Tomorrow night is the STAPLE pre-party at Austin Books and Comics. I’m going to roll in there like I know what is going on. But I don’t know what to say to a room full of indie comic writers. I’ll hang out there until I feel awkward and then bounce over to Reed and Laura Lee’s housewarming party.

Saturday is all about STAPLE. Got to get up early, drag some products over to the convention center, check in, find my table and act like I know what I am doing. My plan is to set up House of Whack and invite people to play. Also, I will trick people into paying $1 for The Stork when it is actually worth $1.45! Ha ha! No idea what to expect. I’ve never done an expo for reals and I don’t know if I can deal with sitting at a booth all day.

After that, there are several events that I will attempt to hit, depending on my energy level. My friend Jonathan is having a birthday party, there is the STAPLE BBQ dinner and the STAPLE after party. It will be at a club with a DJ, so I don’t know.

Sunday evening brings Fiction Circus. It’s a thing.

Monday = take a breath.

Tuesday is Boards ‘N Brews. That night’s double feature is Dungeon Lords and Cosmic Encounter.

Wednesday = dork around online.

Thursday promises an interesting mixer for the Austin Geocachers Meetup, followed by my friend Reed’s band, World Racketeering Squad at Headhunters.

Friday = video games.

Come Saturday and SXSW will start to ramp up. While I am not attending the insane industry fame fest proper, I will be checking out peripheral parties and events, like the one put on by io9 and Gawker media. MC Frontalot and Stormtroopers!

Sunday finds me hanging out with friends.

Monday there is a Meetup for all the Meetup organizers hosted by the Meetup bigwigs in town for SXSW. Supposedly we will be discussing strategies. My meetup is awesome, so I’m not sure what I will take home from it except maybe some beers in my belly.

The rest of the week is a question mark. Chances are I will check out a few SXSW things, but more likely stay at home.

Then there is a big lull the following week right before PAX East. I’m really looking forward to it. By all accounts, this looks like it will be the geek convention suited for me. I probably won’t do GenCon again and I’m not sure I’ll ever do a ComiCon or E3. But PAX seems like the perfect blend of those things.

I had been back last December, but this time around felt a lot different. I felt like I was still in Austin and had just sent a serviceable hologram of myself on the plane. It took a few days to shake the dissonance, but I never stopped feeling like a stranger. Ghosts haunted every street corner and layers of emotional data augmented every interaction.

This has nothing to do with my friends or Albuquerque, but I just didn’t want to be there for very long. I felt like in order to fit into that realm and feel at ease I would need to morph into some old version of myself, a proposition I found horrific. Although there were major changes in the worlds of all of my friends, my version of Albuquerque remained the same.

It really is true: You can’t go home again.

The case was turned over to homicide because the victim wasn’t holding up too well at the hospital. I don’t know if he lived. I guess I have to check the news like everyone else.

Also, fuck you, bad guys.

Pictures will explain what words cannot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/birzer/sets/72157604762416387/

Today I received a letter from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Inside I found a plastic card bearing my photo, my face already strange. They wanted to let me know that I live here now. Officially.

Then I headed over to the next block to Fado, where I heard a U2 cover band was playing. For all intents and purposes, their lead singer was Bono. He looked just like him. He even had all the stage moves, engaging us in wild, rock star antics. They played mostly B-sides, but threw in some of the hits. They were very good.

All the while I was painfully aware of this sea of attractive women, all on someone’s arm or wearing a ring. I always wonder where they were before. When does that window of opportunity occur?

And then there was the waitress. She resembled Juliette from Lost, who, as some may know, is a representative of archetypal hotness  for me. The whole night, she had to squeeze past me on her way to and from the bar. It almost made me cry.

It’s about 40 minutes southwest of Austin, a journey I took through dark, rolling hills. The restaurant itself is sprawled across two ranch-like buildings and a large outdoor picnic area.

The Salt Lick is a BYOB establishment. Let that sink in for a moment. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and they told you to please bring all the beer you want? I came with a six-pack of Sam Adams. Jay, the Meetup organizer, had a better idea: a rolling cooler stuffed with beer.

Once we had a table, our group ordered ribs, sausage, brisket and turkey, accompanied by piles of potatoes, beans, slaw and bread. For about $10 a head. The meat was slow roasted for 8 hours, ascending into some higher state of being. It was delicious!

To celebrate, we got to see an advance screening of No Country for Old Men, which I will say right now is the Coen’s masterwork. And, by the way, Javier Bardem is utterly terrifying and I’d book passage to the moon if I knew his character was pursuing me.

Then Quentin Tarantino showed us some old Japanese monster movie from his collection: War of the Gargantuas. He was obviously a bit inebriated and he geeked out for quite some time before getting off the stage. He’s great.

I put together this dark knight costume. No, not Batman or the kanniggit from Holy Grail. I got this chest armor, some spikey shoulder guards, these sweet skull gauntlets, and a badass 4-foot long sword. I also had this huge, matching skull shield, but it proved unwieldy to take everywhere.

I went to a fabulous party at the Enchanted Forest. Normally, this is a three-acre art space in the woods. Imagine a small Burning Man or Three-Sided Hole, but in the woods instead of the desert. But for Halloween, they transformed it into a Haunted Forest. It was BYOB, so you just show up with a cooler of beverages, pay the fee, and walk through this archway into another world.

It looked like a gigantic rave as designed by Neil Gaiman. Imagine hundreds of people in bizarre costumes, all dancing around immense trees while bands play in front of trippy projected light shows. There was a drum circle around a fire pit. There were lightsaber duels (and, briefly, lightsabers vs. a badass 4-foot long sword).  There were crazy tents where people were doing awesome improv. It was, to summarize, the best Halloween party ever.

I got home at 7AM!

Oh, and I got to make out with a beautiful woman.

Right now I’m part of Discovering Austin, a couple wine/coffee/singles Meetup groups, a sushi group, two Landmark groups, and two movie groups. One of the movie groups is the Alamo Drafthouse Fans, which I am an assistant organizer for. That means I get to pick movies, schedule events and get people to come to the Alamo to have a good time!