A Diversion

How is it that it is now Wednesday? How is that even possible?  I got on a plane last Thursday, and came home on the red-eye on Saturday night, and climbed into my bed when I got home at about noon on Sunday, and now it's Wednesday.

Oh, I got up and went to work on Monday, and on Tuesday, but I was catching up from two days away and my assistant was out having surgery, so here it is Wednesday and I sort of have my head above water. A little.

Seattle was great. It was wonderful to be away, terrific to be there, lovely to be alone, awesome to be surrounded by bloggers - a complete mixed bag of bloggers, all there because we're Nintendo Brand Ambassadors. I got to spend time with Amie and Stimey and Ilina and Julie and Aimee and Kim and Cooper and Emily, and I met two food bloggers at dinner, Marisa and Jen. Jen took pictures of our delicious meal at Black Bottle, and I'm in some of those pictures. (And if you want to see me in action on the 3DS, I'm in a couple of the photos in Rachelle's post.)

We were in Seattle for a "summit" - basically a day of hanging around the Nintendo headquarters playing video games on the new Nintendo 3DS. 3D + DS = 3DS, get it? It's kind of amazing that you can have dogs jumping out of the screen without having to wear funny glasses. It has motion and gyro sensors, for games like the mesmerizing Steel Diver where you're manning a submarine periscope and shooting down boats. The "augmented reality" games are kind of wild - and actually make you get up and dance around the table as you aim at little moving targets.  I bought a copy of Nintendogs (+ kittens) because I knew the girl would love it, even though I think it's tediously boring. I didn't love all of the games, but I was oddly captivated by Street Fighter, because I was like an idiot savant at punching the lights out of bad guys. Steel Diver, though, I could play that on my swivel chair in the basement...

The device has hands-off features that work when you're just walking around - if you're carrying it, and it's in sleep mode, it counts your steps like a pedometer. It also "talks" to others of its kind - and exchanges miis. I collected a mess of miis in Seattle, even outside of the hotel we were all at, but I think no one in NYC has a 3DS because I haven't picked up any more. And yes, I'm carrying it around with me, for research, you know. Apparently, this irritated my kid yesterday when she got home from school and couldn't show it to her friend.

Now? Back to reality. Or something



Disclosure: Nintendo provided the airfare, accommodations, meals, a Nintendo World gift certificate, and a Nintendo 3DS. No one paid me to write about the trip or the DS, in fact, they didn't even ask.