That’s what one of our professional Overwatch players asked me. With a quick search on Google, I found out that, apparently, palm trees were first introduced into the Los Angeles area during the 18th century by Spanish missionaries, and their popularity rose dramatically during the Victorian era. Palm trees are supposedly associated with desert weather, but it seems like they actually need a lot of water to grow, and the recent drought in this area has stunted their spread.

BlizzCon was at the Anaheim Convention Center, and we got here a few days early to get accustomed with the area. On the day of our arrival, a few of our pro players and I walked around Anaheim. We stopped by a restaurant that boasted meats with “no skin, no dairy, no trans fats, no fried stuff.” Then one of our players wanted to stop by a medical marijuana facility (which is legal in California) to see if he would qualify – unfortunately for him, a California identification was required (and an Australian passport was not accepted).

BlizzCon itself was pretty busy for me. I was there for work, but the press area was extremely crowded and loud, so there wasn’t really a nice place for me to work. I managed to find an out-of-the-way area where I was allowed to be because of my media badge, but even then, there were still hundreds of people flooding by right next to me to get to a different floor of the convention center.

I also realized that it probably isn’t the best idea to dispatch writers to BlizzCon to be on-site if I actually ever want content to be done. Conventions are pretty compelling, and I don’t really want to take away from writers who want to actually enjoy the convention … but seeing as there are non-stop shows and events and parties, it’s difficult for them to actually find the time to write.

Because of how busy I was, I wasn’t really too alert in terms of photographing things. Regardless, a lot of interesting stuff at BlizzCon I wasn’t able to photograph anyway, because they were in the restricted area where we were not allowed to photograph or share anything we were being told. But, I did still manage to get these two photos:

The first photo was the meal I had when I met up with our Merchandising Director. The second photo was from my spot next to reynad as we were setting up when he was doing a meet-and-greet in the Hearthstone tavern area of BlizzCon.

My plan was to leave California and head back to Illinois shortly after BlizzCon’s conclusion, but there has been a change of plans … I’ll be sticking around for a little bit longer while I do some setup of our new team house here in southern California.