My household remains COVID-cautious. We socialize outdoors and, when indoors outside of our home, we mask up. I’ve been to my FLGS to game twice since I ran the Old Dominion Disagreement in Feb 2020 (both times in the last six months) and both times I had serious concerns about airflow (which is why it’s only been twice).

I love NOVA. It’s my convention, the one I get to go to. I’ve been to all of them (well, not the first cook-out one that was less formal – but all of them since the one at the Dulles Convention Center). The last two, though, I’ve only stopped by for a few hours to tell myself I’d been there and do some shopping.

I’m reasonably confident that the air flow is going to be better at the hotel than at the store, I’m going to be there anyway, and I’m going a little nuts. So: I’m going to play at NOVA this year. I’ve checked with my buddy who’s running Thursday’s ITS, who gets my situation, and he’s OK with me showing up playing a game and deciding the vibes (aka air quality, crowding, etc) are bad and peace-ing out.

I’m not planning on that, though: my hope is that vibes are great (air is OK), the N95 isn’t too oppressive for 8 hours, and so on. If that’s the case, I’ll be able to get through the day. In fact, because I really want this to work, I’m packing models and lists to play in Friday’s Narrative tournament as well, in case at end of day Thursday I think it’s a good idea!

Because I have major anxiety about finding parking (listen: entering the District is really fucking stressful if it’s not a thing you do often), I’ll actually heading out and checking in Wednesday night. I think it’s better setting myself up for success to avoid having to get up early, drive into town (in traffic) and find parking immediately before diving into the thing I’m going to spend all day doing. And, because it’ll be helpful to know I have a place to duck into, unmasked, to eat if I need it, I won’t be checking out until Friday… so if playing Friday is in the cards I’m set for that, too.

I’ll probably be less social than normal; it’s going to be a lot of time masked and if being anti-social in the evenings means I’m more likely to get to play in the events during the day: that’s a worthwhile trade-off. But just in case I’ll be bringing TAG Raid with me, too.