Hey, everyone. I'm just posting to let you all know I'm not dead.

E3 was amazing. As I predicted, we hardly played any games. Since the conference covered several hotels as well as the show floor, we had to run from one place to another to make all our appointments. Man, we were so tired at the end of each day. Most of what we did was recorded at our site, NintendoPlayers.com.

Definitely the hilight of the week was meeting Shigeru Miyamoto twice. The first time we had an inside tip on where he would be on Friday morning, so we waited for him and got him to sign our DS's. (I'll post a picture of mine later.) Unfortunately, he was in too much of a hurry for a picture. After that we were able to meet Reggie Fils-Aime (photo above) while he was waiting in the lobby of a hotel for his next appointment to start. Naturally we took a picture and got his autograph. Later, in the early evening after Chris and I had dinner, we talked to Eiji Anouma, and did not realize it until we walked away. When it finally occured to us, we ran back to find Miyamoto there with him. We had Anouma sign our DS's and took a picture with the four of us, shown below.

So far the building project has been fairly mundane work. Since we actually do not have a building permit yet, we must do as much preporatory work as possible for now. Most of our efforts are going towards one of two projects: using boom lifts and pressure washers to clean the ceiling, and wiring the building with some temporary power to run tools and lights while we work.

My job has been to use celophane and trash bags to waterproof light fixtures and electric boxes on the ceiling befor the washing crew comes through. I was taught to run a lift on my own, so I spend most of my day by myself in a basket about 15-25 feet above the ground.

Once I was told to join the washing crew. I was only doing that for a few hours yesterday afternoon, but it was really not fun. I would even say that it was almost just plain miserable. The only redeeming element is being able to pretend the washer is some kind of machine gun. Beyond that, we get totally drenched and smell awful. The stuff stuck to the ceiling is basically fifty years worth of dirt and bird poop that has been left up there. Naturally this ends up all over you when you are blasting it off.

The other tasks happening around here include making revisions to the building plan, which will be resubmitted to the city soon, and sorting out all the junk found in the warehouses and toolsheds nearby. So far we have found everything from doorjams to lamp posts. There are at least two water fountains to be thrown away. There is a lot of wood that can be used to make temporary platforms, tables, benches and whatever a construction site may need. That has to be saved, but nearly everything else must go.

Right now I am in the home of the Scatterdays in Anaheim after a wonderful meeting which, of course, included an equally wonderful dinner.

Speaking of free food, after a week of hard work and lots of talk about good restaurants, we have only eaten out once. That was this afternoon for lunch. Every other meal has been provided for us. Somehow we end up with so much food for dinner each night that we have enough for lunch the next day. And it's always incredible! We had two huge trays full of Chinese barbecue chicken one day, for example.

In the future I hope to write more often, but I really don't get much time to get on the internet each day. I will do my best, though.