As the Cardinal Flies

Being a properly qualified member of geekdom, I have on a handful of occasions ordered things from ThinkGeek.  Most notably, I ordered one of the "con edition" Bags of Holding almost instantly after their initial release, and it's still in my regular rotation of messenger-like bags.

And then, early last week, I got email from ThinkGeek announcing their first Oregon store.  On one hand, it's in a shopping center all the way over on the opposite side of the metro area from my abode (which is somewhat less centrally located than it was at this time last year).  On the other hand, the grand opening was on one of my days off, and this was after all ThinkGeek....

By bus and light rail, this turned out to be a trip of a bit under two hours.  And there was an actual line to get in (the crowd being good-sized, and the store's square footage relatively modest).  But there were also Imperial stormtroopers, and some other cosplayers, and small bits of swag, and interesting geeky things to look at.  And I may now have a set of coasters that look like Star Trek transporter pads, complete with blinky lights and sound effects.  (Fortunately, there's a mode for "blinky lights only"; otherwise, your glass makes transporter noises every time you pick it up and put it down.)  Now if the next release will just include a working replicator function, so it will actually refill the glass of root beer on demand....

The trip was also justified by the discovery that the B&N at the other end of the mall had significant markdowns on a large selection of their genre DVDs...and I have a B&N membership/discount card.  Thus, among other things, I now have the first season complete-series set for Class, the Doctor Who spinoff, in my stack of things to get around to watching eventually.