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Some Holiday?
Let's see, so when last we left our heroine, she was sick and it sucked.
Well, I straightened out all of my videogame systems on Tuesday in the end, which was fun. I think that having a monitor/TV will be a nice interesting change from past arrangements in my life, although I'm somewhat wondering what I'll do about my music games; not sure Pop'n'Music would work anywhere in the house at all. I enjoyed playing through some SMB3 and puzzle games, though.
Wednesday, K came to Tagged to hang out. I hadn't seen him in person since 2004, back when we were both in the same crew in Puzzle Pirates and I used to crash at his house in Berkeley during long blockade fights and whatnot. Originally, we were going to meet there and then come here to the Mission to hang out and eat and play puzzle games, but our company was so sparse that night I suggested he just leech dinner with us, plus I figured that Joris would enjoy meeting him -- and I was entirely correct. We basically got K on our wireless network and the three of us played Puzzle Pirates together for like 3 hours, which was pretty awesome, it's been years since I did that. The weird thing was, well, K actually WORKS for Three Rings, so... lots of weird awkward conversations about that all! Hopefully we can hang out more now that I'm in the area, anyway (he's gonna try to get us back into the group of friends we used to play Robo Rally and stuff with, maybe).
Thursday I felt relatively not sick, which was good. It was a little sad at work because there was a lot of saying goodbye; lots of people leaving for winter, but worse, our Stig interns were both finished and leaving :( Chris is going to come back next summer, which is awesome, but Dan probably won't. Sad. Actually, all of the interns this term were pretty cool; I really like working with them, even if I'm not an actual mentor or anything. Oh well. It was also a good week for Cooper, the dog, who has now gotten in the habit of sleeping next to my desk and guarding our quad from intruders (he's a great guard dog because basically people will come to ask us questions but instead go "Awww Cooper!" and pet him and forget what they wanted to ask us). Best dog ever.
Thursday night, we had a few friends over here for playing board games; it was Jenny's last night before the weekend and her (someday mine too?) friends Eric and Mike came by. We went to Blue for dinner (yay), then came back here and played a series of mostly not-very-long games. Actually, the great thing is that I made Eric and Mike move up my big boxes of board games. I wasn't going to be able to carry them up the stairs, so this worked out quite well. (I calculated that I had around 7 cubic feet of games, and that's after leaving the half of my collection that sucks back in Seattle.)
First we played Trumpet, which I hadn't played in ages, and I lost terribly, but didn't mind too much. I think Mike won. Second game was Seven Wonders with Leaders; I remember that Jenny got stuck with the Mannekin Pis wonder, which is not really worth playing IMO, but whatever. I had the leaders that gave me science discounts and points, so got an alarming number of points off science for me -- and built NO blue or purple or yellow cards, which will stun most people who usually play with me, but whatever. I forget who won. There were two games of Qwirkle, one with all 4 of us and then one without Jenny. The first was a ridiculous clusterfuck and I lost horribly -- kind of funny how math nerd cutthroat gamers will manage to do that; the second game was just less luck with the tiles (though I won that one, I recall). We also played No Thanks for one round that Jenny won, and then a 3-player game of Innovation, because Mike wondered what I'd think of it. (Sadly, what ended up happening is that I played some bizarre strategy where I might have almost won had Eric not managed to screw me over and win on his turn; I wasn't progressed to the higher level cards like the others, but had a chain for scoring cards and had gotten the achievements for 2-5. So. I suppose I need to play again sometime and see the rest of the cards.)
Then I played Stay Up Too Late Talking to Jenny until like 4am, when I think she won by playing The Dog Needs To Go Out. You'd think by now that I'd learn when to play I Have Work Tomorrow, but in reality...
...Friday I woke up around 10am and was like "Wait a minute. Nobody's going to be in the office today anyway, why am I going?" and then realized, "I'M HUNGRY! WORK HAS FOOD! YEAH!" and went there. It was pretty deserted, but Tim and Justin did their intern presentation and I'm glad I could be there for that (it was actually pretty useful stuff about how we're using the Kafka pubsub system for some of our applications). I was actually being reasonably productive all things considered, until Joris showed up in the late afternoon and was like "Play Puzzle Pirates with me!" and so that's what we ended up doing for a few hours.
Hmmm...
Saturday was pretty fun, I invited Mike D to come over and hang out because he was in the same boat of holiday-weekend-whateverness. So we went on a walk around the area, down to 24th and Mission, and then played a crapton of Pokemon Puzzle League (the game formerly known as Tetris Attack). Which was awesome! Much like with Set, he's better than me, but not by enough to make it unfun for me, and we both won and lost our fair share of the matches, playing in 3-D mode all the time, with matches going to like 23 minutes. I can't remember the last time someone could go that long with me... maybe it was Django? Eventually we were hungry and went out to look for dinner, which is not all that much fun on Christmas Eve, as a lot of places (including the place he wanted to go, Chow) are closed, so we ended up in an Indian place that reminded me of the Pittsburgh ToI, actually. Yay. :) After that we hung out talking for a long while about life the universe and everything -- why don't people really do that anymore, just talk about random crap for hours? It feels like such a thing that we did in college and that you stop doing as you get older in place of structured activities for hanging out. (I guess that's why I liked rooming with Kozo in Japan, we had these habits of staying up until all hours just talking about random crap.) Maybe I just talk too much :)
Anyway, lovely day, much better than last year's December 24th, which definitely was one of the Top 10 Worst Days Of My Life, I think.
Christmas Day was today, not that it really matters to me in that sense. I slept in and basically kind of leisurely got up, microwaved some Mac'n'Cheese for lunch (heh), worked on some stuff in my room (I'd haphazardly unpacked a box yesterday), called Mike (J, that is), and as I was beginning to try to get my act together for going to Drew and Jason's tonight for dinner, Jenny showed up at home, but had to go out again to see more family or something. Huh. It turned out she could give me a ride to J&D's place, but I had already said I'd go with Yaakov (my coworker) on BART, so instead I got Yaakov to come over to our place, and then he and I and Jenny all walked about a mile to go find a Zipcar. It was a pretty nice walk, actually, we also had Ella (Jenny's dog) with us.
Dinner was Italian wedding soup, and ham and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and of course it was totally fantastic. Jason's mom adores me for whatever reason and she was joking how they should adopt me so I can carry on their family's cooking traditions, but I had to explain that I'm a lousy cook. (I guess that's not quite true. I'm lazy, not lousy.) Anyway, everything was yummy. After dinner there was cookies for dessert, and then we played Dominion for a few hours, and it was with some new expansion that I knew nothing of the cards for as usual. Eventually we got a ride to BART and I came home.
I wrote this long entry partially because I spent a while today rereading old parts of my life and was thinking how fortunate it is that I wrote so much, and I wish I had written more about the last 3 months; I don't even have an entry about Shin and my adventure to Yokokawa, which is really a travesty. I thought I'd go fill in my Japan trip after I got home, but instead just spent that month packing and being depressed about being in the US again and all. Eh. Whatever, at least I have photos and short FB blurbs to remind me about the time, but it's not the same as having the fresh emotional imprints of everything, which have been invaluable in reevaluating past experiences. I dunno. Maybe these year-end-year-beginning times just bring out the worst in me?
Well, anyway.
Well, I straightened out all of my videogame systems on Tuesday in the end, which was fun. I think that having a monitor/TV will be a nice interesting change from past arrangements in my life, although I'm somewhat wondering what I'll do about my music games; not sure Pop'n'Music would work anywhere in the house at all. I enjoyed playing through some SMB3 and puzzle games, though.
Wednesday, K came to Tagged to hang out. I hadn't seen him in person since 2004, back when we were both in the same crew in Puzzle Pirates and I used to crash at his house in Berkeley during long blockade fights and whatnot. Originally, we were going to meet there and then come here to the Mission to hang out and eat and play puzzle games, but our company was so sparse that night I suggested he just leech dinner with us, plus I figured that Joris would enjoy meeting him -- and I was entirely correct. We basically got K on our wireless network and the three of us played Puzzle Pirates together for like 3 hours, which was pretty awesome, it's been years since I did that. The weird thing was, well, K actually WORKS for Three Rings, so... lots of weird awkward conversations about that all! Hopefully we can hang out more now that I'm in the area, anyway (he's gonna try to get us back into the group of friends we used to play Robo Rally and stuff with, maybe).
Thursday I felt relatively not sick, which was good. It was a little sad at work because there was a lot of saying goodbye; lots of people leaving for winter, but worse, our Stig interns were both finished and leaving :( Chris is going to come back next summer, which is awesome, but Dan probably won't. Sad. Actually, all of the interns this term were pretty cool; I really like working with them, even if I'm not an actual mentor or anything. Oh well. It was also a good week for Cooper, the dog, who has now gotten in the habit of sleeping next to my desk and guarding our quad from intruders (he's a great guard dog because basically people will come to ask us questions but instead go "Awww Cooper!" and pet him and forget what they wanted to ask us). Best dog ever.
Thursday night, we had a few friends over here for playing board games; it was Jenny's last night before the weekend and her (someday mine too?) friends Eric and Mike came by. We went to Blue for dinner (yay), then came back here and played a series of mostly not-very-long games. Actually, the great thing is that I made Eric and Mike move up my big boxes of board games. I wasn't going to be able to carry them up the stairs, so this worked out quite well. (I calculated that I had around 7 cubic feet of games, and that's after leaving the half of my collection that sucks back in Seattle.)
First we played Trumpet, which I hadn't played in ages, and I lost terribly, but didn't mind too much. I think Mike won. Second game was Seven Wonders with Leaders; I remember that Jenny got stuck with the Mannekin Pis wonder, which is not really worth playing IMO, but whatever. I had the leaders that gave me science discounts and points, so got an alarming number of points off science for me -- and built NO blue or purple or yellow cards, which will stun most people who usually play with me, but whatever. I forget who won. There were two games of Qwirkle, one with all 4 of us and then one without Jenny. The first was a ridiculous clusterfuck and I lost horribly -- kind of funny how math nerd cutthroat gamers will manage to do that; the second game was just less luck with the tiles (though I won that one, I recall). We also played No Thanks for one round that Jenny won, and then a 3-player game of Innovation, because Mike wondered what I'd think of it. (Sadly, what ended up happening is that I played some bizarre strategy where I might have almost won had Eric not managed to screw me over and win on his turn; I wasn't progressed to the higher level cards like the others, but had a chain for scoring cards and had gotten the achievements for 2-5. So. I suppose I need to play again sometime and see the rest of the cards.)
Then I played Stay Up Too Late Talking to Jenny until like 4am, when I think she won by playing The Dog Needs To Go Out. You'd think by now that I'd learn when to play I Have Work Tomorrow, but in reality...
...Friday I woke up around 10am and was like "Wait a minute. Nobody's going to be in the office today anyway, why am I going?" and then realized, "I'M HUNGRY! WORK HAS FOOD! YEAH!" and went there. It was pretty deserted, but Tim and Justin did their intern presentation and I'm glad I could be there for that (it was actually pretty useful stuff about how we're using the Kafka pubsub system for some of our applications). I was actually being reasonably productive all things considered, until Joris showed up in the late afternoon and was like "Play Puzzle Pirates with me!" and so that's what we ended up doing for a few hours.
Hmmm...
Saturday was pretty fun, I invited Mike D to come over and hang out because he was in the same boat of holiday-weekend-whateverness. So we went on a walk around the area, down to 24th and Mission, and then played a crapton of Pokemon Puzzle League (the game formerly known as Tetris Attack). Which was awesome! Much like with Set, he's better than me, but not by enough to make it unfun for me, and we both won and lost our fair share of the matches, playing in 3-D mode all the time, with matches going to like 23 minutes. I can't remember the last time someone could go that long with me... maybe it was Django? Eventually we were hungry and went out to look for dinner, which is not all that much fun on Christmas Eve, as a lot of places (including the place he wanted to go, Chow) are closed, so we ended up in an Indian place that reminded me of the Pittsburgh ToI, actually. Yay. :) After that we hung out talking for a long while about life the universe and everything -- why don't people really do that anymore, just talk about random crap for hours? It feels like such a thing that we did in college and that you stop doing as you get older in place of structured activities for hanging out. (I guess that's why I liked rooming with Kozo in Japan, we had these habits of staying up until all hours just talking about random crap.) Maybe I just talk too much :)
Anyway, lovely day, much better than last year's December 24th, which definitely was one of the Top 10 Worst Days Of My Life, I think.
Christmas Day was today, not that it really matters to me in that sense. I slept in and basically kind of leisurely got up, microwaved some Mac'n'Cheese for lunch (heh), worked on some stuff in my room (I'd haphazardly unpacked a box yesterday), called Mike (J, that is), and as I was beginning to try to get my act together for going to Drew and Jason's tonight for dinner, Jenny showed up at home, but had to go out again to see more family or something. Huh. It turned out she could give me a ride to J&D's place, but I had already said I'd go with Yaakov (my coworker) on BART, so instead I got Yaakov to come over to our place, and then he and I and Jenny all walked about a mile to go find a Zipcar. It was a pretty nice walk, actually, we also had Ella (Jenny's dog) with us.
Dinner was Italian wedding soup, and ham and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and of course it was totally fantastic. Jason's mom adores me for whatever reason and she was joking how they should adopt me so I can carry on their family's cooking traditions, but I had to explain that I'm a lousy cook. (I guess that's not quite true. I'm lazy, not lousy.) Anyway, everything was yummy. After dinner there was cookies for dessert, and then we played Dominion for a few hours, and it was with some new expansion that I knew nothing of the cards for as usual. Eventually we got a ride to BART and I came home.
I wrote this long entry partially because I spent a while today rereading old parts of my life and was thinking how fortunate it is that I wrote so much, and I wish I had written more about the last 3 months; I don't even have an entry about Shin and my adventure to Yokokawa, which is really a travesty. I thought I'd go fill in my Japan trip after I got home, but instead just spent that month packing and being depressed about being in the US again and all. Eh. Whatever, at least I have photos and short FB blurbs to remind me about the time, but it's not the same as having the fresh emotional imprints of everything, which have been invaluable in reevaluating past experiences. I dunno. Maybe these year-end-year-beginning times just bring out the worst in me?
Well, anyway.