Some of you may have seen us a few weeks ago at Connooga 2010. For those of you who have never been, Connooga is a "multi-fandom" convention that takes place in Chattanooga, TN. If you're a fan of sci-fi, anime, gaming, horror, fantasy, role-playing, or just about anything else out of the ordinary, Connooga has something that should interest you.

We here at World at Play Games all have a little geek in us, so we couldn't resist setting up a booth at this year's Connooga. Patrick and I manned the booth, where we set up some of our damaged and slightly-used merchandise that we normally don't put out on the website, plus some of our more popular items like Fluxx, Pound Bags of Dice, and some large plush animals. Since we're strictly an online business, this is the closest Patrick or myself get to running a retail store. Add to the fact that this was my first time attending a convention whatsoever, and it was quite an experience for me.

It became quite an experience for Patrick as well. We were at the convention from Friday to Sunday. Sometime Friday night, Patrick was visiting one of the many room parties that went during the nights of the convention when he had a run-in with another convention attendee. And when I say run-in, I mean that the guy stumbled and fell onto Patrick, breaking his shin in 2 places. After a trip to the hospital to get pain medication and a cast, Patrick spent the rest of the convention rolling around one of the hotel's loaner wheelchairs.

The good news: The convention was a success. We sold some of our products, passed out a lot of business cards, and seemed to make a pretty good impression on the people who visited our booth.

The bad news: Patrick is still in a cast. His broken shin wasn't healing correctly, so he had to go back to the hospital and have surgery. He had an "intramedullary nailing of the left tibia", which is a fancy way of saying that they screwed a piece of metal to his shin bone to keep it from moving out of place. It'll be a while before his broken bone heals fully, but in the meantime he's back to his usual duties here - minus anything physical and plus a wheelchair.

Hopefully this experience will teach Patrick and the rest of you an important lesson: Be wary of drunk convention attendees.