Saturday I head northeast to Bentonville, Arkansas, to meet up with fellow game players and computer enthusiasts with names like Icebreaker, Grimbal and Phosphor Dot Fossils. Ok, so they have real names too (Brian, Heath and Earl), but that’s not nearly as interesting. A few times a year several of us get together and spend an entire day playing videogames. Sometimes we have an agenda, other times everything’s unplanned. This time we have a pseudo plan — between everyone who’s attending we’ll have all three new consoles available to play: Sony’s PS3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii. We’re all also big retrogaming dorks, so I expect a lot of Nintendo and Atari challenges tomorrow as well.

The biggest challenge of all will be getting back home. As of right now they’re predicting between 5 and 10 inches of snow to fall on both where I live and where I’m headed, which is a four-hour drive on a good day. If the television weathermen predicted the winter storm’s arrival time accurately (har har) it looks like I’ll stay ahead of the snow during my drive there. That doesn’t help me Sunday during my return trip, when I’ll be driving the other way, head first into the storm.

Fortunately I plan on playing a bunch of Grand Theft Auto this weekend in order to brush up on my driving skills …