• Loads of geeky fun and laughs, great music
• It was Spider-Man’s webbing that killed Gwen Stacy
• Got autographs from John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton, and Adam Savage
• Got to see Neil Gaimen himself
• The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis’ wireless network *can* survive a thousand geeks with iPods, Androids, and iPhones
• Four hours of sleep is barely enough to survive a drive back to Decorah

Paul and Storm do a lot of great songs.  Same with Molly Lewis.  I had a great time and did a lot of laughing, surrounded by a ton of people who were just like me – geeks.

One of the most entertaining and educational portion of the night?  A physics lecture.  Hang on, stay with me here.  This was no ordinary lecture, oh no.  This lecture was given to us by Professor James Kakalios who taught us all about physics using the powers of superheroes and it was damned entertaining.  I will be rushing out to buy his book, The Physics of Superheroes as soon as I can.

Wil Wheaton is an incredible writer.  Most non-geek folks will know him for his movie roles (Star Trek : The Next Generation and Stand By Me being the two big ones) but it was his stories that made me laugh the hardest.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show tale was great.  I’ll have to grab a few of his books when I get a chance.  He did sign my copy of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, for which he wrote the foreword.

Adam Savage of the Mythbusters – very entertaining in so many ways.  I got his autograph and shook his hand after the show.

A crowd of well-read geeks will go bat-shiat insane when Neil Gaiman walks onto the stage, even if it’s just to say ‘Arrr’.

John Scalzi, as Wil would say, is the awesomesauce.  He is one of my favorite authors and instructor at Viable Paradise, so I hoped I’d get a chance to run into him again.  My one-on-one with him at VP has really helped transform my novel and I wanted to tell him thanks.  So I brought along one of his books (Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded) and wore my VP 2009 shirt.  I figured that it couldn’t hurt to jog his memory of who I was since, after all, the man meets thousands of people every year at conventions.

Turns out I didn’t need it.

I was talking to Steph when Scalzi saw me and immediately said, “Hey!  Matt!  How are you?”  Being a bit shocked, I said, “You remember me?” and he replied, “Of course!”  He asked me how the book was coming and we talked for a minute or so.  I got to thank him, he signed the book, and posed for a lovely picture (lovely in the sense that it was 1am and being photogenic typically goes out the window at that time).

w00tstock was Steph’s anniversary present to me.  If you are not a geek, you might be on the outside when it comes to the festival and that’s where Steph was.  A lot of things she didn’t understand but she stuck it out through the entire five (!!!) hour show, even if it meant she had to drive to Chicago the next morning tired.  Easily one of the best anniversary presents ever.