I was wired enough to wake up very early. hmace merely groaned, so I trotted out for a swim. So not a Grey Panther hotel - 7am and I had the pool and the hot tub totally to myself. It was heaven.

I padded upstairs to meet brenda_mccart and family coming down - and the girls giggling at my (forbidden-in-the-elevator) bare feet. This time I woke hmace and we dressed and went down to breakfast.

The Con room was open, and we found mcurry and arcaedia there. We helped ourselves to the excellent breakfast ... I fell with a whoop of delight on the Froot Loops, which I hadn't seen for about twenty years. Most of the other Con breakfasters regarded me in silent horror - I felt like the unfortunate in a Bateman cartoon. hmace cleared her throat.

"Well I'm not catching you when you have your sugar crash," she said firmly.

I also had the main course, and a waffle with syrup. Sheer greed and a delight in the novelty - the first time I'd ever had a proper, waffle-iron cooked waffle. But I avoided the potato-y dishes for breakfast, and the eggy-bread. I was intrigued by the number of people who seemed to be having maple syrup with the savoury food - the last time I've seen that was with Dutch pancakes - perhaps it is a hangover from early Dutch settlers? Also eating bacon with your fingers - well, it was very thin and crunchy compared with English bacon (which is more like, I think, American ham?).

Hmmm. This is turning into an account of How I Ate my Way across America. No matter. I was thinking of including how people struck me - as opposed to the mental picture I'd built up of them online. But this might cause consternation ;-).

After breakfast, tryslora turned up, wanting to do a run to Trader Joe's. I'd heard so much about this store that I was eager to go, so bushi7 and I climbed in the back of tryslora's van, with tryslora and princejvstin in the front and we set off. bushi7 and I were comparing notes on our travels and Europe v the US - we didn't seem to get round to gaming at all!

Trader Joe's was great - a small, ethical supermarket. The prices seemed higher than the Wal-Mart (hey - do you know Microsoft word spellchecks Wal-Mart? I'd be less surprised if I wasn't using the British English spell-check) brenda_mccart and I had hit the previous day, but the range of food was terrific - I bought snacks for the games and ended up in conversation with the cashier - he was keen to tell me about Trader Joes's as long as I talked to him with my real English accent. It's nice to be able to amuse people simply by opening my mouth and speaking - generally I have to come out with a few witticisms first.

Anyway, back to the hotel, where tryslora dropped us off. I bore away my booty to my room and then got ready for my first game - In Spectres.

I was a little nervous about this. I was clearly by far the most inexperienced person playing ... previously, I'd played a few Amber games at AmberCon UK in 2005, a Call of Cthulhu game at MelCon and hosted a dinner party murder mystery game once. Only once at AmberConUK did I hit my stride - and that was playing Emilia (clearly playing ditz is noooo problem). In addition, a couple of the players had played in GalRen and had dropped fairly soon, not finding it to their taste (which is fair enough); I was a little worried that I was going to be pretty inadequate all round.

The premise of the game had us playing 1960s/borderline 1970s characters - The Avengers was mentioned in the notes. With this in mind, I wrote to the GM (Jack Gulick) suggesting the TV heroine of The Champions, Sharon Macready (as played by Alexandra Bastedo), a cool blonde version of Emma Peel. I added weblinks to more info.

I suspect I could hardly have made a better choice. Jack's knowledge of UK TV is encyclopaedic - but the Champions was new to him and he was, I think, intrigued. When he turned up, he had a DVD set of the series under his arm - although he hadn't managed to watch it by then. I suspect he has by now - I hope he enjoyed it!

The game was set in an agency that investigated paranormal events - and our investigation was into the mysterious disappearance of a patient (Carl Corey) from a private nursing home. Sharon was suitable cool and blonde - and changed into a starchy nurse's uniform at the first opportunity (which is pretty much a given of the genre). When things got hot, a few hairs escaped from her smooth chignon; once, attacked by monster, she broke a pink frosted fingernail too (I seem to remember there was other damage which normal people might see as more severe - but the fingernail stands out in my memory).

The game was a great deal of fun. I particularly liked the road trip to California (the group had run out of money for airfares) and the scene where the absent minded professor (played by follybard) was disguised as a hippy in order to get into the musical promotion hosted by Random's records company, wandered on to the stage and built a Theremin. His niece (bushi7) and I promptly became the girl group and were, of course, a massive success.

The game finished when - on Corwin's suggestion - we made enquiries as to who our employer was and discovered it was Bleys. At which point as he was, after all, our employer, we saw no reason not to tell him everything we had found out about Corwin and Random. The professor wrote to Random and Corwin asking a little wistfully if we could still have our record contract; he, however, got his niece to type it and she simply destroyed it quietly.

It was great fun, although a little weird to be playing a diced game as my first! Other players had a better grasp of rules, I think, and how rules worked. But I think I relaxed well into the roleplaying. I certainly enjoyed myself!

A whole group of us grabbed a soup and sandwich at a nearby Pannini (?) bar after that, and then returned for the evening games. I was playing in hmace's Ship of Chaos game, using a character I'd created on spec for an Amber game which hadn't quite worked out for me. Her name was Ranth (short for Amaranth) and she was a shapeshifter who had dived in The Pit, but was now used as a space scavenger by her owners.

The game had us on a mysterious craft - which we gradually learned was, in fact, the sort of symbiotic ship used in Farscape, completed with a Pilot (hmace was terribly good as Pilot) - although some of the crew also, to me, had touches of Lexx. I think that Ranth worked ok - I was very impressed with the way hmace GM-ed a large game (eight players), half of whom were strangers. She kept it tight but friendly ... and made sure no-one had too much downtime. It certainly gave me some thoughts for how I would GM my game the following night.

It also gave me a chance to catch up with my one player who hadn't submitted a character (another one had given me an outline which, with Jayson's help, had been shaped into a pre-gen while I was at Brenda's). I was promised the missing character - which was excellent!

The experience of chasing characters made me aware of how helpful it was for GMs to have characters presented in a timely fashion. And increased my guilt that - with eight characters to create and two games to prep, I still hadn't given characters to two of my ACUK GMs.

I enjoyed my moment of peril in the game - trapped in my changed form (which no-one knew about) inside the airlock - with PCs hastening towards me - any one of whom would have been happy to play shoot the alien creature. I also liked playing a tough and resilient character. Not a Ripley - but certainly someone who could take care of herself.

"You were a slave?"

"Yes. So?"

The game did run a little long; I was to have the same problem with my games. TBR slots are necessarily quite short - perhaps next time I'll beg for a longer slot for one of my own games.

And so ... wearily ... to bed.