about her and I doing girl's day out on the floor, ditching the guys for an afternoon. (Althought, that was just something we talked about briefly--no plans or nuthin'.)

I can tell you what will be total agony though. Hearing about everything after the fact, and feeling like you would have really had to be there. It'll be like hearing about a cool movie that everybody but you got to go see. It'll be worse than Freddie vs. Jason. Two or three weeks of "That was the coolest..." or "Man, that blew goats! Did you see Company X's booth babes? Only good thing about...." is just not going to be fun. At all.

I wish all the other wives and girlfriends cared. I wish they all wanted to go. I wish that in some alternate universe we could be Lysistrata until the guys agreed that there needs to be a Significant Others Pass to E3.

I know I'm being stupid and childish and it's just a big dumb convention. (With lots of video games.) A big dumb convention. Yeah. That's right.







<small-voice>But I was really looking forward to it.....</small-voice>