No Jawa at Feast of Blades... :(

Life lesson learned.

And Larry, no comments from the peanut gallery!

I take full responsibility for this one.  

I will not be attending Feast of Blades. 

WHY? Well I'm an idiot.

I booked the flight in April, and bought my ticket to play, bought the limited edition "one of thirty" swag bag, and arranged for hotel, made plans to broadcast events on WarTV, and even set up a Mountain Pizza Challenge. Mere days from my flight though, I realized I had to actually request the days off, I was planning on missing Friday and Monday. 

Same with Jim, we work in the same school.

Any way, I submitted the paper work to my principal, who asked why I was requesting the time, then he made a scrunchy face and sighed. 

Uhoh.

Without getting into the hows and whys, the end decision was that I could take the days unpaid if I wanted and lose a substantial amount of money. 

I don't. Shit.

Oh, and Travel Insurance offered by Orbitz is a scam. Don't buy it. They make you think you can cancel a flight for any reason. You can't. Pretty much they have the same list of reasons that would get you out of paying extra change fees to any airline straight up, like death in the family and other emergencies. Only you pay more to have the insurance company say you are shit out of luck. Whatever you do, don't tell them the truth. "My boss rejected my days off" was not on the list of reasons I could use the insurance. 

After an hour of wrangling with Orbitz and the travel insurance company, I called back and told them that I was actually cancelling my flight because my wife's father was just diagnosed with end stage COPD and I did not want to be in Denver if something bad happened.

They accepted that one.  

It is actually true by the way, I am not that good a liar. (In fact I'm terrible) This is especially important because they sent me 10 pages of documentation I had to have signed, including physicians reports. I guess they don't take people at face value. All for a couple hundred bucks.  

Maybe it is for the best in that regard. This sorta bubbled to the surface after I spoke to Chandler last night and broke the bad news. I hadn't really considered it. He thankfully is out of the weeds this time, but I really would have hated to be in Denver and have him slip again.  The doctor called my wife last week and told her she should get down there when he was admitted. It did not look good. If that happened while I was in Denver for four days... Maybe the Emperor is trying to tell me something. I hope not.

So any way. No Mountain Pizza. No Goatboy and Brent. No bloggers round table. No armies on Parade. No GT.  No Chandler and Larry and Rob Baer. Well I guess no Baer is not such a bad thing.  :)  He makes me do bad things. 

The biggest loss here is I don't get to see my friends that I have been looking forward to for a year now and I don't get to be part of a community that I enjoy so much.  I don't get to see Denver and I don't get to blow off steam.  :( I love being at these events and enjoying the company of good people. 

My hugest apologies go out to Chandler who was counting on me to broadcast some events, and to the readers and viewers who were looking forward to seeing the coverage.  I guess the cleaning ladies wont mind though. Four nights of Jawa funk in a hotel can be pretty taxing. 

Whats next for me? 

Well the wife is happy as I get to go to the Scarecrow Festival with her, her friend, and two screaming 2 year olds.  

But also, DaBoyz GT is in November and I am still planning on going to Rochester NY.  Goatboy and Brent have gone to that one, hopefully I will see them there. 

Sad week for me.

JB