when the sand runs out: Thank You Sean Plott

This Christmas, I got Man-Cub the best present ever and will never again be able to top it. As you all know, Man-Cub is a little bit nerdy...and has started to turn me a little bit nerdy. He plays many video games and his current favorite is Star Craft 2. Now, if you ask him, he could give you all the details about the game. But all I really know is there's a lot of clicking, and a map, and you attack each other. I don't really know much about it, obviously.

But it's supposed to be a big deal in the gaming world these days and there are professional players and tournaments and they're trying to get it on ESPN like a real sport...I think you get the point.

When Star Craft 1 came out, this guy named Sean Plott played professionally. He was super good and everybody loved him. When Star Craft 2 came out, Sean decided to quit playing professionally and help other people not only get better, but also learn to love and appreciate the game. Sean's gaming name is Day[9] so in order to help other gamers, he created a show online for others to watch. His website is day9.tv and he does Day[9] daily shows in order to help Star Craft 2 gamers "become a better gamer." Although most of you are not gamers, Day[9] is kind of a big deal in the gaming world. He can have 17,000 live viewers during the daily, then he archives the show and will get hundreds of thousands of more views. He is a big deal.

Man-Cub loves watching the Day[9] Daily and is happy to share the funny moments with me. Although I don't play, nor understand Star Craft, Day[9] has some non-Star Craft episodes so Man-Cub happily shared them with me. In watching the few shows I could, I learned that Day[9] is awesome and super funny and I became a fan. Man-Cub had mentioned wanting a Day[9] t-shirt and considering I loved Day[9], I figured that was something I could support.

In October, I emailed one of the links of Day[9]'s website asking for a signed t-shirt to give to Man-Cub for Christmas. Of course, I made Man-Cub sound as awesome as possible and made sure Day[9] knew how awesome we both thought he was. After waiting a few weeks without hearing anything, I emailed a different address from the website. After waiting a few more weeks, I sent the same email to every address on the site. The Day[9] staff probably got about 8 emails. :) When I never heard anything, I went ahead and just bought a t-shirt offline, a little disappointed about never hearing anything.

On the glorious morning of December 21, I got an email response from a staff member at Day9.tv saying that Sean thought I was awesome and wanted to send a signed shirt. They asked what I wanted the shirt to say, etc. and said they would send a picture of the shirt for me to print out for under the tree until the actual shirt came.

Friends, let me tell you. It's a good thing I didn't hear anything in October. Man-Cub and I were exchanging presents Christmas Eve and I could barely keep it in for those 3 days. I was SO excited and became even more excited when I received this!!