Summer in Iceland - Day 3

I'm patching Eve on my slow ass connection.

will sadden some to know that there has been no crazed, naked dancing in the cold, northern ocean. Instead, evenings have contained a lot of good conversation with developers who are willing to brave our attention.

Wednesday started the actual official meetings. We hit the office at 0830 hours and had breakfast. I teems that a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon is a rare thing for CCP and happened due to CCP Leeloo's super powers. It meant a stack of happy bacon guzzling CCP employees cheering on the CSM for bringing them bacon.It is not a bad way to be known.

We wound up having breakfast with Hilmar and talking to him for our first hour or so before the meetings stopped and went hot and heavy. We even lost half of lunch for one of them which gave us twenty minutes to scarf down lunch and go back to our meeting room.

The meeting room has a camera that pretty much creates a surround view of everyone at the table. All I can say is ugh to seeing myself on the screen. I knew it would happen but it is still somewhat horrifying to live through. Although, as the day progressed it was easy enough to forget when dealing with the larger subject of topics and things that needed to be discussed. Still, I hate my picture being taken and I hate my image being recorded. I own no pictures of myself for a reason.

Sessions were back to back. I had an idea tht we'd have 10 or so minutes between each but nope. We kept people talking and questions rolling and kind of clawed every minute out of every meeting. The meeting room was rather stuffy by the end of the day. They  gave us a good room but we crammed a lot of bodies in that room for a long time. We took lots of notes and asked lots of questions and discuses many things. I chewed nicely through my document book.

Our meetings ran to 1900 hours. and we finished up around 1920.  A long day but it is what we signed up for. If it has to be longer then so be it. I'm not going to ask for a shorter day and less communication.

Then it was off to dinner where we finally went to Noni's which everyone keeps talking about. It appears to be a sandwich place. So, there I am staring at these sandwiches and to me they mostly look terrible. I like my cold cuts cold. Plus, everything comes with 'sauce'. So, I ask, "What is sauce?" and it turns out that sauce is a mayo and Dijon mustard mix. The horror. Complete horror.

I got no sauce. I finally default to a cheeseburger and french fries. So, the nice young man made my sandwich and he takes my bun to put toppings on it and he ladles on the 'sauce' to my horror. I'm kind of waving weakly at him going, "Is that the burger with no 'sauce' and teh young lady that took my order goes, "Oh no sauce".

Now I am high maintenance and they have to make me another bun. However, this is accomplished and I get my burger which is okay. I had expected god to descend from the sky and gift me with the pleasure of raw ambrosia for how people talk about this sandwich shop. Plus the fries had paprika on them? Kind of weird for me.

After we went off to wherever people keep drinking in the evenings. Nora's I think it is. It turns out that is where I went with Kaeda and Arianna and Siuil for fanfest. So we talked as we have been doing in the evening but everyone was tired. There has been no drunken binging and people barely able to walk. By 2215 we were tired and rolled out to come back to the hotel and get to sleep.

We may be an utterly boring CSM.

I will try to take pictures of the shop outside in the daylight. They are stripping its paint and touching it up. I haven't gotten permission to take pictures of stuff in CCP's office yet so I have no fresh pictures today.

It is surreal in a good way how this goes. We sit, as players and discuss Eve all day. We talk on coms and we chat to each other, we write blogs and programs and concepts. We theory craft and share and record and play and watch, yet doing it on the level where this company and the people who create and maintain the game join and to the discussion is super interesting and adds another dimension to everything.

I feel like I am getting a lot done and a lot said. I'm able to raise the points I want to raise and insert the views and reminders about the players that I am there for. And maybe my eyes glow a little bit as I go, "So, I have a list..."