i’m currently visiting my uncle and cousin, who live one state over. last year they won me a free pass to a sci-fi/gaming convention they go to every year, so i’m here for the week+ (arrived on saturday, will fly home on monday.) my uncle & cousin are two of my favorite family members; in particular my cousin is only 1 yr older than me and we share a lot of interests, so we’ve always been close. i’m out as trans to my cousin, but not yet my other non-immediate family members.

the main social activity whenever my uncle is involved is playing board games. he has hundreds of board games in his collection. of our family, the most avid board gamers are me, my uncle, my cousins, and my grandma. (my parents and brother also like it but not as much. my sister usually opts out.) a lot of what we’ll be doing at the convention is gaming. as such, when my grandma heard i would be coming here to attend the con, she proposed that she come too & pay for our plane tickets.

the good thing about this is that she paid for my plane ticket, which would’ve been a problem otherwise (though realistically i would’ve just not bought much/anything at the last con i went to.) the unfortunate thing is that my grandma can be critical/stress-inducing sometimes, and also sometimes she’s also a tad slow/difficult to play games with. but hey, she paid for my plane ticket, so i can’t complain! i don’t think my uncle enjoys having his house/organization/lifestyle criticized though.

today we finished playing Pandemic Legacy Season 2. my group has really enjoyed the Pandemic Legacy games, but the end of PL s2 was... brutal. as in, a giant difficulty spike during the final month. it was honestly just kinda frustrating. we’re done with it now, at least. for the rest of the week we can move on to some other games instead of playing PL every other game.