When I wake up, the room is full of lively conversations about Showgirls, Van Helsing (just awful), Saved and some of the Culkin kids. The Interns are especially lively today. For now. Next week, Intern Chandler will be in Costa Rica getting bitten by outbreak monkeys and procompsagnathuses.

Aaron and Chad are trying to make this new-fangled high-tech conference call device work. "Hold on!" Aaron says.

("You're all total fucking noobs!," says Chaney.)

"Ethan and Aileen?" asks Aaron.

Long pause.

"What?" Aileen's voice comes out of the device, like she's far away. She says "what" like the other half of the sentence is "the fuck do you want? Speak up, loser."
Then we accidentally hang up on her. When we call her back, she says "Hello?" like the first half of the sentence was, "Ummmm…" Like we just said something stupid. We disgrace her. She's sick to death of us.

Now Brian is crunching his ice.

"What is that button!" he cries, suddenly. He's got the wireless keyboard in his lap. "What did I do?!" The screen has gone blue, filled with the kind of giant ugly icons that make you think you're looking at something raw, meant-for-the-factory interface. When he gets it back to Windows (ugh) there's a little picture of a kitten. This, like a ten-second play, is a beautiful microcosm of the PC experience.

I am writing this on my MacBook. Everything is going smoothly.

"After this," says Aaron, "we're having another meeting."

"Is it a meeting about having other meetings?" asks Chaney.

"Yes." Aaron has his fingers steepled like a Bond villain's. "That is the subject of all our meetings."

Rich is just back from vacation, and his big giant head is all bronzed. But the beach he went to was in Delaware (and, I imagine, still is), so I'm guessing his jaundice-yellow tone came out of a bottle.

Chaney shaved his head. We hoped this would end up with some kind of Sampson and Delilah situation, diminishing his power to spew vulgarities and hate, but he just said something about masturbating in Santa's workshop. So it turns out he's the anti-Sampson.
If you're in Dallas, leave us a comment telling Aaron and Oscar where they should eat and where they should drink. They'll be there on business later this week. Oscar's buying a suit, even. In unrelated news, he just had a birthday this weekend, so his dirty old manhood is catching up to his dirty-old-man MO. (Thanks to Nedward for that joke.)

"Did that guy finally make it to Iceland?" someone asks.

"Yeah, they harpooned him," says Chaney. People chuckle, but are deeply uncomfortable. "Now they use him as a lantern."

On with it.

John is "all about" Dreams of the First Age. Stephen "Shep" Shepard is working on another book, and Bax is looking over the art notes for Scion: God, to make sure they are done and soon to go to the matt. He's also pulling together a bunch of visual reference material or something, and checking the mechanics in the manuscript again. It's another big book.

Scion: Demigod went off to the printer's last week.

Brian's got artwork coming in, still, on Roll 3d4+1 of Glorious Divinity. He's also making some handsome Gen Con banners. He and Zack have also taken some new product images of the Exiled expansion for EVE: The Second Genesis.
Ethan is trying to get Rites of Spring done this week, and is then rocketing into Adamantine Arrow.

Tribes of the Moon is coming. That's all I'll say for now.

Aileen is trying to get Astral Realms out the door, which is harder than it sounds. 'Cause they're all astral and huge. After that, Winter Masques takes center stage. Now she's talking all nice and friendly like.

the matt is making Gen Con T-shirts, attending a lot of pre-new-office and pre-Gen Con meetings, plus returning to the task of making the Requiem for Rome cover glorious, while Craig continues to battle its insides in the arena. Which is the office he shares with Chaney.

Petur is working, he says, on "a lot of the same stuff as last week." This includes some final guidance on MwaHaHaHa!, the upcoming board game.

Rich just ran off. In the big projection image of his office, his chair is spinning around in his wake. He didn't say anything. Maybe he's going back to Delaware?

Oh, wait. He's back.

Petur'll be in London next week, by the way. On business, I guess, but I'm not sure. I couldn't hear him over my jealousy. I fucking love London.

Craig is holding Mage's hand through the proofing process. While waiting for all of that to happen, he's also hammering away at Requiem for Rome, which is shaping up to be a lovely book.

Chaney's putting Murder City into the proofing stage this week. He's also going over some proofs of Lords of the Night for VTES.

Advance copies of Monte Cook's World of Darkness are here. I barely got to see it, but I can tell you that the logo looks gorgeous all huge and embossed and printed on a cover.

The first Changeling supplement has also had advance copies come in. That's right, we have Autumn Nightmares here in the office. I wish the first day of autumn was the day after Gen Con.

I, Will, am working on some materials for Gen Con, including getting the first Changeling SAS story out in time for the convention. Last week, you may remember, "Frenzy Scenes" went live, too. Go and have a look at that.

Aaron's life is a series of meetings, and I don't know how he keeps it all straight. (Aaron leans over, points at the previous sentence on my monitor and whispers, "I don't.")

Chad is working with Brian to make some banners happen in time for Gen Con. He's also got a bunch of Gen Con stuff to get ready, too, like airfare and schedules. He's also checking our ISBNs and barcodes for upcoming books now.

Chad and Aaron walked the Appalachian Trail this past weekend. They got ate by a bar.

Our Gen Con party is in the works.

Intern Jessica is about to start laying out the new Quarterly.

Intern Chandler just turned in her first draft of her SAS story for Mage: The Awakening, which I'll be looking at this week. For those of you who've been commenting on the SAS site or to me in email: Soon. Soon.

Intern Merry is about to start working on a secret project. Which I can't tell you about. 'Cause it's secret.

"But you still aren't getting paid," Chaney points out.

"That's okay. You guys don't know what I have to do at my other job," Merry says.

Bax says, "Whoa."

Rich is preparing for his trip down next week. He'll spend the whole week with us here in the late days of the "old office," meaning the current office.

Oh. I guess we're done with that stuff.

So, here's a game for you. Can you tell who's who in this picture?



UPDATE: We've had some accurate and some inaccurate guesses so far. Keep 'em coming.

Use the following key to give us your guesses. The following people are all represented here:

• Rich Thomas
  
• Brian Glass
  
• Craig Grant
  
• matt milberger = #3
  
• Intern Merry
  
• Intern Chandler
  
• Mike Chaney = #15
  
• John Chambers
  
• "Murder" Chad Brown
  
• Will Hindmarch = #4
  
• John "Bax" Masterson
  
• Aileen Miles = #8
  
• Aaron Voss
  
• Ethan Skemp = #1
  
• Petur Thorarinsson

Current Location: White Wolf Game Trail
Current Music: The Veils, "More Heat Than Light"