I’ve been home sick for the past several days, fighting off some sort of rather nasty convention plague. I have, for the time being, been fortunate enough to manage avoiding the dreaded H1N1 that appears to have reached over a hundred fellow con-goers, which is a small consolation, I suppose. (EDIT: turns out I was indeed one of the H1N1 sufferers, but fortunately, the worst is over!) As I intimated on Twitter, I have reason to believe that EA’s Dante’s Inferno marketing campaign probably has something to do with this particular outbreak. After all, no other company is both rich and foolhardy enough to hire the services of Pestilence himself, right?

Anyway, now that I’m at least coherent enough to make it through a blog post, I figured I’d give all you folks watching at home that PAX recap I promised earlier. Suffice to say, if there’s anything out there that’s worth getting this sick over, this year’s PAX was definitely it, at least for me. I came carrying several months of anger at the video game industry and frustration about the future of my career, and left feeling newly invigorated and hopeful about where life will take me next. Not an easy effect to have on me, I tell you.

But wait! There’s more…

This weekend, I’m going to be making my annual pilgrimage to the Penny Arcade Expo taking place in the magical land of Seattle. Of course, as I alluded in an earlier post, I’m attending for the first time ever as a speaker, talking about fun things like ladybusiness [1] and sax ‘n violins in games. If you happen to be making an appearance at the expo as well, you’ll be able to find me at the following times:

Saturday, 10:30am – 11:30am, Unicorn Theatre
Girls and Games: The Growing Role of Women in the Game Industry

Sunday, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Serpent Theatre
Murder, Sex & Drugs

You’ll also be able to find me intermittently at the Hothead Games booth, where we’ll be previewing plenty of DeathSpank goodies in our continued attempts to convince you to buy the game when it comes out so I can still keep on having a day job.

Also, for those of you who aren’t able to attend PAX, or who are and just can’t get enough of the dulcet tones of my voice, I recorded a podcast over the weekend for the Gamers Confab, run by Michael Abbot of Brainy Gamer and also featuring Corvus Elrod and Matthew Gallant. In it, we talk about a couple of recent game industry controversies — mainly, those surrounding the Dante’s Inferno Sin to Win contest and Orson Scott Card’s involvement in Shadow Complex — as well as about the growing landscape of indie games and how we hope they’ll combat such silliness. Give it a listen!