It's been a thoroughly busy month since I last wrote and outside of working 64 hours a week at my job (that's eight days) I've also been on a couple of trips around the US.

At the end of last month I flew to San Francisco to visit the Aurora Feint offices and meet with the staff there. This is was my first event I have visited as a journalist and it took a little getting used to. The guys at the office there are fantastic: They took several other journalists and myself out to lunch and dinner, then the next day we had the chance to interview some of them. I was a little worried about being in with other writers, as I said this was my first time doing anything like this and definitely my first time doing an interview and I was worried that I'd be quickly out cla$$ed by more experienced minds but actually the opposite was true. I didn't realize it during the interview but upon listening to the recording I made (I was the only one to do so) I noticed that it seemed to be only me asking any questions, with just a few exceptions. Not to besmirch the other writers there, I won't mention any names but they were great guys and I hope to meet them again at a future event. As for the staff at Aurora, I really couldn't imagine a better team. They are all so very passionate about games, especially one Steve Lin who has one of the craziest video game collections I've ever seen, not only does he own systems that most people haven't heard of but he probably has a prototype of them too.

When I got back from San Francisco my wife was at the airport to greet my with a new copy of Civilization 5 collectors edition. Really, how awesome is she?

Last week I was off again on more Android business to the Big Texas Android BBQ. It was a lot of fun meeting so many like minded folks there but sometimes I wonder why it's so hard for people to admit that another platform has any merits, as bad as the GameSpot system wars thread gets, you try going to an event like this and talking about the iPhone and you're likely to end up with a horde of angry Android geeks to deal with. It's the first time I've been to Texas and man that 12 hour drive seemed to take forever, my wife actually drove most of the way while I did some writing but still. The city of Austin really surprised me with it's size and busy downtown areas, although truthfully I'm not sure what I expected to find there. I came to the BBQ equipped with a handful of business cards that my Dad printed out and sent over from the UK and I ended up giving out most of them to vendors and I got chatting to the staff at HTC after I sorted out one of their employee's children with a DS and PSP to play while their dad tried to work. The strangest part of the BBQ was coming across someone who knew me from my writing and followed me around for a while, I can't decide if it was flattering of creepy, but it sure was unexpected.

It really has been a crazy busy month, but it's also been so awesome taking part in all of these things I never expected to happen. I hope you all get a few pleasant surprises also in the coming weeks that'll give you equally as good memories to cherish.

Also please check out my interview transcript that'll be appearing on AndroidSPIN.com throughout this coming week.