The following is a transcript of my experience at the I Love Bees Training Exercise in Schaumburg, Illinois.

I left my house at about 1430 Eastern time for the long drive to Schaumburg from my home in Ada, Michigan, right outside of Grand Rapids. I wore my Utilities that I bought for paintball just for fun, to screw with peoples heads a little, and to get into the mood for the "Training Exercise."

I arrived at the local Lowes Theater at approximately 1745, 1800, walked and up to the ticket counter and showed my confirmation letter and I was given a card attached to a string for wearing around the neck. I saw another guy with the same thing around his neck and asked if he was there for the "I Love bees thing" and he said yes, but he worked for the theater. I then stood around for a few minutes, asking if I could help set up or anything, but the guy said things were fine and the Microsoft guys were all up there. Then someone told me that I should go to Theater 15 and get in line! Way to help me out there, buddy... could have been a little faster about telling me WHERE TO GO, but that's life; shit happens.

I took the escalator to the upper level where Theater 15 was and walk towards the small line I see way back in the corner, fully aware that I will stand out just a bit in my Boots 'n Utes. As I approach the crowd of people, everyone stopped talking, as if I were some official with Microsoft or Bungie or something--pretty darned hilarious. Everyone's looking at me expectantly as if I should start things off, but I just got in line and said as innocently as I could, "Why did everyone suddenly stop talking?"

I stood in line for a little while, talking to a guy name Joe and another named Matt. (Cool guys). I played a card game with Matt (yay). Went to use the bathroom, got some water, you know...the normal things humans need to do. I was lucky, really, as I got into the line very early--there ended up being about 350 people there later on, as some of my pictures should illustrate (coming soon). There were also some little kids there who simply shouldn't have--they were neither "on the list," nor 17 as the Training Event information HAD SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCTED. Lucky for them that some older man was nice enough to LIE and say he was their "guardian" for the night (who knows what he was expecting...:-D Yeah-I'm an ass.). Oh, and I almost forgot to mention I met a couple kids from Grand Rapids as well--that was both unexpected and cool.

At about 1900, a girl from the Theater got up and announced that at 1920 the doors will open, they will be checking ID's at the door, you need to have one of the cards that they gave out, and be on the master list. I was pretty hopeful that they were going to kick those kids out, but as I said already, someone lied for them. I still don't know how they got through without being on the master list. The girl divided us into two lines, one with people who knew we were on the master list and one where people who were "just there" could stand and hope to God they got in. I have a feeling many of them did not.

As we entered the corridor to the theater, ID's were being checked by a nice girl named Rosa (cute), another guy was asking for confirmation emails or for the name and rank sent to the Operator, mine being Alexis--Lieutenant Junior Grade (yeah, that's really my name), and handing out the I Love Bees DVD's to those who were on the list (The DVD's are very cool, by the way). Then as we entered the theater itself, they handed out raffle tickets for the opportunity to come up and play Halo 2 Multiplayer.

Joe, Matt, and I found seats and went to sit down. Halo 2's soundtrack was playing over the speakers, which I might add, is AWESOME! Marty did an outstanding job! I promptly went up to the guy I saw wearing the Halo 2 t-shirt to see if he was a Bungie employee, but he was not. However, don't let that stifle the coolness--his name was Chuck Blevens, and he was the U.S. Product Manager for Halo 2 for Microsoft! Very, very nice man--I talked to him for maybe 10-20 minutes or so and quite a bit during the event itself when people were playing the game and he was very inviting, friendly, and open to answering questions. I don't remember everything that I asked him, but he answered everything with a very kind smile and was obviously happy to be there and be talking to someone instead of being a manager, if you know what I mean. He did say that the Bungie employees were very, very cool people as he worked with them almost every day. (Chuck, if you read this--thanks, man! You rock!) :-) I got his Gamertag so we could play some Halo 2 next chance he got to be online (he's going to be extremely busy for the next two weeks or so)! (Side note--in the MTV Special Making the Game: Halo 2, Chuck was the guy showing the game to celebrities at the VMA's--I thought that was pretty neat! I met that guy! :-P ).

At about 2100, the event started, and Chuck got on a microphone and did a short introduction and then played the final Jersey audio clip. After the clip, people were just silent, so I said, "Hey, shouldn't we be clapping now?" as I started to clap, but people weren't joining in, so I stopped. A minute later, Chuck got on the mic and said, "Clap!" so people did. (And there was much rejoicing.)

Then the show "really" kicked off and Chuck started calling people's raffle ticket numbers for people to get up and play Halo 2. (This ended up not working so well as whomever set up the tickets put way too many numbers in the box, so there were a ton of numbers that weren't given to people. We went to just picking people's names off of the master list and even then there was a ton of people on the list who weren't in the theater). There were 5 TV's setup in the room--4 for System Link and one for Xbox Live so the two people in the "hot seat" could play the people at the other Theaters. Also, the XBL people ended up being projected on the big movie screen with the audio pumped through the theater, which was really, really cool. Everyone was cheering our theater's team along and going NUTS when we won rounds or scored/captured the flag, etc.

About half an hour into the event, Chuck raffled off some cool packages for us. The package contents consisted of one Halo 2 Limited Edition, one XBL Starter Kit, one Plantronics Halo 2 headset, and a 12 month subscription to XBL. Chuck was originally supposed to raffle off only two but he gave away four instead! Initially he was going to just have some dude pick four names, but most of the people wanted to go with the raffle tickets for that, so we did after much yelling/cheering. The fourth kid to win was one of the damned little kids, and many people complained, so Chuck gave in (nice guy, as I said!) and gave out a fifth package! Those that won are having their stuff shipped to them--they didn't receive them right away.

After the raffle, a lot of people took off, apparently just hoping to win a copy of Halo 2 or not expecting to be able to play the game. I watched some more and talked to Chuck some more, which was cool and finally worked up the courage to ask (when there was maybe 45 minutes left in the event) if Chuck could do me a favor and help me get down there to play the game. He said he'd see what he could do and in the next round, after he called out five names of people that weren't there in a row, called me up! (Again, again, again--what a cool guy!) I played just a simple Slayer match on Ivory Tower, and did fair--only third place--but I thought we were in a Team Slayer match for the entire thing, so that screwed me over just a little bit. Ah well, it was awesome nonetheless!

After that I thanked Chuck (for the umpteenth time), told him the event was great (again for the umpteenth time) and said I'd send him an invite on XBL, so hopefully we could get together in Halo 2 and kick some butt, then took off for the long ride home!

(I got some random girl to take my picture as I was leaving, too--she must have thought I was crazy, but who cares!)

And there you have it, my impressions of the event and what happened to me. Extremely longer than I initially wanted this thing to be, but I guess it was worth it (the amount of writing I mean).

Thanks to Microsoft and the guys over at "4orty 2wo Entertainment" for creating the I Love Bees experience--it was a joy while it lasted and fun as heck. Finally, thanks again to Chuck Blevens for being such a cool guy and keeping the event clean and fun!

(Pictures coming soon!)