One Short Day in the Emerald City

Emerald City Comic Con 2025 has come and gone, and I’ve had one heck of a weekend!  It was shorter than usual (I only was there for 1 day, as opposed to my usual 2 or 3 days at each con) and it brought about some stress (picking up my entrance badge took waaaay longer than expected), but I had plenty of fun cosplaying and losing myself among my fellow enthusiasts for a day!  Going through my whole day blow for blow isn’t that exciting, so I’ll let my photos do the talking:

(For those who can't tell from the Bryar pistol and lightsaber, I'm cosplaying as Kyle Katarn, the mercenary main protagonist of the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series.)

This is the way.

First-person shooter perspective time!

FPS Perspective 2: Now With Lightsabers!

What's more dangerous than the Scarlet Witch?  Two Scarlet Witches!

What's better than an aspiring Jedi?  Two aspiring Jedi!

There you have it, I had a great time at another convention!  Best of all, I showed I can still work hard and play hard, even in the face of stressful times and massive life changes.

Future Shock

The year 2025 is now in full swing.  Without going into detail or sinking into despair, I will say that things look bad in most of the world.  Weirdly enough (or not so weirdly, considering how last year went), things are mostly going well in my personal and professional life.  I’ve been handling tricky cases with aplomb, I recently got certified for juvenile delinquency misdemeanor cases, and I’ve been making good use of my free time.  With my personal matters lining up well, I’ve got an announcement for this blog that I was hinting at last time:

Although I am still working out details and exact logistics, I have decided that I will be moving my law practice from Tillamook to Salem, Oregon.  If all goes according to my current plan, I hope to complete my move by the end of this year.

This announce raises an important question: “Ben, why are you doing this?”  Good question, friendly and conveniently inquisitive reader!  I’ve been thinking about what the future holds for a while now.  I’ve expected that I’d eventually leave Tillamook; the only undetermined factors were when and where to.  Late last year, as the world reached a new depth of s*****ness (see my last blog post), I finally decided that the one thing I need more than anything now was closer proximity to my friends and loved ones.  Tillamook has plenty of friendly people and a very welcoming legal community, but I know virtually no one outside my work sphere there.  My old college chums, my law school comrades, my drinking buddies, and Cthulhu are mostly located in or close to Salem, the town where I’ve lived half my adult life.  To top it off, I have some professional connections in Salem; it’s probably the legal community I’m most connected to outside of Tillamook.  The stars have more or less aligned: Salem is the optimal place for me, and now’s the best time to start moving there.

Make no mistake: this process won’t be easy.  I’ve got a lot of cases to wrap up (and I’ll likely be doing business in Tillamook for a while after moving), I’ll need to find office and housing spaces, and there are plenty of other complicated matters related to moving a business and moving in general.  Nonetheless, this move has the potential to drastically change my life for the better.  Not only are many of my friends in Salem, but I’m also already acquainted with the various restaurants, cafés, bars, social calendar events, shops, and historical landmarks of the area.  There will a lot for me to see, revisit, and experience when I finally get back.  Plus, Tillamook will still be less than three hours away, so I don’t have to completely abandon my ongoing adventures/ice cream orgies in the Dairylands.  All in all, I’m quite excited!

There’s a lot to do, and a lot to look forward to, but that’s all for another time.  I have a convention to go to, so I’ll be quite busy tomorrow…stay tuned for the next exciting entry!