A Night Out with the Nerds

I never told you about the fun night out I had with my sister a few weekends ago. “Ooh, two redheads out on the town,” you’re probably thinking, “must have been a wild night.” And you are absolutely correct, if by “wild night” you meant “sipped on decaf tea while crashing a gaming convention.”

Our evening started with a yummy dinner at a restaurant on the canal. The restaurant is in an old church building, and is named Creation Café. I wish we had been there with a group of people because I totally would have made them reenact the “fish climbing out of water and changing into man” iconic evolution image stretching from water to restaurant patio. Next time, I guess.

After dining Julie and I strolled down to the water. Julie stalked a duck, which jumped back into the water right as I snapped a picture. Two cops who were patrolling the canal stopped and offered to take a photo.


After photo-snapping we chatted with the cops for a few minutes. Conversation turned to the Gen Con convention in town, a gathering of 20,000+ game fans. I commented on all the gaming fans that were intermingled with the Colts fans leaving the stadium the night before, and asked the cops if Gen Con was still in town.

JENNIFER: So, is the convention still in town tonight?
COPS: Don’t you smell the virginity in the air?

The police officers told us the hotel where most of the conventioneers were staying, and I declared that we were going to go people-watch. Julie and I drove downtown in search of nerds in costume, the theme to Legend of Zelda stuck in my head. (Come on, ‘80s children, sing with me: dooo doo dooooo, doo doo doo doo doo dooooooo). We spotted lots of goateed boys with backpacks—everybody had a backpack, what were they carrying?—and several goth-wench-looking gamers out for a night on the town. We quickly decided that we needed to crash the convention and people-watch.

We strolled into the hotel and found a corridor containing an overflow of the convention. Not really wanting to sneak in to any anime lectures, we tried to find a bar but settled for some tea at Starbucks instead, and settled into a table with a good view. I can’t name a single Dungeons & Dragons/World of Warcraft/steampunk character, but it was fun to see all the people dressed up. Corsets, flight goggles, and triangle Revolutionary-war-looking hats were common. I had to get my photo taken with a girl whose costume had peacock feathers all down the back. Which of course you can’t see in this photo. We did plenty of under-our-breath mocking that night, but this costume was truly beautiful.

Julie and I of course had to discuss what we’d dress up as if we decided to join the convention.

JENNIFER: So, what would you dress up as? I’d think I’d be that hooker chick from Firefly. She always had pretty dresses.
JULIE: Posh Spice.

We left Gen Con and headed back to Julie’s apartment, where the inaugural Jen-and-Julie Con took place. We went old school with our gaming.

And of course there were costumes.

I look like a gypsy, or a cold maid. Will have to work on my costume for next year.

Poor Andy is so used to my shenanigans with my sister. When I got home the next morning, he didn’t even bat an eyelash when I told him, “So, we went out to eat, and then the cops told us there might be a costume parade, so we crashed the nerd convention, and then went back to Julie’s apartment and made up our own convention and played Legend of Zelda while draped in scarves.”